On Race Relations and Presidential Power, Part 2

January 30, 2014February 10, 2014 / gouverneurmorris / 3 Comments

James Weldon Johnson, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Photo taken around 1920.

When it was arranged for James Weldon Johnson, the first black leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, to visit the White House in the early months of the Coolidge Administration, Mr. Johnson was not only glad to leave but, unfortunately, left with a completely mistaken perception of the President. Even more unfortunate, Johnson let that first impression influence future interaction with the Vermonter. Johnson wrote years later of this meeting,

“He, it appeared, did not want to say anything or did not know just what to say, I was expecting that he would make, at least, any inquiry or two about the state of mind and condition of the twelve million Negro citizens of the United States. I judged that curiosity, if not interest, would make for that much conversation. The pause was painful (for me at least) and I led off with some informational remarks; but it was clear that Mr. Coolidge knew absolutely nothing about colored people. I gathered that the only living Negro he had heard anything about was Major Moton (Booker T. Washington’s successor at Tuskegee). I was relieved when the brief audience was over, and I suppose Mr. Coolidge was, too.”

William Monroe Trotter, editor of the Boston Guardian. Coolidge had come across Mr. Trotter back in the Massachusetts Senate days back in 1915.

William Monroe Trotter, the fiery editor of the Boston Guardian. Coolidge had come across Mr. Trotter back in the Massachusetts Senate days in 1915.

Asa Philip Randolph of the preeminent news source, The Messenger, would go on to lead the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925. He would become an elder statesman during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

Asa Philip Randolph of the preeminent news source, The Messenger, would go on to lead the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925. Randolph had accompanied James W. Johnson on his visit to the White House in February 1924. He would become an elder statesman during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

William H. Lewis, standing, argues a case before a Massachusetts court, 1910s. He had graduated Amherst three years before Coolidge, who wrote his father at the time about Lewis’ skill as a football player, saving the college team on more than one occasion. Lewis, a Republican, failed to see why Coolidge would not verbally condemn the Klan in 1924. Coolidge’s subtle yet more effective approach to the problem prevailed.

Born a slave, Giles Beecher Jackson worked his way to freedom, becoming a Richmond attorney and relentless advocate for a Negro Industrial Commission, which (thanks to his efforts) found its way into the Republican platform of 1924. Coolidge endorsed his idea and urged Congress to create it in 1923. Regrettably, Mr. Jackson died without seeing it come to fruition. Coolidge, however, continued to remind Congress (and anyone who asked about it) of the importance of this joint effort started by Mr. Jackson.

While this short meeting illustrates the importance of an accurate understanding it also demonstrates the need for a healthy measure of forbearance. It underscores that even someone as eager for a good relationship between blacks and whites was still vulnerable to prejudice sometimes. As Alvin Felzenberg points out, Mr. Johnson was completely unaware of the broad network of associations already forged between Coolidge and quite a few black leaders in education, business and media, including such notables as William M. Trotter, editor of the Boston Guardian, Nahum B. Brascher, Editor-in-Chief of the Associated Negro Press, A. Philip Randolph of The Messenger, William H. Lewis (who had been an upperclassman at Amherst with Coolidge), Giles B. Jackson, who introduced the idea of a Negro Industrial Commission, and numerous other educators and public servants. Felzenberg reminds us that this was simply the Coolidge temperament, making no distinction between what color the visitor was. We recall that Frank Strearns’ initial impression of “Silent Cal” was not favorable either. One could say that Mr. Stearns was still trying to acclimate to Coolidge’s reticent habits years after becoming good friends with him. Coolidge learned not merely by engaging in conversation, but by observation. His keen judgment of people’s character worked through it all, the quiet and the loquacious times. A person’s presence could tell him volumes about the individual. He explains what he was doing in his Autobiography,

“I called in a great many people from all the different walks of life over the country…It has been my policy to seek information and advice wherever I could find it. I have never relied on any particular person to be my unofficial adviser. I have let the merits of each case and the soundness of all advice speak for themselves” (p.188).

From the very earliest days in state government through his years in the White House, it became apparent to those who followed his career that Coolidge simply did not “slop over” with enthusiastic guarantees for anyone, regardless of who they were. A master of time management, he listened carefully, remained polite but curt and then followed up quietly without any of the standard operating procedures expected of politicians. This was what unsettled Mr. Johnson most and he never quite understood it. Consequently, we of today should not be so quick to condemn circumstances or people when, at the time, even the most dedicated leaders were struggling to understand each other accurately, addressing how to solve problems and determining what were the best means for everyone to move forward. The twelve million “colored” people in America no more agreed on one, solitary solution than did the rest of the country. It is a mistake to assume one-size-fits-all fixes from Coolidge or anyone else in Washington were capable of resolving each issue…especially when it involves people.

William Edward Burghardt DuBois (pronounced Doo-boyz) helped found the NAACP in 1909 and was a seminal influence on what was to be done about race relations in the twentieth century. Coolidge sought to include him in diplomatic work but Dr. DuBois declined to be part of what he considered a rigged political system. By refusing to participate, he unwittingly helped thwart the mechanism for an expression of popular government through party principles. He too, underestimated Coolidge’s courage and willingness to tackle the tough political questions between blacks and whites.

The “black community” of the 1920s was anything but monolithic. The death of Booker T. Washington in 1915 had left a vacuum of leadership and direction. Still, many wise and able leaders had stepped forward since the formal emancipation. Veteran reformer, W. E. B. DuBois, continued to work, write and influence the movement toward more drastic changes than the political process or economic growth could accomplish, he felt. Ever the skeptic, DuBois wanted sweeping action taken to right the wrongs through social justice. It would not happen by merely helping blacks help themselves improve through vocational training, commerce, and political involvement. For DuBois, it demanded expansive changes to society. Nevertheless, despite criticism by DuBois and others, real successes in a short seventy years could be claimed. Much remained to be done but it did not negate the very significant advances experienced by blacks through education, hard work and engaged civic participation. The path to addressing the problems in race relations was by no means clearly marked. We, who look back on the past, often mistake the hindsight of the present with the clarity of what should have been known and done at the time. This is but another form of prejudicial perception: interpreting what has been through the lens what now is.

Some favored a segregated civil service, like black attorney Perry W. Howard, while others sought a broad executive order to ban all discrimination and bigotry in government. Making the despicable act of lynching a Federal crime was paramount to many, including Coolidge himself, who considered the constitutional question of declaring martial law to confront areas especially rampant with lynching. Still others, distrustful of either political party, sought the development of literature and the arts as the means to racial equality, like James W. Johnson and the NAACP. Some believed that economic development should remain secondary to social and political changes, emphasizing the reform of voting rights and “Jim Crow” laws ahead of the self-help made possible by a strong educational and commercial effort, as exemplified by Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute, Howard University and other “colored” organizations. Even Marcus Garvey, directing the vibrant 400,000 member Universal Negro Improvement Association, gravitated to this concept of self-sufficiency applying it to a drastic break from American laws and institutions for a solution less committed to improving conditions in this country than to establishing a nationalist identity independent of the “white man’s” America. Yet, in 1927, it was Coolidge who commuted Garvey’s sentence of imprisonment for mail fraud, a penalty meted out by Wilson’s xenophobic Justice Department.

Marcus Garvey, native-born Jamaican, established and led the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Many, including DuBois, perceived him as a dire threat to blacks everywhere. This photograph was taken in the summer of 1924. He would leave his mark on movements around the world, including the Rastafari movement, which considers him a prophet. His second wife, Amy Jacques Garvey, petitioned President Coolidge for his release, which was granted in November 1927 followed by deportation back to Jamaica.

The Veterans’ Hospital was another trouble spot early in the Coolidge Administration. Led by an overtly bigoted official, the proposal among blacks and whites to temporarily keep segregation ensured that everyone received the care they needed without partiality or discrimination. The decisive action taken by Coolidge on this, as with the other specific moves to stop discrimination on his watch, will be discussed in the next part of our series. Yet, his energy to act in concert with those who did not always agree with him like William M. Trotter and William H. Lewis, using the talents of men like Emmett Jay Scott and William Matthews on behalf of the abused and aggrieved has been largely suppressed since it fails to neatly fit with the accepted narrative of a “racist white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant” Republican Party and President. Prejudiced by ideology instead of honesty about the actual record, too many historians have mistaken, like the unfortunate James W. Johnson, a first impression of Cal’s “inactive” approach with the complete picture of Coolidge, the man and what he actually did about race relations.

In the third part of this series, we will examine in further detail how Coolidge responded to racial conflicts and helped lay a foundation for progress grounded in Christian forbearance, humility and voluntary collaboration. By emphasizing the respect we owe our neighbor, whatever race or color, and promoting constructive opportunities rather than perpetuating a victim mentality, more was done for people as the unique individuals we all are than the approach taken in subsequent decades to corral everyone into a collective existence centered around the determinations of what is “just” and “equal” from Washington.

On Race Relations and Presidential Power, Part 1

January 28, 2014February 10, 2014 / gouverneurmorris / 3 Comments

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue; and they that love it shall eat the fruit of it” — Proverbs 18:21

“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in fittings of silver” — Proverbs 25:11

Few, especially in public life, have respected the truth of these maxims than Calvin Coolidge. He understood the power of the spoken word. It carries the ability to inspire one to greater heights of goodness and nobility or to destroy with malice and hatred. It can build up the soul or crush the spirit. It carries a potency that cannot be entirely harnessed or contained once uttered and thus dare not be exercised flippantly or with casual disregard for the responsibilities which fall to the speaker, especially as the President of the United States of America.

Coolidge wielded this power effectively during his Presidency by deploying the spoken word sparingly, giving what he would say maximum effect upon the listener. Coolidge knew the speaker can control the timing of what is said while the damage done to credibility by spiteful and vindictive rhetoric cannot be undone. If the President gave legitimacy to what is petty, hateful and divisive, however culturally or politically influential those forces may be, it would be no less an abdication of duty than the Boston police abandoning their posts to the lawless and violent. It would bring impugn not only the trust placed in our leaders but upon what America is and what it has done, as Coolidge noted in his Inaugural Address in 1925. This is why he so carefully withheld his words and refrained from being the first to intervene with “comment” upon every area of life. Experience taught him that more harm came when a President indulges the desire to be “quick to speak” and “slow to hear” without a fair hearing of all the facts thereby taking sides against the fairness and decency of Americans. This is why his silence and refrained involvement, so often mistaken for insensitivity, disinterest or rudeness, were actually measured with a sincere and heartfelt regard for the situation and what was in the best interest of everyone directly concerned. His respect for people gave him pause. After all, Coolidge understood what too many current politicians find to be an inconvenient, confining truth: Freedom is a zero-sum game. Every action taken by the President removes a commensurate ability from individuals to so act for oneself.

With a word, Presidents can exacerbate strife and division or heal and comfort. To have used the Presidential platform and denounced the Klan, as the Democrat candidate Mr. Davis urged in 1924, would have validated an utterly illegitimate organization with enough importance to warrant a sitting President’s attention. The Klan, despite how politically powerful they were, simply did not merit a moment of official recognition. Instead, he went to Howard University and spoke of the genuinely phenomenal advancement of black Americans since emancipation. To a Mr. Gardner, who wrote protesting the participation of black candidates that election year, Coolidge replied,

“Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without discrimination on account of race or color. It is the source of your rights and my rights. I propose to regard it, and administer it, as the source of the rights of all the people, whatever their belief or race. A colored man is precisely as much entitled to submit his candidacy in a party primary, as is any other citizen. The decision must be made by the constituents to whom he offers himself, and by nobody else. You have suggested that in some fashion I should bring influence to bear to prevent the possibility of a colored man being nominated for Congress. In reply, I quote my great predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt: ‘I cannot consent to take the position that the door of hope–the door of opportunity–is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color.’ ”

August 16, 1924 edition of The New York Age. What Coolidge did made headlines and further strengthened the trust and credibility Coolidge possessed.

August 16, 1924 edition of The New York Age. Coolidge’s emphatic endorsement of Harlem’s candidate, Dr. Roberts, further strengthened the credibility and trust between Cal and black Americans. W. E. B. DuBois estimated that 1 million blacks voted for Coolidge that fall.

He went to the Holy Name Society and declared, “He who gives license to his tongue only discloses the contents of his own mind. By the excess of his words he proclaims his lack of discipline. By his very violence he shows his weakness.” He went to Omaha, two years after Klan-inspired riots shook the city, and Coolidge spoke before the American Legion on October 6, 1925, saying,

“If we are to have that harmony and tranquility, that union of spirit which is the foundation of real national genius and national progress, we must all realize that there are true Americans who did not happen to be born in our section of the country, who do not attend our place of religious worship, who are not of our racial stock, or who are not proficient in our language. If we are to create on this continent a free Republic and an enlightened civilization that will be capable of reflecting the true greatness and glory of mankind, it will be necessary to regard these differences as accidental and unessential. We shall have to look beyond the outward manifestations of race and creed. Divine Providence has not bestowed upon any race a monopoly of patriotism and character.”

He went to the Congress annually over the course of nearly six years to devote a portion of each Message to the circumstances of what then were 12 million “colored” Americans. Offering his set of proposals for Congress to act upon, he recognized “that these difficulties are to a large extent local problems which must be worked out by the mutual forbearance and human kindness of each community. Such a method gives much more promise of a real remedy than outside interference.” He would confront discrimination firmly and bigotry honestly but he would not strip an individual of his or her freedom in order to pursue the impossible: perfect equality through government-directed vengeance.

In what the coming years would reveal was the last desperate gasp of “respectable” Klan retrenchment, the KKK took advantage of Coolidge’s absence from Washington to follow the debacle that was the 1924 Democrat Convention to march down Pennsylvania Avenue, August 8, 1925. Coolidge would help deliver the decline and demise of the Klan’s membership and influence in the years ahead. They would never again be the nationally regarded organization it had been under President Wilson.

He could have opined the injustice of it all, decried the unfairness of “the system” and demanded sweeping legislation to “fix” it. Because he did not hardly makes him a do-nothing enabler, he was appealing to higher ideals than perpetual victimhood. Ideals that constructively edify and encourage everyone to rise above the typical to strive for the exceptional, opportunities at self-betterment and self-sufficiency only possible when individual freedom is honored. It seems that bad laws simply do not exist in the eyes of this current regime. As with any authoritarian, any action is justified to meet the situation. The President behaves as it there is no virtue in refrained action, withholding the use of power to take stock of what collateral damage is being done. In actuality, the array of unintended and intended consequences meted out to political enemies in order to settle scores and correct “inequities” in America’s traditions and institutions is the exact opposite of wisdom or justice. Coolidge reminds us that there are situations when the best use of power is not to parade it, when the wisest means of diffusing conflict is not to advertise it and the surest solutions rest not in Executive word or deed but in the renewed commitment to the ideals on which America began. These ideals find expression not merely in great parchments and speeches but in the lives of a people free to govern themselves.

In the series that will follow on race and Presidential power, we are going to examine Coolidge’s record on race, reappraising what he did do when it came to differences between Americans, how he addressed discrimination and segregation, how he fought to end lynching, how he worked to build up not tear down with the power of the spoken word and acted, usually behind the scenes, to handle requests and calm tensions all without sweeping civil rights legislation or grandiose executive might. His record on race, as with most of Coolidge’s accomplishments, is underrated not because it was uneventful or he did nothing about it but because his record under-promised but over-delivered. In a very real way, Coolidge’s approach to race relations achieved more than the boldness of TR, the retrenchment of Wilson or the flashy promises and empty results of FDR and LBJ. We will explore how in the coming days.

“The words of the President have an enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately. It would be exceedingly easy to set the country all by the ears and foment hatreds and jealousies, which, by destroying faith and confidence, would help nobody and harm everybody. The end would be the destruction of all progress” — Calvin Coolidge, The Autobiography, p.186.

On Unemployment Benefits

January 9, 2014January 9, 2014 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

Back when unemployment insurance came with built-in incentives to get off the dole, compensation not to work was something to be overcome rather than expanded and extended indefinitely. Now in its fifth year of “temporary emergency benefits,” the administration is asking us yet again to equate economic growth with more money to those who are not working. Some who know better, like Senator Durbin and President Obama, expect us to believe that job creation does not lead to growth, prosperity and plenty for ourselves, our children and even the poorest among us. Instead, they want us to accept the notion that the engine of economic recovery resides in government redistributing money to whom it wishes. Equating unemployment benefits with economic growth is not only patently absurd but willfully ignorant, understanding neither how prosperity happens nor who works to earn it. It is not government who creates wealth but industrious people who make a profit through the work they do. The more profitable the enterprise, the greater the opportunity to employ more people and improve everyone’s lot. Calvin Coolidge identified the source of real benefits to all when he said, “It is the number at work, not the number out of work, that measures our business prosperity.”

To tell America that recovery occurs by enhancing the number of those not working is dishonest. It is a failure to inform people of the fundamental truths of economics. By obfuscation and distraction the Democrat leadership continues hurting the very people it claims to advocate. The truth could be easily understood but to explain it honestly would liberate those who rely on others, especially Washington, rather than themselves for better lives. “The problem of the wage earner,” as Coolidge explained it, “would be simplified by remembering he works not for money but for goods and services. Wages come out of production. The employer cannot get them permanently out of any other source. Wages are raised or lowered with production.” President Obama hopes we fail to see why taking from the wages of those who work to provide “benefits” to those who do not is never going to create jobs or increase opportunity.

Coolidge knew that a sound system of meeting unemployment is not so easily solved by the Democrat method of throwing money at the problem. “If unemployment insurance were like life and accident insurance the problem would be simple,” he observed. “Each would take what he wanted and pay for it. But it is generally proposed that the employer and the public treasury should pay part of the cost as in workmen’s compensation. If when unemployed he is to receive something he did not pay for, no one can say how that would affect the will of the wage earner to hold his place by doing his best. Evidently, the morale would be lowered.” Coolidge identified local institutions as the ones to assist the individual return to what he, on another occasion, called “normal,” the freedom of self-support. He rejected the falsehood that without National Government “help,” no help would be given to those in true need. “The duty,” at the local level, “to relieve unemployment is plain, but not even the unemployed have a right to what they do not earn. Charity is self-existent. Employer and employee are on a business, not a charitable relationship.” Remaining such enables greater opportunity for everyone, especially in depression.

Coolidge understood that what was ultimately being considered was not actually helping those who needed, it was about “government ownership,” exercising the power to make the decisions and direct the material means of life, death, prosperity and poverty as political considerations dictated. In contrast, the free enterprise makes opportunity for everyone with the industry and perseverance to improve one’s lot, bettering the lives of those around him or her. It is the means to feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and raising life’s standards. “Healthy and normal employment consists of serving another for his personal satisfaction or profit. As the government is not personal, its proper business would be for those serving for its profit…If it is assumed that payment of wages will go on without work, that is not employment, but relief. Then no one should work. The government has never shown much aptitude for real business…The most free, progressive and satisfactory method ever devised for the equitable distribution of property is to permit the people to care for themselves by conducting their own business. They have more wisdom than any government.”

The eternal truth of that statement remains in force even now. The genuinely unprecedented success of the Coolidge Era was not something for which he ever took credit. He did not boast of contributing to the latest stellar job creation numbers because individual Americans accomplished them. Free individuals build prosperity. He simply “minded his own business,” removing the hindrances to the full and just reward for one’s labor neither resorting to the public treasury — the income of our neighbors — nor funding redistribution schemes rooted, then as now, in vague and destructive conceptions of equality.