From today's corrections:

An article on Friday about a controversy over remarks by Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut praising Senator Robert Byrd, a onetime opponent of civil rights, referred incorrectly to the 1948 presidential campaign of Strom Thurmond, who was at the center of a similar controversy in 2002 that cost Senator Trent Lott his post as majority leader. Mr. Thurmond was the candidate of the States' Rights Party in 1948; he was not yet a Republican.

Anyone who claims to be a reporter on this subject ought to know the derivation of the word "Dixiecrat." This specific error both derives from and reinforces the canard that the southern Republican surge was primarily a result of racist Democratic defections.