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kin wrote

You asked for stories too, so here goes one of Dizzy Gillespie:

"The jazz musician John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie campaigned as an independent write-in candidate during the 1964 United States presidential campaign.

He promised that if he were elected, the White House would be renamed the Blues House, and he would have a cabinet composed of Duke Ellington (Secretary of State), Miles Davis (Director of the CIA), Max Roach (Secretary of Defense), Charles Mingus (Secretary of Peace), Ray Charles (Librarian of Congress), Louis Armstrong (Secretary of Agriculture), Mary Lou Williams (Ambassador to the Vatican), Thelonious Monk (Travelling Ambassador) and Malcolm X (Attorney General). He said his running mate would be Phyllis Diller. Gillespie pledged to provide housing and hospital care for all those who needed it and to withdraw American troops from the Vietnam War. Gillespie said that his campaign was not just a publicity stunt but was intended "to take advantage of the votes and publicity I'd receive and to promote change"."

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