update 10/20/99 - TRA

First and foremost it is important to consider the time period. The concept of civil rights was not the same as we know it. Theodore Roosevelt was born not too long before the Civil War. During his childhood slavery was legal, but later abolished. Women could not vote, many considered college education and higher paying professions as inappropriate roles for women, and property ownership and legal rights were different for women. Many changes took place in the United States during his life time. But what we know of civil for all people regardless of race, religion or sex was still a long time away.

Theodore Roosevelt on Civil Rights -
On African Americans
On Anti-Semitism
On Women's Rights

On African Americans
(contibutions by Linda Milano Assistant Director Theodore Roosevelt Association)

Overall TR had a good record of treatment of African-Americans. Unfortunately however, his one major failure of his presidency also included them.

Desegregation

In 1899, while he was Governor of the State of New York, Theodore Roosevelt pushed a bill desegregating state schools through the State Assembly, sending the Assembly a note saying that his own children went to school with colored children (the politically correct term at the time) and that it did them no harm.

First African-American entertained at the White House

In 1901, right after he was sworn in as President after the death of President William McKinley, he invited Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute to the White House for a meeting. The meeting ran late, and TR invited Mr. Washington to dinner. This was the first time that an African-American was entertained at the White House as a guest.

The newspapers in the South went ballistic; the papers in the North weren't too supportive either. The Memphis "Scimiter" said that it was "the most damnable outrage that has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States." Roosevelt claimed he had invited a friend to dinner with his family and it was no one else's business.

After that, TR met with Booker T. Washington at the home of his sister, Anna Roosevelt Cowles, and had dinner with him there. He also met with Mr. Washington in New York City in 1910, after TR returned home from his trip to Africa and Europe. TR wanted an update about what had been happening while he was away.

In his Memorial Day speech in 1902, TR spoke out against the lynching of
African-Americans in the South. He did so several times, actually.

Appointment of Dr. Crum

TR appointed an African-American, a Dr. Crum, as Collector of the Port of Charleston (collector of tariffs) in South Carolina. TR was put under pressure
to withdraw the appointment, but refused to do so. In a letter to a citizen of
Charleston who wrote to protest the appointment, Roosevelt answered:

"I do not intend to appoint any unfit man to office. So far as I legitimately can, I shall always endeavor to pay regard to the wishes and feelings of the people of each locality; but I cannot consent to take the position that the doorway of hope - the door of opportunity - is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color. Such an attitude would, according to my contentions, be
fundamentally wrong."

Minnie Cox was an amazing woman. She was appointed head of the post office in Indianola, Mississippi, down in the Delta region, by Benjamin Harrison, in an area where blacks were in the majority, and she was still in office when TR became President. White racist politicians, particularly the infamous James K. Vardaman, running for governor, in 1902 used Minnie Cox as proof that African Americans had too much power, and that President Theodore Roosevelt was a Negrophile. Vardaman, who was indeed elected governor, called TR that "coon-flavored miscegenationist in the White House."

Mrs. Cox was threatened with violence by local whites, who held several mass or mob meetings to demand her removal (her term expired in 1904). The mayor and sheriff declined to protect her, and she resigned as postmaster, effective January 1, 1903, and left town for a time.

TR's response was to close the Indianola post office on January 2, 1903; decline Mrs. Cox's resignation and continue her salary; and force Indianola residents to collect their mail at Greenville, 30 miles away. By statute Indianola as a county seat was entitled to a post office. Thus the President could not abolish that post office or keep it closed indefinitely. Mrs. Cox said she would not accept reappointment. TR in 1904 appointed a white Democrat who was a friend of Mrs. Cox and had been her bondsman. The Indianola post office was demoted from third-class to fourth-class, on the basis that no revenues had been received in 1903.

Minnie Cox and her husband Wayne W. Cox, who had been an employee in the railway mail service, returned to Indianola and organized the "Delta Penny Savings Bank." They had been substantial property owners before 1903, and they now bought more land and became successful bankers as well.


Brownsville Incident

The main "failure" of Theodore Roosevelt's administration was the "Brownsville Incident" - the people of Brownsville, Texas claimed that 12 members of the African-American 25th Infantry stationed nearby had shot up the town and then returned to their base.

When members of the 25th were asked to step forward to admit guilt, no one did. The men were then ordered to give information against whoever was responsible. Again, no one did.

They were then told that if no one either claimed responsibility for the action, or gave information against who was responsible, they would all be dishonorably discharged for insubordination. No one stepped forward.

The papers for the dishonorable discharges were sent to President Theodore Roosevelt for signature. He asked for an investigation into the incident and was told that the people of Brownsville were insisting that members of the 25th had shot up their town. As a matter of military discipline (the discharges were for insubordination - disobeying the order to admit guilt or give information, not for the act of shooting up the town itself), TR signed the 167 discharges. Many of these men were career soldiers, who were then denied their pensions. It caused a lot of hardship for them. It also
caused a lot of hard feelings.

Years later, after most of the men of the 25th, and also Theodore Roosevelt, had died, the truth came out. The people of Brownsville had lied, and the men were framed. The dishonorable discharges were reversed, but it was too late for most of the men who had been discharged under those circumstances.

That was the worst failure of TR's adminsitration.

Employees
On a personal note, TR had several African-American employees, two of which
follow:

Charles Lee, a former slave, was a stable-hand at the White House stables and, when TR left office, Lee asked him for a job at his home in Oyster Bay. At first TR was not sure - it wasn't a good time to be adding to his payroll when he was just out of a job himself. Lee kept asking, saying he had no one in the Washington area who he was close to and that he was not married. TR hired him.

TR's wife Edith, when they got back to Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, approached
the ministers of the two African-American churches in town to see if there were
suitable ladies to introduce to Mr. Lee. There were. Mr. & Mrs. Lee lived in an apartment on the grounds of Sagamore Hill.

TR hired another African-American, James Amos, to look after his children while
they lived in the White House. James also did a lot of travelling with TR (you can
see him standing near the President in at least two photos taken on different trips).

After TR left the White House, James went to work for the Burns Detective Agency,
but kept in touch with the family. In 1919 when TR was very ill, Edith Roosevelt
called James to ask him as a favor to her to come out to Sagamore Hill an d help sit up through the night with her husband. James did so, and he was the person who was with TR when he died on January 6, 1919. He was also the last person TR spoke to before his death. After TR's death, James became an FBI agent, and wrote a book about his former boss, "Theodore Roosevelt: A Hero to his Valet" - the title of which has been mis-understood over the years. There was a remark made by a famous author of the time that "no man was a hero to his valet" and the title of James Amos's book was a play on words as Amos was never TR's valet.

On Anti-Semitism

Roosevelt generally judged men and women by their character, or on more than one occasion by their politics, but not on their race or religion. As police commissioner, he opened the department to Jews. One Jewish officer, Otto Raphael, said the traditional prayer for the dead over Roosevelt's body the night before he was buried.

One of the favorite stories of TR and Jews comes from his time as a Police Commisioner of New York City. A German anti-semitic preacher planned to give speeches in New York "denouncing" Jews. The preacher expected protection from the police department and that is where Roosevelt came in.

Many Jews were alarmed and/or outraged and asked Roosevelt to prevent the speeches. "Of course I told them I could not - that the right of free speech must be maintained unless he incited them to riot." But, "On thinking it over, however it occurred to me that there was one way in which I could undo most of the mischief he was trying to do."

Cleverly, TR put a Jewish Police Sergeant in charge of the preachers protection, along with forty Jewish Policemen and the fanatical preacher looked absolutely ridiculous.

[Miller, pg 232]

Roosevelt also stood firmly against Russian aggression against the Jews. "following a particularly savage explosion of anti-Semitic violence in Kishinev during Easter week of 1903, Roosevelt,..., ordered the State Department to forward a protest petition from prominent American Jews to the Russian government. He also issued a statement expressing, 'the deep sympathy felt not only by the administration but by all the American peole for the unfortunate Jews who have been the victims in the recent appalling massacres and outrages.' "

The Russians would not formally receive the petition, but the message was there, both for the Russians, and the Jewish voters of the US.

[Miller, pg. 443-444]

On Women's Rights

Although TR had many of the affectations of a young reasonably well-to-do Harvard man, his progressive bent showed itself even then. Perhaps as an effort to impress his love and later first wife Alice Lee? Or as a result of the influences to the bright, educated, thoughtful and strong women around him, such as his mother who smuggled supplies to the South during the civil war, or his sisters, or even young Edith Carow who would be his second wife. His father was a reformist and he may have been exposed to the discussions of early feminists while socializing at Harvard.

Whatever the reason, TR became an early champion of rights for women. His college senior essay in 1880, would be about that subject, "The Practicality of Equalizing Men and Women Before the Law."

"In advocating any measure we must consider not only its justice but its practicality. Viewed purely in the abstract, I think there can be no question that women should have the equal rights with men [he contended]. Even as the world now is, it is not only feasable [sic] but advisable to make women equal to men before the law. . . A cripple or a consumptive in the eye of the law is equal to the strongest athlete or the deepest thinker; and the same justice should be shown to a woman whether she is, or is not, the equal of man. A son should have no more right to any inheritance than a daughter should have. Property is but little more likely to be mismanaged in the hands of a woman than in those of a man. Especially as regards the laws relating to marraige [sic] there should be the most absolute equality preserved between the two sexes. I do not think the woman should assume the man's name."

[Miller, pgs. 99-100]

Not long after his graduation and then marriage to Alice, TR found himself elected to the New York State Legislature. The suffrage party (supporters of a woman's right to vote in elections) hoped to find an "able and forceful promoter" of the rights and interests of women in his district.

[Miller, pg. 121]

When Roosevelt served on the Civil Service Commission for six years, he pulled many government jobs out from the political payback system, and put them under a merit system with tests for applicants. "For the first time, women' were put on the same competitive level with men, which incread their numbers in government jobs."

[Miller, pg. 226]

In 1912, when Roosevelt was nominated to serve as the third party candidate for president (the formation of the Bull Moose party) his nomination was seconded by Jane Addams, the founder of the settlement house movement (a precursor to the homeless shelters we have today). She received his assurance that he was in total support of woman's suffrage.

"Working women have the same need to protection that working men have; the ballot is as necessary for one class as to the other; we do not believe that with the two sexes there is identity of function; but we do believe there should be equality of right."
Speech, National Convention of the Progressive Party, Chicago, IL, August 6, 1912

"Much can be done by law towards putting women on a footing of complete and entire equal rights with man - including the right to vote, the right to hold and use property, and the right to enter any profession she desires on the same terms as the man."..."Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly."
An Autobiography, 1913

resources:
Miller, Nathan. Theodore Roosevelt: A Life. New York:William Morrow and Co. Inc., 1992.
The Theodore Roosevelt Association