Bobby Joe Morrow (October 15, 1935 – May 30, 2020) was an American sprinter who won three gold medals at the 1956 Olympics. He has been called "the dominant sprinter of the 1950s" and "the most relaxed sprinter of all time, even more so than his hero Jesse Owens".
David Ernest Duke (born July 1, 1950) is an American politician, white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. From 1989 to 1992, he was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for the Republican Party. His politics and writings are largely devoted to promoting conspiracy theories about Jews, such as Holocaust denial and Jewish control of academia, the press, and the financial system. In 2013, the Anti-Defamation League called Duke "perhaps America's most well-known racist and anti-Semite".Duke unsuccessfully ran as a Democratic candidate for state legislature during the 1970s and 1980s, culminating in his campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination. After failing to gain any traction within the Democratic Party, he gained the presidential nomination of the minor Populist Party. In December 1988, he became a Republican and claimed to have become a born-again Christian, nominally renouncing antisemitism and racism. He soon won his only elected office, a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives. He then ran unsuccessful but competitive campaigns for several more offices, including United States Senate in 1990 and governor of Louisiana in 1991. His campaigns were denounced by national and state Republican leaders, including President George H. W. Bush. He mounted a minor challenge to President Bush in 1992.
By the late 1990s, Duke had abandoned his pretense of rejecting racism and antisemitism, and began to openly promote racist and neo-Nazi viewpoints. He then began to devote himself to writing about his political views, both in newsletters and later on the Internet. In his writings, he denigrates African Americans and other ethnic minorities, and promotes conspiracy theories about a Jewish plot to control America and the world. He continued to run for public office through 2016, but after his reversion to open neo-Nazism, his candidacies were not competitive.
During the 1990s, Duke defrauded his political supporters by pretending to be in dire financial straits and soliciting money for basic necessities. At the time, he was in fact financially secure and used the money for recreational gambling. In December 2002, Duke pleaded guilty to felony fraud and subsequently served a 15-month sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Big Spring in Texas.
Ruthe Jackson (October 29, 1920 - August 9, 2013) was an American community organizer. She held a seat on the city council of Grand Prairie, Texas, and produced and hosted the longest-running Public-access television cable TV show in Texas. She was considered by many to be the matriarch of Grand Prairie, Texas.
Earl Irvin West (May 18, 1920, Carmel, Indiana – February 4, 2011, Memphis, Tennessee) was a historian of the Restoration Movement. He was known for his multivolume work Search for the Ancient Order, published incrementally from 1949 to 1993. He was baptized by Hugo McCord in 1935. A graduate of Butler University, he received his Ph.D in American History at Indiana University. Although he lived in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was the minister for two different congregations, he also served for many years as professor of church history at Harding Graduate School of Religion in Memphis, Tennessee, now Harding School of Theology, commuting once a week to Memphis. West founded Religious Book Service.