2

He stoked a hostile atmosphere that
made it even more difficult for
moderate voices to emerge and prod
the South into acceptance of the
inevitable.

At bottom, Thurmond and his co-
resistors stood against the equality
principle enshrined in our Constitution. In time -- far too much time-- that princple trumped
the ways of the past. The new civil rights laws and court decision that upheld them
changed the electorate and the culture itself. Thurmond, however grudgingly, came to
realize that politics grounded in across-the-board equality were of paramount importance.

Though he accepted the new politics of equality, Thurmond never formally rejected the old
politics of inequality. There was no grand concession, no tearful apology, but rather the
continuous day-to-day ministrations of a consummate politician.

Thurmond was a retail practitioner; he moved around the state handshake by handshake.
He prided himself on "standing with the people," and when the "people," those who voted,
became white and black, Thurmond shook their hands with equal gusto.

He made gestures both concrete and symbolic: becoming the first white politician in the
state to hire a black staff member, and to a prominent position: funneling millions of dollars
to black communities for one civic project or another; voting for a critical 1982 extension of
the Voting Rights Act; and giving vocal support to a national holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

South Carolinians re-elected him time after time with healthy margins. He drew white
moderates as well as double-digit support from the black community, which, importantly,
never rose up for the sole purpose of defeating him.

In ways just and unjust, race can and does shape politics. Sometimes, as in the case of
Strom Thurmond, it requires the law, invoked with courage and enforced without
compromise, to redirect the path that race plays in public life. Thurmond's success owed
less to embracing the equality principle than to abandoning his open opposition to it.

His long tenure was possible because he bent to the winds of change. There's something
to be said for that.

Nadine Cohadas is a Washington writer and author of "Strom Thurmond and the Politics of
Southern Change."