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NEGRO RIGHTS AND WHITE BACKLASH IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1920
by RANDOLPH C. DOWNES
I believe in equality before the law. You can't give rights to the white man and deny them to the black man. But while I stand for that great, great principle, I do not mean that the white man and the black man must be forced to associate together in the acceptance of their rights. Harding address in Oklahoma City, October 9, 1920, as reported in The Daily Oklahoma, October 10, 1920. The greatest indignity suffered by Harding in his career was the allegation made during the campaign of 1920 that he had Negro forebears. This was
NOTES ARE ON PAGES 184-185 |
86 OHIO HISTORY
part of the white backlash reactions
that were aroused by the moderate
concessions made by Harding and the
Republicans to the rising Negro-rights
movement. To be attacked for racial
reasons was not a new experience for
either Harding or the Republicans. The
whites, especially Democratic ones,
had been backlashing ever since
anti-slavery days. The Hardings had been
punished with "nigger talk"
ever since they espoused anti-slavery sentiments
in a Democratic section of Ohio in
pre-Civil War times. It has been standard
treatment in certain sections of
society, especially in the Civil War and
Reconstruction periods, for Republicans
to be called "nigger worshippers"
because of their interest in civil
rights.
In the 1920 campaign Harding's talents
for political adjustment were given
an unusual test by the new dimensions of
the Negro situation. It was a
matter of simple statistics that the
potential Negro vote in the North from
1917 to 1920 had more than doubled. The
great increase came not only
from the enfranchisement of the Negro
women by the adoption of the
Nineteenth Amendment to the United
States Constitution, but from the
migration to the North during World War
I of many thousands of southern
Negroes to work in the production
stimulated by the conflict. Imigration
of cheap labor from Europe was cut off
during World War I; therefore,
the work force had to be largely
replaced by southern Negroes.1
Increased tension resulted not merely
from an increase in numbers of
Negroes in the North, but from an
increase in the Negroes' desire to remedy
their own grievances. The bars of racial
restriction were not as great in
the North as they were in the South; and
Negroes as a result were sure
to be more active in the direction of
securing more equality in political,
civil, and even social rights. Many who
had served in the armed forces during
the war returned home with new ideas and
hopes stirring in their minds
and spirits. Negro rights societies
increased in number and militancy. So
did Negro newspapers. In 1910 the
National Association for the Advance-
ment of Colored People was born with its
exhilarating idea that the Negroes
could not expect to attain more equal
rights unless they themselves actively
and intelligently sought to get them.
Increased lynching after World War I
drove the NAACP and other Negro
organizations to vigorous counter action
in the direction of federal
legislation.2
In 1919-20, as the signs of increased
Negro militancy became apparent
to whites, there arose the inevitable
backlash. Whites, who had never
indulged in the unthinkable thought of
Negro equality, were suddenly
confronted with it; and they did not
like it. The return of four hundred
thousand Negro soldiers to civilian life
had explosive possibilities. An upsurge
of lynchings followed. The "Red
Summer" of 1919 saw race riots in some
twenty-five American cities, north and
south.3 Therefore, as the Republican
party and Harding made adjustments to meet the
requirements of retain-
ing the loyalty of the traditionally
Republican, and now more numerous,
Negroes, the defenders of white supremacy,
especially Democratic ones,
made themselves heard. The race issue,
which by certain gentleman's code
NEGRO RIGHTS AND WHITE BACKLASH 87
of honor, was not supposed to be a part
of politics, became such in the
minds of many people. Candidate Warren G. Harding
became involved in
this new political issue.
Harding was his usual moderate and
careful self in meeting this new
Negro problem. In his 1920 campaign
conduct, he and his fellow Republican
leaders sought to appease the Negro
desire for equality in politics and
civil rights by two strategic maneuvers.
One was to make displays of
devotion to the general principle of
racial equality in rights and opportunities
without getting down to specifics. These
displays were made in such con-
trolled circumstances as the shaping of
the Republican platform, in Harding's
Acceptance Day address, and in the
well-managed and subsidized ceremonies
of Colored Voters Day at Marion on
September 10. Many strategems were
necessary in these affairs in order to
keep the militants quiet. The second
maneuver was to mount a protest movement
in behalf of the liberties of
the citizens of the Negro republic of
Haiti. These liberties seemingly were
being subverted by the American
occupation of the Caribbean island engi-
neered by the Democratic administration
starting in 1915. Wilson's Haiti
policy and its support by Democratic
vice-presidential candidate, Franklin
D. Roosevelt, gave Harding a golden
opportunity to play politics.
Even though Harding's efforts in the
direction of equal rights for Negroes
were moderate, he was the victim of a
savage backlash movement by
"lily-white" Democrats in the
North and in the border states. As the
campaign closed, some of the more
desperate Democrats launched two
attacks on Harding. One was a claim that
his equal-rights talk was a threat
to white supremacy. The other was the
attempt of certain Democrats to
represent Harding as a Negro.
The first Republican adjustment to the
Negro-rights demands took place
at the June, 1920 nominating convention
at Chicago with the insertion
of an anti-lynching plank in the party
platform. The Negroes wanted far
more than that -- at least the five
Negroes appointed to the platform
committee did. They presented a
resolution asking not only for an anti-
lynching plank, but for other planks
pledging the party to favor: (1) a
force act assuring the right to vote to
all Negroes in the South, and else-
where, as provided for in the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Amendments to the
Constitution; (2) a civil rights act
assuring the abolition of segregation
and discrimination because of color; and
(3) a general commitment that
the United States should be made safe
for democracy at home before it
undertook to do so in foreign lands.
When the committee accepted only
the anti-lynching plank, the Negro
delegates tried to introduce the other
planks in the convention itself. They
were ruled out of order. They therefore
had to be content with a plank entitled
"Lynching" which read, "We urge
Congress to consider the most effective
means to end lynching in this
country which continues to be a terrible
blot on our American civilization."4
More adjustment to Negro demands was
necessary, and the man to
do it, of course, was the candidate.
Harding went farther toward Negro
88 OHIO HISTORY
equality than the platform, but not as
far as many Negroes thought he
had. He went much farther, however, than
the lily whites and the back-
lashers could tolerate.
Strong pressure for racial equality came
from Cleveland Negroes who
were being courted by the local
Republican organization. Harding was
asked by the enthusiastic
editor-in-chief Omond A. Forte of the militant
Cleveland Advocate if he would
abolish color discrimination in the govern-
ment departments, if he would get rid of
the "Taft Southern Policy" of
appointing only lily-white Republicans
in the South, or if he would follow
the Fourteenth Amendment requiring a cut
of southern representation in
Congress if the Negroes were deprived of
the vote. Pressure for racial
equality was also brought by Cleveland
Republican leader Maurice Maschke,
who informed Harding that the Cleveland
Negroes were anxious to repair
"the damage" done by their
opposition to Harding in the primary campaign.
Harding dignifiedly rebuked Maschke for
encouraging the Negroes so much.5
Nevertheless, in his July 22 Acceptance
speech, Harding went a long
way in seeking Negro support. His words went
far beyond the anti-lynching
stage. In fact they were so
characteristically eloquent and expressive in
behalf of Negro equality that the
impressionable Negro could -- and did
-- think that they meant the coming of a
new day of Jubilee. "No majority,"
said Harding, "shall abridge the
rights of a minority ... I believe the Negro
citizens of America should be guaranteed
the enjoyment of all their rights,
that they have earned their full measure
of citizenship bestowed, that their
sacrifices in blood on the battlefields
of the republic have entitled them to
all of freedom and opportunity, all of
sympathy and aid that the American
spirit of fairness and justice
demands."6
By following up these promises of Negro
equality with the appointment
of Negro leaders to high places in
Republican councils the Republicans
could ensure the enthusiastic
propagation of the new doctrine of Negro
equality by the Negroes themselves --
always, of course, on the understand-
ing that they would not go "too
far," that is, agitate for integration. One
of these so favored was the Atlanta,
Georgia Negro attorney, Henry Lincoln
Johnson. The influential Johnson was
given two appointments, one as a
delegate to the National Convention and
the other as member from Georgia
of the powerful Republican National
Committee. Johnson became an ardent
exponent of Harding's type of Negro
rights promotion. He represented
the candidate's Acceptance remarks as
being on a par with Abraham Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation. To the Negro
Methodist pastor, Reverend
J. G. Robinson of Philadelphia, Johnson
wrote, "The Senator spoke to our
souls in matchless words in his letter
of acceptance and filled with joy
every downcast Negro heart with his
assurance of his remembrance of our
travails, and his purpose, so far as the
president's power lies, to allay them."7
The other felicitous Negro appointment
to the Republican hierarchy was
Mrs. Lethia C. Fleming, wife of
Cleveland city councilman Thomas W.
Fleming. As Johnson, she also was given
two positions high in the Republican
hierarchy. The first was to be one of
the five lady members of the Republican
NEGRO RIGHTS AND WHITE BACKLASH 89
National Executive Committee, and the
other was to be chairman of the
Colored Women's Bureau of the Republican
National Committee. We do
not have examples of her utterances in
behalf of Negro rights, but we do
have Harding's testimony as to her high
qualities as a Republican. In
recommending Mrs. Fleming to Maurice
Maschke for the appointments
Harding wrote, June 16, that her
"intelligence is equal to any woman. She
is tactful, prepossessing in appearance,
charming and acquainted with
politics."8
On the basis of the moderate Negro
rights statements of the Republican
platform and the Harding Acceptance
speech, the Republicans launched a
program of publicity designed to keep
things moderate and general and
to curb the militants who wanted more
specifics. This was done by three
well-managed enterprises: (1) the
sponsoring of Negro Republican clubs
throughout the North by Johnson's Negro
Voters Bureau; (2) the prepara-
tion and circulation of special party
pamphlets designed for Negro voters;
and (3) the staging of Colored Voters
Day at Marion on September 10.
Henry Lincoln Johnson's club work stressed
not only the creation and
enlargement of Negro Republican clubs,
but the sending to each of them
a mimeographed form letter on official
Republican National Committee
letterheads, urging them to pass
resolutions of endorsement of Harding
and Coolidge. The letter was simple and
graphic. It opened with a brief
statement saying that "everyone
admits that lynching and mob-violence
are the chief aggravations of the
colored man in the United States." Beneath
this were two columns. The right-hand
column was headed "What the
Republican Party Says," and
contained three well-spaced quotations of
the Republican platform on lynching,
Harding's Acceptance Day remarks,
and a statement by Calvin Coolidge on
Negro constitutional rights. The
left-hand column was headed "What
the Democratic Platform Says," and
was largely blank, except that opposite
"Democratic platform" was the
word "NOTHING," opposite "Governor
Cox" the words "ABSOLUTELY
NOTHING," and opposite
"Franklin Delano Roosevelt" the statement "NOT
ONE WORD."
Johnson was very proud of this form
letter. At the bottom of a copy
sent to Marion was the hand-written
note, "Kind Senator Harding: Just
for your information, every important
meeting of colored people in the
'voting states' is passing sweeping
endorsements of your candidacy in response
to requests indicated above." To
this, Harding's office replied that the Senator
was gratified that the colored people were so generally
endorsing his candi-
dacy with the aid of the "clear,
concise and convincing contrast of the
platforms and candidates relative to the
rights of colored people."9
Johnson's campaign pamphlets were
rousing publications. Harding was
represented as the successor of Abraham
Lincoln and William Lloyd Garri-
son. The Democratic Party was castigated
with a revival of bloody-shirt
talk and was represented as based on too
much southern white political
influence and the disfranchisement of
the Negro. The hypocrisy of the
Democrats was cited in their support of
world democracy abroad and
90 OHIO HISTORY
non-democracy in the South, in their
talk of enforcement of the Eighteenth
Amendment and the nullification of the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend-
ments. Anti-Negro statements by southern
leaders were quoted. In a heavily
leaded-boxed paragraph was Senator Ben
Tillman's remark, "We stuffed
ballot boxes, we shot Negroes: we are
not ashamed of it." A Congressman
Taylor was similarly represented as saying,
"The Democratic Party is a
white man's party in the North, as well
as in the South." Discrimination
and jim crow treatment by the Democrats
in the army, in the offices at
Washington, and in the reception of
veterans were minutely detailed. There
was a special pamphlet written by Negro
Major John R. Lynch, United
States Army Retired, which went deeper.
It assailed the Democrats for
the sin of instilling an inferiority
complex in Negroes so that they could
not understand the higher issues at
stake in the election. "He enters the
campaign handicapped for the
consideration of great issues," wrote Major
Lynch. Always the Democrats were scored
as the Negroes' "lifelong enemy."
Always they were depicted as citing only
the bitter past and present; noth-
ing was said of the Negro future. There
were no specific promises about the
full meaning of the equality that was to
come.l0
Grand climax of the Johnson campaign was
Colored Voters Day, Septem-
ber 10, 1920, at Marion. This affair was
a piece of "front porch" politicking
designed to win Negro votes. The program
was carefully managed, heavily
financed, and skillfully prepared so as
to discourage the militant Negroes
from coming and to encourage the
religiously minded to come in great
numbers.
There were many sources of Negro
militancy with whom the Johnson-
Harding moderates had to parry and
thrust in keeping Colored Voters
Day under control. One of these was the
Cleveland Negro radicals, who
were making real progress in getting
into the city government. The way
to handle them was to leave them alone.
When they saw the nature of
the Colored Voters Day preparation, they
lost interest and stayed out of
it. There was also the NAACP. Harding
was able to cope with this organiza-
tion by the Haiti maneuver, as will be
presently described. Finally there
was the most dangerous of all the
militant groups, the Equal Rights League
and its executive secretary, William
Monroe Trotter of Boston.
Henry Lincoln Johnson was fully aware of
the danger of Trotter and
the Equal Rights League. He made it
quite clear at the outset of the prepara-
tions for Colored Voters Day that there
should be no pilgrimage to Marion
of that organization. On August 9 he
explained his views to Harry M.
Daugherty, Harding's campaign manager.
What he wanted was a visit to
Marion of a few well selected moderate
Negroes who would not raise any
embarrassing questions. This kind of
people are "alright." "They are just
a part," Johnson wrote, "of
the great majority of the colored people of
the United States who want to see the
Senator only to assure him of their
enthusiastic and loyal support. When it comes to the
Equal Rights League,
it may be made up of Monroe Trotter of
Boston and some other wild-eyed
people like that. They may produce some
embarrassment. So before you
NEGRO RIGHTS AND WHITE BACKLASH 91
make any dates may I beg that you let me
advise with you so that no
mistakes whatever will be made? We do
not want any colored people to
come to see the Senator with question
marks. The platform declaration
and the unmatched declarations of
Senator Harding and Governor Coolidge
not only satisfies but enthuses the
colored Republican voters of the United
States and we do not want to be bothered
with any more delegations coming
up and asking how a man stands about
things."11
Johnson had his way. Trotter attended
the Colored Voters Day ceremonies,
but he was entirely surrounded and
contained by the moderate group of
Negroes whom Johnson managed to
assemble. This group consisted mostly
of the Negroes of two Baptist
conventions which happened to be meeting
in Indianapolis and Columbus on
September 10. Negroes who would have
to come from more remote parts of the
country were kept from coming by
the simple device of refusing to pay
their expenses. For example, the Reverend
J. G. Robinson of Philadelphia, head of
the Convocational Council of the
African Methodist Episcopal Church,
wanted to bring a big delegation of
Negro Methodists to Marion for the
September 10 demonstration. "Let me
know," he wrote Johnson on August
28, "if the National Committee will
assist me with my delegation -- R. R.
fare only?" Johnson very bluntly
set Reverend Robinson's mind at ease on
this proposition. "I should rather
advise," he wrote, "against
such a pilgrimage for two reasons: (a) the
terrible expense involved and the
absolute inability of the National Com-
mittee to finance such an excursion; (b)
the lack of need of such an
undertaking."12
The Negro Methodists may have been kept
away from Colored Voters
Day by the denial of railroad fare, but
that was emphatically not the case
of the Negro Baptists who were meeting
at Indianapolis and Columbus.
These places were near enough to Marion
to make the expense less onerous
on the Republican party financial
coffers. The Republican involvement is
clearly demonstrated by a letter of
August 23 from Harry Daugherty in
Columbus to Howard Mannington of Harding's
staff in Marion. This letter
shows that the Republicans not only paid
the railroad expenses of the two
sets of Negro Baptists but helped defray
the expenses of at least one of
the religious conventions. In his letter
Daugherty said, speaking of the
Columbus convention, "Am asking
Rev. J. F. Hughes, General Manager
of the National Negro Baptist
Association, to call on you tomorrow A. M.
This is the big association you know.
Yesterday I told you to see if Hughes
thought he could arrange to have those
in Indianapolis to come also. This
will involve the expense of two special
trains. Whatever you, Carmi Thompson
and Senator New [of Chicago
headquarters] work out is alright with me.
I have done all I can about it.
Confidentially I have secured for Hughes
and paid him $1000 to help some of the
expenses of this convention."13
A danger that lurked in the background
of the preparations for Colored
Voters Day was the jim-crow status of
Marion's hotel and restaurant
facilities. Harding was amply warned on
this in a friendly way by former
Senator Theodore E. Burton and, in a
challenging way, by Ralph W. Tyler
92 OHIO HISTORY
of the Cleveland Advocate. Burton
said that a leading Cleveland colored
Methodist minister, who had recently
visited Marion, was denied access
to any drug store or restaurant in the
city and that in consequence there
could be no Negro endorsement of Harding
in Cleveland. Tyler wrote
Christian along the same lines,
acknowledged that it was not Harding's
fault, but insisted that it would hurt
Harding's candidacy for his home town
to engage in practices
"diametrically opposite to the Senator's pronounce-
ment for justice for the race as
American citizens." Tyler proposed that
the secretary try to get the Marion
"civic associations" to agree to suspend
jim crowism for the duration of the
campaign. Harding, in his reply to
Burton, said that this was the first
time he had ever heard of any lack of
consideration and fair treatment of
anybody in Marion, but there was
nothing he could do about it. He felt sure
that the committee on arrange-
ments would provide for equal
opportunity "even though that involved some
phases of segregation. You know [he
added] racial prejudice is a thing
which can not be set at naught."
The result was that there were no
Cleveland Negro visitors to Marion on
Colored Voters Day.l4
The result also was a smoothly arranged
segregated affair. It was punc-
tuated with religious fervor, but
dominated by Hardingesque moderation.
No episode took place to reveal to the
public eye the fact of the prevalence
of jim crowism on Colored Voters Day.
"We have made arrangements,"
wrote Mannington to Johnson, "with
a local colored church to feed these
people and they will erect a big tent,
where all visitors can be properly
and adequately fed." He hoped that
there would be a "goodly crowd,"
perhaps a thousand people, so that the
church would not lose money on
the venture. It is doubtful that there
were that many present, but, what-
ever the number, there were three things
apparent from the arrangements
program prepared by Mannington and given
to the master of ceremonies,
D. R. Crissinger. One was that the
assemblage was overwhelmingly religious.
Another was that they visited Harding in
four separate groups: the Baptists
from Columbus who arrived at Harding's
home at 8:15 A.M. and returned
to Columbus by the 10:00 A.M. train; the
Baptists from Indianapolis who
saw Harding at 1:00 P.M.; a Methodist
group which called late in the
afternoon; and a delegation from the
"National Race Congress" which saw
the candidate at 11:00 A.M. The third
point of interest was the complete
segregation of the Negroes as per Item
No. 5 in Mannington's mimeographed
instructions: "All delegations must
be told where they can be subsisted,
that is, by the A. M. E. Church of
Marion, wherever they will serve dinner
and supper, and all should be especially
directed to go there." A copy of
these instructions was given to J. W.
Thompson, Marion chief of police.15
The main ceremony took place at the
front porch at two o'clock. It was
marked by climax and anti-climax.
According to the New York Times
report, the affair "had all the
fervency of a camp meeting." A colored band
from Columbus escorted the visitors to
the porch playing "Harding Will
Shine Tonight." At the porch, Henry
Lincoln Johnson took charge and
told the candidate that they were not
present to ask him questions because
NEGRO RIGHTS AND WHITE BACKLASH 93 |
they knew what he thought. To make the formal presentation of the Baptist brethren Johnson called on William H. Lewis, former assistant attorney general under Taft. Lewis likewise said there would be no questions, "We seek no pledges. Your life, your high character, your public services are pledge enough. Your splendid pronouncement in your speech of acceptance that the colored citizens should be guaranteed the enjoyment of all their rights and entitled to freedom and opportunity, because they had measured up to the requirements of citizenship by their sacrifices on the battlefields of the republic, gives courage and inspiration." Lewis's remarks were punc- tuated with exclamations from the audience of "Hallelujah," "Amen," and "You tell it." Then with awesome effect there appeared before them General John J. Pershing, who happened to be Harding's guest. He was introduced to the thunderstruck assemblage and gave his inspirational blessings, praising the Negroes for their service to their country during the war. Mrs. Fleming was also introduced. With excellent poise she was spokesman for the Negro women, praising Harding for his part in bringing them the vote.16 And then, at the grand climax, came forth the candidate. In words of friendly dignity he spoke, not as an evangel of liberty, but in a tone of fatherly moderation. He did not stir them up -- he calmed them down. His central theme was the great progress the Negroes had made since the days of slavery, the noble part they had played in America's progress and |
94 OHIO HISTORY
America's wars. He knew of their trials,
the disgraceful lynchings, the irksome
discriminations. He knew also of their
restraint under great provocation.
He praised them for this, but he also
reminded them that continued progress
was possible only in a land of ordered
freedom and opportunity, such as
was America. He reminded them that such
progress was not possible in
the land of the new slavery under the Bolshevik
dictatorship of violent
Russia. He enjoined them to work hard,
obey the law, and avoid violence.
He knew they would understand the basic
truth behind his counsels of
moderation. "The American Negro has
the good sense to know this truth,
has the good sense, clear head, and
brave heart to live it; and I proclaim it
to all the world that he has met the
test and did not and will not fail
America."17
Harding's references to violence in his
Colored Voters Day address need
to be understood in the context of the
public feeling in the Red-scare days
of 1920. He was not warning so much
about the violence of lynching as
he was about the violence of the race
riots of 1919. His words were: "Brutal
and unlawful violence whether it proceeds
from those who break the law
or from those who take the law into
their own hands, can only be dealt
with in one way by true Americans,
whether they be of your blood or of
mine." This was small comfort to
the militants who saw in it the inference
that the blame for the riots was as much
the Negroes' as the whites'. It
was great comfort to the whites who saw
the law supporting the status
quo which was so favorable to them.
What the militant Negroes thought of
this as the subdued assemblage
dispersed at the end of the day, is not
recorded, at least it has not been
discovered. The militant Trotter of the
Equal Rights League was present.
But he had no part in the public
speech-making. He had his say, but it
was behind closed doors. There are at
least two versions of what was
said about the Equal Rights League's
special emphasis on segregation. One
was by the Associated Press
correspondent who reported: "One of those
who conferred with the Senator was
William Monroe Trotter of Boston,
Executive Secretary of the National
Equal Rights League, who asked that
segregation of Negro employees of the
Federal Government be abolished.
He declared afterward that the Senator
had given the request appreciative
consideration." The other version
of what happened is taken from The
Union, a Cincinnati Negro newspaper. It stated that the
conference was
attended by Trotter and the president
and vice-president of the Equal
Rights League, N. S. Taylor and M. A. N.
Shaw. They asked for federal
action against lynching, denial of the
vote, segregated travel, and segregation
in the executive department of the
national government. "Senator Harding
promised a careful study of the
Congressional measures to the end of
correction of the abuses. He declared
emphatically against federal segregation
and said, 'If the United States cannot
prevent segregation in its own
service we are not in any sense a
democracy.' The League officers expressed
to him satisfaction with the candidate's
acceptance speech statement. Taylor,
Shaw and Trotter said league officers
would support Harding vigorously."18
NEGRO RIGHTS AND WHITE BACKLASH 95
If any of the militant Negroes still
thought that Harding's Negro-equality
talk was what he wanted it to be, his
hopes were frustrated by the final
campaign utterance, which occurred in
Oklahoma City on October 9. There
were other more important subjects on
Harding's mind at this time as,
for instance, the League of Nations, on
which he had expanded with such
unusual effect at Des Moines on October
7. But some party managers
were saying that there was a chance to
swing Oklahoma over into the
Republican column. A speech was
therefore scheduled for the capital of
the Sooner State. It was obviously
necessary to reassure the race-minded
voter of this commonwealth of the
essential moderation of his Negro rights
ideas.
Harding's Oklahoma stand on race
relations included two points: (1) an
assertion in favor of the separate but
equal doctrine; and (2) a repudiation
of the idea of the use of the force of
the federal government in enabling
the Negroes to vote.
Harding was forewarned and prepared on
the subject. The morning issue
of the October 9 Daily Oklahoman had
asked him three sets of questions
two of which dealt with race relations.19
One set was, "Do you or do you
not favor race segregation? Do you or do
you not favor separate cars for
the white and black race; separate
schools, restaurants, amusement places,
etc.?" Harding's answer was a general
assertion of "race equality before
the law," but a specific
endorsement of segregation. He said, "I can't come
here and answer that for you. It is too
serious a problem for some of us
who don't know it as you do in your
daily lives. But I wouldn't be fit to be
president of the United States if I
didn't tell you the same things here in
the south that I tell in the north. I
believe in race equality before the law.
You can't give one right to a white man
and deny it to a black man. But
I want you to know that I do not mean
that white people and black people
shall be forced to associate together in
accepting their equal rights at the
hands of the nation."
On the subject of Negro voting, The
Daily Oklahoman wanted to know
whether or not he favored a revival of
the attempt to pass the Lodge Force
Bill of 1890 authorizing "the use
of federal force if necessary to supervise
elections in southern states, thereby
guaranteeing the full vote of the great
negro population of the south,"
Harding's answer was a ringing, No! "Let me
tell you," he declared, "the
Force Bill has been dead for a quarter of a
century. I'm only a normal American
citizen, and a normal man couldn't
resurrect the dead if he wanted
to."
Such talk pleased southerners, but not
the militant Negroes of the North.
The latter made known their displeasure.
On October 20, Trotter telegraphed
from Westfield, Indiana that the Equal
Rights League was disturbed. He
requested to know whether Harding's
Oklahoma speech "alters your state-
ments to the League at Marion or
interprets their meaning." H. M. Harris of
Washington, D. C., telegraphed in behalf
of thirteen Negro-rights advocates
that Negro "disappointment is
general." Harris demanded to know "if you
are president whether you will stand on
your pronouncement in Marion or
96 OHIO HISTORY
in Oklahoma." To Trotter and
Harris, Christian answered blandly that there
was no conflict in Harding's various
speeches and no change in his position.20
Evidently there was widespread knowledge
among Negroes of Harding's
segregationist stand in Oklahoma. At
least the Republican organization said
there was, and they took steps to stop
its spread. The candidate was asked
to say nothing more about it. On October
11 Senator New, head of the
Chicago Republican publicity bureau,
telegraphed Christian, "Please say to
chief much excitement today among
colored element over Oklahoma City
answer. Avoid any further reference of
any kind if possible."21
Seemingly, there was little or no
knowledge of Harding's Oklahoma race
remarks among northern whites. The press
had much talk about Harding's
desire to carry Democratic Oklahoma for
the Republicans, but that was as
far as it went. For example, the October
9 speech was represented in the
New York Times of the next day as
having dealt with oil and the League
of Nations. No reference was made to the
Negro aspect of his speech.
Not all Negro opinion was offended by
the Oklahoma address. One Negro
publisher was actually exhilarated by
it. This was R. B. Montgomery of
Minneapolis, editor and publisher of the
National Advocate, "the leading
Negro journal of the North West."
"We have never heard such language,"
wrote Montgomery, "from a Christian
gentleman like yourself since the days
of Abraham Lincoln, who was a friend to
all the people. Thousands of
Negro papers throughout the United
States are supporting you and your
colleague for the next President of the
United States."22
Actually, there were many Negroes who
could not see any difference
between Harding and Trotter on the race
question. This came from that
ancient tradition that the Republican
party was the Negroes' saviour. It
did not occur to many Negroes to analyze
men's speeches. Even if the time
came, as it always did, when the Negroes
could not get all they expected,
they would tend to reason quite
naturally that all race progress came from
the Republicans and that there was no
hope from the Democrats because of
their southern background. Typical of
this kind of thinking was that of
W. P. Dabney, editor of the Cincinnati
Negro weekly, The Union. Dabney
at all times boomed and boosted equality
for Harding and Trotter. Dabney's
headlines for Harding were expansive. "Harding's
Creed for Humanity!"
"HARDING, DAVIS, WILLIS and the
Entire Republican Ticket Must be
Elected, then there will be an end of
the segregation policies that have so
disgraced a land consecrated to
LIBERTY." For Trotter the Negro editor
was similarly expansive: "GAME AS A
LION. LITTERED AND REARED
IN THE JUNGLES OF DARKEST AFRICA."
After Trotter had visited
Cincinnati, Dabney recorded, "He is
anti-segregationist, anti-jim crowist,
and the volleys fired by him against
racial discrimination and its condonation
by some of our servile people will bear
good results."23
Strange to relate, the NAACP did not
give the cause of Negro rights the
vigorous support in 1920 which it has
become famous for in recent years.
Perhaps what caused this organization to
focus on the lynching problem and
the situation in Haiti was the atmosphere of white
resentment resulting from
NEGRO RIGHTS AND WHITE BACKLASH 97
the race riots of 1919. In 1920 its most
active leader, so far as the national
political campaign was concerned, was
field secretary James Weldon Johnson,
whose chief concerns were with lynching
and Haiti. On August 9, at the
request of the NAACP board of directors,
he and a few of his colleagues had
visited Harding in Marion and presented
him some questions involving
lynching, federal aid to education, the United
States occupation of Haiti,
the right to vote, and certain aspects
of segregation. According to Johnson,
Harding told his callers that he agreed
with them in principle about these
things, but that "from the point of
view of practical politics, he could not
make them the subject of specific and
detailed statements in a public
address." Subsequent nudging from
Johnson did not budge the Senator.24
Developments in the Caribbean soon
brought a meeting of minds between
Johnson and Harding on Haiti. It
happened that Haiti was one of the subjects
discussed at the August 9 conference,
and it was also true that Johnson was
an expert on the matter. Indeed, on
August 28, there appeared in The Nation
the first of his exposure articles
condemning the United States occupation
of that island and the alleged
mistreatment of its Negro inhabitants. Johnson
sent Harding a copy of the August 28
article and promised "to show up
exactly what the Washington Administration
had done in Haiti." Three more
articles followed weekly in The
Nation and Harding was supplied with
copies.25
Whether by design or by accident,
Harding soon injected himself into the
Haiti problem in such a way as to be
highly pleasing to Johnson and his
NAACP colleagues. The Senator did this
on September 17 in a speech
blaming the "rape of Haiti" on
Vice-Presidential candidate and Assistant
Secretary of the Navy Franklin D.
Roosevelt, who had publicly boasted that
he had written the constitution of
Haiti. Harding did not quote Johnson,
but the spirit of his criticism was as
sharp as Johnson's, and his few facts
cited were among the many cited by
Johnson. Harding's phrase was "thou-
sands of native Haitians have been
killed by American Marines and . . .
many of our own gallant men have been
sacrificed." Johnson's phrase was
"the slaughter of three thousand
and practically unarmed Haitians, with the
incidentally needless death of a score
of American boys."26
Whatever the connection was between
Harding and Johnson on the Haiti
question, the two of them certainly
started some fire-works. Secretary of
the Navy Daniels denied the charges,
Roosevelt called them the "merest
dribble," and Harding apologized in
regard to personal charges, but added,
"This does not in any way abate my
opinion as to the policy of your
Administration in dealing with Haiti and
Santo Domingo." Then came the
allegations by Navy and Army officers
concerning the specifics of alleged
American atrocities in Haiti. These were
from Rear Admiral Harry S. Knapp,
Marine commandant in Haiti, General John
A. Lejeune, and former Marine
commandant in Haiti, Brigadier General
George Barnett. Civilian commen-
tators also added their gory
contributions. The result was that on October 15
Secretary Daniels ordered an official
inquiry, and by October 19 a full board
of inquiry was holding sessions.27
98 OHIO HISTORY
Consequently, there was instant
rejoicing of the NAACP and congratula-
tions were sent to Harding. When Daniels
and Roosevelt started to squirm,
Johnson wrote on September 21, "I
see that you have finally gotten under
the skin of the Wilson administration.
You have smoked them out and got
them on the run and I hope that you will
keep them running." He added,
"You may depend upon the
reliability of the facts given in the information
which I sent you." Then, on October
14, when Daniels ordered his investiga-
tion, Mary White Ovington, chairman of
the board of the NAACP, exultingly
wired Harding, "The NAACP
congratulates you upon the result of inquiry
into the unconstitutional and brutal
invasion of Haiti." A few days later,
Negro attorney Samuel B. Hill of
Washington, D. C., recorded his feeling
of gratitude as he wrote Christian,
"May the God of our fathers preserve
and keep the Senator for the benefit of
America and her people without
harm."28
The Harding-Republican moderation on the
Negro rights issue was well
advised; it kept the lily-white backlash
down to size. If Harding had yielded
to the integrationists, he would have
damaged his appeal to race-minded
whites. The fact is that south of the
Mason-Dixon line, where the backlash
was greatest, there was a gain in the
Republican vote percentage in 1920
over the 1916 vote percentage from 41.5%
to 46.5%.29
Harding's moderation consisted of three
main factors: (1) concentrating
his courting of Negro voters on those in
the North; (2) favoring Negro
political and civil equality on a
segregated basis; (3) confining specifics to
such matters as opposition to lynching
and the alleged Democratic fiasco in
Haiti.
But there was a backlash movement
against Harding, nevertheless. As the
campaign waned and Democratic prospects
for success seemed to fade also,
some Democrats challenged their
opponents with two accusations. One was
to allege that Republicans were
endangering white supremacy, another was
to try to smear Harding with allegations
that he had Negro forebears.
Ohio became a minor storm center on the
integration issue. The Democrats
could not raise the question of Negro
equality in the nation at large because
Harding had repudiated such designs in
his Oklahoma address. But Buckeye
Democrats were thinking about their
opposition to possible Negro equality
in Ohio. In a circular letter sent out
on September 16 from Columbus,
Governor Charles H. Brough of Arkansas
told of his conference with W. W.
Durbin, chairman of the Ohio Democratic
State Executive Committee, in
which the latter had told him the Toledo
Pioneer was "urging race equality
and urging the Negroes to unite at the
polls." This led Brough to include
Harding in his animadversions. "It
is current knowledge here in the Middle
West," wrote the Arkansas governor,
"if Senator Harding and the Repub-
licans triumph, an effort will be made
to pass a Force Bill, which will mean
Federal bayonets to supervise Southern
elections." The governor also said
that Harding's Colored Voters Day speech
of September 10 led Trotter to
speak to the Columbus Negro Baptist
convention in favor of equal rights in
hotels, restaurants and elevators and to
assert "the oneness of the white
and black races."30
NEGRO RIGHTS AND WHITE BACKLASH 99
In mid-October Durbin and the Ohio
Democrats came out boldly with the
release by the State Executive Committee
of a circular entitled, "A Timely
Warning to the White Men and Women of
Ohio." The circular claimed that
the recent great influx into Ohio of
southern Negroes, plus the enfranchise-
ment of women, threatened to give
Negroes the balance of power in Ohio
politics. Central to their concern was
their fear of the Republican candidate
for governor, Harry L. Davis. As mayor
of Cleveland, Davis had appointed
twenty-seven Negroes to the city police
force and had placed other Negroes
in lucrative positions, the aggregate
annual salaries of which exceeded
$350,000. It was claimed that in some
cities the crowding of Negroes had
brought about serious consequences by
their moving into residential districts
and depressing the value of the
properties therein. Referring to certain Negro
newspapers, the circular declared,
"We find them openly predicting that full
social equality will be ensured them by
the election of Republican candidates."
One of these, the Toledo Pioneer of
September 11, had editorially urged its
readers to vote for Davis and other
Republican candidates for the legislature
so that a law would be passed
"making it a felony to discriminate against a
negro on account of his race."31
The Durbin circular gave Harding his
share of the blame for this increase
in integrationist agitation. Citing his
Acceptance speech and his Oklahoma
address, it claimed that the Toledo Pioneer
and the Cleveland Advocate
informed their readers "the
Republican nominee for President, if elected would
make himself a champion of that
cause." Further details emphasized that
these illiterate and ill-paid newcomers
were "haunted by aspirations for social
equality." The encouragement given
by the Republicans "of such ambitions
can only result in greatly magnifying
the evils we are facing."32
Reference to the pages of the Cleveland Advocate
for 1920 does not confirm
the Democratic allegations of specifics
by Harding on Negro integration. The
talk was in that direction, but it was
toned down in the face of overwhelming
opposition. It did so in respect to
Harding's segregation speech in Oklahoma.
In April, the Advocate, in
supporting Wood against Harding in the primaries,
editorially had condemned Harding,
saying that his association with lily-
white Republicans in the South
"stamps him as a man opposed to EQUAL
JUSTICE for the race." Yet when
Harding, as nominee, made his segregation
remarks at Oklahoma City in October, the
Advocate ardently supported
Harding, and was willing to let people
make their own interpretations. "There
are many," said the editor,
"who feel that the statement is upstanding while
there seems to be equally as many who
regard it as unfortunate. Some are
saying that the remarks inject a
quasi-social issue, which has nothing to do
with political matters, while others
declare that it means the Senator favors
'jim-crow' cars. Sober thinkers seem to
be willing to give it the benefit of
the doubt, and accept the many other
upstanding utterances as demonstrat-
ing the attitude of the candidate if he
is elected President." Advocate writer
Tyler expressed this feeling of
resignation in another issue of the paper.
"It is quite likely," he
wrote, September 25, "that Senator Harding's advocacy
of patience, and desistence from forcing
what the race conceives its just due,
will meet the approbation of those who are always
optimistic even in the face
100 OHIO HISTORY
of the most disheartening
discrimination, preaching patience rather than
radicalism, at all times."33
A most interesting phase of the white
supremacy backlash against Harding
developed when certain lily whites
discovered a leaflet originally published in
Cleveland in support of Harding. This
leaflet contained a montage of nine
pictures -- three were of Harding, Frank
R. Willis (candidate for Ohio
United States senator), and Harry L.
Davis (candidate for Ohio governor).
These were flanked by photos of six
Republican Negro candidates for the
Ohio legislature. The leaflet was
entitled, "EQUALITY FOR ALL," and
contained at the bottom a quotation from
Harding's Oklahoma City speech
stating, "I want you to know that I
believe in equality before the law.
That is one of the guarantees of the
American Constitution. You can not
give one right to a white man and deny
the same right to a black man."
The sentences stating that these
rights should be enjoyed in a segregated
manner were omitted. The leaflet was issued by Walter L. Brown of Cleve-
land, and contained the union label.34
Democratic segregationists north and
south seized upon this leaflet, re-
published it, and gave it wide
circulation to prove that Harding was an
integrationist. It was referred to
critically in a Cincinnati Times-Star editorial
on October 29. The writer said,
"For a week or more local Democrats have
been circulating a card on which are
portraits of the Republican candidates
for President, Governor and Senator. Grouped around
them are pictures of
the Negro Republican candidates for the
Legislature." One horrified lady,
Mrs. E. Taylor, of Mt. Victory, Ohio,
wrote Harding imploring him to say
that it was not true. She enclosed a
copy of the leaflet on which she wrote,
"is it true Mr. Harding is it oh i
can not believe it." On October 26 another
much disturbed gentleman, Frank E. Linny
of Greensboro, North Carolina,
chairman of the state Republican
committee, telegraphed in consternation
that the Democrats were about to
circulate that leaflet. Linny's letter con-
cluded, "Answer giving facts."
Two Oklahoma Republicans sent copies of
the leaflet to Harding, one commenting that
it was an example of "the dirty
gutter politics" of Democrats. But
there seem to be no replies to these letters
in the Harding Papers.35
Charges of the Harding family's alleged
Negro ancestry had been circulat-
ing for almost one hundred years. On
October 22, 1920, George Christian,
writing to Samuel C. McClure, publisher
of the Youngstown Telegram in
reply to inquiries, said that the Negro
ancestry charge was an "ancient lie
which has been revived by the
opposition." Christian said that it went
back to a chance and malicious remark
during an abolition-slavery campaign
nearly a hundred years ago. He added, of
course, that it had no basis in fact
and that Harding had "always
refused to dignify it by denial and attention."36
It is apparent that Harding was the
object of such allegations, made with
slanderous intent, throughout his life.
The first reference to the Negro
ancestry charges that has been uncovered
is found in the Marion Independent
of May 20, 1887. The Independent was
Marion's first Republican newspaper.
NEGRO RIGHTS AND WHITE BACKLASH 101 |
The development of the rival Republican Marion Star under Warren Hard- ing's editorship produced a wordy war between the two papers. The Inde- pendent's editor, George Crawford, was jealous of Harding and feared the Star's rivalry in the contest for official spokesmanship for the Republican party. As was the custom in those days, Crawford and Harding engaged in the exchange of mud-slinging epithets. On May 20 the Independent called the Star a "smut machine" and its editor a "kink-haired youth." The next day the enraged Harding fired back and notified the "retailer of Harding's genealogy" that he was a "lying dog" and "a miserable coward." On May 24th the Independent brought the exchange to an end by making a half- hearted apology. In the process, the Democratic Mirror of May 23 printed all the charges and counter charges and mocked the Independent's apology as a "beautiful . . . specimen of crawfishing." In none of his political campaigns was Harding exempt from these mixed- blood attacks. At least that is what the editor of the Philadelphia Public Ledger said in the midst of the October, 1920 campaign muckfest. "Such an effort to slay Senator Harding," said the editor, "has been in progress ever since his nomination. In fact, it has been tried repeatedly in his previous campaigns in Ohio. We have long known of the facts in this office, but have felt that there was no public good to be accomplished by open comment."37 The Republican National Committee became officially aware of the situa- tion in August and was ready with authentic genealogical data if and when needed. On August 20 West Virginia Senator Howard Sutherland wrote Chairman Hays that Democratic candidate Cox had told the game warden of that state, "either the grandmother or great grandmother of Senator Harding was a Negress." After some exchange of correspondence Hays promised Sutherland that he would follow the matter up and "take the vigorous steps you mentioned if necessary."38 What these steps were was |
102
OHIO HISTORY
not
mentioned in the Hays Papers, but it is evident from the Harding Papers
that one
step was to get the facts on Harding's ancestry from the accepted
family
genealogist. This authority on Harding ancestry was John C. Harding
of Chicago
who wrote to his Senatorial relative on October 16 that he was
loaning
"a book containing the Harding genealogy" to the Republican Na-
tional
Committee "who were seeking authentic information to overcome
certain
propaganda ... used to some extent by your opponent." In his reply
Harding made
one of the few references to the Negro slander so far dis-
covered.
"It was fortunate," the Senator said, "that you were able to
furnish
the data
requested, although I do not as yet know what use will be made
of it. I
have always been averse to dignifying this talk with attention or
denial, but
if finally deemed necessary, we will stamp it as the unmitigated
lie it
is."39
For a while,
the anti-Harding mixed-blood gossip circulated via under-
ground
methods. For example there was a one-page mimeographed sheet
entitled
"Genealogy of Warren G. Harding of Marion Ohio" and authorized
by
"Prof. William E. Chancellor of Wooster University, Wooster, Ohio."
This came to
be called the "Harding Family Tree" and read as follows:
Geo. Tryon
Harding Ann Roberts
Great
Grandfather Great
Grandmother
(BLACK) (BLACK)
Charles A.
Harding Mary Ann Crawford
Grandfather Grandmother
(BLACK) (WHITE)
George Tryon
Harding, 2nd Phoebe
Dickerson
Father Mother
(MULATTO) (WHITE)
Warren G.
Harding
Son
No children
have been born to Harding.
One of the
senders of this sheet, A. A. Graham of Kansas, said it had appeared
"on the
lines of the Rock Island railroad in southwestern Kansas."40
There were
others. Mrs. S. B. Williams of Columbus wrote with indignation
telling of
having attended a political meeting at Memorial Hall. "I saw a
man,"
she said, "with a copy of something reading it to a younger man. So
womanlike I
listened, and here he was reading what he said was a copy of
the Court
Records of Marion, trying to prove to the younger man that you
had negro
blood."41 George Clark of the Ohio Republican Advisory Com-
mittee
called this "moonlighting." He told of "paid emissaries . . .
going
from house
to house spreading vile slanders. . . . From vest pockets are
drawn
statements which dare not be printed in the open."42 The
Youngstown
Telegram of November 1 carried a story telling how, for weeks, a
whispering
campaign had
been going on in the border states supported by handbills
and
anonymous circulars that "appeared mysteriously between night and
morning....
Women who answered rings of the doorbell late at night were
told hastily
and emphatically by persons who seemed respectable enough
NEGRO RIGHTS AND WHITE BACKLASH 103
that Senator Harding's blood was not
pure white." Particularly vicious was
a paper strip attached to a picture of
Harding's father, seemingly of dark com-
plexion; the strip reading, "KEEP
WHITE [picture of a house] WHITE
VOTE FOR [picture of a rooster]."43
Many showed deep concern about the
effect of the mixed-blood taunts.
Traveling man Don Cox of Coshocton wrote
with much agitation that people
were telling him "no matter how
anxious they might be to vote for you they
positively would not do so
BECAUSE YOU HAVE NIGGER
BLOOD IN YOU"
"For God's Sake," he implored,
"get busy stamping it out." H. H. Abee of
Hickory, North Carolina told of people
circulating these stories and wanted
to know if such persons should be
arrested. "Rush answers," wrote Abee.
Franklin Williams of Cambridge, Ohio
reported that there were many voters
who say that they "will not vote
for a nigger President." S. A. Ringer of
Ada, Ohio, said that the Pathfinder magazine
printed that "you are one-
fourth negro.... As a result [added
Ringer] thousands of voters, especially,
the women voters, may be caused to vote
against you." W. W. Cowen, of
St. Clairsville, Ohio, reported a story
that "Harding was stopped in Masonry
because he had negro blood."
"If this charge is not true," wrote James Curren
of Cincinnati, "why don't you
protest. If not you will lose quite a lot of
votes." These are only a few of the
many references in the Harding Papers to
the Negro reports. To most of them
Harding's office replied that they were
not true, "baseless lies,"
"mendacious slanders," and so forth.44
Chief villain in the backlash campaign
of anti-Harding genealogical slander
was William Estabrook Chancellor, author
of the previously cited "Harding
Family Tree." This fantastic person
claimed to have the highest credentials
for his "facts" about Harding.
He was Professor of Economics, Politics and
Social Science at Wooster College,
author of several books including Our
Presidents and Their Office, and, apparently, one-time superintendent of
schools in Washington, D. C. Above all
he was an ardent Democrat. Earlier
in the campaign, in a letter to the Plain
Dealer, he had praised Wilson and
the league of Nations and criticized
Harding for his anti-internationality. He
had incidentally shown his anti-Semitic
feelings by claiming that the high
commisars of the Soviet Union were all
Jews seeking revenge for the pogroms
and other discriminations of the past.
Now, as the campaign closed, he
applied his alleged high scientific
qualifications to the production of "proof"
of Harding's Negro ancestry. Chancellor
later denied his authorship, claiming
that a Republican of the same name was
responsible.45
Among the products of Chancellor's
"researches" were posters that certain
Democrats were willing to finance and
release for circulation to help save
the country, as they said, from a Negro
president and his radical pro-Negro
ideas. One of these, dated October 18,
1920, was addressed "To the Men and
Women of America, AN OPEN
LETTER."46 It was said to be the result of
several weeks of touring the country
area of Harding's youth and of Chan-
cellor's interviews with hundreds of
people. The poster stated that the Hard-
104 OHIO HISTORY
ings had never been accepted as white
people. Warren Harding himself
"was not a white man." He was
said to represent "the results of social
equality through free race
relations." Referring to Harding's Central College
days at Iberia, Chancellor wrote,
"Everyone without exception says that
Warren Gamaliel Harding was always
considered a colored boy and nick-
named accordingly."
Chancellor offered in support of these
allegations four notarized affidavits
which he said he collected from former
residents of the Blooming Grove area,
Harding's former home, whom he had
interviewed in Marion and Akron.
These affidavits were printed in full.
From these people he obtained "the
common report" of "lifelong
residents" of the vicinity of Blooming Grove.
He claimed that he, himself, was an
ethnologist trained in scientific methods.
The statements in these affidavits were
amazingly specific. Harding's
father-in-law, Amos H. Kling, was
represented as having stumped the thir-
teenth state senatorial district in
1899, opposing his son-in-law's candidacy
for the senate on the grounds that
Harding was a colored man. Kling was
quoted as having declared on the streets
of Marion, at the time of his
daughter's marriage, that she was
marrying a Negro. Another affidavit raked
up the story of the murder, in 1849, of
Amos D. Smith by David Butler
because Smith called Mrs. Butler a
Negress. Mrs. Butler was a granddaughter
of Amos Harding, and a cousin of Warren
Harding's grandfather.
Suddenly in the last few days of the
campaign the slander stories burst
out on the front pages of some of the
nation's leading Republican newspapers.
The party strategy was to show that the
scurrilous Chancellor and his
Democratic backers had gone too far in
their dirty work.
Leading off was the Republican Dayton Journal.
On October 29, the
Journal in a
frenzy of outrage, blasted forth with full-spread, front-page
headlines five rows deep.
THE VILE SLANDERERS OF SENATOR HARDING
AND HIS FAMILY WILL SEEK THEIR SKUNK
HOLES 'ERE TODAY'S SUN SHALL HAVE SET
THE MOST DAMNABLE CONSPIRACY IN HISTORY
OF AMERICAN POLITICS
Over half of the front page was given to
an open letter "To the Men and
Women of Dayton" by editor E. G.
Burkam. It told of the circulation "in
cowardly secrecy" of "thousands upon
thousands of typewritten mimeo-
graphed and even printed statements
usually under the heading of 'Harding's
Family Tree' . . . These vile circulars
declare that Warren G. Harding has
Negro blood in his veins." These
allegations "ARE A LIE. Warren G. Harding
has the blood of but one race in his veins -- that of
the white race -- the
pure inheritance of a fine line of
ancestors, of good men and women." The
next day the entire front page of the Journal
was again given to statements
of rebuttal under the headlines:
The Whole Vile Structure of the
Slanderers Crumbles
Under the Avalanche of Evidence
NEGRO RIGHTS AND WHITE BACKLASH 105
The Democrats then countered with their
own charges of falsehood saying
that the racial attack on Harding had
originated with the Republicans of
Ohio in their own primary campaign.47
The fat was in the fire. Across the
nation swept the news of the attacks
on Harding's ancestry. Even the stately
New York Times gave the slanders
front-page headlines. It was there
reported that Professor Chancellor had
been dismissed from the Wooster College
faculty for his alleged authorship
of the circulars. Republican press
agents rushed to the defense of their
candidate with reams of genealogical
copy about the Harding family. The
Times called upon genealogist Charles A. Hanna to enter the
lists. Others
traced the name of Harding back to the
Domesday Book of 1086.48 Genea-
logical antiquity momentarily had
front-page billing.
More posters were in the offing. When
Republican reporters besieged
the ousted Professor Chancellor, they
got him so confused that he was
quoted in the Dayton Journal as
having denied that he was the author of
the anti-Harding posters. Thereupon
another set of posters came out, spon-
sored by the Democrats. One of them,
"The Truth Will Out!", was issued
from Columbus "By Order of
Democratic Ex. Com.", and signed by chairman
Ira Andrews and secretary Frank
Lowther.49 In this the professor was quoted
as saying that he had not denied his
authorship of the Negro stories and
that he was suing the Dayton Journal for
saying that he had. Even Repub-
lican national chairman Will Hays was
threatened with a lawsuit if he did
not withdraw his attacks on Chancellor's
genealogical reputability.
Republican posters to counteract
Democratic posters appeared. One of
them, entitled "The Harding
Stock," was issued by the Ohio Republican
State Executive Committee. It contained
a chart of the Harding descent
from the time of Stephen Harding, the
"blacksmith of Providence."50 This
Republican production reeked with
blondness and bravado. Long residence
in America, it said, has not robbed the
Hardings of "the characteristics so
pronounced in the Celt and the German .
. . The blue and gray eyes of the
Hardings of today are a legacy from the
Scotch-Irish blood that entered
the family through the Crawfords."
In Hardings' veins "flow the blood of
English, German, Welsh, Irish, and
Dutch." And this blood "has been spent
on battlefields where the stake was
justice and independence." The Hardings
were represented as the chief victims of
the Wyoming Indian Massacre of
July 3, 1778. "'Remember the Fate
of the Hardings' was the cry which rang
through the Wyoming valley as a party of
settlers sallied forth to wreak
vengeance on the blood thirsty savages."
Lord Hardinge, British Viceroy of
India from 1910-1916, was said to be
"undoubtedly a relative of the Ohio
Senator."
On Marion street corners things got
pretty hot. On November 1, in front
of a cigar store, Harding's father, Dr.
George, approached Democratic Judge
W. S. Spencer and loudly accused him of
responsibility for circulating the
Negro-blood stories. A friend of Dr.
Harding repeated the charges. "You're a
liar," shouted the Judge. The
doctor's friend thereupon punched the Judge
106 OHIO HISTORY
in the face. "Hit him again,"
shouted the crowd, and the Judge was knocked
to the sidewalk. The affair ended with
Dr. Harding assisting the Judge into
the near-by Court House.51
Obviously in the hysteria of the closing
days of the campaign, the discus-
sion of Negro rights had gotten far away
from the merits of the issue.
Whether Harding gained or lost in the
blood melee cannot be decided. It
was said that the mixed-blood charges hurt
him most in the border states,
costing him votes that might have gone
into the Republican column. Possibly
so. His segregation comments at Oklahoma
City, however, probably helped
counteract this loss. It is impossible
statistically to measure the effect of the
many factors influencing the voters'
choices.
As has been stated, the 1920
presidential election statistics show a definite
gain in the border states for the
Republican party over the returns for 1916.
Assuming the border states to be Arkansas,
Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri,
North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland,
Virginia, and West Virginia, five of
them went Republican in 1920 (Delaware,
Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee,
and West Virginia); whereas only two of
them went Republican in 1916
(Delaware and West Virginia). Of the
total votes cast by the border states
awarded to the Republican and Democratic
candidates, 51% went for the
Republicans in 1920 as against 45% in
1916. In southern states the same
trend in favor of the Republicans is to
be observed. For one thing, Oklahoma
voted for Harding 243,415 to 215,521 as
against 148,113 to 97,233 for Wilson
in 1916. Taking the South as a whole
(including the border states) the figures
are: 46.5% Republican in 1920 as against
41.5% in 1916.52
It is to be pointed out that we have not
analyzed all the reasons for
Republican gains in the South in 1920,
since a general analysis of the election
is omitted in this paper. We have merely
pointed out that the Harding-
Republican Negro policy did not offset
other factors that may have caused
an increase in the number of Republican
votes in the South.
Moreover, it is evident that to some
degree the injection of the mixed-
blood issue softened the backlash
against Harding. An example of this is
shown by his ever-loyal brother in
Moosedom, James J. Davis. "It's very
seldom," wrote the enraged director
general of the Loyal Order of the Moose,
"I go off on a tangent, but if I
could have gotten a hold of that professor
that's circulating that stuff on you,
I'm sure I'd have punched his snout and
punched it hard, but I guess it's best
that we never met."53 Equally indignant,
but more restrained were the dignified
publishers of the Cincinnati Times-
Star, Charles P. Taft and Hulbert Taft. These gentlemen made
a front-page
news item out of "The Truth About
Harding's Ancestry." The Democratic
charges were headlined as falsehoods and
"Sneaking Propaganda." In a
signed editorial, they declared that the
Democratic tactics had "turned the
clock back fifty years."54 In
Tennessee, the Democratic Chattanooga Times
not only refused to print the Chancellor
material but gave strong support to
the Taft handling of the charges against
Harding.55 And there was the ever-
critical journalist, Robert Scripps,
who, according to Samuel Hopkins Adams,
wrote, "Tell him we don't care
whether it is true or not. We won't touch it."56
NEGRO RIGHTS AND WHITE BACKLASH 107 |
In conclusion, in terms of the Negro civil rights problems, Harding made little progress during the campaign of 1920. As with so many other problems, he was able to do more for the party -- there was a Republican victory in 1920 -- than for the people. In the North, as we have seen, he talked Negro rights but avoided specifics, taking advantage of the non-militancy of the Negro religious leaders, the anti-race riot feeling and the Red-scare mood of the general public, and the willingness of the NAACP to be satisfied with proposed reforms on the lynching question and on United States-Haitian policy. In the South, he soft-pedalled the race question and gave specific assurances of continued segregation. Nevertheless, he did prepare the way for two specific reforms, minimal though they were: anti-lynching legislation and withdrawal of the Marines from Haiti. In return for his efforts he received praise from some Negro leaders but was severely attacked by whites of the backlash persuasion.
THE AUTHOR: Randolph C. Downes is Professor of History at the University of Toledo. |
|
NEGRO RIGHTS AND WHITE BACKLASH IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1920
by RANDOLPH C. DOWNES
I believe in equality before the law. You can't give rights to the white man and deny them to the black man. But while I stand for that great, great principle, I do not mean that the white man and the black man must be forced to associate together in the acceptance of their rights. Harding address in Oklahoma City, October 9, 1920, as reported in The Daily Oklahoma, October 10, 1920. The greatest indignity suffered by Harding in his career was the allegation made during the campaign of 1920 that he had Negro forebears. This was
NOTES ARE ON PAGES 184-185 |