EDGEFIELD, S.C. - Few S.C. politicians fought harder to deprive black people of their civil rights than Strom Thurmond.

But many of the African American residents in his predominantly black hometown of Edgefield didn't dwell Friday on the past of the legendary 100-year-old. They talked mostly about forgiveness.

In the town square, at fruit stands and banks, flags dropped to half-staff in respect to the former senator, who died Thursday. Thurmond, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, chose to live out his final days in the town of his birth, about 150 miles southwest of Charlotte.

After a funeral Tuesday in Columbia, Thurmond will be buried with military honors in his family plot at Edgefield's Willowbrook Cemetery.

Throughout the day, Edgefield residents and out-of-towners laid flowers at the feet of Thurmond's statue, a focal point in the town square.

But as they mourned Thurmond's death, black Edgefield residents said they felt conflicted about Thurmond, who was known for his staunch support of segregation and his opposition to civil rights legislation.

Several blacks said they deplored the views Thurmond once held, but they also believed he truly had a change of heart and did what he could to help blacks and others in recent years. They said their conflicted feelings are common in Edgefield, a town of 4,500 that is 60 percent black.

"I think he made decisions according to the times, but he did change with the times," said Edgefield native Glasglow Griffin, 65, owner of the Main Street Auto Service Center. "He took a personal interest in my three sons, and encouraged them to get an education and do great things when they got out of the military."

The attitudes expressed by black Edgefield residents illustrate how hometown ties can cross racial lines and how personal relationships can outweigh politics. That's why Edgefield may give a distorted view of the way blacks feel across the state, said a political scientist and an NAACP leader, both of whom are African American.

The Rev. Joseph Darby, first vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said most S.C. blacks don't hold Thurmond in high esteem. He said Edgefield residents may not be candid about their feelings.

"When you have someone who has just passed away, I expect that many folks don't want to say too much out of respect for grieving families," said Darby, of Charleston. "Also, they have to live in Edgefield. This may be the New South, but it ain't that new. If I was an African American living in Edgefield ... I'd say nice things about him, too."

Bruce Ransom, a political scientist at Clemson University, said Thurmond's conciliatory gestures toward blacks -- voting for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and reaching out through constituency service, for example -- did ameliorate some harsh feelings blacks held toward Thurmond.

In the 1996 Senate election, Thurmond got 20 percent to 25 percent of the black vote, much more than Republicans usually get.

But Ransom cautioned: "That's still saying 75 percent didn't vote for him."

Edgefield native Haneff El-Amin, 59, said he remembers he was 17 years old when he saw Thurmond on television espousing segregationist views. As he grew up over the years, he frequently sent Thurmond letters saying how much he disagreed with his stances. But at the same time, El-Amin also knew the Strom Thumond who sent El-Amin's aunt a warm letter of condolences when her husband died.

"What he was saying and what he was doing were two different things," said El-Amin, who sat under a tree waiting for customers to bring shoes for him to shine. "All that's over now. ... People do change."

Ransom said that people familiar with Thurmond only as a political figure tend to think of him only in terms of his conservative philosophy. But he said hometown folks, whether personally or through their families, know Thurmond through that relationship.

"People at a local level get to see the personal side, the helping side," he said.