Douglas Wilder

I think there are more people that listen on the app in this day and age than just about anything else.

804 Jeff, can you please invite John Reed and Doug Wilder to Politics and Pints? It would be great if Jimmy Barrett can show up as well.

We have our tickets.

I don't think Jimmy's coming in.

I think Jimmy comes in every hundred years.

So when the radio station turns 200, he might come back.

But yeah, John Reed and Doug Wilder are both local, and I agree with you.

I think it would be great to have them as part of Politics and Pints again.

Uh, would be, I think, a very entertaining guest.

Doug Wilder again.

You know, Governor Wilder was with us, uh, a while back, and he was great.

John Reed and, uh, Jimmy Barrett both came in for our, uh, 100th anniversary edition of Politics and Pints for the, uh, 100th anniversary of the radio station.

Today on kerrydoherty.com, I actually have a piece by Paul Goldman, former chair of the Democratic Party in Virginia.

He was Doug Wilder's right-hand man while he was, they used to call him his Rasputin.

Well, when Doug was governor and he has a really good, well-reasoned piece, he's still a Democrat.

He has a piece about the violent criminals should not automatically get their voting rights back.

Like it was a three-way.

It was a four-way for a while, and then Doug Wilder got out.

Doug Wilder got out.

So it was complicated,

but you're right.

Three.

Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the first in 1989.

Deval Patrick of Massachusetts became the second in 2006. and Wes Moore of Maryland became the third in 2022.

All three were Black men and Democrats.

Approximately two thousand African Americans in the southern states served in state legislatures, in state government and executive positions, and ultimately in the U.S. Sixteen African Americans from ex-Confederate states were elected to the U.S. Congress, two to the U.S. Senate, Hiram Revels from Mississippi being the first black senator in American history.

And how many times do you hear in our political culture today, the first black since Reconstruction, the first this since Reconstruction, the first that, the first black governor since Reconstruction, was Doug Wilder in The first this and the first that, since Reconstruction.

It's because there was this explosion of black political activity for a short period of time, a decade really, until the lights went Of the 1,000 delegates to constitutional writing conventions in 1868-69, when these new state governments were created, of about the 1,000 delegates that participated in writing those new constitutions, 268 of them were black.

About 680 African Americans served in the lower houses of state governments during Reconstruction.