He did not run home and advertise this epiphany because . . . well, he was trying to get elected. When he ran for governor in 1958, he promised to defend segregation. But in 1963, he did something no other Southern governor dared: In a now-famous speech, he told the legislature that integration was the law of the land and "it must be done with law and order."
A week later, Clemson, one of the state-run universities, was integrated without violence.
"That speech made quite a difference," Clyburn says.
Meanwhile, Hollings was raising taxes and balancing the state budget for the first time in years, while building a system of technical schools and traveling the world to lure industry to South Carolina.
"He's considered the governor who put South Carolina on the path to modern industry," Clyburn says.
In 1966, he won election to the Senate and soon gained a reputation for independence. He led the fight for federal anti-hunger programs. He crusaded for tariffs to protect South Carolina's textile industry. He fought for a balanced budget -- although he never let that stop him from bringing home as much federal bacon and other pork products as he could.
"He was ahead of his time, talking about a balanced budget and the loss of manufacturing jobs decades ago," says Graham, the other South Carolina senator, who then adds: "Sometimes his record as an appropriator was a bit of a contradiction."
In 1984, Hollings ran for the Democratic presidential nomination as a budget balancer, telling interest groups he would cut their favorite programs while raising their taxes. Not surprisingly, his campaign went nowhere.
"I was selling castor oil," he said the day he quit the race.
He did better back home, winning reelection six times in a state that was becoming increasingly Republican. Thurmond, who'd turned Republican in the '60s, kept trying to lure Hollings.
"For the last five or six races," Hollings says, "Thurmond would say, 'Hell, just change parties with me. We'll get you the consultants, we'll get you the pollsters, we'll get you the money. You won't have to do anything.' "
Hollings decided he'd rather fight than switch. The Republican rise in the South, in his view, "started with the 1964 Civil Rights Act." Before Lyndon Johnson signed that law, he says, the South had a "sweetheart deal" with the Democratic Party: "We'd vote for the economic programs as long as they voted for segregation. But once that was broken with the Civil Rights Act, you had Strom join the Republican Party with the same old nonsense you heard Zell Miller say -- 'The party left me!' " Hollings emits a bitter laugh. "He left the party, it didn't leave him. It's still for Social Security, for Medicare, for public schools."
Hollings says he managed to win as a Democrat by assembling an unlikely coalition -- blacks, teachers and even some Republicans.
"A lot of Republicans helped me," he says. "They won't give me any money because they don't want their names listed in the paper, so when they go to the club on Saturday night" -- his voice rises to a shriek as he parodies an irate country club wife -- " 'Why did you give to that damn Democrat?' It would start a big damn fuss. So they won't give me any money. But they pass the word. And that's enough. I get by by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin -- with 51 percent or 53 percent. The last four races have been really rough."
