Strom Thurmond
Biography
Strom Thurmond was a 47-year senator, the fourth-longest in US history, serving South Carolina from 1954 to 2003. Before his long Senate tenure, he was governor of South Carolina from 1947 to 1951 and ran for president in 1948 as a Dixiecrat candidate. Thurmond was a vocal opponent of civil rights legislation and famously conducted a 24-hour filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. He later switched parties and became a Republican.