>> From the library of Congress in Washington D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> My name is Mary Lou Reker and on behalf of the Library of Congress
and the Office of Scholarly Programs and the John W. Kluge Center I wish
to welcome you to a lecture
by Doctor Eric Yellin entitled Federal Discrimination
and the Decline of National Black Politics
in the Early Twentieth Century.
All cellphones off please so there's no interruption during the talk.
Doctor Eric Yellin is an assistant professor of history
at the University of Richmond in Virginia he earned both his MA
and his PhD from Princeton University.
In addition to a Kluge post doctoral fellowship Doctor Yellin has
received a number of honors and fellowships from Princeton,
from the University of North Carolina
and from Columbia University.
He has published in a variety of places including the journal
of Southern History, Washington History on H-Net
and in African American National Biography published
by Oxford University Press.
His Library of Congress research project examined federal employment
as both a lever and an obstacle for racial equality and social mobility
in the District of Columbia during the earliest years
of the 20th century.
This is a story of politics, race, social mobility or like there
of and the American State.
It is a story and a history not always pleasant to face
but important to understand.
Indeed it is officially important that Eric found
out within the last few days that the University
of North Carolina Press will soon be publishing the book he wrote while
doing research here at the Library of Congress.
The title will be, In the Nation's Service: Race, Government Work
and the Making of the Progressive State.
And I can think of no better than you
for telling this particular story of federal government workers
and right here in the federal building
that is the Library of Congress.
So please help me welcome him today Doctor Eric Yellin.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you and thank you to the Kluge Center
and especially Mary Lou Reker and Caroline Brown for their hospitality
and kindness and they all know what this mean
that their flexibility with this talk.
My thanks also to [inaudible] and Canon in the manuscripts department
who pointed me to some amazing resources
that made this project much, much better
and really made my time here special intellectually and for the project.
My thanks to my fellow Kluge, this feels a little posthumous.
The-- my coherence is long gone from here but I'm--
I still remain grateful for their camaraderie maybe--
they'll see this somewhere.
So as Mary Lou mentioned my talk today is drawn
from a larger book project about race and racism
in the federal government from the Civil War to the Great Depression.
The book examines the experiences
of African Americans mostly White collar clerks
who past economic stability through government work were cut off
by the racism of Woodrow Wilson's Presidential Administration.
The connection between Wilson and racial segregation
in the federal offices is not really news to most historians or frankly
to most African Americans.
Though I think some of that story requires clarification
and deepening.
I wanna focus my talk today around less well known issues that helped
to establish the better known part of the story.
That is the history of Black Civil Service before Woodrow Wilson's
election and the ideologies behind maneuvers by progressive democrats
in the 19 teen's to destroy Black politics
and Black federal employment.
This is a story about what political patronage meant
for African Americans and how it became the locus of White attacks
on Black politics and Black social mobility.
Typically the history of patronage is shrouded in darkness,
the story of a malignant system of graft, corruption
and undemocratic politics.
Its not my intention to entirely deny this history.
I'm not in favor of returning to this rural system.
Rather I wanna to explore the ways
in which patronage could also include citizen's claims
to decent jobs and civic equality and circumstances
that deny them other ways to express these claims.
Patronage's real meaning to Black Americans at the turn
of the 20th century is only apparent within the context
of the period's racists U.S. labor market,
in which African-Americans were hired last and fired first.
Government salaries were more than spoils of war, they were livelihoods
and a means to social and economic mobility.
To be sure, patronage did not float all boats
and may have even forestalled a broader collective Black politics
by turning some leaders into conservative ward heelers.
Yet federal patronage did more than serve a few individualistic elites.
For a time, Black civil servants in Washington were treated as equals,
and moved up in a bureaucracy to positions
of decent pay and real responsibility.
Their mobility allowed for investment
in the capital's institutions that benefited all Black Washingtonians.
The public schools in Washington,
taught by the famed Dunbar High School were an obvious example,
but so too was the ability of Black lawyers
and republican administrators
to maintain a relatively unsegregated city into the 19 teens.
This was a real anomaly.
Thus, for decades after the Civil War federal employment was a
powerful means of social mobility for African-Americans.
The decent salaries of government clerks paid for a full
and dynamic life in a capital city
with comparative little racial discrimination.
Washington was an island of possibility for ambitious Black men
and women at a time when racism cordoned them off from most
of the economy and set ceilings on the jobs they could get.
Never for a racism or hardship D.C.
and it's Federal Offices offered nonetheless a promising future
for African-Americans in a nation in which disfranchisement, peonage,
violence and terror were becoming the hallmarks of Black life.
Patronage was in this way not undemocratic or merely corrupt.
It could be counter corrective, in a strange way, a democratic one
and a deeply flawed and racist democracy.
So corruption in a corrupt system needs to be analyzed
for whom it benefitted and why and not simply dismissed.
So in my talk here I'll make 4 points.
First, the history of Black patronage
in Republican Party politics helped
to establish Washington's Black middle class
in the late 19th century.
Second, African-Americans in the capital used this system
to protect their social mobility into the 20th century even
as Black Americans elsewhere experience the onslaught
of Jim Crow.
Third, although White republicans began
to shed their post emancipation egalitarianism around the country,
White supremacy arrived in Washington in full force
with Woodrow Wilson and his democrats in 1913.
Finally, Wilsonians used progressive critics of patronage
to malign Black Republican as corrupt
and associate racial integration with dirty politics.
They proposed a more efficient and clean government,
these are their words through segregation.
When the republicans returned to national power in 1921,
this new political and racial regime continued
to curtail Black politics and social mobility.
It didn't end with the democrats leaving office.
To understand the political and ideological elements as well
as the racist ones behind the shift under Wilson, we actually do need
to look several decades earlier.
For nearly 50 years after the civil war politics was a deciding factor
in who could earn federal paychecks.   Even after the Civil Service reform
and meritocratic fever of the 1870s and 1880s.
The economic stability of Black Washingtonians and the mechanisms
for it's undermining by the Wilsonians cannot be understood
without exploring the relationship
between late 19th century republican politics and federal employment.
Competitive examination made you eligible for federal employment
but the right political party affiliations were necessary
resume builders.
The wrong ones could be occupational suicide.
Political fortunes decided whether
or not you could payoff your mortgaged home or continue
to pursue your law degree at night.
They determined whether or not your wife needed to take on extra work
and how much you could send back to your ailing parents
in Mississippi or Minnesota.
For the most part African-Americans made their political connections
within the Republican Party.
They had first directed their hopes to Abraham Lincoln
after emancipation and soon a bond formed with his party as well.
During the post civil war reconstruction approximately 1877,
the so-called radical republicans won the hearts of Black men
and women by attempting to implement a new civil rights landscape.
They were ready to use the power of the federal government
to insert people of African descent into an equal place
in the republic even for the exercise of law and military.
The free people built institutions at the county and state level
that served as training grounds and depots
for connecting to the national party.
The presence of African-Americans at Republican Conventions
and national inaugurations and in Federal Offices was symbolic
of Black freedom and citizenship and everyone understood it this way.
In fact, Abraham Lincoln was the first to maneuver the spoils,
these jobs that would come with being elected in favor
of both his party and the African-Americans.
The political system that freed people entered into in 1860 was one
in which patronage was essential.
Assessment or fees on government salaries paid the cost
of party management.
There was no system of public's financing
for elections or for campaigns.
This came for the salaries of the government workers
who then got hired when their party got elected.
Careful job placement rewarded the party's troupes
and ensured administrative loyalty up and down the line.
Public works and public salaries brought Black people to the party,
the political system and the civil administration.
To be short, patronage could be corrupt it could be venal
and [inaudible].
It was an exhausting competition that besieged
and dominated the first months of every executive administration
and it demanded loyalty through an often cruel giving
and taking of livelihoods.
But patronage also laid out the rules by which everyone,
regardless of party or race operated.
It was not a system Lincoln
or Republicans, Black or White invented.
But in the late 19th century, it was a system Black politicians fashioned
for themselves into an institutional bull work against political
and economic discrimination.   Black voters and leaders saw more
than civic participation in this system.
They acted always with an eye
on economic welfare and social mobility.
As many in Washington knew, this material view of politics could not
or should not be dismissed merely as greed or corruption.
As the Washington Post remarked in 1897, more than honor or patronage,
recipients, White or Black wanted the salary that would "help him
to pay to educate his boys and girls
and give his family a better social position."
The broad plain of Black politics inaugurated in the 1860's
under the radical republicans was severely narrowed
by state level of discrimination.
But it is a mistake to see 1877, the year the Federal troops withdrew
when reconstruction formally ended, as a bright line
between Black politics and Black disfranchisement.
Many Republicans continued to champion African-Americans
and the party as a whole continued to support Black male suffrage.
Fredrick Douglas had famously declared
that the Republican Party is the ship and all else is the sea,
but in 1899, a Georgia politician Judson Lyons put it differently.
He said the Republican Party was the instrument of God
to see, to free the Black men.
And indeed the party had great power.
Republicans won 10 of the12 presidential elections between 1860
and 1912, and with victory, came control over the patronage
that filled the civil service in executive appointments.
National power still included regional limitations
and ultimately Black Republican influence came
to reside almost exclusively in Washington.
You can watch over these in years in narrow rate and then stopping
at the borders of Washington.
William McKinley's election in 1896 began 14 years
of near total Republican control over the Capitol,
turning it once again into a site of Black political power
that harkened back to reconstruction.
Black Republicans knew it and they converged in Washington to revel
in McKinley's inauguration forcing the society pages to stretch
for 6 columns to account for all the visiting nobles-- notables.
The celebration for the elite culminated
in a lavish 8 course banquet that ran past midnight.
Their enthusiasm seemed justified.
In the busy first days of his presidency, McKinley made a point
of meeting privately with a group of Black politicians at the office
of the Washington be the Black [inaudible] confidence
in the egalitarianism of the government administrator's sword.
People knew though, the Black Washington
in the Republican era was built out of the broken pieces of the south
and more to the point, out of the sectional reconciliation
of White Americans.
The resurgent Republicans, bigger than ever in the North
and finding their feet in the West were [inaudible]
about southern Black votes.
His attention focused on White prosperity empire
and sectional reconciliation, McKinley did nothing
to stop Southern Democrats from disfranchising 90 percent
of the nation's Black electorate or White mobs
from lynching 520 Black men and women during his presidency.
But Washington somehow stood up.
Deposed Black politicians sought refuge
from the distraction in the Capitol.
In fact, the path from Southern politics
to Federal employment had been laid near the end of reconstruction.
The once powerful Black South Carolinian Francis Cardozo moved
to Washington in 1877 to work in the treasury department.
And others like Congressman Joseph Rainey would follow
as their political office terms ended
and they were barred from re-election.
Former congressman John Adams Hyman of North Carolina was a clerk
in the Department of Agriculture by the turn of the century.
Joining them was a new generation of exiles.
Thomas M. Dent, Georgia Republican and school teacher
who had once met Booker T. Washington in Atlanta in 1895,
moved to Washington in 1900 for a job in the Census Bureau.
And when events in North Carolina exiled John C. Dancy,
McKinley's customs collector in Wilmington,
Roosevelt appointed him recorder of deeds at the District of Columbia,
a position held by an African-American
since President Garfield had appointed Frederick Douglas in 1881.
Dancy's son, who went on to a distinguished career
with a Detroit urban league were called for being--
bundled into a horse drawn carriage by my stepmother to flee
from a rioting mob and then reading in the newspapers
that my father had been advised not to come back to town.
Dancy's home in Washington became a mecca
for travelers to and from the South.
Black men and women who worked for the government at the turn
of the 20th century were functional members
of the state apparatus doing the nation's business.
These are not just celebratory or trophy positions,
their numbers grew steadily well into the new century.
In 1912, every dollar printed by the Bureau of Engraving
and Printing bore the signature of the Black man who served
as the register of the treasury.
A Black man also served as auditor of the navy department,
US Consul in Cognac, France, and collector of the port of New York.
More than 400 African-Americans, mostly men worked
as White collar clerks in Washington,
some in supervisory positions over White workers.
The politically savvy, educated and reasonably well-off Black population
in the capital represented the highest ideal of progress
for African-Americans, and was watched carefully
and covered carefully all over the country by local newspapers.
Civil Service reform in the United States,
systematized government employment, but it did not eliminate the role
of politics played and who was hired, who got these kinds of jobs.
In Washington's Executive Departments,
a deliberately porous set
of regulations undermined rules governing appointment,
but public officials were forbidden from writing letters
of recommendation for example.   They were allowed to comment
on an applicant's character and community standing.
Though it is perhaps not surprising to find the letters
of recommendation in the files of White collared clerks,
these are people with a certain amount of status and connections.
Laborers personal files also regularly contained recommendations
from congressmen and prominent citizens.
For example the personal file of Charles Barker, a laborer appointed
in 1902 to the general land office of the interior department,
contained recommendations from US Senator J.R. Burton,
Representative Charles Curtis from Barker's home state of Kansas,
as well as an assistant US District Attorney,
the chairman of the Shawnee County Kansas Republican Central Committee,
a local postmaster and 2 newspaper editors.
For all these estimatization and concerns about merit
for the Civil Service Reform Act in 1883,
introduced into federal employment, appointments,
and indeed most aspects of personnel management were decided by division
and bureau administrators who could easily come
under the influence of elected officials.
It's not lost on you that their budgets depended on these people.
The route to DC was laid by those
with political power and connections.
A bureaucracy did overlay this patronage network.
Efficiency records were kept on every employee,
and reports grated the performance in areas
such as punctuality, diligence, and accuracy.
Our principle source of excitement is wondering
when the next efficiency reports will be sent out,
War Department's clerk Susan Kendrick [phonetic] told his
fiancee, "really everyone is guessing and prophesying."
Good reports and seniority were important for any promotions,
but political connections and recommendations played key roles
in deciding which very good employees moved up quickest.
Within this system African-Americans operated skillfully
and deliberately.
Under McKinley and Roosevelt, a group of Black journalists,
academics, and politicians had coalesced in Washington
into what they called the Black Cabinet.
And they meet regularly at Grey's Restaurant at 13th
in East Street North West, to discuss influent--
to discuss ways to influence American politics,
and the state of Black America.
Notice though not all were loyal to [inaudible] Washington.
Tuskegee, Washington's school in Alabama
and its allies provided avenues to the capital and government job
by forming a network of party players and administrators
who would watch out for Black job candidates and ensure
that Black republicans is around the country.
Writing to Roosevelt's attorney general, Philander Knox,
in October 1901, Washington offered a list of names
for a civil magistrate position, and assured Knox that,
"they were all good, clean,
first class colored people, and competent".
When Alabama Republicans tried to create an all White convention
in 1902, it was Washington who spurred Roosevelt's swift action
against the White delegates.
The Alabama movement was snuffed out, at least temporarily.
Roosevelt had always approached the civil service as a reformer.
He'd been the vice-president of the Civil Service Reform Association
and the director of the system as a large.
And he was a modern thinker.
He thought he could rationalize the bloated and lazy bureaucracy.
If the fundamentally human system of reformative action
for chosen classes, veterans, African-Americans,
close friends persisted, especially within the classified civil service.
Despite his belief in White Supremacy, Roosevelt believed
"worthy" African-Americans deserved recognition.
And he also understood that this was how the party worked.
Thus, the road to finding work for African-Americans
in Roosevelt's Washington usually ran through Republican connections.
For example Thomas HR Clark entered government service
in 1901 fresh off campaign work from McKinley's re-election.
He had gotten out Black voters in the mid Atlantic states
and written a pamphlet advocating the Republican ticket.
All of which attracted the attention of Representative Joseph Sibley
of Pennsylvania and registrar of the treasury Judson Lyons
who was African-American.
After the election, Clark began as an assistant messenger
in the War Department at 720 dollars a year, a classified position.
Within 5 years, he was making 1200 dollars a year as class I clerk
in the Treasury Department.
At that time, this is-- this is good money.
It's about 2 and a half times what most people made [inaudible].
Clark could not have navigated Washington
without men like Sibley and Lyons.   And he wasn't unique.
In fact the point-- the patronage machine could also be set in motion
to save the career of the civil service clerk.
In 1902, William Jennifer [phonetic] was about to dis--
be dismissed from his clerkship but Theodore Roosevelt was alerted
to his status as "the only colored man in the census bureau
from Texas," by some of concern citizens.
Andrew Houston [phonetic], appointed by Roosevelt as a marshall
for the party in Texas, visited the census office in person and stated
that Jennifer was "a representative colored reper--
republican of the state."
That the republicans all over the state know that he is in the office.
That he is the only colored appointee remaining
and they want him to stay.
Black civil servants supposedly symbols
of the meritocracy supported the Republican Party
and effectively cashed in their support for job security.
Patronage in civil service carried economic,
social and psychological costs.
It's not simply a story of happy sort.
The middle class men and women with restrictive Victorian sensibilities,
who were able to rise through these civil service ranks,
often held deep ambivalence toward poor African-Americans.
Elite visions of economic independence, gender roles
and public behavior could be highly decorous and profoundly limiting.
Indeed, a constrained more male-dominated political sphere may
have been one of the first prices African-Americans paid
for participation in the civil administration
in the late 19th century.
This was a system that rewarded what they call respectable men.
Black women did exert their presence powerfully
and publicly including in federal offices.
Laura Joiner [phonetic] worked as a clerk in the interior department
from 1890-1933 and spoke at meetings of the Bethel literary
and historical club and Fanny Chase sister
of the Black newspaper editor pulled the patronage strings for herself
to land a job in the Government Printing Office.
But these women were exceptions and for the most part,
patronage in White colored civil service work were men's work,
undermining the breadth of Black politics and the options available
to Black women in the city.
This is one the reasons why African-American women were narrowed
into the domestic service.
And indeed, patronage was still a relationship of dependence,
despite all of the work and the ability it took
to be deemed worthy of it.
It was a system that was by no means restricted to Black party members
but it was particularly burdensome on them-- burdensome on them.
As the default position for Black people in the 20--
turn of the 20th century was suspicion.
So it took an enormous amount of work
to be deemed worthy of these jobs.
Eligibility for patronage and livelihood was won
by extreme fidelity to the Republican Party
and the middle class principles for which it stood.
Thus, capable well connected Black clerks continued
to earn good positions into the 20th century, but it was all based
on a fragile arrangement that relied on the inclusiveness
of White bureaucrats, the respectability of Black leaders,
and perhaps most importantly, the power of the Republican Party
in Washington, D.C. I think the point is clear.
Patronage had not been eliminated from the civil serv--
civil service system, rather it had been sys--
systematized and maneuvering required knowledge
of how the promotion system worked.
Whose letters of recommendation counted?
And when jobs could be considered up for grabs?
I want us to see this as something that took skill.
[Inaudible] Kendrick, Thomas HR Clark, Thomas Dent
and so many Black government clerks benefited not simply
from political connections or from a web of White and Black politicians
who were interested in boosting these men,
as what they would call "Representative Negros."
[ Pause ]   >> All of these egalitarianism
in Washington was becoming more difficult
in Washington was becoming more difficult
as Roosevelt begun his second administration in 1905.
By then, White Republicans have begun to acknowledge the disconnect
between the Southern electorate, by then almost entirely White
and Democratic and the national prominence
of Black Republicans from the South.
The result was a legitimation by the party establishment
of Black disfranchisement and a White electorate
in southern politics especially during the William Howard
Taft's presidency.
Republicans began to back away from claim that the presence
of African-Americans despite a limited electorate was actually a
corrective, a democratic corrective and simply
So under Taft, the patronage net work that had protected
and promoted Black clerks began to break down.
Calls for reform and economizing within the administration seemed
to fall hardest on Black employees.
In the Bureau of Engraving and Printing,
administrators froze the wages of female employees, a large portion
of whom were African-American.
Even those with the very best Republican connections found it
harder to maneuver.
And ultimately, Taft's declining enthusiasm
for Black patronage stemmed more from Republicans developing view
of social-- stemmed from Republican's developing view
of social and welfare policy.
Taft was no more or less racist or patronage oriented than Roosevelt.
Both were racist in the simplest term.
However, where Roosevelt's personality
and individualism had led to all kinds of contradictory positions
from Anglo-Saxon Pride to Black Rights, from civil service reform
to party loyalty and patronage, Taft did something different.
He placed himself at the forefront of the conservative backlash
against progressive politics.   As progresses began to strike
out for more involved national government,
Taft held on to a less expansive state and a weaker chief executive.
A retreat from the needs of Black Southerners aligned this aspect
of Republican policy with the rest of the party's platform.
The state will do less for everyone.
For Black voters frustrated with the Republicans 1912 represented a
political crisis.
They could not sit comfortably with Taft
and Roosevelt's new progressive party had alienated most,
many at it's convention by refusing
to sit Black delegations from the South.
Further, Roosevelt had declined to include the party platform--
in the party platform an anti racism plank written by WEB Dubois,
sending Dubois and other Black progressives
into the democratic camp.
Roosevelt, who is-- you may know the story decided he had to run
because Taft was this huge disappointment.
Roosevelt gambled that Taft's support
for Black delegates had lost him any help
of winning southern states in the election.
Setting upon a strategy long rejected by Republican leaders,
he built a shadow Republican Party in the South made
up of [inaudible] organizations.
For a long time the one sort of hold on the southern electorate
for African-Americans was their presence as the only representatives
of the Republican Party and the National Party had to refuse
as in the case of the Obama delegation
to align with the [inaudible].
Roosevelt saw this as his way of maneuvering against Taft.
He declared the Southern Delegates to be illegitimate representatives
of what he called the rotten boroughs.
In the long run, Roosevelt's work undermined the ability
of Black republicans to operate as representatives
of the National Party in the south,
the so called Black and Tan coalition.
They were delegitimized.
They were no longer seen as something
that could be called democratic, small [inaudible].
Calvin Chase, editor of the Black weekly,
the Washington Bee was keenly aware of the stakes
of dividing the republican vote and the dangers
of the democratic challenger.
He said, "Democratic success means a sweeping out from under us,
our present foundation of political recognition."
Put plainly he said, "If Wilson wins, negro clerks lose."
Wilson did win of course.   [ Pause ]
>> As the reality of the democratic victory begun to settle in,
the Republican in Black Cabinet gathered a grace one last time.
This is November 1912.
Over a banquet of four prime [inaudible] and a trunk full
of delicious Tuskegee sweet potatoes sent directly
by Booker T. Washington, the male luminaries
of Washington society put the tragic election out of their minds to revel
in each others company once last night.
But Chase was already wondering what would happen to this world.
"Will such a galaxy of men be seen holding similar positions
under the incoming administration?
Will Mr Wilson have the confidence in an alleged Negro democracy
that Mr. Taft and Colonel Roosevelt have had in their Black cabinet."
The democrats who arrived in March 1913, aimed at reforming government,
demolishing the Republicans
and instituting a Whites only civic life.
Such change was not merely a reflection of a new ruling party.
The timing of Wilson's administration was crucial.
The expansion of progressive reform, institutionalization
of White supremacy and the rise of the Democrats
in Washington all contributed to a permanent shift
in a national racial regime.
As America has moved toward a political and administrative system
that aspired to efficient and centralized bureaucracy,
White Democrats figured African-Americans
and Republican Washington as vestiges of the old system.
Black clerks became representatives of an old regime.
The nineteenth century's spoil system and its urban nest
in Washington were increasingly associated
with specifically Black corruption by the 19 teens.
Though Black politicians were operating
under patronage rules long ago established
by White politicians indeed, patronage
and congressional privilege would actually continue and flourish
in Wilson's administration.
Progressive reformers nonetheless left African-Americans holding the
bag, making it easier for Wilsonians
to connect clean government with White government.
Progressive politics converged
with White nationalism in Wilson's Washington.
White southerners in the administration accustomed
to dealing with-- to dominating society nearly every way found
Washington's racial circumstances confounding and deeply unsettling.
The failure of congress to formally Black and White people
in DC left racist open to encounters
with Black Americans on an equal basis.
The city's proud Black people walked through the streets freely
and spent money they earned in federal paychecks.
White supremacists haunted by the memories of reconstruction,
saw a federal city out of control, a society nearly ruined
by Republican rule and Black Power.
A clean progressive Capitol needed not only Democrats,
but White Democrats to function morally and efficiently.
Woodrow Wilson's demands for good government provided the progressive
frame for an administration he loathed with White supremacists.
And race served as a useful shorthand for the problems
of Republican rule in Washington, for example,
when Democratic congressman William Borland went on a campaign
to increase the hours of federal clerks,
an effort that would inspire the first federal employees union,
he put a Black face on civil service laziness and entitlement.
He said on the floor of Congress "On the slackers,
we need to waste no sympathy.
I'm told that among the young negro couples, it is customary
for both husband and wife to take civil service examination
and secure appointment if possible in the same offices.
As they get to work late in the morning and go home early
in the afternoon, it's possible for them to keep house
and raise an interesting brood
of pickaninnies while drawing too comfortable salaries
Though the parties always charged each other with corruption,
Black republicans were especially dogged by the accusation
as nearly every Black appointee was maligned
by the labeled nearly political or even
by specific charges of corruption.
That the charges against Black politicians were occasionally true
was more an indictment of politics at large than of Black politicians.
Patronage was ubiquitous in US politics.
Corruption is ubiquitous.
Moreover, African-Americans never had the autonomy or power
to cut deals only amongst themselves.
When Black politicians participated in dirty politics,
they did so in league with White politicians.
The Black politicians were the ones labeled as corrupt.
In Washington, dirty politics brought not merely political--
so in the frame of-- the democratic frame,
dirty politics brought not merely political corruption
but racial mixing, which evoked
in democrats an especially strong desire for social control
which they clouded in the redirect of progressivism.
As one writer put it to Wilson's Secretary of the Treasury,
William McAdoo what Washington needed was strong colonial control
over its Black population like in the British Empire.
"There are nearly 800 thousand Negroes in Jamaica.
Last year there were eight murders in Jamaica
as against thirty in Washington."
As in the post emancipation South, African-Americans
in Washington were not ready
to handle the privileges republicans were giving them.
This was the claim.
The inevitable result was crime, corruption and immorality.
White supremacists hoped that Woodrow Wilson would restore order--
law and order in the nation's capital
in the same way he had sought
to destroy machine [inaudible] urban politics in New Jersey
as a crusading reform governor in New Jersey.
Calls for racial segregation connected Southern Democrats' ideas
about law and order with those of urban progressives in Washington,
drawing order, drawing lines, making separations.
Segregation restored order by more means
than merely separating White and Black people.
Segregation was a method of managed contact much
as enslavement had been a way of keeping African-Americans close
and available for service and perhaps
in our better day is tutelage but not too close or too empowered.
Constant interracial contact was acceptable,
so long as Black people were in a distinctly subordinate position.
Indeed even an explicitly racist bill to segregate the civil service
in the House of Representative made an exception for messengers,
janitors, and porters who worked in every office
and interacted everyday with White workers.
Much like other progressive tools of reform, segregation was a new
in modern technology for restoring an order
that supposedly existed before modern life brought
so much class and ethnic strife.
Wilsonians justification of racial discrimination was critical
to the changing place and power of Black citizenship
within the 20th century America State.
Wilson always maintain that the goals
of his administration were fairness and efficiency.
These were big words with him.
Segregation and discrimination was necessary
for good, clean modern government.
When Wilsonian progressives came to clean up Washington,
they meant its offices and its streets.
They posed as redeemers of a government
and its capital gone astray under Republican rule.
Black politicians and civil service
in DC were not representatives of a biracial democracy.
They were symbols of corruption and spoils.
Segregation was then declared.
It was part of his plan to make the federal government more efficient
and the capital, a happier, more attractive city.
Indeed, according to Wilson,
Black people in the national capital aroused irrational passions among
White Americans, setting this stage for corrupt government
and eventually racial conflagration.
African-Americans going about their businesses
and doing their jobs made White people crazy,
and then White people would do things like be corrupt.
So, the solution was to get rid of the Black people.
Friction between White and Black people was inevitable, he argued.
It would have to be controlled if the United State was
to be a model nation, if the federal government was
to be a model employer and if Washington was to be a model city.
Bureaucratic reform, the so called rationalizing a federal employment,
an effort actually to remove all of these holes and porous regulations
in federal offices, proceeded with racial discrimination under Wilson
and with similar arguments and language.
The progressive state nationalized a racial hierarchy White Southerners
had spent a generation erecting at home.
The administration sought to delegitimize public objections
to segregation and there were public objections.
By marking any protest by employees as both insubordinate and false.
Black workers who rejected the civil services image
as an objective rational bureaucracy
with no particular racial agenda were [inaudible]
or down right crazy.
If African-Americans were disproportionately
in the lower ranks of government service Wilsonians insisted,
this said more about African descent that about their employer,
never mind 50 years of opposite history of opposing history.
African-Americans and some allies never accepted these arguments,
of course.
But the vast majority of White Americans did not question it.
In this way federal discrimination including administrator's
explanation of it is rational as normal, as necessary.
Played its part in the national institutionalization
of White supremacy in the United States.
False meritocracies are the idea that,
what was there represented merit,
can transform socially constructed hierarchies
into natural expectations.
Segregated and then calling that normal creates expectations.
The return of republican rule in 1921, revealed the way
in which then new racial regime crossed party lines.
Harding and Coolidge did not turn back the clock to the days
of the republican patronage machine, the republican disconnect was felt
in the streets and in the offices of the capital.
"The last 4 years," declared one Black journalist in 1925,
had proved disappointing, the destruction of a legitimate role
for Black politics had eroded the possibility,
that Black republicans might be effective representatives
of Black America.
Accusations of corruption, frequent even before Wilson,
stuck to Black Southern politician better as real constituencies
and achievements shrunk as the electorate was crushed,
African-Americans leaders were held up were more easily isolated.
And with the party, if not Coolidge himself,
still dogged by the Harding scandals and incredibly corrupt--
if you've seen Boardwalk Empire there are these great illustrations
of this.
White republicans were eager to distance themselves
from anybody they can show easily as rotten
and Blackness became associated with rottenness.
Patronage, especially Black patronage,
have lost out to managerial bureaucracy
and African-Americans once skilled players were now left
without access to the game.
What concerned African-American employees most was the increasingly
apparent relationship between segregation and opportunity.
Even if they could accept the so called Negro corners,
the corners were necessarily on the margins.
African-American federal employees made a distinction
between segregation and employment discrimination.
Segregation was something that one might have to accept.
It was the norm in the country.
Employment discrimination was new at least in the federal government.
The racially tiered system meant less mobility and less money
for Black Washingtonians.
Requesting a promotion in 1923 for example,
Thomas Hutchinson acknowledged the special circumstances affecting
promotions of Black census clerks.
"I know that all of us cannot be promoted
at once," he told his supervisor.   But he wondered if his years
of being underpaid might push him up the list.
His senator in recommending him for promotion in 1924 noted
that he was a clerk in the colored group of the bureau.
The reply confirmed Hutchinson's suspicions.
Mr. Hutchinson is a good faithful employee explained his supervisor.
It has not been possible however to recognize him by promotion
to 1200 dollars because of the few vacancies that occur in that grade
and the more pressing needs of the bureau to take care of persons
with special qualifications who were likely to leave us in the event
that they do not receive these promotions.
Hutchinson had no special qualifications
but more importantly everyone knew
that a college educated Black Arkansan
like Hutchinson had few options elsewhere.
Where was he gonna go?
No other area of work offered these stable employment
for African Americans.
African Americans continue to be profoundly disturbed
by discrimination in federal offices and they never stop protesting.
But most of the Black civil servants working in Washington
when Wilson took office in 1913 did not live
to see the color line erased.
That generation experienced the opportunities of the Republican Era
and the frustrations of the shift in racial regimes.
No longer did their abilities, education, political loyalty
to the GOP and darker skin service productive elements
in a government career.
But as that generation began to pass away in the mid
and late 1920's a new one emerged equally hard working this group
of men and women were shaped
by federal segregation the disappointments following World War
I and the rise of a Republican regime that had no political
or ideological connections to the abolitionism
or Republican Republicanism, the Radical Republicanism the ties
to reconstruction were cut.
Whereas the previous generation had funneled its racial consciousness
into republican politics and U.S. Citizenship the new one found its
identity upon-- founded its identity upon Black Pride,
transnational connections to people of color
and opposition to rigid White hate.
The NAACP, the national urban league,
and briefly [inaudible] replaced mainstream politics
as guardians of civil rights.
But these outside interest groups could not reach
into federal offices the way political patronage could.
It is also clear that for many African Americans
in this latter generation hard work family migration
and economic survival dominated their lives in a nation
that offered them even less than it had a generation earlier.
Federal discrimination was thus not simply the establishment
of segregation in federal offices by one democratic president,
rather this process was part of a dramatic change
in national politics one that touched on big trends
like bureaucratic rationalization, progressive politics
and sudden disfranchisement.
Patrons were so much more than a spoil system.
For savvy educated and political Black men women it was a protector
of social welfare, economic mobility and democratic citizenship.
Thank you.   [ Applause ]
>> Are you going to reply?   >> Oh sure, sure.
[ Pause ]
>> I put you to sleep or I've awed you.
>> I have one, a question about that shift of the way party,
the Democratic Party seemed to-- I guess I'm what is it.
I'm wondering do they not [inaudible] that they put
out to the public or the publicity spin.
>> The Democrats in Wilson's?
>> The Democrats coming from through the [inaudible].
>> Yeah absolutely it's-- its.   [ Inaudible Remark ]
>> Yeah. It's-it's drawn out.
There-- there is no official announcement of this.
There is no-- nobody had a press conference.
But civil rights activists, Black and White,
pounded the administration through the-- through beginning in--
in April of 1913, right after they started to unfold
within the administration, with questions and with public protest.
There were mass meetings in cities from Washington to Chicago
to Boston to Tacoma, Washington.
And so, somebody had to say something.
And the rhetoric was very carefully laid out and it was this.
We didn't make this system.
We came into a system that was broken, that was corrupt,
that was full of-- and this is the keyword friction.
Black and White people in federal offices,
everybody knows that's a bad idea.
And it's been a bad idea for 50 years.
And so all we're doing is just making things run better.
And so there was-- there were this weird kind of denials
about ill intent toward African-Americans
and claims of fairness.
Well, what we're really doing is setting up separate offices
in which African-Americans can actually expect greater chance
of promotion because they're not competing with Whites.
And that way if we make separate offices will reduce this friction
and we can-we can further this goal of a progressive state
that runs better and serves the American population better.
And the rhetoric was, "You American citizens don't want this"
because it makes everything run bad, right?"
The notion that somehow Washington is clogged and full of peo--
incompetent people is not a 21st century tea party notion right?
It's something that is always used, right?
So what de-- what democrats did is to locate
that in almost everything republicans did including the
supposed racial integration.
And so the rhetoric was, "This is efficiency.
This is modern."   Yeah. And it was public.
It's not public from Wilson until November 1914 when he's confronted
in his office by William Monroe Trotter.
Why wasn't at this meeting?
Is an interesting question but it took a meeting with Trotter
who was a brilliant but very fiery civil rights activist.
And Wils-- and Trotter said, "You can't call this democratic.
You can't call this equality."
And that's where Wilson leaned heavily on this claim of efficiency
for the nation, efficiency for the people.
And Trotter stepped right out of the office
and the meeting was well publicized and important enough
that there were reporters right outside Wilson's office
and Trotter laid out almost word for word what Wilson said.
And Wilson never denied it.
And that's when it became public that Wilson was--
was making this line of argument.
But Wilson's lieutenants like Secretary
of Treasury McAdoo had been making that argument, publicly for a year.
[ Pause ]   >> Yeah.
[ Inaudible Question ]
>> Yeah. This is a-- so Wilson's wife was a Georgian
and a White Southern lady for all
that entails-- his first wife, Ellen.
And there's a story that she toured the Bureau of Engraving
and Printing right after Wilson took office and was horrified
by what she saw, which was absolute--
integration is always the wrong word because integration implies
from segregation to-- this was just race was not an issue
where employees were placed.
And so she saw mixed offices and supposedly was horrified and went
to Tommy Woodrow Wilson and said, "You can't, you can't do this."
There's no evidence of that.
If she said that to you, she said it so privately
that no one has ever recorded it.
The-- her visit is recorded and her advocacy on behalf of Bureau
of Engraving and Printing women who were working in really difficult,
working circumstances is public.
But I-- I haven't found any evidence that she said something,
"Wilson, it's entirely possible."
But I think, my sense has always been
that I don't think these guys needed Ellen Wilson to tell them
that segregation was a good idea or that African-Americans ought
to be prevented from social mixing.
I think John-- John Skelton Williams who was the assistant secretary
of treasury who was in-charge of personnel management felt
that it was a burning passion of his.
It was one of the first things he did.
There are stories about him,
crazy stories about him taking correspondence that was coming
out of the department and removing the words Mr.
and Mrs. before every name of a person he knew to be Black.
He was absolutely zealous.
And so, I don't think he needed Ellen Wilson to tell him to do this.
And so that-- that sort of, yeah, but that story is out there.
>> Now Wilson [inaudible] himself.
>> So Wilson is born in Staunton, Virginia and grew
up in South Carolina in Georgia and I mean Wison is a White supremacist.
He's an Anglo-Saxonist.
He is not in favor of racial integration.
[ Inaudible Remark ]
>> And he was president of Princeton University.
He was professor at Princeton
and then president of Princeton University.
He was instrumental in keeping it White then.
The difference between Wilson and someone like John Skelton William,
his Assistant Secretary of the Treasury was
that first Wilson was a New Jersey politician
who didn't have deal with issue much.
He didn't get elected by race bidding, by claiming a kind
of populist, White populist division.
He got elected by progressive politics that were local
to New Jersey and where race wasn't a huge issue.
Secondly, he considers himself a rationalist.
He did-- he never gave fiery speeches against anyone, right?
Was he a racist?
Absolutely, he had a-- he thought segregation was a very good idea.
He told Oswald [inaudible] the head of the--
one of the leaders of NAACP
that it was a very good idea that he supported it.
But his sense of the motive and the zealousness behind is,
I don't think it was, I don't think it was something that got him
out of bed in the morning, the way it did his administrators.
And the way it did people who were pushing
for segregation in federal government.
Yeah.   [ Inaudible Remark ]
>> Oh yeah.
Yeah and in fact the republicans strutted it out in 1932.
He's on record as endorsing segregation
within the navy department.
It's a memo that was written I think right in 1913, 1914 and he just--
just disavowed and said yeah there was
at the times that's what everybody was doing.
If he-- he was careful [inaudible] because it played both ways, right?
He was still a democrat and he still needed Southern democratic support.
So for those people he said, see I'm on record.
And the other people said, I'm from New York, right and so he could--
he could play but yes his-- he knew about it.
Yeah.   [ Inaudible remarks ]
>> I think that's a big part of it.   Yeah.
>> On the other side where you alluded
to change in [inaudible], right?
As the less [inaudible] and more western [inaudible]?
>> Yeah for the-- for the Republican Party.
So you've got-- see you've got-- the Republican Party was always this mix
of people who would even [inaudible] the Massachusetts senator
who was a White supremacist and actually against immigration.
We get fiery speeches saying
that our party is founded on abolitionism.
It's founded on African-American civiliza--
citizenship and so we owe this and he would stand up for suffrage
and the [inaudible] bill in 1890 was supposed
to force White Southern constitutionists
to accept Black suffrage.   And for him it was ideological.
And then there were people who for whom it was political
and you get this people who say, we can't abandon Black voters not
because I care anything about Black voters but because
that they're the only presence in the South.
And they're the only reason we can claim to be a national party.
This was very important.
The Republican Party to be claimed to be a national party particularly
if you're gonna make any claims
of sectional reconciliation after the war.
There was a lot of concern
that because Lincoln's election essentially was part
of that road towards the Civil War.
The view would be that it's actually not a national party,
it's a Northern party.
And these parties could say, no,no,no we have offices
in every city in the South.
They happen to be staffed by Black people who can't vote
but that's not-- here and there.
And that calculation the calculating sorts--
the calculus could change as the electorates, Black electorate shrank
as disfranchising became more and more effective by the turn
of the century as the West picked up as a Republican territory
so they could claim, we're national
because we have representatives in the west.
And essentially, as also White supremacy became an increasingly
elite view, all right, a race [inaudible] supported their view
so that the calculus didn't seem to make-- wasn't--
there wasn't the same impetus behind the calculus.
And then its those people, those ideological people like Cabot Lodge
who just think that, remember, I mean Cabot Lodge was raised
at the [inaudible] of Charles [inaudible] in Boston.
Those people start to fade out from, from having real control
over the party and they can't make the argument that well,
it's worth it and that's where Roosevelt's decision in 1912
to build White-- Lily White organizations comes on ,
ecause Wilson, because Roosevelt beats Taft.
It works, and so Roosevelt says look,
you don't need a rather national party director
to say look actually Roosevelt proved it.
We don't need Black offices, we don't need to be a national party
and we don't need these Black leaders
to wrangle their constituencies, even if they're starting
to grow small constituencies in Chicago and New York
and Philadelphia, alright.
And then, with Harding and Coolidge they're simply to believe
that we weren't elected with it.
We're elected in disfranchisement so, we're done with that.
And there's nobody like Cabot Lodge, really to say.
Yeah but you promised and it's democratic and its basis
of our citizenship and the [inaudible] amendment is there.
There's nobody really to say that anymore.
Is that sort of--   >> Yeah, yeah.
>> Yeah.   [ Inaudible Remark ]
>> There were voices Martin Madden was a congressman from Illinois
and he's elected right on 1900 and he serves until the Depression
until 1928 when he dies which leads to Oscar De Priest's election and so
if you know anything about Chicago from 1900-1928, he's the--
his district is the south side of Chicago
and he is literally watching his district become increasingly Black.
And so by 1913-1914, he has a Black constituency and he is one
of the main of people on the Fourth Congress who would make sure
that segregation bills were never passed, there was a bill
to segregate the federal government, the federal civil service
and that Martin Madden was
on the civil service reform committee and he blocked it.
So there were absolutely voices here and there
but they become increasingly localized so that Madden stands
for kind off majority minority district what we would call
[inaudible] politics.   So he peaks for south side Chicago
but doesn't speak for the party, right.
And then when he dies, De Priest is elected as a Conservative Republican
and he's not seen as a national party leader, he's seen as from
that one weird constituency in Chicago
where there are a lot of Black voters, yeah.
[ Inaudible Remark ]   >> It's both.
There's a kind of slipping in the Taft administration.
One of the first things that Taft does, he hints at it
when he is Secretary of War under Roosevelt and then
when he becomes president,
he says that he's no longer gonna force southern cities
and southern constituencies to accept Black federal appointees,
and so he stops appointing African Americans to you know,
[inaudible] jobs and he makes a public statement in Atlanta
that he won't do that anymore which is a kind of capitulation and racist
within the federal government and there were some, take this as,
as a note that oh, you know the regime is starting to shift and,
so there are increasing reports of discrimination and of segregation.
What's different under Wilson is a fully backed administration
for the claim-- a belief that it's Washington specifically that needs
to change not our relationship with the south and simply
if you were republican administrator who have some connection
to this past egalitarianism.
So it's-- there are some erosion and then there's no question the 1913
where Black employees felt like a big shift, big change.
>> Thanks.   >> Thank you very much Eric.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.