US: Former Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a one-time symbol of fierce southern resistance to integration who was the longest-serving senator in US history, has died at the age of 100.
Mr Thurmond had retired from the Senate in January after more than 48 years in office. He was the oldest person to serve in Congress. He died on Thursday night after having been in poor health in recent weeks, his son, Mr Strom Thurmond jnr, said.
Mr Thurmond's ardent opposition to the civil rights movement in the late 1940s established him as a national figure. Initially a Democrat, he quit the party in 1948 in protest at the party's inclusion of a civil rights plank in its platform.
During that year's presidential campaign, he declared: "All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our eating places, our schools, our churches, our swimming pools and our theatres."
Mr Thurmond returned to the Democratic fold after winning his first Senate term in 1954 as an independent.