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James Strom Thurmond (December 5, 1902 – June 26, 2003) was an American politician who served for 48 years as a United States Senator. He ran for President in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrat) candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes. He represented South Carolina in the US Senate from 1954 until 2003, at first as a Democrat and, after 1964. as a Republican. He switched because he opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and supported the conservatism of Republican presidential candidate, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. He left office as the only senator to reach the age of 100 while still in office and as the oldest-serving and longest-serving senator in U.S. history (although he was later surpassed in the latter by Robert Byrd). Thurmond holds the record at 14 years as the longest-serving Dean of the United States Senate in U.S. history. In 1957, he conducted the longest filibuster ever by a lone senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes, nonstop against the Civil Rights Act. He opposed civil rights, the end segregation, and enforcement of voting rights for African-American citizens. He insisted he was not a racist, but fighting excessive federal authority. He said, "all the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, our churches and our places of recreation and amusement." He attributed the integration movement to Communist agitators. In the 1970s, he moderated his position on race, but continued to defend his early segregationist campaigns on the basis of states' rights and never fully renounced his earlier views. Six months after Thurmond's death in 2003, it was revealed that at age 22, he had fathered a mixed-race daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, with his family's maid, Carrie Butler, a 16-year-old black girl. Although Thurmond never publicly acknowledged Essie Mae, he paid for her education at a historically black college and passed other money to her for some time. His children by his marriage eventually acknowledged her. Repro pub domain.