Will Chandler Independent-Mail photos A billboard in the entryway of the Strom Thurmond Institute at Clemson University features a sign honoring Strom Thurmond with photos of the former legislator in front of the U.S. Capitol and with then-Vice President George Bush at the groundbreaking of the institute.

By Emily Huigens / Independent-Mail
June 27, 2003

For better or worse, retired U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond embodied South Carolina and at times, the entire Southeast for observers inside and outside the state.

Following the former senator’s death at an Edgefield hospital Thursday at the age of 100, Anderson-area leaders remembered him as a complex man who lived out the best and worst parts of Southern politics in the 20th century.

For many, Mr. Thurmond’s capacity for change, his service to his constituents and his role as a progressive was so remarkable that it eclipsed the white supremacist beliefs he held early in his career.

Ralph Callaham, 79, the animal-control officer for the town of Honea Path, still has the pencil that he used to cast a ballot for Mr. Thurmond as a write-in candidate in 1954.

"The Democrats said people in South Carolina were ignorant and couldn’t write, but we wrote him into office," Mr. Callaham said. "I think he’s the greatest statesman we’ve had in South Carolina, and maybe in the U.S."

For others, his political sins in the days of institutional racism can never be forgiven, no matter the deeds that followed.
Anderson community volunteer Cordes Seabrook, who said he was one of the first Southerners to join the Republican Party that Mr. Thurmond switched to in 1964, said he "wasn’t a great fan" of the senator, but acknowledged, "He was a pretty extraordinary fellow."

He said he isn’t convinced Mr. Thurmond’s views about segregation changed for any reason beyond his realization that the black vote was important to his success.

"He could do arithmetic. He found out that black folks counted," he said.

South Carolina state Sen. William O’Dell, D-Ware Shoals, said he believed the changes Mr. Thurmond underwent over his 70 years in politics were genuine.

"He had been in politics since the 1930s, and he made decisions in accordance with the times," Sen. O’Dell said. "I’d hate to say he was a racist, but a lot of people thought he was. But things have changed in his lifetime, and he changed with them. That’s a credit to him."

Robert Becker, executive director of the Strom Thurmond Institute at Clemson University, said it would be a mistake for people to judge Mr. Thurmond by any one period in his career. The one consistency in Mr. Thurmond’s lifetime was his capacity for change, Mr. Becker said.

In Washington, D.C., Mr. Thurmond’s Republican successor, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, said Friday, "There will never be another like him."

For African-Americans, it will be a blessing if South Carolina never produces another politician like Mr. Thurmond, said Anderson County NAACP Chapter President Gloria Plotnik.

One of the children who first integrated Pendleton Elementary School, Ms. Plotnik said the senator’s early comments vehemently against segregation negatively resonate with her to this day.

She said she never believed that he rejected those early beliefs, although he did appoint some of the first high-ranking African-Americans to office, was the first Southern senator to hire a black staff member, and voted to make the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday.

"He changed because he knew that was the right thing to do for politics, not just the morally right thing to do," Ms. Plotnik said.

She said she also was disappointed in the way television networks reported the senator’s death Thursday evening and Friday, in her eyes giving inadequate attention to a racist past.

"I watched one network, and they made a point of interviewing African-Americans who felt that he was a wonderful man. They showed briefly the Dixiecrat party, and they glossed over the hatred," she said.

For some of his constituents, however, the senator’s actions later in his career showed a real commitment to equal rights and service to everyone he represented.

"I think he came around full circle to believing that everybody should have equal rights and equal opportunities," said Em Holman,who met a young Strom Thurmond in 1940 when she was a teenager visiting the home of Wilton Hall, then owner of the Anderson Independent.

Mr. Hall introduced the young man as someone "you’ll be hearing a lot from," she said.

In his transformation, he mirrored the face of Southern politics, she said.

"I do think that he evolved with the South in recognition of the changing times," she said.

The times will now change without him, and for today’s leaders, the political landscape has been forever altered.

Like many of his contemporaries, Anderson Mayor Richard Shirley could not imagine what the state’s political scene would be like if not for Mr. Thurmond’s influence.

Friday morning, he said he found himself thinking that Mr. Thurmond was elected to the Senate in 1954, the same year he was born.

"I don’t know life without Sen. Thurmond," he said.

— Independent-Mail reporters Samantha Epps and Alison Glass contributed to this report.

Emily Huigens can be reached at (864) 260-1260 or by e-mail at huigensee@IndependentMail.com

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