Ernest F. Hollings, a silver-haired South Carolina Democrat who served 38 years in the United States Senate in an era of rising prosperity and often painful accommodation to racial tolerance in his state and across the South, died on Saturday at his home in Isle of Palms, S.C. He was 97.

His former press secretary, Andy Brack, confirmed his death.

Like his colleague Strom Thurmond, South Carolina’s senior senator, Mr. Hollings became governor, ran for president and was a revered populist who took care of the military, business interests and the folks back home.

Together, they were the nation’s longest-serving Senate pair from one state. When Mr. Thurmond died in 2003 at 100, he had been the Senate’s longest-tenured member after 48 years in office. Moreover, Mr. Hollings was junior senator for 36 years, itself a record, and his tenure of 38 years and 55 days, including more than two years fulfilling the term of a senator who died in office, made him the eighth longest-serving senator.

Mr. Thurmond, a Democrat who switched to the Republican Party, never relented in his opposition to full equality for black Americans. Mr. Hollings, while remaining a fiscal conservative, evolved into a social moderate, riding winds of change that swept the South as proponents of civil rights won court cases, staged protests and endured brutalities that shocked the nation’s conscience.