Strom Thurmond

Strom Thurmond appears as a political opponent of federal efforts to dismantle racial segregation in the American South. His 1948 presidential campaign challenged the federal government’s authority to change southern institutions, but the weakening of the unified Democratic Party and the eventual implementation of court rulings and civil-rights laws limited the political force of that resistance.

Opposition to Federal Intervention

As southern elites faced rising challenges to their control, non-southern elements of the Democratic Party turned against segregation. Southern Democrats regrouped as the States’ Rights Democratic Party and entered the 1948 presidential election with Thurmond as their candidate. He carried four states and received thirty-nine Electoral College votes, a showing far short of the national power the Democratic Party had held when southern elites could command it as a unified force.

Thurmond’s campaign centered on opposition to federal intervention in southern institutions. He argued that federal authority could not force the South to end segregation in public and private settings. The book presents that claim against the broader shift already under way: the Supreme Court had begun challenging the political arrangements that sustained white control, and resistance to federal authority could no longer rely on the same unified national party.

Resistance and Federal Enforcement

Thurmond’s opposition continued in the Senate during the fight over the first Civil Rights Act. In 1957 he spoke continuously for twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes in an attempt to prevent or delay its passage, reading aloud material ranging from the Declaration of Independence to telephone books. The effort did not stop the legislation. The 1957 act was followed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed a broad range of segregationist state laws and practices, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited literacy tests, poll taxes, and other methods used to disenfranchise Black voters while expanding federal oversight of state elections.

The larger struggle also depended on whether court decisions would be enforced. In 1962, after a prolonged legal battle, federal courts ruled that James Meredith, a Black air force veteran, had to be admitted to the University of Mississippi. Governor Ross Barnett publicly rejected the order. Federal marshals and troops ultimately enforced it, and Meredith remained on campus under protection until he graduated. The episode illustrates the limits of state resistance when the federal government acted to implement a judicial ruling.

Political Legacy in the Book’s Account

The book places Thurmond’s career within the erosion of the political support that had sustained Jim Crow. Earlier, the Supreme Court had ruled in 1944 that white-only primary elections were unconstitutional; later decisions challenged school segregation and legislative malapportionment. These rulings mattered because federal action and changing party alignments made implementation possible where local authorities had previously protected the southern elite’s control.

The consequences extended beyond electoral rules. In Mississippi, the share of eligible Black residents voting rose from about 5 percent in 1960 to 50 percent in 1970; Alabama and South Carolina saw comparable increases. Black employment in southern textile mills also grew, from about 5 percent of workers in 1960 to 15 percent in 1970 and 25 percent by 1990. In this account, Thurmond’s resistance is significant not as a successful defense of segregation, but as a prominent challenge overtaken by federal enforcement and institutional change.