Jesse Helms, the former North Carolina senator with the courtly manner and mossy drawl who turned his hard-edged conservatism against civil rights, gay rights, foreign aid and modern art, died early Friday. He was 86.

Mr. Helms’s former chief of staff, James W.C. Broughton, said that the senator died at the Mayview Convalescent Center in Raleigh, where he had lived for the last several years. Mr. Helms had been in “a period of declining health” recently, Mr. Broughton said.

Read More...