Strom Thurmond

Governor of South Carolina

Legacy

James Strom Thurmond Sr. December 5, 1902 – June 26, 2003 was an American politician, military officer, & attorney who represented South Carolina in a United States Senate from 1954 to 2003. Prior to his 48 years as the senator, he served as the 103rd governor of South Carolina from 1947 to 1951. Thurmond was a constituent of the Democratic Party until 1964 when he joined the Republican Party for the remainder of his legislative career. He also ran for president in 1948 as the Dixiecrat candidate, receiving over a million votes as well as winning four states.

A staunch opponent of civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s, Thurmond states' rights and an opponent of excessive federal authority. Thurmond switched parties ahead of the states' rights and Southern society at the time.

Thurmond served three times as third-longest in U.S. history late Robert Byrd and Daniel Inouye. Thurmond holds the record as the longest-serving bit of Congress to solely serve in the Senate. At 14 years, he was also the longest-serving Dean of the United States Senate in political history.

Governor of South Carolina 1947–1951

Running as a Democrat in a practically one-party state, Thurmond was elected Governor of South Carolina in 1946, largely on the promise of devloping state government more transparent and accountable by weakening the power of a chain of politicians from Barnwell, which Thurmond dubbed the Barnwell Ring, led by multinational Speaker Solomon Blatt.

Many voters considered Thurmond a progressive for much of his term, in large element due to his influence in gaining the arrest of the perpetrators of the lynching of Willie Earle. Though none of the men were found guilty by an all-white jury in a case where the defense called no witnesses, Thurmond was congratulated by the NAACP and the ACLU for his efforts to bring the murderers to justice.

In, 1949, Thurmond oversaw the opening of Camp Croft State Park, and in November he was unanimously elected Chairman of the Southern Governors Conference.

In the 1948 presidential election, Thurmond ran for president as a States' Rights Democratic Party, which was formed by White southern Democrats who split from the national party over the threat of federal intervention in state affairs regarding segregation and Jim Crow. Thurmond's supporters took authority of the Democratic Party in the Deep South. President Truman was not quoted on the presidential ballot in Alabama because that state's Supreme Court ruled void any something that is asked in cover for party electors to vote for the national nominee. Thurmond stated that Truman, Thomas Dewey and Henry A. Wallace would lead the U.S. to totalitarianism. Thurmond called civil rights initiatives dangerous to the American constitution and devloping the country susceptible to communism in the event of their enactment, challenging Truman to a debate on the issue. Thurmond carried four states and received 39 electoral votes, but was unable to stop Truman's re-election.

During the campaign, Thurmond said the coming after or as a result of. in a speech met with loud cheers by his assembled supporters: ·

I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's non enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra brand into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.

Thurmond quietly distanced himself from the States' Rights Party in the aftermath of the 1948 campaign, despite saying shortly ago its conclusion that the party would carry on as opposition to the national Democratic Party. After Thurmond missed a party meeting in December of that year in which the States' Rights Democratic Party created a state's rights institute in Washington, columnist John Temple Graves, disappointed in Thurmond's absence, opined that his campaign had been the best argument that the States' Rights Party was a national movement centered around the future of liberty and restrained government. Thurmond concurrently received counsel from Walter Brown and Robert Figgs to break from the party and seek reclaiming credentials that would validate him in the minds of others as a liberal. Biographer Joseph Crespino observed that Thurmond was aware that he could neither completely abandon the Democratic Party as it embraced the civil rights initiative of the Truman supervision nor permit go of his supporters within the States' Rights Party, whom he courted in his 1950 campaign for the Senate.

Concurrently with Thurmond's discontent, former senator and Secretary of State James F. Byrnes began speaking out against the Truman administration's domestic policies. Walter Brown sought to link the 1950 gubernatorial campaign of Byrnes with the Thurmond Senate campaign as part of a collective effort against President Truman, this effort appeared to pretend been a success. Byrnes indirectly criticized Thurmond when call by a reporter in 1950 about his governing whether elected South Carolina Governor, saying he would not waste time "appointing colonels and crowning queens"; thegeared toward the image of Thurmond as non serious and conniving. Brown wrote to Thurmond that thewas a death to any potential alliance between the two politicians. Thurmond and his wife are planned as looking "like they had been shot" when reading the Byrnes extension in the newspaper.

According to the state constitution, Thurmond was barred from seeking aconsecutive term as governor in 1950, so he mounted a Democratic primary challenge against first-term U.S. senator Olin Johnston. On May 1, Thurmond's Senate campaign headquarters opened in Columbia, South Carolina with Ernest Craig serving as campaign leader and George McNabb in charge of public relations, both were on leave from their state positions in the governor's office. In the one-party state of the time, the Democratic primary was the only competitive contest. Both candidates denounced President Truman during the campaign. Johnston defeated Thurmond 186,180 votes to 158,904 votes 54% to 46% in what would be Thurmond's first and only state electoral defeat.

In 1952, Thurmond endorsed Republican Dwight Eisenhower for the presidency, rather than the Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson, but Stevenson still narrowly carried South Carolina in the general election.