page_title: Strom Thurmond
section_title: Governor of South Carolina
hierarchical_section_title: Strom Thurmond / Early career / Governor of South Carolina
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of Strom Thurmod as South Carolina Governor
context_page_description: James Strom Thurmond Sr. was an American military officer and politician who served for 48 years as a United States Senator from South Carolina. He ran for president in 1948 as the Dixiecrat candidate on a States' rights platform supporting racial segregation. He received 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes, failing to defeat Harry Truman. Thurmond represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 until 2003, at first as a Southern Democrat and, after 1964, as a Republican.
  A magnet for controversy during his nearly half-century Senate career, Thurmond switched parties, primarily because of his vehement opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and endorsed Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. In the months before switching, he had "been critical of the Democratic Administration for ... enactment of the Civil Rights Law", while Goldwater "boasted of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, and made it part of his platform." Thurmond left office as the only member of either chamber 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.
context_section_description: Running as a Democrat in the one-party state, Thurmond was elected Governor of South Carolina in 1946, largely on the promise of making state government more transparent and accountable by weakening the power of a group of politicians from Barnwell, which Thurmond dubbed the Barnwell Ring, led by House Speaker Solomon Blatt.
  Many voters considered Thurmond a progressive for much of his term, in large part due to his influence in gaining the arrest of the perpetrators of the lynching of Willie Earle. Though none of the men were found guilty by the all-white jury and the defense called no witnesses, Thurmond was congratulated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for his efforts to bring the murderers to justice.
  On May 31, 1949, Thurmond held a ceremony in his office commemorating the acquisition of Camp Croft into the South Carolina State Park system.
  On November 22, 1949, Thurmond was unanimously voted Chairman of the Southern Governors Conference, replacing Arkansas governor Benjamin Travis Laney.
caption: Strom Thurmond as Governor
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