Thurmond, Strom

Thurmond, Strom Thurmond, Strom (James Strom Thurmond) thûr ´m?nd [key], 1902â€"2003, U.S. senator from South Carolina (1954â€"2003), b. Edgefield, S.C. He read law while teaching school (1923â€"29) and was admitted to the bar in 1930. Thurmond was elected (1932) a state senator and became (1938) a circuit-court judge. After serving in World War II, he was elected (1946) governor of South Carolina. In 1948, Thurmond was nominated for president by the States' Rights Democrats ( Dixiecrats ), southerners who bolted the Democratic party in opposition to President Truman 's civil-rights program; he won 39 electoral votes. In 1954 he was a successful write-in candidate for U.S. Senate. In 1957 he staged the longest filibuster in Senate history, speaking for over 24 hours against a civil-rights bill. Thurmond switched from the Democratic to the Republican party in 1964, and later chaired the Senate judiciary (1981â€"87) and armed services (1995â€"99) committees. In 1996 he became the oldest sitting, a nd in 1997 the longest serving, U.S. senator in history (Robert Byrd surpassed him as the latter in 2006). The posthumous revelation in 2003 that he had a daughter in 1925 with an African-American maid and that he and his child had had a warm relationship proved a thought-provoking footnote to his career. See J. Bass and M. Thompson, Ol' Strom (1999); J. Crespino, Strom Thurmond's America (2012). The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. See more Encyclopedia articles on: U.S. History: Biographies