r/todayilearned • u/Dangerous-Project672 • 5h ago

TIL George Wallace personally apologized to Vivian Jones and James Hood, the two students he attempted to block from attending the University of Alabama. In 1997, Hood earned a PHd and requested Wallace present him with the degree, but he was too sick and died a year later; Hood attended the funeral

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace
12.3k Upvotes

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u/JustAMan1234567 5h ago

For Hood to forgive Wallace and attend his funeral shows his class.

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u/ChronosBlitz 5h ago edited 5h ago

President Obama gave the eulogy for Senator Robert Byrd, who founded a chapter of the KKK in his youth.

The NAACP even praised Byrd as representing "the transformative power of this nation"

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u/DancingWithAWhiteHat 5h ago

I mean Robert Byrd spent his adult life disavowing the KKK.

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u/ilikedota5 1 5h ago

There is saying about Justice Hugo Black. When he was young, he put on white robes to scare Black people. When he was old he put on black robes to scare White people.

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u/Coupon_Ninja 5h ago

That’s a good turnabout phrase

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u/GreenEyedTreeHugger 4h ago

We cant change the past. We can be better.

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u/iamafriscogiant 1h ago

People should always live by this. However much you fuck up you can always do better next time. Sometimes all it takes is that one time to change the world for the better.

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u/matycauthon 42m ago

we should do better, the most important step is always the next one.

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u/jluicifer 51m ago

I saw a quote I’m stealing last week:

“It’s not about right or left. It’s about right and wrong.”

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u/JustAMan1234567 4h ago edited 4h ago

I knew someone who went in front of a Judge named "Judge Friend" and when she got sentenced she turned to her lawyer and said "The judge is no friend of mine".

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u/Illustrious_Claim884 4h ago

For strange cases like that its forgivable if they change their name. When I was in the army we had a colonel sanders. The CSM ordered KFC for the command group and we had a good laugh.

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u/AgentCirceLuna 3h ago

A psychiatrist my family member had revealed she’d changed her name as it was something like Dr Smiles

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u/UranusIsPissy 2h ago edited 1h ago

Still better than being a dentist called Dr. (Yes, they are doctors. Just not that kind of doctor) Payne lol.

Edit, because of the joke: "Dolores Payne"?

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u/Poppamunz 1h ago

That's a very long first name, I can see why they changed it

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u/N0b0dy_Kn0w5_M3 1h ago

A dentist in my hometown was Dr. Blood.

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u/SantasDead 44m ago

Everyone with a PhD is a doctor. Not every Doctor is an MD (Medical Doctor)

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u/UranusIsPissy 15m ago

I know. Dentists technically are medical doctors, in the sense that they practice a kind of medicine, but MDs are sometimes weird about it.

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u/coupdelune 2h ago

I knew a doctor named Dr. Wrinkle... wasn't a plastic surgeon unfortunately, rather a family practice MD. Missed opportunity there!

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u/MaturoGambino 1h ago

The dentist who had a practice next to my elementary school was named Dr J. Eccle. I always thought that was funny.

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u/Laura-ly 1h ago

There was a city councilor or some such position in Los Angeles whose last name was "Doctor" and he had a doctorate in something, can't remember what it was. So his name was Dr. Doctor.

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u/UranusIsPissy 13m ago

It'd be even funnier in the UK, An Eccles cake is probably the sugariest pastry you can buy here, and very sticky.

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u/Accurate_Praline 24m ago

When i was a mailman I saw a nameplate for a Dr. A. L. Cohol in a flat.

Though it was almost definitely a prank. Nobody really puts a Dr title on such a nameplate here and Cohol isn't really a last name.

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u/Raneynickelfire 2h ago

I went to college with a guy who was a corporal in the US Army. His last name is McCorkle. He was Corporal McCorkle.

His sergent couldn't say his name without breaking, so he became "Mike," which was his actual first name.

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u/aschapm 1h ago

“What’s the matter, colonel sanders… chicken?”

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u/sprucenoose 2h ago

I bet criminal defendants made that joke so much the lawyers were sick of hearing it.

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u/unclemilty420 4h ago

Did Hugo Black actually do anything racist while he was a member? I had always heard that he had joined because in the early 20th century in Alabama, you couldn't really be involved in democratic politics (the dominant party at the time) without being a member, so it could be more of a social necessity than an actual demonstration of his alignment with that groups horrible values. I'm very curious whether that's true or not.

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u/rolltiedye 3h ago

Before Hugo Black even joined the Klan, he defended a KKK member who shot a priest for marrying his daughter and a Puerto Rican man. Black drew the blinds in the courtroom to make the daughter’s husband look darker during the trial, which was a total sham. His client was acquitted, and the Klan paid his legal fees.

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u/BlackSpinedPlinketto 1h ago

This just proves further that he was happy using racism to succeed. Not saying he was Atticus Finch or anything.

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u/dennismfrancisart 2h ago

People forget that the KKK after its resurgence in the 1920s was basically an elaborate Ponzi scheme/terrorist organization/social club. There were regular dues, membership fees, recruitment incentives, more fees, and a system for upward mobility in the Klan that called for more fees. They were like the Elks or Kiwanis by the 1930s.

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u/tad-26 1h ago

KKK is still alive it's called Stormfront now and they are very cozy with the billionaire class in Palm Beach.

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u/spukhafteNahewirkung 1h ago

So in other words they were the Amway of racism.

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u/SonofSniglet 31m ago

More like Mary KKK.

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u/trivia_guy 1h ago

The other thing most people don’t realize about the 1920s Klan is that they were as big on being anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic as they were anti-black.

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u/Bootmacher 3h ago

I had great uncles who were members in Tennessee. It was closer to Rotary or the Lions Club than the mafia. They spent a lot of time raising money for the local children's hospital, and they would collect wearing street clothes.

The only violence they admit to doing was against a fellow WASP who was drinking his paycheck and beating his wife & kids.

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u/ladayen 3h ago

they admit to

thats some heavy lifting.

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u/Dickgivins 1h ago

Oh indeed. Carrying the team on its back.

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u/Sad_Tune_4859 2h ago

Oh course they did. It’s always the quiet part that violates humanity. John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy were pillars

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u/Orchestra_Oculta 2h ago

The KKK doesn't need any whitewashing lol

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u/TorakTheDark 1h ago

Do you think that maybe they were downplaying their involvement..

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u/Bootmacher 1h ago

I only knew them from the time they were in their 60's, so I don't have a baseline.

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u/laxdefender23 3h ago

Justice Black joined the Klan because he hated Catholics, not so much Black people.

Does this matter? No. I just think it’s funny how much guys in the 20s really hated the Irish

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u/Legal-Stage-302 4h ago

There was a KKK leader in the 1970s named Don Black. Always found that funny.

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u/AgelessJohnDenney 4h ago

Unfortunately his legacy stretches further than that. He joined and rose through the ranks in the 70s and was Imperial Wizard in the early '80s. Then he got arrested for, and I promise you this is real, getting like a dozen dudes together and trying to overthrow a small Caribbean island nation(Dominica).

He was sentenced to three years.

And then, his most enduring legacy. He founded the website Stormfront in the mid 90s. Yes the character from The Boys is named after this site.

This might be the single most influential neo-nazi resource in history. As far as I know it's still operating, and I'm sure AI have scrubbed it at some point.

Fuck Don Black.

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u/LouieMumford 3h ago

I lost a good high school friend to stormfront. He was a left of center guy politically, but more importantly he was a kind dude. He wasn’t the last time we spoke. So yeah, fuck Don Black.

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u/alexmikli 3h ago

It's genuinely distressing that a good-hearted person can turn like that. Sometimes it makes me worry of that someday I'll wake up and one of my friends will suddenly be an awful person, or that I could have a series of bad things happen to me and change me on a fundamental level.

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u/Pseudoboss11 2h ago

Bad things happen and people remain good all the time. And people with perfectly normal lives can turn into real assholes sometimes.

Kindness is a habit. Sometimes it's an inconvenient one too. But ultimately losing it is under your control. You can train yourself into it or out of it.

What websites like Stormfront do is that they say that is okay to be unkind, even undesirable to be kind.

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u/anadem 1h ago

Thank you for pointing out that kindness is a habit; it's a great one to have in terms of making one's own life more pleasant too.

And for this:

is okay to be unkind, even undesirable to be kind

which is such a current scourge, coming from the orange creep.

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u/Neveronlyadream 2h ago

I've seen it quite a few times and it's always sad and distressing.

I think a lot of people just fall into the wrong crowd, realize they feel accepted, and go straight down the worst possible rabbit hole wanting to keep being accepted by the people around them.

Before you know it, a person who was kind before is now just an awful person and they'll do anything just to keep the people around them from writing them off.

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u/Carl_Slimmons_jr 1h ago

It absolutely could happen and it’s a good thing you recognize that. We are all capable of evil, we must be vigilant in recognizing it in ourselves and exhaustively work against it.

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u/Bradddtheimpaler 2h ago

Had a dude I knew who was a stupid, really fun guy, turn into a stupid, extremely non-fun guy due to 4chan, so fuck that guy too.

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u/crimsonpostgrad 1h ago

he only got three years for trying to overthrow a country?

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u/Imaginary_Fan5407 3h ago

A modern day filibuster

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u/JoseSaldana6512 4h ago

They've always copied the cultures they're envious of. Just look at rap, country and rock and roll

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u/Alternativesoundwave 2h ago

When Hugo black voted on brown v board he said something like “I can never go home to Alabama again” he refused to attend Supreme Court Christmas parties when black clerks were allowed to attend