Strom Thurmond: Keynote Address at the States’ Rights Democratic Conference

About the Author

Born on December 5, 1902, in Edgefield, South Carolina, James Strom Thurmond would serve in the U.S. Senate for nearly fifty years, from 1954 to 2003. Beginning his career in education, Thurmond went on to practice law. He then served in the South Carolina Senate and also the state's judiciary. During World War II, he served as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, rising to the rank of major general in the reserve force. Following the war, he won the 1946 South Carolina gubernatorial election as a Democrat, to serve from 1947 to 1951. In 1948 Thurmond ran for president of the United States on the ticket of the States' Rights Democratic Party, known as the Dixiecrats, in protest of President Harry Truman's position on civil rights. Thurmond next sought a seat in the U.S. Senate from South Carolina, but after losing his first bid for the office in 1950, he went on to complete his term as governor and then practiced law from 1951 through 1955. In 1952 he broke with the Democratic Party by endorsing Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party's candidate for president. In retaliation, the Democrats in South Carolina ensured his primary loss in the race for the U.S. Senate in 1954. Thurmond responded, however, by winning the seat through a write-in campaign. He took office early when he was appointed senator following the resignation of Charles E. Daniel, whom he had defeated in the election. Thurmond duly served until his promised resignation in 1956, but he won back the seat in a special election to fill the vacancy that he left. Thurmond was then repeatedly reelected to the Senate, serving until January 2003. He died a few months later, on June 26, 2003.

Thurmond was the first national figure in the post–World War II era to oppose integration. After taking office as governor of South Carolina in 1947, Thurmond increasingly turned his attention to the growing civil rights agenda of the Truman administration. In 1946 he had opposed the establishment of the President's Committee on Civil Rights. In December 1947 the committee produced a civil rights report titled To Secure These Rights, which then shaped much of Truman's agenda. In 1948 the U.S. district court judge Julius Waties Waring ordered the state of South Carolina to allow African Americans to vote in primary elections. In all, these civil rights developments persuaded Thurmond to mount a national campaign to preserve segregation in the South. Joining like-minded southern politicians in Jackson, Mississippi, in May 1948, Thurmond delivered a speech to the States' Rights Democratic Conference. He attended the Democratic National Convention held in Philadelphia in July 1948, but later that month he accepted the nomination to run for president of the United States on the States' Rights Democratic Party ticket. This provided Thurmond and other southern politicians who opposed integration with a national platform, even though Truman won the election for the presidency.

During the 1950s Thurmond fully launched his political career as a staunch defender of states' rights. After losing his first run for the U.S. Senate in 1950, Thurmond went on to win a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1954 through a write-in campaign. In 1956 Thurmond successfully led an effort to produce what became known as the Southern Manifesto. This document was signed by all southern senators except the majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson (Texas), Estes Kefauver (Tennessee), and Albert Gore, Sr. (Tennessee). The Southern Manifesto proclaimed the “clear abuse of judicial power” of the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Thurmond continued in his leadership role opposing integration in the name of states' rights by setting a filibuster record during Senate debates on the 1957 civil rights bill.

Thurmond solidified his movement away from Democratic positions on civil rights by switching parties in 1964, officially declaring his new political affiliation with the Republican Party and campaigning for Barry Goldwater, the party's presidential candidate. In 1968 Thurmond published a book titled The Faith We Have Not Kept, which summarized his conservative positions on law and order, values and morals, and the cold war against Communism, effectively outlining the conservative agenda for decades to come. In 1968 Thurmond played an important role in the “southern strategy” used by Richard Nixon to win the presidential election.

Thurmond continued to serve South Carolina and conservative America in the U.S. Senate until 2003. During the intervening years, he shifted his views on segregation and civil rights to more supportive positions, yet he maintained his strong support of states' rights in opposition to federalism. He also continued to lead the nation in matters of national defense. In 1998 Congress passed Public Law 105-261, entitled the Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999; members of Congress named the act in honor of Thurmond's many years of distinguished service in the military and as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Overall, as a southerner who maintained steadfast antagonism to civil rights for decades, Thurmond long reflected the region and era in which he came to political prominence.