In 1986, a relatively fresh-faced senator from Delaware delivered an impassioned speech on the immorality of South Africa’s apartheid regime and his country’s support of it. During a Senate foreign relations committee hearing, a 43-year-old Joe Biden pounded his fist on the table in anger as he attacked George Shultz, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, for backing the South African government, which imposed a system of segregation policies against its non-white majority.
“I’m ashamed that’s our policy [...]. I’m ashamed of the lack of moral backbone!” he said. “These people are being crushed, and we’re sitting here with the same kind of rhetoric.”
