While attending USC, McNair served as the first governor of the South Carolina Student Legislature, was initiated into the Kappa Sigma fraternity.

[2] McNair won the 1966 general election over State Representative Joseph O. Rogers, Jr., of Manning, the first Republican gubernatorial nominee in South Carolina in the 20th century.

[3] McNair was governor during the Orangeburg Massacre in 1968, which he blamed on Black Power advocates, and called it a stain on the state's good record in civil rights.

In 2006, decades after leaving office, McNair admitted responsibility for the deaths of the three Black civil rights activists killed in Orangeburg.

He was inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame, and awarded an honorary doctorate in 2005 by Francis Marion University, a school which he signed into creation while governor in 1970.