8. Strom Thurmond
There are a lot of unsavory facts about American history. Among the most prevalent of these is the long-standing open racism that marked much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Strom Thurmond is one of the symbols of that. The South Carolina native ran for president in 1948, as a so-called Dixicrat. Officially known as the States Rights party, the group split off from the Democrats when Northern members of the party insisted on a pro-civil rights stance at the party’s convention.
Thurmond’s racist party gained just 2% of the total vote (just over 1 million votes total), but managed to carry four Southern states. Thurmond would go on to become one of the all-time longest-serving U.S. senators. He wouldn’t leave the Senate until 2003, a few months before his death at the age of 100. After his death, it was revealed that, back in 1925, Thurmond had fathered a baby with his family’s black maid.
Discussion about this post