In his last address to the General Assembly on January 9, 1963, ahead of the peaceful admission to Clemson University of its first African American student, Harvey Gantt, Hollings declared: "As we meet, South Carolina is running out of courts ... this General Assembly must make clear South Carolina's choice, a government of laws rather than a government of men ...

"[23] Hollings oversaw the last executions in South Carolina before Furman v. Georgia, a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which temporarily banned capital punishment.

The following year, Hollings won the Senate seat for his first full term when he again defeated Marshall Parker but in this instance by a much wider margin.

For over 36 years (from November 9, 1966, until January 3, 2003), he served alongside Democrat-turned-Republican Strom Thurmond, making them the longest-serving state delegation duo in U.S. Senate history to date.

Thurmond and Hollings generally had a good relationship despite their sometimes sharp philosophical differences, and frequently collaborated on legislation and projects for South Carolina.

"[27] In February 1969, however, Hollings testified as to what he had seen on his fact-finding tours in front of the United States Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs.

"[28] Hollings recommended to the committee that free food stamps from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program be distributed to the most needy, and just over a day later, Senator George McGovern from South Dakota announced that free food stamps would be distributed in South Carolina as part of a national pilot program for feeding the hungry.

In the 1970s, Hollings joined with fellow senators Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts and Henry M. Jackson from Washington in a press conference to oppose President of the United States Gerald Ford's request that Congress end Richard Nixon's price controls on domestic oil, which had helped to cause the gasoline lines during the 1973 oil crisis.

Hollings attributed the principal blame for the disunity of the U.S. on special interest groups and "impatient minority blocs" that had shouted "non negotiable demands".

[33] In February 1971, Hollings introduced Ted Kennedy in Charleston, South Carolina, ahead of his remarks calling for an end to the Vietnam War.

Hollings's opposition was considered unusual given that most requests were approved and State Department officials publicly stated their wishes for Hollings and his colleagues to drop their opposition in the face of Taiwan's reluctant agreement to setting up "nongovernmental body in Washington" that would serve as the counterpart to the American Institute in Taipei.

[38] Hollings opposed legislation in 1979 that would admit additional ethnic Chinese refugees amid increased concern regarding moves by the Vietnamese government.

Hollings's wit and experience, as well as his call for a budget freeze, won him some positive attention, but his relatively conservative record alienated liberal Democrats, and he was never really noticed in a field dominated by Walter Mondale, John Glenn and Gary Hart.

[41] On March 24, 1981, Hollings introduced legislation that if passed would restore the military draft with limited deferments and exemptions and stipulating that men aged 18 to 22 years old would be required to spend nine months of active service for basic training that potentially would precede reserve duty.

Hollings's proposal granted deferments "to people on active duty, in the reserves or in advanced Reserve Officers Training Corps study; surviving sons or brothers of those killed in war or missing in action; conscientious objectors and ministers; doctors and others in vital health professions, and judges of courts of record and elected officials".

Hollings stated that recruiting for the armed forces had fallen short of requirements by an estimated 23,000 people in 1979 and that he believed the draft applying to women "should be across the board" due to the issue continuing to be debated between the public and the courts.

[44] On May 1, 1985, the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation rejected an amendment to a bill reauthorizing the Federal Communications Commission prohibiting public television stations from swapping channels with commercial stations, Hollings afterward stating that the vote was "a tragic abdication by Congress of its over 60-year-old responsibility to protect the public's interest in broadcasting".

[45] In October 1985, Hollings and Republicans Phil Gramm and Warren Rudman sponsored an amendment to establish a budget deficit ceiling that would decline to zero by 1991 that was attached to a bill raising the debt limit of the federal government by more than $250 billion.

Hollings charged FEMA with "stonewalling, fretting and filling out forms" and called on the federal government to become more active in trying to relieve areas devastated by Hurricane Hugo.

[48] In April 1990, Hollings planned the compiling of the Senate Budget Committee to vote on a cut in the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, an idea initially forwarded at the end of the previous year by fellow Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan as a way of making Congress address what he considered to be a serious problem in the management of the Social Security trust funds.

The goal was considered an uphill battle where Hollings could be outmaneuvered in committee with parliamentary tactics that would result in the precluding of a straight up-or-down vote on the Social Security tax cut.

I used to do it for the United States Convention on the Law of the Sea conferences and you'd find those potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they'd just come up and get a good square meal in Geneva.

Hollings replied, "You should draw a mushroom cloud and put underneath it, 'Made in America by lazy and illiterate Americans and tested in Japan'.

His appeal in the Lowcountry – traditionally a swing region at the state level – enabled him to hold Hollings to only fifty percent of the vote.

On fiscal issues, he was generally conservative, and was one of the primary sponsors of the Gramm–Rudman–Hollings Balanced Act, an attempt to enforce limits on government spending.

[52] As a senator, Hollings supported legislation in the interests of the established media distribution industry (such as the proposed "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act").

Hollings introduced the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, a draft of the later CBDTPA, which would have mandated "manufacturers of all electronic devices and software to embed government approved copy protection technology in their products".

It gave more than a hundred undergraduates from around the country a ten-week internship with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a monetary scholarship for the school year.

Hollings helped to establish the Hollings Center for International Dialogue, an organization that promotes dialogue between the United States and Turkey, the nations of the Middle East, North Africa, and Southwest Asia, and other countries with predominantly Muslim populations in order to open channels of communication, deepen cross-cultural understanding, expand people-to-people contacts, and generate new thinking on important international issues.

On April 6, 2019, Hollings died at the age of 97 at his home in Isle of Palms, South Carolina, following a period of declining health.