Shouting down Klansman violated ‘noblest traditions’

On this day in 1975: Black hecklers prevent David Duke, a little-known Ku Klux Klansman from Louisiana, from speaking at the University of North Carolina’s Memorial Auditorium.

Chancellor Ferebee Taylor calls the incident “a transgression of one of the highest and noblest traditions of this institution.”

Duke will go on to form the National Association for the Advancement of White People in 1980, be elected to the Louisiana legislature in 1989, challenge incumbent George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and run unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate and House seats in 1996 and 1999, respectively.