Professor Dave here, let’s learn about Calvin Coolidge.
John Calvin Coolidge Jr. ascended to the presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding
in 1923.
Elected in his own right in 1924, he gained a reputation as a small-government conservative,
yet one deeply committed to Civil Rights.
“Silent Cal” Coolidge restored public confidence in the White House after the revelations
of the Teapot Dome Affair and other scandals of his predecessor’s administration, and
he left office with considerable popularity.
Coolidge first gained prominence as Governor of Massachusetts, when the Boston Police went
on strike in the fall of 1919.
Initially, Coolidge left the matter to local authorities, but the situation threatened
to get out of hand once three out of every four policemen was on strike.
Boston Police Chief Edwin Curtis, who had opposed the strike, was relieved by the mayor.
Coolidge sent in the National Guard, reinstated Curtis, and personally took control of the
police force, correctly anticipating that the public would support his position.
Although he usually acted with deliberation, the Boston police strike gave Coolidge a national
reputation as a decisive leader and strict enforcer of law and order.
Six decades later, President Ronald Reagan cited Coolidge’s tough handling of striking
Boston police when he fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981.
Coolidge won re-election in a landslide and he began attracting national attention.
He was selected to be Warren Harding’s running mate at the 1920 GOP convention and the ticket
won a decisive victory in the general election.
Harding’s sudden death thrust Coolidge into the presidency and “Silent Cal” became
known as a man of few words, and a dry sense of humor.
The most famous Coolidge story, possibly a myth, was that at a dinner party a woman once
said to him, “I made a bet that I could get more than two words out of you.”
To which Coolidge supposedly replied, “You lose.”
His silences were so famous, that upon hearing of Coolidge’s death, writer Dorothy Parker
remarked, “How can they tell?”
But Coolidge represented the hopes of the middle class, an All-American booster of Main
Street values.
He embodied the spirit of the times when he famously stated, “the chief business of
the American people is business.”
After capably handling the mess left by Harding’s scandals, Coolidge was nominated and easily
won re-election.
During his second term, the country experienced a period of rapid economic growth known as
the “Roaring Twenties,” and the stock market soared to record heights as Americans
of every stripe saw investing as a way to secure wealth.
Coolidge left the administration’s economic policy to his Secretary of Commerce, Herbert
Hoover, who used the government to promote business and develop airlines and radio.
Coolidge shunned regulation, and demonstrated this with appointees to the Federal Trade
Commission and Interstate Commerce Commission who did little to restrict businesses they
were supposed to supervise.
Government regulations under Coolidge were practically non-existent.
Ronald Reagan would later call Coolidge his favorite president of the 20th Century, even
though Coolidge’s distrust of financial regulations helped cause the Wall Street Crash
and Great Depression of the 1930s.
In foreign policy, the Coolidge administration oversaw the Dawes Plan, which handled loans
to Germany so that it could pay reparations for World War I to countries that would in
turn pay debts to the United States, thus locking the economies of these powers into
one thread.
There was also the Pact of Paris, whereby Germany, France, and the United States pledged
not to use war to settle disputes.
But Coolidge’s stance on Civil Rights is his greatest legacy.
He frequently spoke out against racial discrimination against African-Americans and Native Americans.
He signed legislation making all Native Americans citizens of the United States and was famously
photographed in a tribal headdress.
He also commissioned studies to improve programs for the Indian nations.
In his statements on immigration and the rights of African-Americans, Coolidge was passionate,
articulate, and prophetic.
Rights for blacks were “just as sacred as those of any other citizen” under the U.S.
Constitution and he declared that it was a “public and a private duty to protect those rights."
Most of his attempts at such legislation were filibustered by Southern Democrats, though
during his tenure, the KKK lost much of the influence it had gained during the Wilson
Administration.
Coolidge refuted the premise that America was a “white man’s country,” writing
in 1924, “Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without discrimination
on account of race or color.
I have taken my oath to support that Constitution.
It is the source of your rights and my rights, the source of the rights of all the people,
whatever their belief or race.”
In a May 1926 speech delivered at Arlington to commemorate the U.S. military, Coolidge
praised the linguistic, ethnic, and religious diversity of the population, citing it as
an example of American exceptionalism.
He spoke out against race hatred and religious intolerance, saying that engaging in such
actions would be an injury to the country: “We are situated differently in this respect
from any other country.
All the other great powers have a comparatively homogeneous population, close kindred in race
and blood and speech, and commonly little divided in religious beliefs.
Our great Nation is made up of the strong and virile pioneering stock of nearly all
the countries of the world.
We have a variety of race and language and religious belief.
Race hatred, religious intolerance, and disregard of equal rights is a positive injury.”
It is in these eloquent statements of tolerance that “Silent Cal” Coolidge speaks to us still.