James Strom Thurmond (December 5, 1902 – June 26, 2003) was an American politician who served as governor of South Carolina and as a United States Senator. He also ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrat) candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes. Thurmond later represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 to April 1956 and November 1956 to 2003, at first as a Democrat and after 1964 as a Republican, switching parties as the conservative base shifted. He served as Senator through the 1990s, and left office at age 100 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 for the longest serving Dean of the United States Senate in U.S. history at 14 years. He conducted the longest filibuster ever by a U.S. Senator in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, nonstop. He later moderated his position on race, but continued to defend his early segregationist campaigns on the basis of states' rights in the context of Southern society at the time, never fully renouncing his earlier viewpoints. He is the only US Senator to reach the age of 100 while still in office.

James Strom Thurmond was born on December 5, 1902, in Edgefield, South Carolina, the son of John William Thurmond (May 1, 1862 – June 17, 1934) and Eleanor Gertrude Strom (July 18, 1870 – January 10, 1958). He attended Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina (now Clemson University), where he was a member of Pi Kappa Alpha, graduating in 1923 with a degree in horticulture. He was a farmer, teacher and athletic coach until 1929, when he became Edgefield County's superintendent of education, serving until 1933. Thurmond studied law with his father and was admitted to the South Carolina Bar in 1930. He served as the Edgefield Town and County attorney from 1930 to 1938, and joined the United States Army Reserve in 1924. In 1933 Thurmond was elected to the South Carolina Senate and represented Edgefield until he was elected to the Eleventh Circuit judgeship.

After the outbreak of World War II, Judge Thurmond resigned from the bench to serve in the U.S. Army, rising to Lieutenant Colonel. In the Battle of Normandy (June 6–August 25, 1944), he landed in a glider attached to the 82nd Airborne Division. For his military service, he received 18 decorations, medals and awards, including the Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster, Bronze Star with Valor device, Purple Heart, World War II Victory Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, Belgium's Order of the Crown and France's Croix de Guerre. During 1954–55 he was president of the Reserve Officers Association. He later retired from the U.S. Army Reserves with the rank of Major General.