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Softening his stance on race aided success
Two weeks ago, Strom Thurmond left the Senate, frail but alive, able to gavel the chamber to a close. He turns 100 today. Those with long memories will say good riddance. Others attuned to recent history might be more charitable.

Either way, how did a man who never authored a major legislation, who was never a power broker of much consequence, garner such name recognition?

Most would say it is simply longevity. And in important repects they are right. What makes Thurmond so interesting is his 74-year political career embraced two distinct eras --segregation and the post-civil rights political world.

He was the last of the old-time "segs." He was also the politician who made the most successful transition into an electorate remade by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a law passed over the unyielding opposition of Thurmond and every other deep-South senator.

His critics, uncharmed by the courtly old man of the past 20 years, will duly remind us of the litany of harsh resistance: Thurmond's 1948 bid for president as a Dixiecrat seeking to preserve segregation in the name of
"custon and tradition;" his authorship of the 1956 "Southern Manifesto" to overturn Brown v Board of Education; his record-setting filibuster in 1957 to block a voting rights bill; his 1967 attempt to block Thurgood Marshall's ascent to the U.S. Supreme Court.