Blease As Senator
In 1924, Blease defeated James F. Byrnes in the Democratic primary and was elected to the U.S. Senate. His campaign foreshadowed his style as Senator. Blease's defeat of Byrnes was widely credited to a rumor campaign that Byrnes, who was raised a Roman Catholic in Charleston had not really left that faith when he entered politics. Such an assertion in an overwhelmingly Protestant state in the years when the Ku Klux Klan was at the height of its power ruined Byrnes's hopes that year. Byrnes later defeated Blease in his 1930 run for re-election.
In 1928, Blease proposed the last and most strict anti-miscegenation amendment to the U.S. Constitution, requiring that Congress set a punishment for interracial couples attempting to get married, and for people officiating an interracial marriage.
Read more about this topic: Coleman Livingston Blease
Famous quotes containing the word senator:
“Helicon: “It takes one day to make a senator and ten years to make a worker.”
Caligula: “But I am afraid that it takes twenty years to make a worker out of a senator.””
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)