The issue of states' rights is often characterized by political scientists as a smoke screen used by Southern leaders to defend the segregationist society that dominated the landscape at the time.

That racist undertone was evident during Thurmond's acceptance speech for the nomination of the Dixiecrat party in Birmingham, Ala. On that sultry July night, then-Gov. Thurmond spoke the firebrand words that would follow him for the rest of his career.

"I want to tell you, ladies and gentleman," he proclaimed as his voice rose and his finger jabbed at the crowd, "that there's not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches."

That pronouncement, coupled with others he made along the campaign trail, forever branded Thurmond as a racist in the eyes of many, a legacy he would spend the next half-century trying -- with mixed results -- to overcome.

In 1995, for example, the Greater Washington Urban League touched off a small firestorm when it decided to honor Thurmond for his work helping historical black colleges and universities.

"There are some people I think history can't redeem," said NAACP official Nelson Rivers III at the time. "Strom Thurmond is one."

Later in life, Thurmond reflected on the states' rights movement, arguing that it was launched to fight the "liberal and activist" policies of the Truman administration, which he characterized as eroding the authority of states.

During a 1998 appearance at the National Press Club, Thurmond said his campaign rhetoric half a century earlier was grounded in the world he was raised.

"The whole South by custom and by law practiced segregation of the races," Thurmond said. "Whites went to one church, blacks went to another church, and that was the case with all segments of society."

Unlike many other segregationists from that era, Thurmond never apologized for the things he said on the campaign trail. The closest he ever came to admitting he was wrong was when he said: "You have to take a person for what he or she is, not the color of their race. What really counts is what a person stands for and what he practices, how he treats his fellow man. I think those are the things that really count."

Back in 1948, however, it was a different era and a different story. When delegates to the Democratic National Convention adopted President Truman's civil rights bill, the entire Mississippi delegation, followed by about half of the Alabama delegation, stormed out of the hall. Thurmond stayed and spoke against the platform at the convention's final session.

The civil rights platform called upon Congress to give full and equal political participation to all races, equal rights for employment, security for everyone and equal treatment in the service and defense of the country.

A group of angry Southern governors reassembled later in a Birmingham hotel room to seek their own third-party presidential candidate. First, the nomination was offered to Arkansas Gov. Ben Laney, who declined. Then came Thurmond.

Thurmond, who had not planned to attend the July 17 meeting in Birmingham, wound up going to Alabama anyway and being offered the States' Rights nomination. The next month, in Houston, he officially was nominated, with running mate Mississippi Gov. Fielding Wright.

"I knew that accepting the nomination would have future political repercussions," Thurmond later told biographer Alberta Lachicotte, "but I had little time to make up my mind, and I thought somebody ought to do something, so I finally decided to take the plunge."

Up until that point, as Lachicotte points out in the her 1966 book "Rebel Senator," Thurmond was considered a liberal by Southern standards.

As a school superintendent in Edgefield, Thurmond had worked to help educate illiterate blacks. He also started an industrial training school for black girls and worked on higher salaries and better education for both races.

"In the public eye," she wrote, "he changed overnight from a liberal to a conservative."

That November, Thurmond and Wright wound up carrying Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, winning 38 electoral votes, plus one more from a single elector in Tennessee. Still, he fell far short of his opponents.

Truman beat Thomas Dewey for the presidency with 303 electoral votes to 189.

The states' rights movement died down after the race, and Thurmond, his national image dramatically altered, returned to his duties as governor.