Reginald Carter, May 6, 1906 (Kimball, W. Va.) - September 6, 2000 (Inglewood, Calif.)
VP candidate for Independent Afro-American Unity Party (aka Afro-American Unity Party aka Independent Afro-American Unity Liberation Party) (1960)
Running mate with nominee: Clennon Washington King, Jr. (1920-2000)
Popular vote: 1485 (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/537
The campaign:
Clennon Washington King's troubled life was reflected in his erratic political journey, which earned him the nickname "The Black Don Quixote."
He was raised in a prominent family in Albany, Ga. (birthplace of Ray Charles!), but no matter how cultured and educated he became, he still encountered the restrictions of American Apartheid as he attempted to pursue a professional career in various fields, including education and law.
As a history teacher at Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in the mid-1950s, King was very outspoken with iconoclastic public statements such the NAACP was "a tool for conniving whites." As far as school integration went, King said "Negroes segregate themselves, even in voluntary situations" and that "Negroes can be discriminated against just as effectively in unified school systems." In response the students called him an Uncle Tom, hung him in effigy, and boycotted the entire school.
At the same time this controversy was taking place, King was accused of embezzling funds from the Methodist Church where he served as pastor. Finding himself fired from the position and locked out of the building, for some reason he broke into in the church and was arrested and jailed.
Shortly after the Alcorn boycott came to an end, King testified before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in favor of a bill that would provide loans for African Americans who desired to relocate to Liberia. The bill failed, but King was receiving some editorial support from white segregationists.
After being fired from Alcorn in 1958, King attempted to enroll in a graduate program at the all-white University of Mississippi, purposely generating his own publicity in the process. The powers that be proclaimed him to be a lunatic and for a spell he was confined in the Mississippi State Hospital. Voices raised in King's defense included Medgar Evers, Roy Wilkins, Hodding Carter, and Martin Luther King.
After his release he packed up his family and fled to Mexico, where he actually sought political asylum from American racial abuse. The Mexican government advised him to return to the United States.
By 1959 King's domestic life fell apart (he would be dogged for not providing support payments for years) and in November of the same year he sounded the call in Los Angeles to hold a convention in an effort to organize "The Movement for Negro Unity and Liberation."
In January 1960 he felt compelled to announce he was running for President of the United States with Richard Nixon as his running mate, which was probably news to Nixon. In the presence of two reporters and photographer at the Casablanca Hotel in Miami Beach he outlined part of his Party's platform was "to seek a mutually satisfactory solution to the racial problem within one year after the new administration has been inaugurated ... In case no mutually satisfactory solution of the racial plan can be agreed upon, Congress would call a Negro plebiscite after one year to vote on the creation of a separate Negro nation within or without the United States."
Apparently Richard Nixon did not accept the nomination for running mate, so Reginald Carter was named as the replacement VP nominee in June 1960. Carter appears to have been a jack-of-all trades businessman who settled on printing/publishing/editing newspapers and moved to Los Angeles from the Bluefield, West Virginia/Virginia area in 1959. Perhaps King and Carter met at the time the former was in Los Angeles late 1959.
King's campaign was not without incidents. He was arrested for vagrancy in New Orleans in April, and arrested for disturbing the peace/disorderly conduct while soliciting campaign funds in Florida in March and May. Apparently he attempted to kidnap his children from their mother in California, failed, was arrested, jumped bail, and spent the later part of the campaign in Hawaii.
The King/Carter ticket did manage to be listed on the ballot of one state-- Alabama. Well, actually in 1960 Alabama did not list any Presidential candidates on the ballot by name, only the electors and party, but the Independent Afro-American Unity Party was represented. Their 1485 Election Day tally was 0.26% of the Alabama result.
King went on to have a roller-coaster political career, continuing to be a magnet for controversy and conflict. Carter, on the other hand, seemed to have continued the life of a successful businessman and lived well into his 90s.
Election history: none.
Other occupations: bottling company worker, coal miner, insurance agent, neon sign company owner, false teeth maker, printing company owner, newspaper publisher/editor, artist.
Buried: Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Notes:
Publisher/editor of: Los Angeles News, The Banner, Negro Reporter, Tabloid Teen Post, Independent Observer.
Buried in the same cemetery with a zillion celebrities.
