The Strom Thurmond Collection at Clemson University

Good afternoon. My name is Alan Burns. I am the Political Collections Archivist aka Thurmond Archivist in Special Collections at Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina. I have worked there for 15 years and have been in charge of the Strom Thurmond Collection since 2000.

I may be the last in a long line of Thurmond Archivists at Clemson University because I can see that processing of the Strom Thurmond Collection is coming to an end. All my predecessors had one collection to process. I will have several. I must soon start thinking about the less comfortable „electronic record‟ or „digital-born‟ congressional records. We already have one acquisition and may receive a second. But that‟s another story.

James Strom Thurmond was born December 5, 1902, in Edgefield, South Carolina. His father, John William Thurmond, was a lawyer and associate of Senator Benjamin Ryan Tillman. Strom related that, at an early age, he learned the importance of a firm handshake from Senator Tillman. Strom Thurmond graduated from then Clemson Agricultural College, in 1923, with a degree in Horticulture. He taught school and coached for five years before running for his first elected office – Superintendent of Education for Edgefield County – in 1928. In 1930 he studied law with his father, who was then a Judge, and was admitted to the Bar. In 1932 he was elected State Senator, in 1938 he was elected Circuit Court Judge taking a four-year leave of absence in 1941, at the age of 39, for active military duty during WWII, and in 1947 he was elected Governor of South Carolina. In 1948, he ran for President of the United States as the States‟ Rights Democratic candidate, the year Harry Truman won.

Thurmond was elected to the US Senate via a write-in vote, the first US Senator to do so, in 1954, and was sworn into office by then Vice-President Richard M. Nixon in January 1955. For many years, he was the oldest and longest serving Senator in US history. At the time of his retirement in 2003 he was 100 years old and had served in the Senate for 48 years. In 1964, he switched from the Democratic to Republican Party to support the Presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater. As a Senator, he had been and would be a delegate to six Democratic and six Republican National Conventions. He served as President Pro Tempore from 1981 to 1987 and was named President Pro Tempore Emeritus in 2001. In 1998 he cast his 15,000th vote in the Senate.

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Senator Thurmond served on three major Senate Committees – Armed Services from 1959, Judiciary from 1967, and Veterans‟ Affairs from 1971. He and others were instrumental in establishing the latter committee. I should mention that Strom had a strong military connection beginning as a cadet at Clemson. He was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant when he graduated and served in the US Army Reserve and on Active Duty for 36 years retiring as a Major General in 1959. He served as Chairman and was named Emeritus Chairman of both the Armed Services and Veterans‟ Affairs Committees, and was Chairman of the Judiciary Committee from 1981 to 1987. As such, he presided over hearings that confirmed Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O‟Connor and Antonin Scalia to name a few.

Senator Thurmond was married twice. In 1947, as Governor of South Carolina, he proposed via a memo he dictated to his then Secretary, Jean Crouch, a former Miss South Carolina. She accepted. Jean was 22 and Strom was 45. They were happily married although childless until 1960 when Jean was diagnosed with, and died as a result of, a brain tumor. In 1968, Strom married Nancy Moore, also a former Miss South Carolina, who was a member of his staff. She was 22 and he was 66. Despite the vast difference in age, their marriage produced four children – Nancy Moore, Strom Jr., Paul, and Julie. Nancy Moore was tragically killed by a drunk driver in 1994, and as a result Senator Thurmond became a strong proponent of alcohol warning label legislation. Strom Jr. and Paul followed in their father‟s footsteps running for and being elected to political office in South Carolina. Strom Jr. was US Attorney for South Carolina and now serves as Edgefield County Solicitor. Paul was a Charleston City Councilman.

In 1981, Senator Thurmond began negotiations with his alma mater, Clemson University, to begin sending, storing and making available to the public, his papers. From that time until he retired from the Senate, Clemson has received a massive amount of records, over 3500 cubic feet, that have been arranged and organized into 36 series documenting all aspects of his 100 year life and his 77 year career. His correspondence files are the most voluminous comprising over one million letters to and from his constituency. Senator Thurmond was tirelessly devoted to his constituency. He and his staff would scan newspaper articles, obituaries, wedding announcements, and other sections for evidence of what was happening to people in his home state. One of his early staff members, Harry Dent, counseled him that this effort was taking up too much valuable time in comparison to what it actually harvested. Thurmond listened patiently

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and Dent thought that was the end of it. A few weeks later, when Dent was taking care of some business in South Carolina, he went into a café and overheard a conversation about Senator Thurmond. Neither person had ever voted for Thurmond. One said to the other, „Senator Thurmond sent me a card after my wife‟s death stating how sad he was to learn of my loss. I do not know the man, and he does not know me, but I can tell you that that card impressed me. He took the time to express his concern to a complete stranger. I can tell you that I will vote for him from now on.” Dent went back to Washington, DC, and told Thurmond, “Don‟t ever let me counsel you about constituency issues again.” Thurmond was a master at massaging his constituency, and his 48 years in office and voluminous correspondence files are the result of his popularity.

Besides correspondence, the Judiciary Committee records are next in size originally totaling 450 cubic feet of material. Following Senator Thurmond‟s retirement, 150 cubic feet of these records, covering the time he was Chairman of the Committee, were returned to Washington, DC. Then there are the other two Senate Committee records, military case files, Projects, Social Security files, staff records, and records pertaining to the personal, legal and military portions of his life. Senator Thurmond was very fastidious and took ownership of the records he produced. His long-time Chief of Staff, Duke Short, was of a similar mind. This attitude resulted in the fact that ALL Thurmond‟s Senate records, including his Committee records, came to Clemson. I found out later, to my embarrassment, that this should not have happened. Committee records usually always stay with the committee of origin. Not so with Senator Thurmond. But arrangements were made, as stated earlier, to return appropriate files to Washington. When I mentioned one time to Mr. Short that we sometimes weeded records he begged to differ saying that none of the Senator‟s records should ever be discarded. I never mentioned that procedure to him again.

Processing the Strom Thurmond Collection has been fairly routine since 1981. With paper documents the standards for processing are pretty straight-forward if sometimes mundane. However, portions of Senator Thurmond‟s papers are far from routine and often posed some thinking „outside-the-box‟. For instance, Senator Thurmond served as Governor of South Carolina from 1947 to 1951. These are official state records, and as such should be housed at the State Archives, and they are by the way, but prior to that happening some of his Gubernatorial

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records were at Clemson because he sent everything to Clemson, and the „official‟ Gubernatorial records were at the University of South Carolina due to proximity. As these locations for his Gubernatorial records were discovered the State Archives wanted everything from Clemson and USC sent to Columbia where they could be microfilmed. The State Archives thereafter retained master Diazo and use copies of the microfilm and then sent all the Gubernatorial records that Clemson and USC held plus a use copy of the microfilm to Clemson.

One portion of Senator Thurmond‟s correspondence, called PINKS, due to the fact that each letter was a pink colored carbon paper copy, was microfilmed in toto. I should mention that Senator Thurmond‟s correspondence is documented via four time periods representing four iterations of how Congress managed correspondence. The first iteration, called Subject Correspondence, ran from 1955 to 1976, and was arranged by subject. The PINKS cross- reference important correspondence during that time. The second iteration, called Correspondence Mail System or CMS, ran from 1976 to 1989, and covered all correspondence. The third iteration, called Constituent Services System or CSS, ran from 1990 to 1996, and covered any correspondence coming through the Senator‟s office including case files. The fourth iteration, called Senate Mail System or SMS, was basically CSS revised. As the Senator‟s staff fluctuated over the years, especially the waning years, the division between correspondence and case files was, or seemed to be, less and less black and white. As we‟ve processed these last years of correspondence we‟ve had to check and re-check the case files for correspondence.

As I have mentioned several times, Senator Thurmond and his staff sent everything to Clemson. Thus cases files made their way to Clemson to sit on the shelves until they could be identified and dealt with properly. Some repositories do not accept case files at the outset, and some accept them but soon discard them. We chose to let them sit until everything else was processed. Our policy, having said that, is still the same as everyone else‟s – that sooner or later case files are eliminated.

I should say that for many years, when Senator Thurmond was still in office, Clemson was basically an extension of the Senator‟s office where constituency service was concerned. When someone called the Senator‟s office for information about a file we were often called upon for evidence of that file because we held it. But because we were also processing those same files, in many cases, the file had been weeded and was no longer available. I am glad to say, however,

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that there were just as many files that had been processed and were available for relevant information. Obviously, after the Senator retired these calls ended. There were, nonetheless, calls that came in from individuals after the Senator had retired who needed information from their files. The availability of information for these queries was spotty to say the least. I always felt bad when I could not answer someone‟s request for information but that‟s what happens when you have a processing policy and you try to stick to it – some records are lost while some are not.

There are other formats of records that came from Senator Thurmond and his offices as well. There are thousands of artifacts and memorabilia that our Curator has inventoried, scrapbooks that have been microfilmed and donated to historical societies, and large format cartoons, posters and maps that are housed in map case drawers. A microfilm index of the Subject Correspondence was made and that is part of our audio/visual series along with scads of tapes, cassettes, CDs, and DVDs, as well as over 10,000 photographs documenting Senator Thurmond‟s career and family life. Usually processing is done to the box and folder level only, but with his photographs we decided to take them to the item level for descriptive purposes.

Since processing of the Strom Thurmond Collection began until now we have used traditional processing methods, dealing with odd formats as necessary. Our office has discussed the use of the Greene-Meissner approach to processing of „More Product, Less Process‟ but have not used it too much to date. I‟m just glad Senator Thurmond‟s office did not produce any electronic records. Those issues are for the next congressional collection we will have to deal with.

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