“It is easy to understand why a people with the historic background of the Jews, should thus overwhelmingly and unhesitatingly have allied themselves with the cause of freedom. From earliest colonial times, America has been a new land of promise to this long-persecuted race…whatever their origins as a people, they have always come to us, eager to adapt themselves to our institutions, to thrive under the influence of liberty, to take their full part as citizens in building and sustaining the nation, and to bear their part in its defence, in order to make a contribution to the national life, fully worth of the traditions they had inherited…
“Our country has done much for the Jews who have come here to accept its citizenship and assume their share of its responsibilities in the world. But I think the greatest thing it has done for them has been to receive them and treat them precisely as it has received and treated all others who have come to it. If our experiment in free institutions has proved anything, it is that the greatest privilege that can be conferred upon people in the mass is to free them from the demoralizing influence of privilege enjoyed by the few. This is proved by the experience here, not alone of the Jews, but of all the other racial and national elements that have entered into the making of this nation. We have found that when men and women are left free to find the places for which they are best fitted, some few of them will indeed attain less exalted stations than under a regime of privilege; but the vast multitude will rise to a higher level, to wider horizons, to worthier attainments” — President Coolidge, portion of remarks at the laying of the cornerstone of the Jewish Community Center, Washington, May 3, 1925.
Cited in Slemp, C. Bascom, compiler, “The Mind of the President.” New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1926, pp.288-9.
race
On Being American
Standing before those gathered at the American Legion Convention in Omaha, Nebraska, President Coolidge on October 6, 1925, offered one of the plainest expositions of what it means to be an American citizen ever uttered. He could have said any number of vague platitudes to avoid alienating anyone. He could have tried placating the supporters of the Klan with sympathetic doublespeak. He could have even appealed to the emotional and racial invectives of two administrations before, under President Wilson. To Coolidge, being “American” meant far more than any of these attitudes could comprehend. Weighing the heavy costs of the war, concluded a mere six years before, Coolidge recognized the long-term burdens but also the exceptional example of service Americans of all national origins had demonstrated to the world. Despite the dangers personal and national, the humble and devoted efforts of individuals serving side by side for common defense of life and liberty, that is, “Americanism” (as Coolidge would call it) shone forth. For Americans, it was not an imperial conquest. It was not the racial or ethnic superiority of “Americanism” that willingly shouldered the burden and cost. It matters not from where you came or how long you have been here. What matters is the sharing of a common respect for law, our founding institutions and our sense of moral obligation.
Being American, to Coolidge, is a unity of spirit not a physical birthright. It is an agreement on what is eternally essential, not earthly, racial and unessential. This is why Coolidge never appeals to class differences or racial distinctions. They are irrelevant and counterproductive to being American. “Americanism” is not a call to absolute conformity, emptying the individual into “cookie-cutter” blueprints. It is a voluntary enterprise ventured upon together with a common set of navigational truths that do not grow old with time or fade with use. By these essentials, Americans assimilate to embrace not only the freedoms of self-government but also the responsibilities. Both are necessary to ensure liberty remains intact. Liberty is not to be a cover for license. Flouting the law is just as un-American as is enforcing laws in contradiction to those essential truths of human nature discovered by the Founders. As Coolidge would aptly summarize,
“We must not, in times of peace, permit ourselves to lose any part from this structure of patriotic unity. I make no plea for leniency toward those who are criminal or vicious, are open enemies of society and are not prepared to accept the true standards of our citizenship. By tolerance I do not mean indifference to evil. I mean respect for different kinds of good. Whether one traces his Americanisms back three centuries to the Mayflower, or three years to the steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of today is real and genuine. No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat. You men constituted the crew of our ‘Ship of State’ during her passage through the roughest waters. You made up the watch and held the danger posts when the storm was fiercest. You brought her safely and triumphantly into port. Out of that experience you have learned the lessons of discipline, tolerance, respect for authority, and regard for the basic manhood of your neighbor. You bore aloft a standard of patriotic conduct and civic integrity, to which all could repair. Such a standard, with a like common appeal, must be upheld just as firmly and unitedly now in time of peace. Among citizens honestly devoted to the maintenance of that standard, there need be small concern about differences of individual opinion in other regards. Granting first the essentials of loyalty to our country and to our fundamental institutions, we may not only overlook, but we may encourage differences of opinion as to other things. For differences of this kind will certainly be elements of strength rather than of weakness. They will give variety to our tastes and interests. They will broaden our vision, strengthen our understanding, encourage the true humanities, and enrich our whole mode and conception of life. I recognize the full and complete necessity of 100 per cent Americanism, but 100 per cent Americanism may be made up of many various elements.”
It is the current cultural climate that is intolerant of these essentials and fixated on non-essentials that forecasts even rougher waters ahead for the American enterprise. If we are to navigate safely to port, we have to rally around the moral nature of our voyage while giving no berth to those resolved on dragging the ship back from real progress into the barbarity of ignorance, lawlessness and government paternalism.
“Calvin Coolidge and Race: His Record in Dealing with the Racial Tensions of the 1920s”
This excellent essay by Alvin S. Felzenberg highlights in bold relief how courageous and characteristically sensible Mr. Coolidge was when it came to race. It is widely unknown that he was the first President to push forward a national discussion on these issues, not Lyndon Johnson or any of Coolidge’s five predecessors. But that is not all he did. He also publicly confronted the Klan in public speeches and events around the nation, he acted decisively to end segregation policies inherited from the Wilson years and he reminded Congress of their Constitutional duty to uphold equality under the law through anti-lynching legislation. Even more, his correspondence with various folks looks like a “who’s who” of minority leaders of the 1920s. He commuted the prison sentence of Marcus Garvey. He detested the veiled racism of affirmative action and made sure that his appointment of people like Perry Howard to the Justice Department were made for their character and competence not their color. He kept an open door in his pursuit of advice from attorneys like Ruth W. Whaley and educators like Howard University’s Emmett Scott, who praised Coolidge’s defense of “ordered liberty,” understood by Americans at the time as responsible self-government. “Law and order” for “blacks” was not a racist code phrase, it was that wonderful coupling of freedom with responsibility. Scott continued,
This address brought great encouragement to thoughtful representatives of the twelve million colored people of the United States. The principles above stated by you include most or all of what they hold near and dear in connection with their citizenship. The one thing for which they have struggled since the Republican Party conferred upon them … freedom and enfranchisement has been this American ideal of “ordered liberty.” The colored people suffer many disabilities among them persecution by a hooded order which seeks to exclude them from the privileges of American citizenship. They also suffer from discrimination in the Federal service and from segregation in many Departments of our government. This discrimination is a legacy which has come to your administration. They know Calvin Coolidge. They know his traditional friendship and they know of his distinguished services in behalf of their race.
Perhaps most importantly, while one President (Woodrow Wilson) was promoting a truly bigoted spin on America’s past, the novel turned film “The Birth of a Nation,” Senator Coolidge was instrumental in shutting it down in Boston theaters. His unbiased respect for all people was simply who he was, not a device to win political power. He is ignorantly attacked today as another racist relic of our prejudiced past. The truth, if actually sought however, shows that minorities had few friends as brave and loyal as Mr. Calvin Coolidge.
The Importance of the Obvious 