The Presidency of Warren G Harding (R) is regarded by many historians as one of the worst in American history. Elected in a landslide in November 1920, he died in the summer of 1923 just as a notorious financial scandal involving several of his cabinet members was becoming front page news.
I think that ranking unfair as Harding's steadfast approach helped America quickly recover from a sharp recession after the end of the First World War and there is another little known aspect of his Presidency that reflects well upon him - his unusual, for the times, stance on race. He's still not a top-tier executive but should not be at the bottom of the list.
On October 26, 1921 President Harding visited Birmingham, Alabama to give a speech as part of the city's celebration of the 50th anniversary of its founding. More than 100,000 people lined the streets as his motorcade made its way to where the presidential address would be delivered - a park recently named after Harding's predecessor, President Woodrow Wilson (D), a fervent racist who had resegregated the federal civil service.
The President's speech started out conventionally, reviewing the history of Birmingham in glowing terms and speaking of its critical role in helping the South recover from the Civil War, but then took an unexpected term to focus on race for its last two thirds:
“If the Civil War marked the beginnings of industrialism in a South which had previously been almost entirely agricultural, the World War brought us to full recognition that the race problem is national rather than merely sectional.”
The President went on to describe what we call "The Great Migration" during the War of blacks from South to North (until that time 95% of America's blacks lived in the former slave states), pointing out:
"it has made the South realize its industrial dependence on the labor of the black man and made the North realize the difficulties of the community in which two greatly differing races are brought to live side by side.”
"I should say that it has been responsible for a larger charity on both sides, a beginning of better understanding; and in the light of that better understanding perhaps we shall be able to consider this problem together as a problem of all sections and of both races, in whose solution the best intelligence of both must be enlisted."
He then referenced our recent war experience, contrasting the lack of racism faced by black soldiers serving in Europe:
"In another way the World War modified the elements of this problem. Thousands of black men, serving their country just as patriotically as did the white men, were transported overseas and experienced the life of countries where their color aroused less of antagonism than it does here."
"These things lead one to hope that we shall find an adjustment of relations between the two races, in which both can enjoy full citizen- ship, the full measure of usefulness to the country and of opportunity for themselves, and in which recognition and reward shall at last be distributed in proportion to individual deserts, regardless of race or color."
Harding then went on to make a radical proposal in the context of the times:
“I would insist upon equal educational opportunity for [blacks and whites]. This does not mean that both would become equally educated within a generation or two generations or ten generations. Even men of the same race do not accomplish such an equality as that. They never will. The Providence that endowed men with widely unequal capacities and capabilities and energies did not intend any such thing.”
In the midst of what must have been a disturbing speech for his mostly white audience, the President emphasized:
"Men of both races may well stand uncompromisingly against every suggestion of social equality. Indeed, it would be helpful to have that word " equality " eliminated from this consideration ; to have it accepted on both sides that this is not a question of social equality, but a question of recognizing a fundamental, eternal, and inescapable difference. We shall have made real progress when we develop an attitude in the public and community thought of both races which recognizes this difference."
Though he did not advocate integration of schools he wanted better schools for blacks.
“I would accent that a black man can not be a white man, and that he does not need and should not aspire to be as much like a white man as possible in order to accomplish the best that is possible for him. He should seek to be, and he should be encouraged to be, the best possible black man, and not the best possible imitation of a white man.”
And stressed the importance of economic equality:
"When I suggest the possibility of economic equality between the races, I mean it in precisely the same way and to the same extent that I would mean it if I spoke of equality of economic opportunity as between members of the same race. In each case I would mean equality proportioned to the honest capacities and deserts of the individual."
The President directly addressed the overriding issue in the South - the disenfranchisement of black voters:
"I would say let the black man vote when he is fit to vote: prohibit the white man voting when he is unfit to vote."
Harding went on to express his desire for a common American heritage without separation into classes and groups, a battle many of us thought won with the Civil Rights Movement but now threatened by the New Racism of the Woke:
"Coming as Americans do from many origins of race, tradition, language, color, institutions, heredity; engaged as we are in the huge effort to work an honorable national destiny from so many different elements; the one thing we must sedulously avoid is the development of group and class organizations in this country. There has been time when we heard too much about the labor vote, the business vote, the Irish vote, the Scandinavian vote, the Italian vote, and so on. But the demagogues who would array class against class and group against group have fortunately found little to reward their efforts. That is because, despite the demagogues, the idea of our oneness as Americans has risen superior to every appeal to mere class and group. And so I would wish it might be in this matter of our national problem of races."
"Just as I do not wish the South to be politically entirely of one party; just as I believe that is bad for the South, and for the rest of the country as well, so I do not want the colored people to be entirely of one party. I wish that both the tradition of a solidly Democratic South and the tradition of a solidly Republican black race might be broken up. Neither political sectionalism nor any system of rigid groupings of the people will in the long run prosper our country. I want to see the time come when black men will regard themselves as full participants in the benefits and duties of American citizenship ; when they will vote for Democratic candidates, if they prefer the Democratic policy on tariff or taxation, or foreign relations, or what-not; and when they will vote the Republican ticket only for like reasons. We can not go on, as we have gone for more than a half century, with one great section of our population, numbering as many people as the entire population of some significant countries of Europe, set off from real contribution to solving our national issues, because of a division on race lines."
"Is it not possible, then, in the long era of readjustment which we are entering for the Nation to lay aside old prejudices and old antagonisms and in the broad, clear light of nationalism enter upon a constructive policy in dealing with these intricate issues? Just as we shall prove ourselves capable of doing this Ave shall insure the industrial progress, the agricultural security, the social and political safety of our whole country regardless of race or sections and along the line of ideals superior to every consideration of groups or class, of race or color or section or prejudice."
By our 21st century standards certainly President Harding's address falls short in several respects but in the context of its time and in the context of the place where it was given it is remarkable and that feature was recognized by both whites and blacks.
The largely white audience had applauded frequently at the start of the speech but that slowly dwindled as Harding expounded at length on his thoughts on race. It was reported that the state officials and legislators on the platform with the President sat in "stony silence" during the latter part of his speech while he received "thunderous applause" from the blacks sitting in their segregated section.
This article summarizes some of the other white reaction:
The Birmingham Post called the speech an “untimely and ill-considered intrusion into a question of which he evidently knows little.” Mississippi Senator Pat Harrison said, “If the President’s theory is carried to its ultimate conclusion, then that means that the black man can strive to become President of the United States.” Georgia Senator Thomas E. Watson declared Harding had planted “fatal germs in the minds of the black race.” The junior senator from Alabama, Thomas Heflin, said, “So far as the South is concerned, we hold to the doctrine that God Almighty has fixed the limits and boundaries between the two races and no Republican living can improve upon His work.”
As to the black reaction:
Marcus Garvey, head of the separatist Universal Negro Improvement Association, sent a telegram to the President “on behalf of four hundred million negroes of the world.” He wrote: “All true negroes are against social equality, believing that all races should develop on their own social lines. Only a few selfish members of the negro race believe in the social amalgamation of black and white.”
W.E.B. Dubois had misgivings about Harding’s repeated emphasis that he was not calling for social equality or racial amalgamation, but he wrote: “the sensitive may note that the President qualified these demands somewhat, even dangerously, and yet they stand out so clearly in his speech that he must be credited with meaning to give them their real significance. And in this the President made a braver, clearer utterance than Theodore Roosevelt ever dared to make or than William Taft or William McKinley ever dreamed of. For this let us give him every ounce of credit he deserves.”
This was the NY Times coverage:
President Harding also took other actions (again in the context of a much smaller federal government and constitutional role than today's behemoth administrative state), sponsoring legislation which would have made lynching a federal crime, which passed the House but was blocked in the Senate. He also appointed several blacks to federal posts which Wilson had refused to do.
Nor was Birmingham the first time the President spoke on race. In his acceptance speech at the 1920 Republican Convention, Harding declared:
“No majority 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.”
Earlier in 1921, Harding accepted an offer to give the commencement speech at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the nation's first degree granting historically black college. It turned out that the commencement took place only three days after the end of the Tulsa riot and massacre which saw that city's black community destroyed. The President proclaimed:
“Despite the demagogues, the idea of our oneness as Americans has risen superior to every appeal to mere class and group. And so, I wish it might be in this matter of our national problem of races.”
Addressing the events at Tulsa he added, “God grant that, in the soberness, the fairness, and the justice of this country, we never see another spectacle like it.”
He then shook each graduate's hand.
There is some additional interesting context to all of this. For all of Harding's life there had been rumours that he had some black ancestry and this even became part of the campaign against him in 1920. I have not spent time looking at the evidence so have no opinion but these rumours were something Harding was well aware of.
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After the speech, Harding returned to his hotel for a banquet. In his remarks at the banquet he made an observation that still resonates today:
“Men who are really worthwhile are simpler than they are appraised, and vastly greater than many partisans have measured them.”
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