Word: states
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...fact, the deal had been reviewed in the White House by the National Security Council and approved by George Bush, who had been urging the State Department to press ahead in the complicated claims-settlement process. At his press conference last week the President admitted to a hope that the agreement would eliminate a further obstacle to cooperation by the Iranians. "I'd like to get this underbrush cleaned out now," he said. "I hope they will do what they can to influence those who hold these hostages...
...Iran arms-for-hostages swaps still fresh, American officials too have been careful to reject suggestions that the two nations are conducting anything like hostage negotiations. "You want to do things that are justifiable on their own merits and defensible in terms of U.S. interests," said a State Department official. "And if Iran wants to take it as a signal, fine...
...Baltic dilemma. The American government never accepted the Soviet annexation of the republics 49 years ago. To this day, the State Department recognizes "legations" of anti-Communist emigres as the "representatives of the last free and legal governments" of their captive homelands. American diplomats have long avoided traveling to the Baltic capitals of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius, since going there requires Moscow's permission...
...with a Virginia political trailblazer named Douglas Wilder. Back in 1975, when Wilder was the only black in the state senate (and the first since 1890), he gave voice to his overarching aspirations, a notion of empowerment far beyond what seemed plausible amid the genteel conservatism of the Old Dominion. "If people will elect you Lieutenant Governor," Wilder predicted with startling prescience, "they'll elect you Governor. I would think it would be an interesting test somewhere along the line for a black to run for one of those positions so as to put prejudice right on the line...
Wilder, himself a product of segregated education and law school at Howard University, will be the embodiment of state government for the next four years. When he is inaugurated in January, he will command more day-to-day administrative power than any other elected black official in the nation's history. (P.B.S. Pinchback, hitherto the nation's only black Governor, served for just four weeks in Louisiana during Reconstruction.) But there is also an important symbolic dimension to Wilder's election. It is sobering to remember that just one other black has been elected to major statewide office since Reconstruction...