Racial Harmony Quotes
As enlightened and progressive that his views on Blacks were, he was amazingly racist when it came to Native Americans. See {588991}.
Taft, very progressive on racial matters, was a little too optimistic. The “intelligent” Southerners were in the small minority. Only a week after Taft made this statement, Joseph Gorden, a Negro, was lynched outside Greenwood, Mississippi.
Bilbo was one of the worst racists who ever served in the Congress.
In his travels to the Americas Darwin saw some free Blacks but mostly slaves. He thought very highly of Blacks and was an inveterate opponent of slavery.
At the time racism and discrimination in the United States was not only rampant but legal. But change in many substrata of America was detectable and many intellectuals--writers, artists, scientists, educators, theologians, entertainers, groups who would later be called “elites” began to make themselves heard on the subject. Falkner was one whose novels had always taken an anti racist view point and now were overtly calling for political and social change.
This was a bomb-shell statement at the time. Advocates for equality and desegregation usually tried to avoid this issue and Black leaders in particular were afraid of a backlash if they included this issue in the argument for equality. Du Bois did not run from the issue. His position was used by segregation leaders to show what “evils” would befall the nation if segregation was ended. See {586739}.
This column outraged most of the Southern politicians but was extolled by African Americans and those who opposed segregation in the country. Her husband, the President, remained silent on the issue. That way the Southern segregationists could be grateful that the President did not endorse that they considered un-American statements, and meanwhile those who were outraged by the existence of legal segregation could take heart that the President did not oppose his wife’s statement.
