President Harding publicly condemns lynching
On October 21 1921 President Warren G.Harding delivers a speech in Alabama in which he condemns lynchingsillegal hangings committed primarily by white supremacists against African Americans in the Deep South.Although his administration was much maligned for scandal and corruption Harding was a progressive Republican politician who advocated full civil rights for African Americans and suffrage for women.He supported the Dyer Anti-lynching Bill in 1920.
As a presidential candidate that year he gained support for his views on womens suffrage but faced intense opposition on civil rights for blacks.The 1920s was a period of intense racism in the American South characterized by frequent lynchings.In fact the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) reported that in 1920 lynching claimed on average the lives of two African Americans every week.During the 1920 presidential campaign Hardings ethnicity became a subject of debate and was used by his opponents to cast him in a negative light.
Opponents claimed that one of Hardings great-great-grandfathers was a native of the West Indies.Harding rebuffed the rumors saying he was from white pioneer stock and persisted in his support of anti-lynching laws.Although the anti-lynching bill made it through the House of Representatives it died in the Senate.
Several other attempts to pass similar laws in the first half of the 20th century failed.In fact civil rights for blacks were not encoded into law until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964.Hardings public denunciation of lynching would appear insincere if one were to believe allegations that he had actually been inducted into the Ku Klux Klan while in office.In 1987 historian Wyn Wade published The Fiery Cross in which a former Ku Klux Klan member claimed to have witnessed Hardings initiation into the Klan on the White House lawn.
Scholars have since pored over Hardings papers but have found no evidence to support this allegation.
