Southern legend Strom Thurmond dies

WASHINGTON — James Strom Thurmond, who personified many of the changes that swept the South after the civil-rights movement and was the oldest person to serve in the U.S. Senate, died yesterday at the age of 100.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., halted the Senate's historic debate over Medicare and prescription drugs to announce Sen. Thurmond's death and extend his sympathies to the family.

Senators observed a moment of silence in honor of Sen. Thurmond, a South Carolina Republican.

"He was, in many respects, a legend," observed Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

Sen. Thurmond was controversial during much of his national political career. Just last December at his 100th-birthday and retirement party, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) ignited a political firestorm by paying tribute to Sen. Thurmond's past embrace of segregationist policies.

"I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either," Lott said, recalling Sen. Thurmond's presidential campaign in 1948 on a segregationist platform.

The remarks provoked a heated controversy and forced Lott to resign as Senate majority leader, with Frist being chosen as his replacement.

Until displaced by former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, Sen. Thurmond was a leading symbol of the South's resistance to granting civil rights to the nation's blacks.

In 1955, Sen. Thurmond initiated the Southern Manifesto, a petition he circulated in Congress calling for all-out resistance to the Supreme Court's 1954 decision outlawing segregation in schools.

Sen. Thurmond was also known for his stamina. In August 1957, he waged a solo filibuster, holding the Senate floor for a record 24 hours and 18 minutes, in a futile attempt to block passage of a landmark voting-rights bill — the first since Reconstruction.

A one-time Democrat and delegate to the 1932 convention that nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt for president, the former South Carolina governor ran for president in 1948 on the third-party States' Rights or "Dixiecrat" ticket when Democratic President Harry S. Truman pushed a civil-rights agenda.

"We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race," the Dixiecrat party platform stated bluntly. During the campaign Sen. Thurmond was quoted as saying, "All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negroes into our homes, our schools, our churches."

In the election, Sen. Thurmond's segregationist ticket carried the Deep South states of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, winning 39 electoral votes. Truman won election with 303, and New York Gov. Thomas Dewey had 189 for the GOP ticket.

But times changed ,and so did Sen. Thurmond. First elected to the Senate in 1954 by an unprecedented write-in vote after the state Democratic machine refused to back him, he eventually abandoned the Democrats in 1964 and joined the Republican Party.

In a statement televised throughout the then-solid Democratic South, Sen. Thurmond charged that the Democratic Party had "abandoned" the people, "repudiated" the U.S. Constitution and was "leading the evolution of our nation to a socialistic dictatorship."

After the 1970s, however, he voted for several civil-rights laws, including the extension of the 1982 Voting Rights Act and District of Columbia statehood. He also began to hire black staffers and in 1979 became the first Southern senator to recommend an African American to the federal bench.

Ralph Neas, former executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights for 14 years, said that the 1965 Voting Rights Act was a major reason for Sen. Thurmond's transformation. The conference is the legislative arm of the civil-rights movement.

"One thing to remember is that Sen. Thurmond is a masterful politician who pays attention to all his constituencies and also his black constituency," Neas said.

Born Dec. 5, 1902, Sen. Thurmond grew up in thriving Edgefield, S.C., where his father, prominent lawyer and landowner J. William Thurmond, frequently invited politicians to dinner with the family. Clearly a favorite relative was grandfather George Washington Thurmond, a veteran of both the Mexican-American War and the Civil War who hiked home from Virginia when the Confederacy was defeated.

After his graduation from Clemson University in 1923, Sen. Thurmond taught and coached high-school students before launching his political career in 1928 by running for Edgefield County school superintendent. His winning platform called for new courses in character formation, free health examinations by local doctors and dentists for both whites and blacks.

While superintendent, he began the study of law under his father. Before passing the state bar examination, Sen. Thurmond represented a group of black children born out of wedlock and won a complex state Supreme Court case involving their inheritance rights.

Combining his law practice with state politics, he continued his rise through the ranks from senator to circuit judge to governor in 1947.

During World War II, he served in the Army and landed in Normandy on D-Day with the 82nd Airborne Division. He was wounded in a glider crash behind enemy lines. On display in his Senate office were such medals as the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster and the French Croix de Guerre.

On March 6, 1996, Sen. Thurmond — then 93 years and 94 days old — finally surpassed the late Sen. Theodore Green of Rhode Island, who retired in 1961 at age 93. By then Sen. Thurmond was serving as the Senate's president pro tempore, third in line for the presidency.

While not known for his legislative achievements, he was popular on both sides of the political spectrum because of the attention he paid to his colleagues and their legislation. On Capitol Hill, he was widely viewed as an institution and a stickler for civility rather than a wheeler-dealer willing to use any political tactic to achieve a political goals.

The real secret of Sen. Thurmond's success, according to veteran reporter Lee Bandy, was service to his constituents. Most South Carolinians sooner or later came into contact with the senator, whether it was a letter congratulating a new high-school graduate, the parents of a child, or a birthday celebrant.

The chief political writer for The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C., Bandy remembered meeting a black woman at a Thurmond function who had brought an old letter showing how the senator had helped her husband resolve a government benefit problem.

In his late 90s, his age and a hip ailment kept Sen. Thurmond from returning on weekends to South Carolina. He was treated like royalty in his home state.

A nonsmoker and teetotaler, Sen. Thurmond prided himself on his healthy lifestyle that stressed exercise and a sensible diet, featuring a breakfast of grits and an egg substitute.

In the early 1970s, he was one of the first members of Congress to undergo hair transplants, a few years after he had married Nancy Moore, a former Miss South Carolina and a former intern in his office who was 44 years his junior. With a well-known eye for attractive women, Sen. Thurmond frequented the Senate Beauty Salon to maintain his hair's reddish hue and his aura of indestructibility.

His first wife Jean, who was 24 years his junior, died in 1960 after surgery for a brain tumor.

With the Senate divided 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans after the 2000 election, Sen. Thurmond's increased frailty raised concerns about his health and his ability to continue in office.

With the defection of Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont from the GOP ranks in 2001, however, the Democrats regained control, and veteran Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia succeeded Sen. Thurmond as president-pro tem.

By then the senior Republican had resigned the chairmanship of the powerful Armed Services Committee. Although Sen. Thurmond remained diligent about voting, his appearances and testimony at hearings became noticeably abbreviated.

Nearing his 99th birthday in November 2001, Sen. Thurmond moved into Walter Reed Army Medical Center for monitoring of his health. He insisted the move was temporary and continued to show up for work at the Senate.

Sen. Thurmond and his wife, Nancy, who lived separately in later years, had four children, including J. Strom Jr., the U.S. attorney for South Carolina; Juliana Whitmer; and Paul. Their eldest child, Nancy, was killed by a drunken driver in 1993 when she was a college senior.

Information from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.