Not being from Georgia, I've never known much about his political career. Here is some info about him from OpinionJournal Best of the Web today:

We've done a little further research, and the evidence we've uncovered suggests Sullivan may have been mistaken. First, there's this e-mail we received from reader and veteran journalist Frederick Allen:

As political editor of the Atlanta Constitution, I knew Zell quite well, and I have observed his career for more than 30 years. As a native of north Georgia, Zell did not grow up in the stew of black-white politics (he is closer probably to Orval Faubus, only with a high IQ), and I have never known him to utter a racist sentiment. He made two runs for Congress in the late 1960s against veteran Phil Landrum, one from the right and one from the left, and uttered an infamous line accusing Landrum of selling out his heritage for a "mess of dark pottage." So for a time, anyway, Zell was not enlightened on race.

When he served as executive secretary to Lester Maddox, I'd put Zell closer to the part of Lester that tried to help the little man than to the seg rhetoric, and by the time Zell ran for lieutenant governor in 1974 he seemed to me to fit the bill of a reformer. He ran as a near-liberal against Herman Talmadge for the Senate in 1980 and lost in the Democratic primary. In 1990, he ran for governor and won and passed the lottery, whose proceeds allowed him to send the children of the middle class to college for free.

He is a good man, in my mind, but also one whose nickname, "Zig Zag Zell," has been earned.

Blogger Greg Greene, a Miller critic, picks up this passage from "Buck Up, Suck Up . . . and Come Back When You Foul Up: 12 Winning Secrets From the War Room," a 2001 book by Democratic operatives James Carville and Paul Begala:

Zell Miller, our candidate for governor of Georgia in 1990, had performed stunningly well in the statewide-televised debate against his GOP opponent. There had been one rather tense exchange that Miller knocked out of the park. He was asked about a comment he allegedly made back in 1964--a racist attack on Lyndon Johnson when LBJ had gone to Georgia to campaign for Miller's opponent. The reporter questioning Miller said that Miller had slammed Johnson for supporting civil rights, accusing him of "selling his Southern heritage for a mess of dark pottage."

As racist comments go, that was hardly the worst we'd ever heard. And it was allegedly made a quarter-century ago. Still, watching the debate, we were stunned. Miller had been one of the leading lights of racial progress in Georgia for decades; he was one of the few white Georgia politicians to endorse civil rights hero John Lewis when he ran for Congress. This hurt.

Carville and Begala write that Miller told a reporter in 1990 that "he'd always been for racial equality but when Lyndon Johnson supported his opponent, he wanted to lash out. He'd regretted that one moment of anger, dressed up as racial division, ever since. It was as moving, honest and forthcoming a moment as we'd ever seen from a politician."

Miller's 1964 comment was to his discredit, but it seems an awfully slim basis on which to call him a "Dixiecrat" 40 years later. We trust a correction will be forthcoming from Andrew Sullivan.

From the sound of people who've known him a long time, he does have the negative of an apparently racist remark 40 years ago. It also sounds like he did a lot of good on racial issues during most of his career.

Contrast that to Senator Byrd, (D-KKK), and his "white ni**er" remark 3 years ago. No one said squat about it and no one tried to force him out of his leadership position in the Senate, unlike what happened to a Republican who made a stupid remark.

On March 4, 2001, an interview with FOX News Sunday host Tony Snow was aired. In the interview Byrd was asked about race relations: "They are much, much better than they've ever been in my lifetime," Byrd said. "I think we talk about race too much. I think those problems are largely behind us... I just think we talk so much about it that we help to create somewhat of an illusion. I think we try to have good will. My old mom told me, 'Robert, you can't go to heaven if you hate anybody.' We practice that." Then Byrd warned: "There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time; I'm going to use that word." "We just need to work together to make our country a better country, and I'd just as soon quit talking about it so much." Byrd's office later issued an apology.

The fact that he said it suggest to me that the thoughts aren't too deeply buried. Has anyone heard anything even remotely similar from a Republican, or from Zell Miller?

You may not like what he said. Too damned bad. Interestingly enough, an MSNBC focus group report shows his speech went over very well with independents.