Historical notices

The second to final paragraph of this news story on a historical track getting dropped for lack of diversity, veering into the career of Frederick Douglass and striking this false note:

Douglass also campaigned on the issues of women’s rights. He later ran for Vice President, becoming the first African-American to do so.

I… guess? From wikipedia:

Woodhull’s campaign was also notable for the nomination of Frederick Douglass as vice-presidential candidate, although he did not take part in the convention, acknowledge his nomination or take an active role in the campaign.

Does such count as a run? Victoria Woodhull’s is sometimes slighted in favor of the more respectable and organized bid of Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood. Some more on the vice presidential bid of Douglass:

But while Woodhull was clear about her presidential intentions, she never informed her running mate, Douglass, who never even acknowledged he had been nominated. Many have speculated that Douglass didn’t want to recognize the nomination for fear of being associated with Woodhull, who was seen as “a loose cannon and controversial even among radical feminists and abolitionists,” said Harvard historian John Stauffer. […]

Douglass also likely didn’t recognize the vice presidential nomination in 1872 because he was already supporting a different presidential candidate, said Kenneth Mack, a historian and Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. A loyal Republican, Douglass had backed Grant’s run for a second term. During his first four years in the White House, Grant had proven himself a champion of the rights of freed African Americans, having supported several Civil Rights acts in 1870 and 1871, including one designed to the end Ku Klux Klan’s reign of terror against Black people in the former confederate states. “And President Grant had supported sending in the Union army to protect the lives and the votes of Black people in the south. So, for Douglass, there was no real choice other than to support Grant.”

I do not understand the point of dropping in this historical footnote, which falls asunder to virtually meaningless under the smallest lean-in.

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