Tom Turnipseed turned himself from a strident segregationist to a champion of everyone’s rights.

Among his many causes was restoring tiny St. John Baptist Church in Lexington County‘s rural Dixiana.

He died Friday at age 83.

We first met at St. John Baptist after the church was vandalized on New Year’s Eve 1984. That led to an unusual friendship between a pair of political opposites.

Tom was a liberal Democrat and lawyer. As a newspaper editor, I kept my views mostly to myself, but Tom knew I was conservative and suspected I was probably a Republican.

We shared the conviction that civil, educational and political rights belonged to all Americans.

Our coverage of the biracial Save St. John committee’s restoration of the church attracted national newspaper and TV attention and a few telephoned threats against our paper.

Tom called himself a “reformed racist” who once led Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s 1968 race-baiting presidential campaign.

His transformation led him to become a champion for liberal causes.

As a SC state senator, he became a target of Republican strategist Lee Atwater who used Tom’s history of mental depression against him politically.

Tom also ran unsuccessfully for US Congress, governor, lieutenant governor and SC attorney general in 1998, winning 46% of the vote against Republican Charlie Condon.

He became president of the SC Trial Lawyers Association, board chairman of the Center for Democratic Renewal and co-counsel for Macedonia Baptist Church in Clarendon County in suing the Ku Klux Klan.

He won a $37 million verdict against the Klan for burning the African American church.

Tom’s wife Judy wrote on social media, “Tom fought for racial, social and economic justice. He set an example for us, his wife and kids, that was hard to live up to. In his honor, I will try to carry on his legacy.”