US senator Robert Byrd, who evolved from a segregationist to a civil rights advocate in becoming the longest serving member ever of the Congress, died today, a spokesman for the West Virginia Democrat said.
First elected to Congress in 1952, Mr Byrd was 92. His death is not expected to have any immediate impact on the Democrats' 59-41 control of the Senate. West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin is virtually certain to appoint a fellow Democrat to succeed Mr Byrd, whose current term expires in 2012.
After Mr Byrd's office said the senator was seriously ill on Sunday, Democratic aides said the party remained hopeful it could muster the 60 Senate votes needed to clear a Republican procedural hurdle and pass a landmark crackdown on Wall Street crafted last week by congressional negotiators.
Mr Byrd helped shape much of the nation's history and served with a dozen US presidents. He died peacefully at Inova Fairfax Hospital outside of Washington, D.C., said his spokesman, Jesse Jacobs. Mr Byrd was hospitalised last week with what doctors believed was a heat-related illness.
"I love to serve. I love the Senate. If I could live another 100 years, I'd like to continue in the Senate," Mr Byrd, who kept a copy of the US Constitution in his breast pocket, said in a 2006 interview with Reuters.
Senator Jay Rockefeller, also of West Virginia, said: "Senator Byrd came from humble beginnings in the southern coalfields . . . and triumphantly rose to the heights of power in America. But he never forgot where he came from nor who he represented, and he never abused that power for his own gain."
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Mr Byrd will be remembered "for his fighter's spirit, his abiding faith and for the many times he recalled the Senate to its purposes."
Mr Byrd was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1952, and served six years in that chamber before moving to the Senate. His early campaigns were punctuated by his skills as a bluegrass fiddler that helped draw big and enthusiastic crowds for the self-described West Virginia "hillbilly."
With his old-fashioned courtliness, Mr Byrd was a defender of the Senate's traditions and over the years held most of its key positions, including Democratic leader from 1977 to 1988 and later as the top Democrat on the powerful Appropriations Committee.
He was an early and eloquent opponent of the Iraq war, which began in 2003 with popular support but within a few years was widely condemned. He also warned against a buildup of US troops in Afghanistan.
He worked with and challenged presidents, Democrats and Republicans alike, and reminded all of them of Congress' responsibility to check their power. "I'm not any president's man. I'm a Senate's man," Mr Byrd told Reuters in the 2006 interview.
During his more than half century in Congress, America changed dramatically and so did the late senator. "When I got here, I was to the right of Barry Goldwater," Mr Byrd told Reuters, referring to a conservative Republican senator and failed 1964 presidential candidate. "I moved more to the center."
In the early 1940s, before being elected to Congress, Mr Byrd belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, a membership that he attributed to youthful indiscretion. "It has emerged throughout my life to haunt and embarrass me and has taught me in a very graphic way what one major mistake can do to one's life, career and reputation," Mr Byrd wrote in a 1987 memoir.
In Congress, Mr Byrd, who denounced civil rights leader Martin Luther King as a "self-seeking rabble rouser," eventually became a leading backer of civil rights. Of the record-setting 18,500-plus Senate votes the senator cast, he said his biggest regret was opposing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a landmark law that brought down barriers for black Americans.
He said his views changed most dramatically after his teenage grandson was killed in a 1982 crash that Mr Byrd said put him in a deep emotional valley. "The death of my grandson caused me to stop and think," Mr Byrd said. "I came to realise that black people love their children as much as I do mine."
Reuters