The Also-Rans: Strom Thurmond
In this series I try to include some of the people who ran as candidates for parties other than the GOP or Democrats. One such candidate was Strom Thurmond, who for most of his career was a Democrat, but who broke with his party in 1948 to run for President as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party (or "Dixiecrat") candidate. His candidacy was one of the many reasons why political pundits thought that Harry Truman didn't have a snowball's chance on hell of winning the election: his party was so badly splintered. But as the userpic shows, they were wrong.
James Strom Thurmond was born on December 5, 1902, in Edgefield, South Carolina. He attended Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina (now Clemson University), where he graduated in 1923 with a degree in horticulture. After college, Thurmond worked as a farmer, teacher and athletic coach until 1929, when he was appointed Edgefield County's superintendent of education. Later he studied law with his father as a legal apprentice and was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1930. In 1933 Thurmond was elected to the South Carolina Senate and represented Edgefield until he was elected to the Eleventh Circuit judgeship.
In 1942, Judge Thurmond resigned from the bench to serve in the U.S. Army, achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. In the Battle of Normandy he landed on the beach in a glider attached to the 82nd Airborne Division. For his military service, he received 18 decorations, medals and awards, including the Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster, Bronze Star with Valor device, Purple Heart, World War II Victory Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, Belgium's Order of the Crown and France's Croix de Guerre.
Thurmond's political career began in an era of the Jim Crow laws, at a time that effectively disfranchised African-Americans from voting. South Carolina strongly resisted the efforts of civil rights activists to achieve integration. Running as a Democrat, Thurmond was elected Governor of South Carolina in 1946. Many considered Thurmond a progressive for much of his term. He supported the arrest of those responsible for the lynch mob murder of an African-American man named Willie Earle. Though none of the men were found guilty by the all-white jury (under the South Carolina constitution, only white men could serve on juries), Thurmond was congratulated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for his efforts.
In 1948, President Harry S. Truman ordered the desegregation of the U.S. Army, proposed the creation of a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission, supported the elimination of state poll taxes (which were used to discriminate against the poor, largely African-American), and supported drafting federal anti-lynching laws. In response to this platform, Thurmond and a group of other southern Democrats bolted from the party. The selected Thurmond to became the candidate for President of the United States on the third party ticket of the States' Rights Democratic Party (also known as the Dixiecrats). The split with the national Democrats was over what was perceived as federal intervention in the segregation practices, laws and constitutions of the Southern states. Thurmond's rhetoric during the campaign included the following:
"I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches."
In the election, Thurmond was less of a factor than expected, and he helped attract northern African-American voters to Truman. Thurmond carried four states and received 39 electoral votes.
Under the South Carolina constitution, Thurmond was constitutionally barred from seeking a second term as governor in 1950, so he mounted a Democratic primary challenge against incumbent first-term U.S. Senator Olin Johnston. Johnston defeated Thurmond by a margin of 54% to 46%. It was the only statewide election Thurmond ever lost.
In 1952, Thurmond endorsed Republican Dwight Eisenhower for the Presidency, rather than the Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson. This led state Democratic Party leaders to block Thurmond from receiving the nomination to the Senate in 1954, and he ran as a write-in candidate. Thurmond won overwhelmingly, becoming the first person to be elected to the U.S. Senate as a write-in candidate against ballot-listed opponents. In 1956, Thurmond kept a pledge to resign and run in the party primary, which he won. Afterward, he was repeatedly elected to the US Senate until his retirement 46 years later.
Thurmond supported racial segregation throughout much of his career. He was a leading opponent of the US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. In an unsuccessful attempt to derail passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, Thurmond made the longest filibuster ever conducted by a single senator, speaking for a total of 24 hours and 18 minutes. Cots were brought in from a nearby hotel for the legislators to sleep on while Thurmond discussed increasingly irrelevant and obscure topics, including his grandmother's biscuit recipe.
Thurmond was increasingly at odds with the national Democratic Party, a majority of whose leaders were supporting the civil rights movement led by African Americans in the South seeking enforcement of their right as citizens to vote and an end to racial segregation. He opposed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, which was passed. On September 16, 1964, he switched his party affiliation to the Republican Party.
At the 1968 Republican National Convention, Thurmond played a key role in keeping Southern delegates committed to Nixon. Thurmond addressed conservative fears over rumors that Nixon planned to select a liberal Republican to be his running mate. He informed Nixon that this was unacceptable to the South. Nixon ultimately asked Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew—an acceptable choice to Thurmond—to join the ticket. Thanks to his close relationship with the Nixon administration, Thurmond was in a position to deliver a great deal of federal money, appointments and projects to his state.
On February 4, 1972, Thurmond sent a secret memo to William Timmons (in his capacity as an aide to Richard Nixon) and United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell that former Beatle member John Lennon (living in New York City at the time) be deported from the United States as an undesirable alien, due to Lennon's political views and activism. Thurmond's memo and attachment, received by the White House on February 7, 1972, initiated the Nixon administration's persecution of John Lennon that threatened the former Beatle with deportation for nearly five years from 1972 to 1976.
In 1976, Thurmond appeared in a campaign commercial for incumbent U.S. President Gerald Ford in his race against Thurmond's fellow Southerner, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. In the commercial, Thurmond declared that Ford "sounds more like a Southerner than Jimmy Carter".
After the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was implemented, African Americans were protected in exercising their right to vote in South Carolina and state politicians could no longer ignore this voting bloc. Thurmond appointed Thomas Moss, an African American, to his staff in 1971. In 1983, he supported legislation to make the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. a federal holiday.
Thurmond served as the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court in 1991 and worked closely with Joe Biden, then the chairman. He joined the minority of Republicans who voted for the Brady Bill for gun control in 1993.
On December 5, 1996, Thurmond became the oldest serving member of the U.S. Senate, and on May 25, 1997, the longest-serving member (41 years and 10 months), casting his 15,000th vote in September 1998. In the following month, when astronaut John Glenn was to embark on Discovery at age 77, Thurmond, who was his senior by 19 years, reportedly sent him a message saying; "I want to go too."
Thurmond left the Senate in January 2003 as the United States' longest-serving senator (a record later surpassed by Senator Robert Byrd). In his November farewell speech in the Senate, Thurmond told his colleagues "I love all of you, especially your wives." Thurmond's 100th birthday celebration generated controversy because of remarks by Mississippi Senator Trent Lott that were considered as racially insensitive, stating: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, [Mississippi] 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 the years, either."
Thurmond was known for his attraction to younger women. He married his first wife, Jean Crouch, a former Miss South Carolina (and almost 24 years younger than him) in South Carolina's Governor's mansion on November 7, 1947. In June, upon her graduation, Thurmond hired her as his personal secretary. On September 13, 1947, Thurmond proposed marriage by calling Crouch to his office to take a dictated letter. The letter was to her, and contained his proposal of marriage. Crouch died of a brain tumor 13 years later. They couple had no children. He married his second wife, Nancy Janice Moore, Miss South Carolina of 1965, on December 22, 1968. He was 66 years old and she was 22. She had been working in his Senate office off and on since 1967. They separated in 1991, but never divorced. At age 68 (with his wife Nancy then age 25), Thurmond fathered what was believed to be his first child. He had four children with Nancy. Six months after Thurmond's death, an African-American woman named Essie Mae Washington-Williams publicly revealed that she was Thurmond's daughter. She was born on October 12, 1925, to Carrie "Tunch" Butler (1909–1948), who had worked for Thurmond's parents and was 16 years old when Thurmond, then 22, impregnated her. Thurmond paid for her education at South Carolina State University.
Strom Thurmond died in his sleep on June 26, 2003, at 9:45 p.m. of heart failure at a hospital in Edgefield, South Carolina. He was 100 years old.
James Strom Thurmond was born on December 5, 1902, in Edgefield, South Carolina. He attended Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina (now Clemson University), where he graduated in 1923 with a degree in horticulture. After college, Thurmond worked as a farmer, teacher and athletic coach until 1929, when he was appointed Edgefield County's superintendent of education. Later he studied law with his father as a legal apprentice and was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1930. In 1933 Thurmond was elected to the South Carolina Senate and represented Edgefield until he was elected to the Eleventh Circuit judgeship.
In 1942, Judge Thurmond resigned from the bench to serve in the U.S. Army, achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. In the Battle of Normandy he landed on the beach in a glider attached to the 82nd Airborne Division. For his military service, he received 18 decorations, medals and awards, including the Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster, Bronze Star with Valor device, Purple Heart, World War II Victory Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, Belgium's Order of the Crown and France's Croix de Guerre.
Thurmond's political career began in an era of the Jim Crow laws, at a time that effectively disfranchised African-Americans from voting. South Carolina strongly resisted the efforts of civil rights activists to achieve integration. Running as a Democrat, Thurmond was elected Governor of South Carolina in 1946. Many considered Thurmond a progressive for much of his term. He supported the arrest of those responsible for the lynch mob murder of an African-American man named Willie Earle. Though none of the men were found guilty by the all-white jury (under the South Carolina constitution, only white men could serve on juries), Thurmond was congratulated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for his efforts.
In 1948, President Harry S. Truman ordered the desegregation of the U.S. Army, proposed the creation of a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission, supported the elimination of state poll taxes (which were used to discriminate against the poor, largely African-American), and supported drafting federal anti-lynching laws. In response to this platform, Thurmond and a group of other southern Democrats bolted from the party. The selected Thurmond to became the candidate for President of the United States on the third party ticket of the States' Rights Democratic Party (also known as the Dixiecrats). The split with the national Democrats was over what was perceived as federal intervention in the segregation practices, laws and constitutions of the Southern states. Thurmond's rhetoric during the campaign included the following:
"I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches."
In the election, Thurmond was less of a factor than expected, and he helped attract northern African-American voters to Truman. Thurmond carried four states and received 39 electoral votes.
Under the South Carolina constitution, Thurmond was constitutionally barred from seeking a second term as governor in 1950, so he mounted a Democratic primary challenge against incumbent first-term U.S. Senator Olin Johnston. Johnston defeated Thurmond by a margin of 54% to 46%. It was the only statewide election Thurmond ever lost.
In 1952, Thurmond endorsed Republican Dwight Eisenhower for the Presidency, rather than the Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson. This led state Democratic Party leaders to block Thurmond from receiving the nomination to the Senate in 1954, and he ran as a write-in candidate. Thurmond won overwhelmingly, becoming the first person to be elected to the U.S. Senate as a write-in candidate against ballot-listed opponents. In 1956, Thurmond kept a pledge to resign and run in the party primary, which he won. Afterward, he was repeatedly elected to the US Senate until his retirement 46 years later.
Thurmond supported racial segregation throughout much of his career. He was a leading opponent of the US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. In an unsuccessful attempt to derail passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, Thurmond made the longest filibuster ever conducted by a single senator, speaking for a total of 24 hours and 18 minutes. Cots were brought in from a nearby hotel for the legislators to sleep on while Thurmond discussed increasingly irrelevant and obscure topics, including his grandmother's biscuit recipe.
Thurmond was increasingly at odds with the national Democratic Party, a majority of whose leaders were supporting the civil rights movement led by African Americans in the South seeking enforcement of their right as citizens to vote and an end to racial segregation. He opposed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, which was passed. On September 16, 1964, he switched his party affiliation to the Republican Party.
At the 1968 Republican National Convention, Thurmond played a key role in keeping Southern delegates committed to Nixon. Thurmond addressed conservative fears over rumors that Nixon planned to select a liberal Republican to be his running mate. He informed Nixon that this was unacceptable to the South. Nixon ultimately asked Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew—an acceptable choice to Thurmond—to join the ticket. Thanks to his close relationship with the Nixon administration, Thurmond was in a position to deliver a great deal of federal money, appointments and projects to his state.
On February 4, 1972, Thurmond sent a secret memo to William Timmons (in his capacity as an aide to Richard Nixon) and United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell that former Beatle member John Lennon (living in New York City at the time) be deported from the United States as an undesirable alien, due to Lennon's political views and activism. Thurmond's memo and attachment, received by the White House on February 7, 1972, initiated the Nixon administration's persecution of John Lennon that threatened the former Beatle with deportation for nearly five years from 1972 to 1976.
In 1976, Thurmond appeared in a campaign commercial for incumbent U.S. President Gerald Ford in his race against Thurmond's fellow Southerner, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. In the commercial, Thurmond declared that Ford "sounds more like a Southerner than Jimmy Carter".
After the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was implemented, African Americans were protected in exercising their right to vote in South Carolina and state politicians could no longer ignore this voting bloc. Thurmond appointed Thomas Moss, an African American, to his staff in 1971. In 1983, he supported legislation to make the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. a federal holiday.
Thurmond served as the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court in 1991 and worked closely with Joe Biden, then the chairman. He joined the minority of Republicans who voted for the Brady Bill for gun control in 1993.
On December 5, 1996, Thurmond became the oldest serving member of the U.S. Senate, and on May 25, 1997, the longest-serving member (41 years and 10 months), casting his 15,000th vote in September 1998. In the following month, when astronaut John Glenn was to embark on Discovery at age 77, Thurmond, who was his senior by 19 years, reportedly sent him a message saying; "I want to go too."
Thurmond left the Senate in January 2003 as the United States' longest-serving senator (a record later surpassed by Senator Robert Byrd). In his November farewell speech in the Senate, Thurmond told his colleagues "I love all of you, especially your wives." Thurmond's 100th birthday celebration generated controversy because of remarks by Mississippi Senator Trent Lott that were considered as racially insensitive, stating: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, [Mississippi] 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 the years, either."
Thurmond was known for his attraction to younger women. He married his first wife, Jean Crouch, a former Miss South Carolina (and almost 24 years younger than him) in South Carolina's Governor's mansion on November 7, 1947. In June, upon her graduation, Thurmond hired her as his personal secretary. On September 13, 1947, Thurmond proposed marriage by calling Crouch to his office to take a dictated letter. The letter was to her, and contained his proposal of marriage. Crouch died of a brain tumor 13 years later. They couple had no children. He married his second wife, Nancy Janice Moore, Miss South Carolina of 1965, on December 22, 1968. He was 66 years old and she was 22. She had been working in his Senate office off and on since 1967. They separated in 1991, but never divorced. At age 68 (with his wife Nancy then age 25), Thurmond fathered what was believed to be his first child. He had four children with Nancy. Six months after Thurmond's death, an African-American woman named Essie Mae Washington-Williams publicly revealed that she was Thurmond's daughter. She was born on October 12, 1925, to Carrie "Tunch" Butler (1909–1948), who had worked for Thurmond's parents and was 16 years old when Thurmond, then 22, impregnated her. Thurmond paid for her education at South Carolina State University.
Strom Thurmond died in his sleep on June 26, 2003, at 9:45 p.m. of heart failure at a hospital in Edgefield, South Carolina. He was 100 years old.