26 October
'I think one man is just as good as another so long as he's honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman.'
On 26 October 1944 the then US vice president, Harry S Truman (he succeeded to the presidency after the death of Franklin Roosevelt), publicly denied ever being a member of the Ku Klux Klan. This was in response to reports that he had sought the Klan’s support in his election as a judge in Jackson County in 1922.
The above quote is taken from a letter Truman wrote to his future wife Bess when he was 27. He went on to become the first president to use executive powers to secure some civil rights for blacks and to desegregate the army.
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