John Sharp Williams

John Sharp Williams was a Mississippi Democrat who served in the U.S. House from 1893 to 1909 — six of those years as minority leader — and then in the Senate from 1911 to 1923, where he became one of Woodrow Wilson’s staunchest allies. A University of Virginia–trained lawyer known for his wit on the House floor, he was invited to deliver Columbia University’s Blumenthal Foundation lectures on Jefferson, published in 1913. Williams was also, by the record of his own speeches, an unapologetic white supremacist — a fact the quote’s modern circulation entirely erases.