Longest-serving US Senator Strom Thurmond died last night at the age of 100.
Mr Thurmond, an ex-segregationist and former Democrat who became a fixture of southern Republicanism, died in his hometown of Edgefield, South Carolina, according to a family friend.
Mr Thurmond began his political career in 1933 as a Democrat during the Great Depression. In the early years of his political life, a time when only Democrats could win elections in the South, he was a stalwart of that party.
It was as Democratic governor of South Carolina and head of the Southern Governors Conference that Mr Thurmond became a symbol of white segregationist resistance to civil rights.
Opposing Democratic President Harry Truman's call for a strong civil rights plank at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, Mr Thurmond left the party to run as a regional presidential candidate on a States' Rights "Dixiecrat" ticket.
He won South Carolina and three other southern states - Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Mr Thurmond switched allegiance to the Republicans in 1964 when presidential nominee Mr Barry Goldwater led a conservative revival among Republicans. He was the first major conservative southern Democrat to make that switch.
First elected to the Senate in 1954, he won his eighth, and last term in 1996, but decided not to seek re-election in 2002 and to retire after more than 48 years in the Senate at age 100.