WI: Possible First Black Vice-Presidents

Fresh after Barack Obama's victory to become the nation's first Black President, and with Gen. Powell becoming the nation's first Black Secretary of State back in 2001...What are some possible POD's that would allow for the country to have it's most plausible first Black Vice-President before reaching the Executive role? All ideas are welcome...
 
Fresh after Barack Obama's victory to become the nation's first Black President, and with Gen. Powell becoming the nation's first Black Secretary of State back in 2001...What are some possible POD's that would allow for the country to have it's most plausible first Black Vice-President before reaching the Executive role? All ideas are welcome...

Is there any chance of Alan Keyes being Bob Dole's running mate in 1996? I wasn't old enough to remember the circumstances surrounding the Republican side of the campaign that year. Alternatively, could Jesse Jackson be chosen by Michael Dukakis following the 1988 primaries?
 
Is there any chance of Alan Keyes being Bob Dole's running mate in 1996? I wasn't old enough to remember the circumstances surrounding the Republican side of the campaign that year. Alternatively, could Jesse Jackson be chosen by Michael Dukakis following the 1988 primaries?
No chance for Alan Keyes. That guy is way to far to the right. Jesse Jackson a little more likely, but still relatively improbable.
 

Keenir

Banned
Fresh after Barack Obama's victory to become the nation's first Black President, and with Gen. Powell becoming the nation's first Black Secretary of State back in 2001...What are some possible POD's that would allow for the country to have it's most plausible first Black Vice-President before reaching the Executive role? All ideas are welcome...

Frederick Douglass.

yes, OTL.
 
What about Brook of Massachusetts....

Other thought- WI somehow Civil and voting rights had been enforced in the South after the 1870s. It might not be such a big deal.
 
Nixon employs a different "Southern Strategy" and selects Martin Luther King Jr in 1968. Does require King to not be killed, have heard he was a life long Republican this makes sense as he would hardly be greeted with open arms by the 1968 Democrats of GA or Alabama
 
^ But King would more likely work with somebody who openly epoused his same views. Bobby Kennedy is the best bet for this, Democrat or not. King probably knows that Kennedy got himself in crap for a 1966 trip to South Africa where he more than once called out apartheid and said:

"At the University of Natal in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. 'But suppose God is black', I replied. 'What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?' There was no answer. Only silence."

Suppose Bobby Kennedy isn't killed. His chances of taking the 1968 Democratic Nomination are very good, especially if Kennedy gets Martin Luther King as his VP. He'd lock to youth vote so tight that nobody else could get at it, and it would leave him free to punch it out with Nixon.
 
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