U.S. senator Barack Obama has become the first person of color to become a major U.S. party nominee for president, but few people know he is not the first person of color on a presidential ticket.
That person is Charles Curtis, a member of the Kaw Indian tribe, who became vice president under Herbert Hoover from 1929 to 1933, the USA Today reported Thursday.
Curtis, a senator from Kansas, had been the Senate majority leader and competed against Hoover for the 1928 Republican presidential nomination.
A great-great grandson of the Kaw chief White Plume, who had offered his help to the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804, Curtis was born in 1860 and spent much of his childhood on the Kaw tribe's reservation near Topeka, Kan.
Curtis was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1892and to the Senate in 1907.
His selection as Hoover's running mate was designed to shore up GOP support in Kansas and other farm states.
The campaign rivalry with Hoover left Curtis marginalized as vice president, however, and he spent much of his time presiding over the Senate.
After Hoover was defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, Curtis remained in Washington, where he died in 1936.
Source:Xinhua
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