President Harding Gives Civil Rights Message in Segregated Birmingham, Alabama
President Warren G. Harding spoke at the 50th Anniversary celebration of the founding of Birmingham, Alabama, on this day. Before a crowd of about 100,000 whites and African-Americans, he gave a strong civil rights message: “Let the black man vote when he is fit to vote; prohibit the white man voting when he is unfit to vote.”
Reportedly his statement was greeted with complete silence. Harding had sent a civil rights message to Congress on April 12, 1921, but when he found no support for it, he dropped civil rights as a issue.
Harding’s speech deserves special mention. It was the last civil rights message by a president until Harry Truman. See Truman’s speech to the NAACP (the first-ever speech to the organization by a sitting president) on June 29, 1947.
Read Harding’s speech: http://archive.org/stream/addressofpreside00hard#page/n3/mode/2up
Read: John W. Dean, Warren G. Harding: The American Presidents Series: The 29th President, 1921–1923 (2004). [Yes, the author is the John Dean of Watergate fame.]
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here
Learn more about African American history: Henry Louis Gates, Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008 (2011)