Monday, June 22, 2020

Today -100: June 22, 1920: Of lynchings, non-geniuses, and blood fusions


The Allies give Greece permission to attack Ataturk’s forces militarily, supposedly in order to enforce the peace treaty on Turkey on behalf of British and French interests as well as Greek.

A black man is lynched in Georgia after “confessing” to killing a white 17-year-old girl (I swear they’re always 17).

A NYT editorial quotes US senators, one unnamed, one Harry New (R-Indiana), as calling Harding “not a genius,” “not a master-mind.” But, the Times adds, “The Republicans have made the discovery that a great man is really out of place in the Presidency. The country, they say, is sick of supermen in the White House. ... Their present effort is to make it out that the truly desirable qualities in a President are mediocrity shot through with good-nature, readiness to take advice from men wiser than he, and a greater disposition to ‘get on’ with everybody and to hope that all will turn out for the best.” The Times disagrees, saying the presidency is actually a pretty hard job and requires more than mediocrity.

California Gov. William Stephens (R) writes to Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby calling for action against the “growing menace” of Japanese immigration. He says “the blood fusion of the Occident and the Orient has nowhere ever successfully taken place”. This is especially true of the Japanese, who “are not a servile or docile stock. Proud of their traditions and history, they brook no suggestion of any dominant or superior race. And it is just because they possess these attributes and feel more keenly the social and race barriers which our people raise against them that they are driven to race isolation and, I fear, ultimately will reach that race resentment which portends danger to the peace of our State in the future.”


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