Trent Lott's ill-judged remarks about Strom Thurmond have, among other things, pushed the 1948 presidential campaign into the public spotlight after more than half a century. But the most-important and dramatic issue in that election is being forgotten. Of course, no one should forget that then-Governor Thurmond was a renegade Democrat, not a Republican; or that it was historically Democrats, not Republicans, who supported Jim Crow segregation and exploited southern racist sentiment for political gain; or that Thurmond and his running mate, Governor Fielding Wright of Mississippi, won a grand total of two percent of the vote. I am...