Warren G. Harding Quotes
We cannot go on, as we have gone on for more than half a century, with one great section of our population … set off from the real contribution to solving national issues because of a division of race lines …
Warren G. Harding, 1865-1923, 29th President of the United States (Republican, OH), Speech, Birmingham, AL, October 26, 1921
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This was actually a very courageous statement for an American politician running for national office. As a result of the pressure of this statement President Franklin Roosevelt allowed Black enlistment in the Army Air Forces.
This was a very courageous speech for the President to give. Senator Hubert Humphrey had proposed civil rights legislation. At the time most of the racial conservative members of Congress were Democrats and not Republicans as they would become after Civil Rights legislation actually passed in 1964. There was little possibility that the civil rights law would pass as the Southern Democrats could filibuster it in the Senate. None the less Truman supported the legislation and the principle of equal rights despite the fact that he was a Southerner and he knew he would lose the support of the conservative wing of his party.
Booth was the younger son of a very prominent Northern family of actors. His older brother was considered the greatest American actor, and the rest of the family were abolitionists and vehement Union supporters. They found young John’s views reprehensible.
At the time, the Southern segregationists were all Democrats and they blocked any Democratic attempt to pass any Civil Rights legislation. When he could not get a Civil Rights commitment from his own party, Powell turned to the Republicans and the President wrote this letter. In return, in November, Powell endorsed and supported Eisenhower instead of Stevenson, his own party’s nominee. Eisenhower could not get any legislation on Civil Rights as the Southern Democrats would always block it. When President Lyndon Johnson finally forced the 1963 Civil Rights Act through the Congress, the racist Southern Democrats cut a deal with Goldwater and the conservative Republicans, and switched parties. Since then the Civil Rights stance of the two parties reversed. The Democrats were thereafter pro Civil Rights and the Republicans, the party of Lincoln and Reconstruction, thereafter reversed their Civil Rights position and opposed progress in this area.
The country was in the midst of fighting WWII and Burma was one of the battle fronts.
The first sentence is inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC. The last two sentences are rarely quoted.
Qutb was studying at Greeley College and with some Egyptian friends want to a movie theater. Greeley, even though not in the South, practiced racial discrimination in many of their public accommodations and the Civil Rights Law would not be passed for another 15 years or so. The ticked clerk at first would not sell tickets to the dark skinned Egyptians and when one protested, the owner was called. He ruled that as long as they were not American Blacks, they could enter. But Qutb refused.
Warren a Republican from California who knew Palmer for years, stood up, put his arm around Palmer and told him, “Kyle, you and I will always be friends” and walked out.
In that year he resigned from the War Department in protest of the discrimination and racism in the armed forces.
His solution was not to change the prejudice or improve the opportunity for Blacks but to have complete separation of the races. See {625687}.
She was one of the first prominent white southerners to denounce racial segregation.
Warren Gamaliel Harding was the 29th president of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death in 1923. A member of the Republican Party, he was one of the most popular U.S. presidents to that point. After his death, a number of scandals, including Teapot Dome, came to light, as did his extramarital affair with Nan Britton; those eroded his popular regard.
