Nadine Cohodas, author of “Strom Thurmond and the Politics of Southern Change,” what got you interested in the subject?

How old is Strom Thurmond?

Somewhere, I think, in your book you said that he's going to run again.

What's the point of the book?

In the material that you read in some of the reviews, they say this may be the first book from a white person's viewpoint on what happened to civil...

Is this an official biography?

Where are you from?

What was your major in school?

When was the first time you can remember seeing Strom Thurmond in person?

So I was kind of anxious to see what does this man look like that I had heard about and also, of course, knowing that when he was rather old he married...

It would have been sometime during the back end of 1979 or during 1980. I'm sorry to say I don't remember the very first conversation. It would have...

Nearly seven years, just a bit shy of seven years.

Let me start with what I think is something important, and it has to do with the men's backgrounds. Senator Thurmond has had a 65-year public career....

The best example, probably, is not the meat and potatoes of this book but his work with Ted Kennedy and Howard Metzenbaum, very liberal senator from...

Well, enormous vigor, certainly. You know, here he is at 90 years old, and the last time I saw him in person was in October when I went up just to show...

That's right, the famous prenuptial headstand. This is right before his marriage to his first wife, Jean Crouch, who was, at that time, 20, 21 years...

He was just a few months shy of his 47th birthday.

They did not. And she died, tragically, very young in 1960, I believe, in her early 30s of a brain tumor. A painful experience for him, from all that...

Her father was a very longtime Democratic Party official in Barnwell County, and Senator Thurmond had gone to see him and noticed the picture on the...

There were titters and some letters sent. Some comments rather harsh but, I think, overall she was attractive, very charming. There is a little story...

He was governor one term; elected 1946 and served until 1950.

He was actually a very progressive governor, I think, in terms of moving toward a reorganization of government agencies. I have to add that I didn't...

But, third, it was still in the context of a segregated society -- no thought that it might be more efficient if we combined our school systems instead...

There is a whole file on this event; so much mail came about this. And it's interesting, I think, in a couple of respects. Most certainly when it came...

I didn't dwell on that too much in terms of their relationship with one another. Where I thought there was a striking moment between the two of them...

The next day Senator Thurmond came to the floor and, in a paraphrase, "That's pretty extraordinary to have a senator say something negative about his...

Yes. Yes.

Let's see. I believe they are about 83 or 84, very, very charming women who were very, very kind to me. Senator Thurmond is one of six children, and...

I found them in South Carolina. Mary Thurmond Tompkins lives in Edgefield, not far from where Senator Thurmond and his family all grew up, although...

Yes, he does.

Sort of, but a little softer. The one thing I think of -- Senator Thurmond's first name as Strom. They refer to him as Strum as though it were spelled...

Yes, he is.

When the senator goes back to South Carolina, I think he makes it a point to see them, and I know that they are in touch with the office because, occasionally,...

I think the senator enjoyed being seen with attractive women, and when he finally had to answer questions as a state senator about why wasn't he married...

That's in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This is several months before he, I think, got serious with Jean and certainly before they announced their engagement,...

As far as I know, three times a week; in fact, one of my favorite pictures in the book is the very last one, when a reporter had a very good idea, went...

Right.

Yes, exactly. I have joked and others have joked too, when he turned Republican, he grew more hair and it got lighter. He had hair transplants. I can't...

You know, I didn't.

They are quasi-separated, as I understand it. They announced their separation a couple of years ago, actually just a few days before Lee Atwater died,...

A couple more questions about his personal life. When did he marry Nancy, his second wife?

Why were his aides involved in a romance in the first place?

But, as history has shown, it has not turned out to be that at all, and, indeed, in 1978 having a young, attractive wife and four very cute children...

He brought SenatorThurmond under 60 percent of the vote, and that's closer than a lot of other people.

Yes, that is correct. You know, on paper Ravenel should have been able to beat him. Jimmy Carter had just been elected in 1976. He was still pretty...

I believe that's correct -- 1954 -- and would you like me to talk a little bit about that?

He was a Democrat then.

Literally, with a space on the ballot for writing in the name of somebody and even a ruling by the attorney general right before the attorney general...

Right. What had happened is that the incumbent Senator Burnet Maybanks had unexpectedly a heart attack. I say unexpectedly because everybody thought...

And it built and built, and Senator Thurmond -- by this time, he had been out of office for a couple of years; he finished his gubernatorial term in...

Yes, as a state senator, that's correct. That is Olin Johnston when he was governor. I believe that was his first term as governor. He served one four-year...

Oh, handsomely. I'm sorry to say that the exact statistic escapes me, but it was handsome. It was not at all 50.3 to 49.7. It was a handsome victory,...

From the time I started till the first hard cover arrived in my hands was three years and 10 months. The actual intensive research and writing was about...

In South Carolina. I made 20 trips there and two to Mississippi and two to Alabama. The reason that I did it that way is that there is roughly 110 years...

I did. I was on leave for a while, and they were very generous to me. And when I could see that I wasn't going to finish, I just ended my formal relationship...

Right here in Washington.

Right. I'm just using their office space. When I decided to write the book and got the opportunity to do so, I knew that I didn't want to work at home,...

It is a research institute that does research on reproductive-health issues.

Yes, it's true.

For the good feeling it gave me that maybe this thing was going to work out. It was on my first trip to Alabama. I flew into Birmingham. Then I had...

Nancy and I went to college together at the University of Michigan, and she and her husband wrote a book a few years ago about the law firm Sullivan...

I had written a couple of columns about him for CQ , and I said, "You know Nancy, I think there is a great story to tell here and maybe a book." She...

A filibuster is the effort to block legislation by keeping talking, not giving up the floor so that other business can go on.

I believe so. Once you get the floor you can keep it, but, if you give it up, you're probably not going to get it back if they know what you want to...

This was in the midst of working on a civil rights bill. Eisenhower was president. Lyndon Johnson is majority leader. Richard Russell of Georgia is...

I don't know how many people knew this, either, that earlier in the day the senator, or at some point that was relevant given what was in the senator's...

Harry Dent had gone to see the Senate doctor. He was worried about him, and the doctor sent a message back and said, "You tell him if he doesn't get...

Bringing him orange juice, that's right. And he starting to drink it with gusto and then Harry Dent realizing, wait a minute, that this could be trouble,...

Even though since he has voted for civil rights?

Is he proud of still having the longest filibuster?

There was another little moment where he's got one foot in the cloak room and one foot in the chamber.

This is really a non sequitur, but it's such an interesting story I wanted you to tell it. When I went back to the notes in the back, I found that this...

Can you give us who David Van is, first of all?

David Van was a clerk for Justice Hugo Black?

You found David Van for an interview when you wrote this book?

Where did you find him?

How old a man is he now?

The only reason I was interested in it was because we do so much about the court, and this was an insight into the information about when the decision...

He hadn't been to the court for some time.

You mean Chief Justice Earl Warren.

We have so little time, and there is a lot that we haven't covered, as you know. There is a lot about civil rights in here. Let me just ask you a couple...

How come he never uses it?

He was a Democrat. When did he turn Republican?

In 1948 he ran for president on what ticket?

He was a Dixiecrat?

How many states did he win?

When he turned Republican in '64, was he the first Republican senator in the South?

You show some amazement that this man, Strom Thurmond, supported and voted for and befriended Clarence Thomas.

And here he is, many years later, embracing a black man for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, and that, to me, is going some. It is certainly...

That's a good question. I did not know that that was in there. I heard that allegation on my first trip to South Carolina, was surprised by it and then...

I think that was in the aftermath of Penthouse magazine finding this person who said she is not his daughter and him saying he is not her father and...

I don't know. He hasn't said a word to me.

He has spoken positively to me about it, said to me he thought that it was a fair presentation of the senator's career.

Thank you very much.