Strom Thurmond had come over from the Democratic Party in time for the 1968 election. He was still, as WFB puts it, "widely acknowledged as among the two or three principal spokesmen for the South. He is also widely applauded and widely reviled for having been a major factor in the victory of Richard Nixon as President," having helped persuade fellow conservative Southerners to vote for Mr. Nixon rather than George Wallace. There is some talk here about that election, but more of this often pungent discussion focuses on the South itself and the way, according to Senator Thurmond, it is misrepresented in the North, with some reminders of how he earned his standing to speak: "I remember when I was governor [in the late Forties], anybody who wanted to vote regardless of color could vote. And we put on campaigns to provide better educational facilities for the black children. And at one point I had to have some white men arrested for lynching a Negro in South Carolina, brought them to trial. I was told it was the first time in the history of the state that had been done. Well, it probably wasn't a pleasant thing, maybe, where a state is predominated by whites, ruled by whites, to do that, but it's the only right thing to do, is to give equal justice to all people."