1921 PRESIDENTIAL: One hundred years after Warren G. Harding a beloved president who supported progress for all Americans
AGN.News Team
January 4, 2023
WASHINGTON (AGN.News) – Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923) was the 29th president of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death in 1923.
On the campaign trail, Harding traveled to Boston, where he delivered a speech that, according to biographer John Wesley Dean III, “would resonate throughout the 1920 campaign and history”.
Harding: America needs “healing”
There, he stated that “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration;…” Dean notes, “Harding, more than the other aspirants, was reading the nation’s pulse correctly.”
In his speech… before the Home Market Club, Boston, May 14, 1920… future president Warren G. Harding said, “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.
Harding won the 1920 election
By Election Day, November 2, 1920, few had any doubts that the Republican ticket would win. Harding received 60.2 percent of the popular vote, the highest percentage since the evolution of the two-party system, and 404 electoral votes.
He was the first sitting senator elected President of the United States in 1920. Yes, he was the first sitting senator to be elected to the White House.
In his inaugural address Warren declared, “Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much from the government and at the same time do too little for it.”
He appointed future president Herbert Hoover as United States Secretary of Commerce. He was the first president to visit Alaska. Harding would later predict statehood for Alaska.
Harding in post- election mood
Hoover, with Harding’s blessings, expanded the Commerce Department to make it more useful to business. This was consistent with Hoover’s view that the private sector should take the lead in managing the economy.
Harding greatly respected his Commerce Secretary, often asked his advice, and backed him to the hilt, calling Hoover “the smartest ‘gink’ I know”.
His Vice President was Calvin Coolidge from 1921–1923 when he became president uopn the death of Harding.
Harding on the U.S. economy
When Harding took office on March 4, 1921, the nation was in the midst of a postwar economic decline.
He prioritized job creation and a revision of the tax code including an equitable tax policy.
Warren Harding’s attitude toward business was that government should aid it as much as possible.
Hoover expanded the Commerce Department to make it more useful to business. This was consistent with Hoover’s view that the private sector should take the lead in managing the economy. Harding greatly respected his Commerce Secretary, often asked his advice, and backed him to the hilt, calling Hoover “the smartest ‘gink’ I know”.
Woodrow Wilson’s work before Harding
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921 grew up in the American South, mainly in Augusta, Georgia, during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
He was the first Southerner to be elected president since 1848. During his first year as president, Wilson authorized the widespread imposition of segregation inside the federal bureaucracy.
Wilson appointed a total of nine African-Americans to prominent positions in the federal bureaucracy, eight of whom were Republican carry-overs.
Woodrow Wilson on race relations
Upon taking office, Wilson fired all but two of the seventeen African American supervisors in the federal bureaucracy appointed by Taft.
By the end of 1913, many departments, including the Navy, Treasury, and Post Office, had segregated work spaces, restrooms, and cafeterias.
Many agencies used segregation as a pretext to adopt a whites-only employment policy, claiming they lacked facilities for Black workers.
In these instances, African Americans employed prior to the Wilson administration were either offered early retirement, transferred, or simply fired.
Wilson promotes racial discrimination
Racial discrimination in federal hiring increased further when after 1914, the United States Civil Service Commission instituted a new policy requiring job applicants to submit a personal photo with their application.
Once the application was viewed, the application was “lost” in the maze of government documents. African Americans were simply discriminated against because of their skin and not their lack of credentials.
As a federal enclave, Washington, D.C., had long offered African Americans greater opportunities for employment and less glaring discrimination. Under Wilson, white supremacy was on full display.
Discrimination against Black veterans
In 1919, Black veterans returning home to D.C. were shocked to discover Jim Crow laws had set in, many could not go back to the jobs they held prior to the war or even enter the same building they used to work in due to the color of their skin.
Booker T. Washington described the situation: “I had never seen the colored people so discouraged and bitter as they are at the present time.”
Harding on Black opportunity
Although Harding’s first address to Congress called for passage of anti-lynching legislation, he initially seemed inclined to do no more for African Americans than Republican presidents of the recent past had. However, he asked Cabinet officers to find places for Blacks in their departments.
Harding spoke of our “oneness”
Harding spoke at the all-Black Lincoln University, founded near Oxford, Pennsylvania in 1854. He declared, “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.”
Harding on Vigilante justice
Vigilante justice or vigilantism in America is the act of preventing, investigating and punishing perceived offenses and crimes without legal authority.
Harding was fully aware of the ‘Tulsa Outrage’ in which 12 members of the Industrial Workers of the World were then, one by one, bound to a tree, whipped, then tarred and feathered.
This was an act of vigilante violence perpetrated by the Knights of Liberty — a group understood at the time to be a contemporaneous incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan — against 12 members of the Industrial Workers of the World on November 9, 1917 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Deputy US Marshal John Moran denounced the attack saying “I am opposed to that kind of business and I tried to get them not to do it. You would be surprised at the prominent men in town who were in this mob.”
Harding was fully aware of the vigilante spirit existing across the country and tried to end the practice using federal resources.
Harding faces U.S. racial violence
The Tulsa race massacre, also known as the Tulsa race riot or the Black Wall Street massacre, was a two-day-long massacre that took place between May 31 – June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents, some of whom had been appointed as deputies and armed by city officials, attacked Black residents and destroyed homes and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
This event is considered one of “the single worst incidents of racial violence in American history” and has been described as one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the history of the United States.
This racist attack on African Americans is called the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. It involved the murder of over 300 Black people in two days with millions of dollars in uncompensated property damage.
The attackers burned and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the neighborhood—at the time one of the wealthiest Black communities in the United States, colloquially known as “Black Wall Street.”
Harding on improving race relations
On October 26, 1921, three months after the Tulsa Race Massacre, Harding gave a speech in Birmingham, Alabama, to a segregated audience of 20,000 Whites and 10,000 Blacks.
“Whether you like it or not,” Harding told his segregated audience, “unless our democracy is a lie, you must stand for that equality.” The White section of the audience listened in silence, while the Black section cheered.
Three days after the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, Harding spoke at the all-Black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
He declared, “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.”
Speaking directly about the events in Tulsa, he said, “God grant that, in the soberness, the fairness, and the justice of this country, we never see another spectacle like it.”
Harding on job opportunities
By 1922, the eight-hour day had become common in American industry with employment of all Americans on the rise. The simmering differences between Whites and Blacks over the issues relating to “equality” in the workplace and voting rights had not been universally resolved.
What Harding had hoped for in Birmingham was an end of race massacres. He had hoped these type of violent actions would never happen again. But it did happen again. This time in the tiny Levy County African American community of Rosewood.
Rosewood community in Levy County
Rosewood was settled in 1845, 9 miles east of Cedar Key, near the Gulf of Mexico. The local industry was centered on timber.
Two pencil mills were nearby in Cedar Key; several turpentine mills and a sawmill 3 miles away in Sumner helped support local residents, as did farming of citrus and cotton.
The Rosewood hamlet grew enough to warrant the construction of a post office and train depot on the Florida Railroad in 1870, but it was never incorporated as a town.
Rosewood in the early 1920s
Rosewood is an unincorporated community in Levy County, Florida, located just off State Road 24 approximately 1 mile northeast of Sumner and 9 miles northeast of Cedar Key.
By 1920, the residents of Rosewood were mostly self-sufficient. They had three churches, a school, a large Masonic Hall, a turpentine mill, a sugarcane mill, a baseball team named the Rosewood Stars, and two general stores, one of which was White-owned.
The village had about a dozen two-story wooden plank homes, other small two-room houses, and several small unoccupied plank farm and storage structures. Some families owned pianos, organs, and other symbols of middle-class prosperity.
Survivors of the Rosewood Massacre of 1923 remember it as a happy place. In 1995 survivor Robie Mortin recalled at age 79, “Rosewood was a town where everyone’s house was painted. There were roses everywhere you walked. Lovely.”
Sumner in the early 1920s
Sumner is an unincorporated community in Levy County, Florida. It is located on State Road 24, approximately 1 mile southwest of Rosewood and 8 miles northeast of Cedar Key.
In the 1920s Sumner was mostly a company town with a sawmill and wood plank houses supported by jobs in timber production as many were employed as millwrights and laborers by Cummer & Sons.
Racial tension in Levy County
Racial violence at the time was common throughout the nation especially in the southern states. This violence was manifested as individual incidents of extra-legal actions, or attacks on entire communities.
While jobs were being created in many U.S. cities, counties, and rural communities, there was an undercurrent of jealousy, envy, and suspicion directed at people of color across the country.
Those negative emotions were evident in many areas in Florida. In the early 20th century racial tension and economic disparities existed in the two rural unincorporated communities of Levy County… the communities of Rosewood and Sumner.
Racial tension existed in Sumner because of the economic plight of its residents. Most women worked at home while the men worked at the lumber yard. Racists in Sumner were generally jealous of the economic prosperity of Black professionals living in Rosewood.
Racists act in Levy County
These Levy County racists were on alert, always looking for any ‘spark’ to light the flames of racial violence just like in Tulsa.
The one spark that would ignite the flames of a massacre and racial violence would have a sexual component. White supremacists have often associated with racial terror against Blacks under the guise of protecting the community from invented or perceived sex acts against the innocent.
This was the case in Rosewood. A 22 year old white woman who allegedly had an ongoing relationship with a white man blamed a Black man in Rosewood of assaulting her.
White racists seized on the accusation and began their reign of terror on Rosewood. They were ready to destroy everything the Black community of Rosewood had built over many decades. On January 1, 1923, that false spark was ignited with deadly consequences.
Rosewood Massacre of 1923
In the first week of January 1923, Rosewood was an African-American community that prospered there in the early 20th century, until a white mob destroyed it in the 1923 Rosewood massacre.
By contrast, there is no historical U.S. record in which a mob of armed Black citizens attacked and destroyed an all-white town and massacred its citizens in America.
Levy County vigilantes takes action
During the week of January 1-7, 1923, vigilantism raised its head, this time in Levy County, Florida. The Rosewood Massacre of 1923 resulted in the deaths of an unknown number of local residents. The entire community was burned to the ground with the exception of one house, the house belonging to the towns only white family.
President Harding had hoped that such vigilante violence would never happen again. He must have been extremely disappointed to see under his watch such racial violence directed at the African American community again. The Rosewood and Tulsa Massacres must have tore at the presidents soul. He passed away 8 months later on August 2, 1923.
Harding popularity grows
In early March 1923, Harding’s popularity began to recover. The economy was improving, and the programs of Harding’s more able Cabinet members, such as Hughes, Mellon and Hoover, were showing results.
On July 26, 1923, Harding toured Vancouver, British Columbia as the first sitting American president to visit Canada. He later went to San Francisco to deliver a speech and have various meetings. He confined himself to his hotel room due to illness.
Harding’s end of devoted service
On August 2, 1923, President Warren G. Harding passed away at the age of 57 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Harding’s unexpected death came as a great shock to the nation. He was liked and admired by both the press and the public.
Harding’s body was carried to his train in a casket for a journey across the nation, which was followed closely in the newspapers. Nine million people lined the railroad tracks as the train carrying his body proceeded from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., where he lay in state at the United States Capitol rotunda.
After funeral services there, Harding’s body was transported to Marion, Ohio, for burial.
His final resting place
In Marion, Harding’s body was placed on a horse-drawn hearse, which was followed by President Coolidge and Chief Justice Taft, then by Harding’s widow and his father.
They followed the hearse through the city, past the Star building and finally to the Marion Cemetery where the casket was placed in the cemetery’s receiving vault.
Funeral guests included inventor Thomas Edison and industrialist businessmen Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone.
Warren Harding and Florence Harding, who died the following year, rest in the Harding Tomb, which was dedicated in 1931 by U.S. President Herbert Hoover.
Harding on ‘Oneness’ and ‘equality’
On October 26, 1921, Harding gave a speech in Birmingham, Alabama, to a segregated audience of 20,000 Whites and 10,000 Blacks. Harding, while stating that the social and racial differences between Whites and Blacks could not be bridged, urged equal political rights for the latter.
“Whether you like it or not,” Harding told his segregated audience, “unless our democracy is a lie, you must stand for that equality.” The White section of the audience listened in silence, while the Black section cheered.
Three days after the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, Harding spoke at the all-Black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He declared, “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.”
Speaking directly about the events in Tulsa, he said, “God grant that, in the soberness, the fairness, and the justice of this country, we never see another spectacle like it.”
President Harding admired by the nation
Today, to the cheers of a grateful nation, nearly one hundred years since the passing of our beloved president, America is still committed to his vision of oneness, cultural equality, justice, diversity, inclusion, equity and unity for all Americans.
Fair and honest elections, improved economic conditions for all Americans, ending child poverty, improving food security, affordable housing, personal security, the elimination of woes facing homeless citizens, health care for the masses, and job creation where government supports economic development can finally become a reality just a President Harding worked non-stop to achieve for all americans during his lifetime.
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