Thurmond was increasingly at odds with the national Democratic Party, a majority of whose leaders were supporting the civil rights movement led by African Americans in the South seeking enforcement of their right as citizens to vote and an end to racial segregation. He opposed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, which was passed. On September 16, 1964, he switched his party affiliation to the Republican Party. He said, the Democratic Party has:
"forsaken the people to become the party of minority groups, power-hungry union leaders, political bosses, and businessmen looking for government contracts and favors.... invaded the private lives of people by using the powers of government for coercion and intimidation of individuals.... encouraged lawlessness, civil unrest and mob actions.... [and] nominated for vice president a key leader of the Americans for Democratic Action, the most influential Socialist group in our Nation." He was one of the first prominent Democrats to switch parties.
He played an important role in South Carolina's support among white voters for the Republican presidential candidates Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Richard Nixon in 1968. South Carolina and other states of the Deep South had supported the Democrats in every national election from the end of Reconstruction, when white Democrats re-established political control in the South, to 1960. However, discontent with the Democrats' increasing support for civil rights resulted in John F. Kennedy's barely winning the state in 1960.
After Kennedy's assassination in 1963, President Lyndon Johnson's strong support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 angered white segregationists even more. These laws ended segregation and committed the federal government to enforce voting rights of citizens by the supervision of elections in states in which the pattern of voting showed that blacks had been disfranchised. Goldwater won South Carolina by a large margin in 1964.
Strom Thurmond - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia