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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2014
The defeat of the Dyer anti-lynching bill in 1922 was a turning point in relations between black Americans and the Republican Party. Little is understood, however, about the role played in the debates by President Warren Harding. This article contends that Harding's conflicted views on presidential leadership caused him to badly mishandle the bill. The President's inability to choose between a restrained and consensual “Whig” approach and a more active “stewardship” role on a wide range of issues resulted in an erratic and ultimately unsustainable style of leadership. The Dyer bill's failure was affected by this dilemma as the hopes of black and white reformers were alternately raised and dashed by Harding's apparent indecisiveness. Black resentment at the bill's ultimate defeat was thus heightened still further, with severe consequences for the Republican Party's long-term electoral relationship with black voters.
1 For a summation of relations between the Harding White House and the press see Ponder, Stephen, Managing the Press: Origins of the Media Presidency, 1897–1933 (London: Macmillan Press Ltd. 1999), 109–20Google Scholar. For media manipulation by the 1920 Harding campaign see Morello, John A., Selling the President: Albert D. Lasker, Advertising and the Election of Warren G. Harding (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001)Google Scholar.
2 Murray, Robert K., The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Dean, John W., Warren G. Harding (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2004)Google Scholar.
3 Sinclair, Andrew, The Available Man: The Life behind the Masks of Warren Gamaliel Harding (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1965)Google Scholar. Johnson, Paul, A History of the American People (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997), 592Google Scholar.
4 Earl Ofari Hutchinson examines Harding's attitude towards the Dyer bill in a broad survey of presidential attitudes on black civil liberties but does not focus solely on Dyer or reference post-1964 revisionism. See Hutchinson, Earl Ofari, Betrayed: A History of Presidential Failure to Protect Black Lives (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996)Google Scholar.
5 See Topping, Simon, Lincoln's Lost Legacy: The Republican Party and the African American Vote, 1928–1952 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Myrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma (New York: Harper & Row, 1944), 560–61Google Scholar.
7 Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States 1889–1918 (Washington, DC: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1919), 7.
8 Walter, David O., “Legislative Notes and Reviews: Proposals for a Federal Anti-lynching Law,” American Political Science Review, 28, 3 (June 1934), 436–42, 436CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Walter's exploration of the constitutional ramifications of anti-lynching legislation is still one of the most concise available.
9 Calhoun, Charles W., Benjamin Harrison (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2005), 117Google Scholar.
10 Morris, Edmund, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House Inc., 2001), 472Google Scholar. TR maintained that lynching not only was indefensible but also debased to the status of animals the adults who participated in it and the children who witnessed it.
11 Myrdal, Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 5. The same argument was used by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s to explain his administration's reluctance to back yet another federal anti-lynching campaign. For the full text of Wilson's denunciation of lynching see www.amistadresource.org/plantation_to_ghetto/archives/document_archive.html.
12 Blair, John L., “A Time for Parting: The Negro during the Coolidge Years,” Journal of American Studies, 3, 2 (Dec. 1969), 177–99, 187CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Official Report of the Proceedings of the Seventeenth National Republican Convention (New York: The Tenny Press, 1920), 105.
14 Sherman, Richard B., “The Harding Administration and the Negro: An Opportunity Lost,” Journal of Negro History, 49, 3 (July 1964), 151–68, 152CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 The concept of the presidency as “steward” of national interests was first articulated by Roosevelt in his book Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913).
16 For a thorough exploration of the “Whig” concept of presidential leadership see Korzi, Michael J., “Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers: A Reconsideration of William Howard Taft's ‘Whig’ Theory of Presidential Leadership,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 33, 2 (June 2003), 305–24Google Scholar.
17 Sullivan, Mark, “Senate Control of White House,” Atlanta Constitution, 14 June 1920, 5Google Scholar. Variations of this description would be later applied by historians to the management structures and leadership philosophies of both the Eisenhower and Reagan administrations.
18 Harding quoted in Sherman, 153.
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20 Pietrusza, David, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 366–67Google Scholar.
21 Adams, Samuel Hopkins, Incredible Era: The Life and Times of Warren Gamaliel Harding (New York: Capricorn Books, 1964), 181Google Scholar.
22 Russell, Francis, President Harding: His Life and Times 1865–1923 (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1969), 40Google Scholar.
23 Trani, Eugene P. and Wilson, David L., The Presidency of Warren G. Harding (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1977), 104Google Scholar.
24 Harding quoted in Randolph C. Downes, “Negro Rights” 95.
25 Letter, William Borah (WB) to Troy W. Pendleton, 18 Feb. 1922,Washington, DC Library of Congress, William Borah Papers, Box 133, General Office File, Anti-lynching Bill (Dyer Bill) 1, Dec. 1921–March 1922.
26 Letter, WB to Herbert H. Stockton, 12 May 1922, William Borah Papers, Box 133, General Office File, Anti-lynching Bill (Dyer Bill) 2, April–May 1922.
27 Letter, WB to editor, Boston Transcript, 8 June 1922, William Borah Papers, Box 133, General Office File, Anti-lynching Bill (Dyer Bill) 2, April–May 1922.
28 Schneider, Mark Robert, We Return Fighting: The Civil Rights Movement in the Jazz Age (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001), 184Google Scholar.
29 Letter, Moorfield Storey (MS) to WB, 31 May 1922, William Borah Papers, Box 133, General Office File, Anti-Lynching Bill (Dyer Bill) 2, April–May 1922.
30 Letter, James Weldon Johnson (JWJ) to WB, 7 Feb. 1922, William Borah Papers, Box 133 General Office File, Anti-lynching Bill (Dyer Bill) 1, Dec. 1921–March 1922.
31 Letter, WB to editor, Boston Transcript, 8 June 1922, William Borah Papers, Box 133, General Office File, Anti-lynching Bill (Dyer Bill) 2, April–May 1922.
32 Harding quoted in Murray, The Harding Era, 94.
33 Ponder, Managing the Press, 114.
34 Harding quoted in Murray, 398.
35 Du Bois quoted in Sherman, “The Harding Administration and the Negro,” 157.
36 Schneider claims, however, that the effect of Goff's testimony was to reinforce the fears of Democrats and some Republicans that the new law would trigger federal government intervention in a variety of state policing matters from lynching to bootlegging. Schneider, 175.
37 Christoper Waldrep comments that Daugherty's summation was “longer and more convincing” than that presented in a landmark Harvard Law Review article twenty years earlier by NAACP legal adviser Albert Pillsbury. See Waldrep, Christopher, African Americans Confront Lynching: Strategies of Resistance from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Era (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2009), 73Google Scholar.
38 Daugherty's influence over Harding was often exaggerated by earlier historians, encouraged by Daugherty himself in his memoirs and by Harding's detractors. Letters and official papers released after April 1964 suggest that Daugherty's influence waned after Harding entered the White House.
39 Johnson, James Weldon, Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (London: Penguin Books, 2008), 364Google Scholar.
40 Sullivan, Mark, “One Year of President Harding,” World's Work, 43, 1 (Nov. 1921), 26–32, 29Google Scholar.
41 “The Negro's Status Declared by the President,” Literary Digest, 71, 8 (19 Nov. 1921), 8.
42 Ibid.
43 “Harding Directs South to Give Fit Black Man the Vote and to Prohibit Vote from Unfit White,” New York News, 28 Oct. 1921, 1.
44 “Harding Says Negro Must Have Equality in Political Life,” New York Times, 27 Oct. 1921, 1.
45 “Harding Directs.”
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 “President Harding in Birmingham,” Montgomery Advertiser, 28 Oct. 1921, 1.
50 “The Birmingham Speech,” The Constitution, 30 Oct. 1921, 4, Warren G. Harding Papers, Ohio State Historical Archive, Columbus, Ohio, Roll 230, Box 765, Folder 777.
51 “The President's Mistake,” Montgomery Journal, 29 Oct. 1921, Harding Papers, Roll 230, Box 765, Folder 700.
52 Ibid.
53 Letter, J.Silas Harris to Warren G. Harding (WGH), 26 Oct. 1921, Harding Papers, Roll 230, Box 765, Folder 700.
54 “The Negro's Status Declared by the President.”
55 Byron Harrison quoted in Sherman, “The Harding Administration and the Negro,” 159.
56 Murray, The Harding Era, 397–99.
57 Dean, Warren G. Harding, 125.
58 Sinclair, The Available Man.
59 Both quotations from Sinclair, 230–35.
60 Letter, WGH to H. H. Kohlsaat, 28 Oct. 1921, Harding Papers, Roll 229, Folder 761, #0339.
61 Letter, WGH to Malcolm Jennings, 5 Jan. 1922, Malcolm Jennings Collection, Harding Papers, Roll 261.
62 Murray, The Harding Era, 401.
63 Letter, WGH to Malcolm Jennings.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid.
66 Johnson, Along This Way, 66.
67 Dray, Philip, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (New York: The Modern Library, 2002), 267Google Scholar.
68 The Crisis, 25, 1 (Nov. 1922), 28.
69 Letter, WB to James T. Williams, 21 June 1922, Borah Papers, Box 133, General Office File, Anti-Lynching Bill (Dyer Bill) 3, June–Sept. 1922.
70 Letter, George H. Woodson to WB, Borah Papers, Box 133, General Office File, Anti-lynching Bill (Dyer Bill) 3, June–Sept. 1922.
71 George Christian (GC) to JWJ, 23 June 1922, Harding Papers, File 266, Folder 5.
72 Ibid.
73 GC to Alice Carter Simmons, 1 Aug. 1922, Harding Papers, File 266, Folder 5.
74 Nick Chiles to WG. Harding Papers, 5 Aug. 1922, File 266, Folder 5.
75 Ibid.
76 Letter, WGH to Malcolm Jennings, 14 July 1921, Malcolm Jennings Collection, Harding Papers, Roll 261.
77 Literary Digest, 6 Aug. 1921, 12.
78 Letter, JWJ to GC, 6 July 1922, Harding Papers, File 266, Folder 5.
79 Indiana Evening Gazette, text of President Harding's message to Congress, 19 Aug. 1922, 7.
80 Ibid.
81 Ibid.
82 Hunt, John Gabriel, ed., Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents (New York: Gramercy Books, 1995), 312Google Scholar.
83 Indiana Evening Gazette.
84 Ibid.
85 Telegram, JWJ to WGH, 22 Aug. 1922, Harding Papers, File 266, Folder 5.
86 “Harding for Kellogg Bill. President Prefers It to Anti-Lynching Measure,” New York Times, 26 Aug. 1922.
87 Telegram, NAACP to WGH, 27 Aug. 1922, Harding Papers, File 266, Folder 5.
88 Anthony, Carl S., Florence Harding: The First Lady, the Jazz Age and the Death of America's Most Scandalous President (New York: William Morrow & Co. Inc, 1998), 376–83Google Scholar.
89 Letter, GC to JWJ, Harding Papers, 8 Sept. 1922, File 266, Folder 5.
90 Ibid.
91 Underwood quoted in Dray, At The Hands of Persons Unknown, 271.
92 “Harding to Advise with U. S. Senate,” Atlanta Constitution, 20 Aug. 1920, 5.
93 Letter, Henry Cabot Lodge to GC, 4 Oct. 1922, Harding Papers, Roll 193, File 266, Folder 5.
94 Letter, Harry C. Gahn to WGH, 14 Oct. 1922, Harding Papers, Roll 193, File 266, Folder 5.
95 Letter, WGH to John N. Parker, 8 Nov. 1922, Harding Papers, Roll 193, Box 720.
96 Letter, GC to JWJ, 23 Nov. 1922, Harding Papers, Roll 193, File 266, Folder 5.
97 Letter, Harry E. Davis to WGH, 2 Dec. 1922, Harding Papers, Roll 193, File 266, Folder 6.
98 Ibid.
99 Lodge quoted in Dray, 271.
100 Letter, WGH to Harry E. Davis, 4 Dec. 1922, Harding Papers, Roll 193, File 266, Folder 6.
101 Ibid.
102 Ibid.
103 Letter, Harry E. Davis to WGH, 15 Dec. 1922, Harding Papers, Roll 193, File 266, Folder 6.
104 Ibid.
105 Letter, WGH to Jonathan Bourne Jr., 4 Dec. 1922, Harding Papers, Roll 229, Box 762.
106 “Political Straws,” The Crisis, 26, 3 (July 1923), 124.
107 Ibid.