"I believe," wrote Harry Truman in his memoirs, "that if Dick Russell had been from Indiana or Missouri or Kentucky, he may well have been President." As it was, Richard Brevard Russell Jr. was an unreconstructed Georgian from the red-clay hamlet of Winder, 45 miles northeast of Atlanta; his one effort at the Democratic nomination, in 1952, quickly collapsed because of his unshakable racial attitudes. Russell remained in the U.S. Senate for 38 years. There he alternated between outdated parochialism and respected service in the national interest. When he died at 73...
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