ADVERTISEMENT

Infamous people from your hometown?

ohio-state-v-oklahoma.jpg
 
Not infamous but an interesting story completely off topic for thread

Daniel F. Steck​

In 1924, Steck won the Democratic nomination to run against incumbent Senator Smith W. Brookhart, who had been elected just two years earlier in a special election. Brookhart had run as a Republican and won the Republican nomination, but angered many within his party by crusading against business interests, demanding the withdrawal of Charles Dawes, President Coolidge's running mate, and by endorsing Progressive Party presidential candidate Robert M. La Follette. By the middle of October 1924, the editorial pages of all but one of the state's major Republican daily newspapers had encouraged Republicans to vote for Steck over Brookhart.[6] The day after the election, newspapers reported that Steck had won.[7] However, two days after the election, late returns from rural districts appeared to give Brookhart a tiny lead.[8] Because Steck appeared to have lost the race by a small margin, with Brookhart getting 447,706 votes to Steck's 446,951, Brookhart initially retained his seat, and was sworn in on March 4, 1925.[9]

Steck, however, had filed an election challenge with the Senate Committee on Elections and Privileges. His challenge succeeded on April 12, 1926, when the Senate voted by a margin of 45 to 41 to declare Steck the victor. Steck then took over the seat and served out the remainder of the term, while Brookhart immediately filed as a candidate for Iowa's other Senate seat, which he captured later that year. On other occasions the Senate has settled election disputes before a senator took office, but this is the only time the results were overturned after the senator was seated.
 
Not infamous per se, but she was an also ran contestant on America's Next Top Model which is a show I don't watch so I regard fame from it as infamy. She was my neighbor for a couple years in HS. We did not date.

41b79bfa-3c6d-5350-8511-038755fac5d3.image.jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sheahawk
Televangelist Jim Bakker. He should have gotten the death penalty for milking all those poor folks out of their money and living rich.
 
2-3 years ago, I met Otis's jailer who was the sheriff of the county west of Austin back then. He and I had about a twenty minute conversation. I had read an article in the "Atlantic" years earlier which featured lots of background provided by this sheriff, and he more or less confirmed all of the details that I remembered from the article.

Otis was held in a cell in the sheriff's office during the time when LEOs were traveling to Texas with their files and offering Otis the chance to confess to various unsolved murders. In any event this sheriff was apparently left to determine, late in the game, which of Otis's confessions were true and which were false. We talked about the process he followed in making what appeared to be recommendations to the court. Otis himself never did correct the record.

The sheriff was a genuinely nice guy. I think that with Otis essentially living in the Sheriff's office and given the amount of involvement in the case on the part of the Sheriff, that they kind of became friends ... to the extent that such could ever happen. This Sheriff was essentially the handler of a superstar criminal, and everyone wanted to come and interview him ... and hopefully go home having solved a murder or two.
 
Alexander Clark. Sued his local school district in the 60s to allow his daughter to attend the school that was only for whites. And won, forcing integration of public schools in Iowa. This was in the 1860s, almost 90 years before Brown v Board of Education. And was used as precedent by the US Supreme Court when making their later ruling.

Was a leader in the movement to modify the state constitution to give blacks the right to vote in Iowa in 1868.

His son was the first black person to earn a law degree from the University of Iowa in 1879. He was the second five years later.

Was appointed the ambassador to Liberia in 1890, the highest ranking black man in the US government at the time.

He also helped recruit over 1000 black soldiers for the Union in the Civil War but was unable to serve himself for physical reasons.


Any one of those things would make him a local celebrity. One man doing all of that is infamous, for good reasons.

I assume you either posted this in the wrong thread, or you do not know the definition of infamous.
 
ADVERTISEMENT