12/5/2002 11:16:00 AM BRIAN PERRY/ Thurmond: The 20th Century South
By BRIAN PERRY
Reasonably Right
One hundred years ago, Strom Thurmond was born in Edgefield, S. C. His birthday is Dec. 5. His story is the story of the South in the Twentieth Century.
He graduated from Clemson University (then Clemson College) during the Roaring 20s with a degree in horticulture and became a farmer, teacher and athletic coach until 1929.
As the Great Depression set in, he assumed the office of Edgefield County Superintendent of Education. During this time he was admitted to the South Carolina Bar after having studied under Judge William Thurmond (his father).
In 1933, he was elected to the state senate and in 1938 elected a circuit court judge. He left the bench when America went to war. After getting a special exemption for his age, the 42-year-old Thurmond joined the Normandy invasion as a paratrooper on D-Day with the 82nd Airborne. He was awarded 5 Battle Stars, earned 18 decorations, medals and awards, including the Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster, Bronze Star for Valor, Purple Heart, Belgian Order of the Crown, and French Croix de Guerre. In 1947, Thurmond’s political career reached a new level, which would ensnare and transform the South in years to come. For some, it is the zenith of their career, but Strom was just getting started.
Now a war hero, the people of South Carolina elected Strom Thurmond Governor in 1947. The following year, he and other Dixiecrats staged a revolt against Democratic President Harry S Truman and his “progressive” positions on race. At a conference held in Jackson, Mississippi Governor Thurmond told his fellow Jeffersonian Democrats, “All the laws of Washington, and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negroes into their homes, their schools, their churches and their places of recreation and amusement.” Thurmond launched a campaign for President of the United States on a platform of states’ rights infused with a race baiting populism.
His Vice Presidential nominee was Governor Fielding Wright of Mississippi. Together they would carry four states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana) for 39 electoral votes and 1,176,125 popular votes. Thurmond’s split in the Democratic Party gave a foreshadow of a coming two-party South. Truman won reelection after defeating Republican Thomas Dewey.
Thurmond returned to South Carolina to complete his term as governor and then move back into private law practice. In 1954, Thurmond ran on a write-in campaign for US Senate and won, the only such event in the history of the Senate. He resigned in 1956 to run in the Democratic Primary for the same post, as he had promised in his 1954 campaign. He won again. He was elected to eight terms of office, cast a record of more than 16,000 votes, holds the record for the longest filibuster in Senate history (24 hours and 18 minutes), is the oldest serving member in Senate history, and is the longest serving member in Senate history.
His most significant accomplishment was the breaking of the Democratic Solid South. In 1964, he switched parties to become the first Southern Republican Senator since Reconstruction. Alexander Lamis recounts Thurmond’s view of the developing GOP in “The Two Party South” saying, “By openly affiliating with the Republican party, Thurmond brought the national party cleavage to the forefront in statewide elections…he said in 1978, ‘The party’s growth in the South will come naturally. A two-party system is important from the standpoint of national elections – to give people clearly defined choices.’”
Thurmond eventually became the first Southern senator of any party to hire a black aide. By 1982, he had begun voting for civil rights bills and made public political advances to blacks in South Carolina. In Thurmond’s life, the country has grown by five states, the Constitution has grown by 12 amendments, transportation moved from horse to car to airplane, and primitive telephone technology has moved into a world wide computer network. The South has moved from a land of a race baiting Democratic Primary to a competitive two-party region with both major political factions supporting civil rights.
The seat he has held for 48 years will go to Republican Congressman Lindsey Graham. He will return to South Carolina. He hasn’t been home in over two years and has been unable to do little more than vote. His first wife died in 1960 after thirteen years together and no children. At age 66, he remarried in 1968 to 22-year-old Nancy Moore. They have had four children together.
In his final address to the US Senate, Thurmond told his colleagues, “Remember your God. Take good care of your body and tax your nervous system as little as possible. Obey the laws of the land. Be strictly honest. Associate with only the best people, morally and intellectually. Think 3 times before you act once, and if you are in doubt, don’t act at all. Be prompt on your job to the minute. Read every spare chance and think over and try to remember what you have read. Do not forget that skill and integrity are the keys to success.”
Brian Perry is Deputy Editorial Page Editor of the Madison County Journal and editor of MagnoliaReport.com.
