He had a long history in the United States Senate, starting out as a member of the Democratic Party before switching to a Republican following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He is known for the longest-ever filibuster by a single senator in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and he opposed the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Later in life, he sent a message to the U.S. Attorney General urging him to have John Lennon deported from the United States as an "undesirable alien" because his influence threatened Nixon's chances of reelection. He suggested that terminating Lennon's visa would be "a strategic counter-measure". After he died, it was revealed that he had fathered a daughter identifying as African American and helped her pay her way through college despite never acknowledging their relation publicly. Which leads to what may be the greatest question: What possible reasons are there for which South Carolina carries such a positive image of the now-deceased senator?
Strom Thurmond was first elected to the Senate when South Carolina was a de facto one-party state, with an electorate consisting almost entirely of white conservatives. His opposition to federally mandated integration and promotion of state's rights played extremely well to this demographic. Despite the Voting Rights Act being passed in 1965 and enfranchising many liberal-leaning southern blacks, they consisted only a plurality of SC. He remained popular until his death in 2003 (at the age of 100!), and a 2011 poll showed that he was the most popular political figure in South Carolina.