Today -100: August 22, 1918: Good riddance to bad racist

Henry Ford says he will give back all the profits which he personally makes from war contracts.

Lenin tells the pope he can’t let the Romanovs out of the country like the pope asked, because Moscow is out of communications with the place where they are now. Which is hell. Because they’re dead. But he doesn’t tell the pope that.

Sen. James Vardaman loses the primary for re-election. The  NYT rejoices in the Mississippi Dems’ rejection of the “duper and idol of the ‘hillbillies,’ the astute player on ignorance, passion, and ‘poor white’ prejudice, the ‘White Chief,’ the upholder of the ‘White South’...”, the “egoist-pacifist” who opposed US entry into World War I, which for the Times is a much bigger crime than his long-time support for lynching and the disenfranchisement of black people. The former governor will not hold office again. The University of Miss. announced in 2017 that it would change the name of Vardaman Hall but doesn’t seem to have actually done it. Mississippi also has a town called Vardaman, the “sweet potato capital of the world.”

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