Unlike the Other Days feature in the Arkansas section that plucks antique news from the Arkansas Gazette archives of 10, 25, 50 and 100 years ago, Old News actively avoids writing about serious old stuff — unless my conscience shames me into it.
Instead, as we poke along through 100-year-old editions of the Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat, I pull out human interest stories or random items that surprise me, that help me appreciate some part of modern life that's easy to take for granted. Recent example: People used to die because there were no windshield wipers.
But every so often the surprise is inextricably muddled in with serious stuff. Witness this headline from the middle of the Gazette's June 7, 1920, front page:
Nixon for president
I know, right?
Obviously, the story was not about Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th president of the United States. He was 7 years old in 1920. Nor was it about his father or an uncle. Here's a bit of the report:
New York, June 6.— Lewis Nixon, public service commissioner, was endorsed for the Democratic nomination for president at a Dolly Madison "breakfast" of the New York Women's Democratic League yesterday after James W. Gerard, himself a candidate, had walked from the meeting following an admonition against going on record for individual candidates.
We don't know why they put "breakfast" in quotes. Maybe it was just coffee. Maybe it was a brunch. But we do know that Gerard had been President Woodrow Wilson's ambassador to Germany before the Great War. In 1920, he was running for president.
Just before Gerard spoke to this group of women and men, someone told him they might endorse someone else. Gerard urged them not to jump the gun. It wasn't time yet to back candidates. The nominees hadn't been named yet. Then he left the meeting.
New York had granted women the right to vote in 1917, so he was speaking to voters. But at this point in 1920, only 35 states had ratified the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Women's suffrage was still a campaign. According to the June 6 New York Herald, about 500 people were at this so-called breakfast, the group's final event before the Democratic convention in San Francisco later in the month.
We can imagine there followed more speeches and discussion, and then the women endorsed Lewis Nixon.
Commenting on the endorsement Mr. Nixon said:
"Who wouldn't run if nominated?"
This was the final time Nixon's name appeared in the Gazette that year and possibly forever. I haven't looked into forever yet, but I expect the name "Lewis Nixon" does appear during or after World War II. That would be Lewis Nixon III, a grandson. He was an Army officer whose service and exploits with the 101st Airborne Division earned him a ton of medals. Lewis III is portrayed in HBO's miniseries Band of Brothers. But in 1920, that Lewis was 1 ½ years old.
So who was the first Lewis Nixon, besides a city official of New York? Almost 60, Nixon was known for his opposition to New York's ruling political machine, Tammany Hall. He had actually been boss of the Tammany Society briefly, but resigned, saying he couldn't remain a member and maintain his self-respect. He'd worked for the populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan and been a delegate to Democratic national conventions.
Outside politics, he was a naval architect. He designed American battleships in the 1880s, and his company built the first U.S. submarines.
Was he a serious candidate for president? Not that I can tell. That minor New York item wound up in the Gazette because Gerard was.
The rest of the page was dominated by the Republican National Convention, which was about to begin in Chicago.
And that's actually all that I want to say about this surprising item, "Nixon for president" ... but, dagnabbit, I must mention that the Republican convention of 1920 was a big deal in U.S. racial politics.
It was the moment when the GOP recognized and seated self-styled "lily white" delegations from Southern states, including Arkansas, even though black delegates petitioned to be seated. The move backhanded black delegates who had been
"steam-rollered" at the county level by white Republicans who thought they would never gain more power in the South if they continued to allow black participation — which they termed "domination."
After being denied, those respectable black Republicans went back to their states and put forth their own slate of candidates.
In an essay published in 1974 by The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, historian Tom Dillard explains that the ultimate leverage black Republicans had to maintain any voice in their party was the threat of running a separate slate. A separate slate would split the GOP vote because some white Arkansas Republicans joined black Republicans in opposing the lily whites; they were called "black and tans."
"The final, and most disruptive, confrontation between the lily white and black and tan factions occurred in 1920, in the atmosphere of growing intolerance of the post World War I period," Dillard wrote. "The thing that differentiates the 1920 Republican racial conflict from earlier crises was the fact that the black Republicans went to the unprecedented extreme of nominating their own candidate for governor."
He was Josiah Blount, a school principal and farmer from Forrest City. You will read more about this black leader as the centennial of his historic candidacy continues. (See arkansasonline.com/68blount.)
So, that national GOP convention was underway 100 years ago this week, and there were big fat controversies every day. Women's suffrage activists picketed but did not heckle. Lily whites failed to take an anti-lynching statement out of the party platform. The Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations, Prohibition, revolution in Mexico, collective bargaining, bonuses for veterans — all were on fire in smoke-filled rooms.
And three strong candidates nobody remembers today each had so much support that it was almost pure surprise June 12 when Warren G. Harding of Ohio was nominated for president with Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts as his vice presidential nominee.
If this has been a rather dull-to-read column, imagine how exhausting it has been to write. This is why I don't like writing about the big stories that were the main news 100 years ago. They almost never point up improvements we can take for granted.
But that headline about the Nixon guy — that was weird, huh?
Email:
cstorey@adgnewsroom.com
Style on 06/08/2020