Strom Thurmond and the Politics of Southern Change

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Hardcover. Very good/good. 25 cm, 574, [2] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Bookplate. Signed by the author. Minor moisture staining inside top DJ edge, minor bleeding of board color onto DJ. Derived from a Kirkus Review: Vivid, balanced account of the political evolution of the legendary segregationist who retained his Senate seat for nearly four decades and become a distinguished Washington institution. Born in 1902, Thurmond grew up in a conservative, racially segregated social milieu and a solidly Democratic political culture. Cohodas presents Thurmond as a decent but conformist and ambitious product of this environment who, elected governor of South Carolina in 1946, took some progressive steps but fought attempts to change his state's ``custom and tradition'' of racial segregation. Thurmond opposed civil-rights so much that, in 1948, he led fellow ``Dixiecrats'' out of the Democratic Party to run a third-party campaign for President. In 1954, Thurmond began his long career as a senator from South Carolina, achieving an enduring reputation who once conducted a 24-hour filibuster against civil-rights legislation. Cohodas argues persuasively that Thurmond's principal political achievement has been to transform the ``solid South'' from a Democratic to a Republican stronghold. , Cohodas shows that his conservatism mellowed as American society changed. The author closes with the striking actions of Thurmond helping, as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Clarence Thomas onto the Supreme Court. James Strom Thurmond (December 5, 1902 - June 26, 2003) was an American politician who served for 48 years as a United States Senator from South Carolina. He ran for president in 1948 as the States Rights Democratic Party candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes. Thurmond represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 until 2003, at first as a Democrat and, after 1964, as a Republican. A magnet for controversy during his nearly half-century Senate career, Thurmond switched parties because of his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, disaffection with the liberalism of the national party, and his support for the conservatism of the Republican presidential candidate Senator Barry Goldwater. He left office as the only member of either house of Congress to reach the age of 100 while still in office, and as the oldest-serving and longest-serving senator in U.S. history (although he was later surpassed in length of service by Robert Byrd and Daniel Inouye). Thurmond holds the record as the longest-serving member of Congress to serve exclusively in the Senate. He is also the longest-serving Republican member of Congress in U.S. history. At 14 years, he was also the longest-serving Dean of the United States Senate in U.S. history. In opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, he conducted the longest filibuster ever by a lone senator, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, nonstop. In the 1960s, he opposed the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 to end segregation and enforce the constitutional rights of African-American citizens, including suffrage. He insisted he had never been a racist, but was opposed to excessive federal authority. He attributed the movement to Communist agitators. Starting in the 1970s, he moderated his position on race, but continued to defend his early segregationist campaigns on the basis of states' rights in the context of Southern society at the time. He never fully renounced his earlier viewpoints.