Herman Talmadge

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Herman Eugene Talmadge (August 9, 1913 – March 21, 2002) was an American politician who served as governor of Georgia from 1948 to 1955 (following an unsuccessful claim in 1947) and as a U.S. senator from Georgia from 1957 to 1981. A Democrat, Talmadge served during a time of political transition, both in Georgia and nationally. He began his career as a staunch segregationist known for his opposition to civil rights, including supporting legislation that would have closed public schools to prevent desegregation. By the later stages of his career, Talmadge, like many other Southern politicians of the period, had modified his views on race following the enactment of the Voting Rights Act. The act increased African American voter participation and gave substance to the Fifteenth Amendment, enacted nearly a century earlier. His life eventually encapsulated the emergence of his native Georgia from entrenched white supremacy into a multiracial political culture where many white voters regularly...

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