Harding and Civil Rights

Ilya Somin argues that Warren Harding is an underrated president, citing among other things W.E.B. DuBoise's praise for his progressive record on civil rights.

Conventional understanding in the United States tends to view racial issues as just frozen in time between the Civil War amendments and Brown v. Board of Education but there was in fact vibrant debate and non-trivial change during the intervening 80-100 years. Woodrow Wilson's administration, for example, actually took positive steps to entrench segregation more deeply than it previously had been, there were failed efforts at anti-lynching legislation in the 1920s, etc.

Comments

D at LGM quite nicely shuts this argument down.

http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2008/04/academy-of-underrated.html

Posted by Philly | April 9, 2008 8:45 AM

Some memorable successes at racial healing stand out. Who can forget the bridging of differences pulled off by Bart and the Waco Kid in Rock Ridge?

Posted by steve duncan | April 9, 2008 8:57 AM

Du Bois, no "e"

Posted by jay | April 9, 2008 8:59 AM

Jay,

DO you think Mr. Yglesias cares about spelling?

Posted by Hector | April 9, 2008 9:15 AM

Failed efforts at anti-lynching legislation. Failed. I don't even know what to say about that. The mind boggles.

Posted by The Puzzled Ibex | April 9, 2008 9:17 AM

Harding was the first to appoint Mellon to Secretary of the Treasury. This is the man whose disastrous banking policy lead directly to the banking failures that were the main cause of the Great Depression.

The crony capitalism under him and Coolidge give our current administration a run for their money.

Harding was not a good president.

Posted by Walker | April 9, 2008 9:37 AM

John Dean also wrote a biography defending Harding from his critics.

Posted by jayackroyd | April 9, 2008 9:40 AM

actually took positive steps to entrench segregation more deeply than it previously had been

WTF? what are *positive* steps to *entrench* segregation???

I thought you were agreeing with the assessment that WW had a semi-decent civil rights record, and indeed the very next phrase following the one quoted above refers to [failed] attempts to stop lynching. [failing] to stop lynching + entrenching segregation is a very bizarre pairing for one seeming to comment on WW's decent but neglected civil rights record.

again -- do you even skim your posts before publishing them?

Posted by MY strikes again | April 9, 2008 9:41 AM

Wasn't the key watershed in the 1870s -- when the wealthy elites in the north cut a deal with Southern Democrats?

That they would withdraw the Federal Occupational Army, withdraw the occupational governments and let the South stomp on the Afro-Americans.

In exchange for "Solid South" support of their robber baron agendas in the Congress -- so that those dirty , nasty progressives could be dealt with.

Wasn't that where the Democratic Party started up its relationship with a long line of Zell Millers?

Wasn't the Southern support for a "strong defense" based on the understanding of Southern elites that their region would remain a backward shithole in not for a huge influx of federal welfare money known as "defense contracts"?

"Permanent War for Permanent Profits ..er Peace."

The rich have money but they know that they can lose it quickly if they don't control US politics. Fortunately for them, there has never been a shortage of whores in American politics.

Posted by Don Williams | April 9, 2008 9:43 AM

"MY strikes again" needs to work on his vocabulary.

Posted by David Weman | April 9, 2008 9:48 AM

Not sure who's conventional understanding you're talking about. Maybe Reconstruction doesn't register on most people's rader screens, but surely Truman's desegregation of the Army is a familiar point.

Posted by Economists for Obama | April 9, 2008 9:49 AM

it occurs to me that you meant "positive steps" as in took "action" to entrench segregation, as opposed to passively watching it become entrenched in our country, but still, the whole post is rather odd.

I gather your point is that the intervening years you speak of contain a mixed record, with some good & some bad occurring, such as WW further entrenching segregration (bad) and attempts (at least) to ban lynching (marginally good).

Posted by MY strikes again | April 9, 2008 9:51 AM

Read more closely, MY strikes again. Pay particular attention to the difference between Warren Harding and Woodrow Wilson. The first had (according to the post) an underrated record on civil rights; the second acted to entrench segregation.

Posted by ajay | April 9, 2008 10:15 AM

There really was a lot happening between 1876 and 1948, most of it in a negative direction. Wilson's "positive steps" to entrench segregation included firing the African-Americans T Roosevelt had brought into Federal employment, such as James Weldon Johnson. TR hated college football, but he gave Federal positions to poets, black and white.

Posted by Gene O'Grady | April 9, 2008 10:20 AM

ajay, thanks.

*hangs head in shame*

I, uh, did in fact miss the crucial difference b/n the two. I saw another "W" first name and casually assumed it was the same. Oops

Sorry MY

Posted by MY strikes again | April 9, 2008 10:37 AM

"there were failed efforts at anti-lynching legislation in the 1920s"

I know (or in most cases knew) people who were communists in the 30's, and it was this kind of thing that drove them to it. Lynchings, as recent photographic displays of the events have shown, were common community event in the South, sort of a Fourth of July picnic with nooses, and nobody did a damn thing about it. Not a damn thing. The odd thing is, of course, that lynching was illegal under then-existing federal Civil War era statutes, but no one would enforce them.

Posted by David in NY | April 9, 2008 10:38 AM

Also, not to be forgotten: Harding kept a pet Indian Elephant named "Rosie" (there was a picture of her serving as his caddy on the golfcourse in this past sunday's NYT).

Posted by Draft Micahel Goldfarb! | April 9, 2008 11:06 AM

IIRC, things became progressively worse in the south between 1876 (after the deal that ended reconstruction) and the mid-90s, then things remained mostly the same until 1948, though Roosevelt took some baby steps. There's some famous book about the post-reconstruction era.

I think the worst thing Wilson did was bring southern style segregation DC, which he had direct power over. Apart from that the federal government was mostly passive between 1876 and 1948.

If I'm right, I wonder who ended segregation in DC?

Posted by David Weman | April 9, 2008 11:08 AM

Well I'm getting educated. I always thought Woodrow Wilson was a progressive. The more I look around the more he looks like an imperialist, anti-civil liberties, anti-union, racist. I didn't realize that in addition to his many adventures in the Americas he also had troops in Russia from 1918-20. Looking around at the racist issue, I came across this:
Wilson sympathizes with the Southern cause and once describes Reconstruction as the overthrow of civilization in the South. As President of Princeton University, he barred the entry of black students. As President of the United States, he presides over the extensive expansion of segregationist practices in the federal government, helping to make Washington, D.C. one of the most segregated cities in America. The Post Office begins to segregate black clerks, the Treasury Department establishes segregated toilets, and Wilson defends segregation as being to the advantage of blacks themselves. http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/brown/1912.html

Posted by Paul | April 9, 2008 11:42 AM

The odd thing is, of course, that lynching was illegal under then-existing federal Civil War era statutes, but no one would enforce them

Presumably lynching was also illegal under then-existing state laws against, you know, murder, but no one would enforce them either...

Posted by ajay | April 9, 2008 11:57 AM

Two other things that allowed Southern racism to survive into the modern era were the invention of air conditioning and the suppression of malaria/yellow fever ( by killing off the mosquito larvae.)

No good deed goes unpunished.

Posted by Don Williams | April 9, 2008 12:40 PM