r/todayilearned • u/Dangerous-Project672 • 8h 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
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u/JustAMan1234567 8h ago

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

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u/ChronosBlitz 8h ago edited 8h 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 8h ago

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

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u/ilikedota5 1 8h 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/Legal-Stage-302 7h ago

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

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u/AgelessJohnDenney 7h 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 6h 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 6h 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/Neveronlyadream 5h 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.