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CHAPTER EIGHT RACE AND THE CONSTITUTION DYER ANTI-LYNCHING ACT 1922 – Ed Sebesta 10/10/2020 The Dallas Morning News Jan. 5, 1922 article reporting Sumners’ speech in the U.S. House against the Dyer anti-lynching bill is as follows: SUMNERS ANSWERS CRITICS OF SOUTH TELLS CONGRESS “NIGGER” AGITATORS HAVE BEEN LYING ABOUT PEOPLE. ATTACKS DYER BILL Note the quotation marks around the word “N*gger.” In the article Sumners’ speech is quoted as follows: “Nigger agitators, white and black, have been going over the country lying about my people, and I have grown tired of it,” said Mr. Sumners.1 The DMN is directly quoting Sumners as to the words used. This is important to note since the Congressional Record reported the speech as not using the term “n*gger.” In 1922 was the peak year of Ku Klux Klan power in Dallas and the year where Sumners was fearful of publically having a position regarding the Klan. When reading Sumners claims to be against mob violence and lynching remember he was dreadfully afraid to be seen as anti-Klan or to take any moral stand against the Klan or any political position at all. Sumners very likely more than any other person in the 20th century was responsible for the failure to pass federal anti-lynching legislation. How he managed to derail efforts to pass federal anti-lynching legislation need to be examined in detail. Prior to this speech Sumners argued against the Dyer Bill twice which was reported in the DMN. In a Nov. 1, 1921 DMN article it is reported that the U.S. House committee on Oct. 31st had made a favorable report on the Dyer Bill. Sumners, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee had filed a minority report attacking the Dyer Bill on the same day. As the DMN reported the attack on the Dyer Bill was limited to constitutional issues. The minority report was as follows:
1
No Author, “Sumners Answers Critics of South,” DMN, Jan. 5, 1922, Page 5.
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The bill, in the judgement of the minority, is without constitutional warrant. It is definitely and directly antagonistic to the philosophy of our system of government, and within the limit of its effectiveness, if it should be held constitutional, would be destructive of that system. If enacted and operative it would not add to the protection of person or the general efficiency of government, or strengthen the relationship between the Federal Government and the States. On the contrary, this proposed intervention of the Federal Government directed against local power, supplanting and superseding the sovereignty of the States, would tend to destroy that sense of local responsibility for the protection of person and property and the administration of justice, from which sense of local responsibility alone protection and governmental efficiency can be secured among free peoples. This bill, challenging as it does the relative governmental efficiency of the States and the integrity of purpose of their governmental agencies, placing the Federal Government, as it does, in the attitude of an arbitrary dictator assuming coercive powers over the States, their officers, and their citizens in matters of local police control, would do incomparable injury to the spirit of mutual respect and trustful cooperation between the Federal Government and the States essential to the efficiency of government. As a precedent, this bill, establishing the principles which it embodies and the congressional powers which it assumes to obtain, would strip the States of every element of sovereign power, control, and final responsibility for the personal and property protection of its citizens, and would all but complete the reduction of the States to a condition of governmental vassalage awaiting only the full exercise of the congressional powers established. The cosigners in order of their signatures were Hatton W. Sumners, Andrew J. Montague, James W. Wise, John N. Tillman, and Fred H. Dominick.2 The DMN reports that on Dec. 9, 1921 the proposal to give the anti-lynching bill a preferred status before the House of Representatives was “bitterly denounced today by Representative Sumners of Texas, member of the House Judiciary Committee and who spoke for the Democratic members of that committee.” [XXX track down the hearing. ] Sumners’ testimony against the Dyer Bill to the House Rules Committee is reported as follows: The anti-lynching bill which Mr. Sumners declared to the committee proposed to confer a power greater than had been given during the reconstruction days 2
“Views of the Minority,” page 18 in the Report No. 452, 67 th Congress, 1st Sess., Report on the Anti-Lynching Bill, Oct. 31, 1921 to accompany H.R. 13. The minority report follows the majority report and is on the last page. DHS Box 75.8.13.
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following the Civil War, as an administration measure. He added that it proposed power that is coercive of the States and that the measure could not be defended from the standpoint of its constitutionality. This bill differs from the policy of all legislation that Congress has enacted,” declared Mr. Sumners, “in that the Federal Government would lay its hand in a coercive way upon the governmental machinery of the States, to enact legislation declaring what officers of the States shall do, and in the vent they violate that Federal edict, it is declared the will of Congress that they be brought before a Federal court, and if convicted, sent to the penitentiary.” The bill does not touch race riots such as occurred in Chicago, Washington, and East St. Louis. Mr. Sumners said, but only cases where the persons who are charged with crime are killed by five or more persons acting in concert. Mr. Sumners said that he held no brief for mob law, but was viewing the possibilities under extension of such a policy which takes charge of a local situation, and enters the realm of police control of the States. If a person is lynched, no matter how outraged the public may be, or what degree the crime, Mr. Sumners pointed out the county would be forced to pay $10,000 to the family of the person killed. If vengeance were exacted upon the culprit by a father and four sons closely related to the victim of the first instance, Mr. Sumners said, they would be subject to terms in the penitentiary. “The legislation would make vassals of the States,” said Mr. Sumners to the committee, “and it goes father in the usurpation of State and local control by the Federal Government than was ever dreamed would be attempted by the American Congress.”
In a fight over the calendar of the U.S. House, the DMN reported that on 12/19/1921 the U.S. House “after a bitter fight” voted to take up the Dyer Bill for a vote, but it would be after the Christmas holidays. The DMN reported, “Mr. Sumners admitted that the majority was probably ‘stacked’ for passage of the bill, but that the Democrats who held constitutional objections to the legislation protested it was being rushed.”3 Sumners’ arguments were held up to ridicule. A cartoon was carried in the DMN where an out-of-control bull labeled “Lynching Evil” was about to be roped by a cartoon character of Uncle Sam, representing the federal government, wielding a rope and pitch fork. Another character with a rope around the bull but clearly not in control, having lost his hat and flying through the air labeled “states rights” and “State’s Power,” is
3
No author, “House Will Take Up Anti-Lynching Bill Under Limited Debate Agreement,” DMN, Dec. 20. 1921, page 6.
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shouting, “Don’t Interfere Uncle! I can hold Him!”4 The humor is that clearly states’ rights can’t hold or have any control over lynching. Tom C. Gooch, editor of the Dallas Times Herald, will write Sumners that the cartoon is unfair to him. On Jan. 4, 1922 in the U.S. House Sumners gives his speech against the Dyer Bill. The following is the text as it appears in the Congressional Record. The term “n*gger” isn’t used though it was reported as being used by the DMN. The full speech is provided in the appendix. Sumners lengthy speech did not confine itself to arguing constitutional points but also made direct and indirect appeals to racism. It also adopted a strategy of complaining that the South was being unfairly targeted, questioning the statistics provided on lynching, and that the bill will result in violent white riotous uprisings. Sumners opens his speech condemning lynching and then in the speech makes inflammatory statements that would be of the type which would give racists a reason to excuse lynching. This was a fairly common formula of those giving arguments that really defended lynching. XXX give some examples. In the opening of the paragraph Sumners states: “Before beginning a discussion of this bill I want to challenge the slanders which have been heaped upon the South by a lot of these hired Negro agitators and white negroettes that have been going over the country falsely representing my people.” The term “white negroettes” is a reference to white women who have a special affection for African Americans. Sumners both challenges the statistics of the Tuskegee Institute and introduces a lurid episode of rape in Duluth, Minnesota. I received the other day a statement from the Tuskegee Institute. The gentleman who has just taken his seat quoted practically all of his statistics and gave practically all his information from that source. Under the date of December 31, 1921, they sent out broadcast, with release for publication dated January 1, "The lynch record for 1921," from which I quote, "there were 63 persons lynched in 1921. Of those 62 were in the South and one in the North." I do not know how I happened to clip this out, but the Washington Post of July 16, 1921, carried a statement under these headlines, which I quote: "Three Negroes hanged by mob in Duluth; 5,000 seize prisoners at police headquarters; troops ordered out. Attack on young white girl rouses crowd's fury." These Negroes were connected 4
Cartoon, DMN, Dec. 22, 1921, page 1. Can’t read the signature.
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with a circus. They took a white girl into the circus grounds and ravished her. This Duluth, Minn., mob hung them all to a telephone pole in the middle of the city. Three at once in one place. And yet we are told that only one person was lynched in the entire North during all of the year 1921. The gentleman who has just taken his seat told you of a killing in East St. Louis of 100 people at one time. That is the sort of thing we are afraid of. We people who believe we understand the situation are convinced that you men are fixing to cut the cord that holds in leash the passion of race conflict in the South and bring to the South such tragedies as that of East St. Louis, in which almost as many people were killed in that one city in one riot as are killed in the entire South by mobs in two years. A U.S. Representative Mondell then asks Sumners, “Do I understand it to be the gentleman’s position that in order to keep down the passions of race prejudice it is necessary to give them an occasional outlet of burnings and lynchings. Sumners reply is, “I do not.” Mondell replies, “Then, I do not quite understanding the gentleman’s statement.” Sumners replies as follows: Mr. SUMNERS of Texas. Sit down and I will make you understand it. It is a hard job, but I can do it. Here is what I mean. Listen to me. Look at me and let me talk to you. I mean this: I mean that nobody on this earth can protect the black man who is in danger of mob violence except the people in the community at the very time of the danger. I mean that if the Federal Government interposes its power, assumes responsibility now borne entirely by the people, so that the man on the ground will feel it is not his duty to protect, but that the Federal Government has stepped in and will take care of the situation, then you are likely to turn loose the passions of race conflict in that community. Let me tell you something. Suppose this other thing happens-and you can do it under this bill-suppose that a black man takes a little white child and drags her off into seclusion where no voice can hear and no hand can help, and rapes that child, and the father of that child and the brothers of the child come up on him and kill him, and the Federal Government takes them away in the face of public sentiment and places them in the Federal penitentiary, and then bas a tax of $10,000 levied against the county for the benefit of the rapist's family, a part of which sum might go to buy that family an automobile to ride by the home of the innocent victim, do you think, as a matter of common sense, with such a policy you could long prevent a condition in that country like those which developed in East St. Louis, Omaha, and Chicago? The African American family of a rapist of a white girl can drive a new automobile past the house of the family of the victim. Mondell attempts to ask another question but Sumners doesn’t allow it.
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Sumner in one section argues that the Dyer Bill would encourage African American rapists, the Bill is unconstitutional, and its passage by the U.S. House would be an act of mob violence, that to pass the Dyer would be the equivalent mob violence as that of a lynching. I am opposed to mob violence, to the crimes which provoke mob violence, and to the conditions which permit those crimes to result in mob violence. I am opposed to this bill because it would increase mob violence by encouraging the crimes which are the most provocative of mob violence and which more than all things else combined create the condition out of which mob violence as a punishment for other offenses arises. I am opposed to this bill because the interposition of Federal would lessen the sense of local responsibility and retard the growth of local purpose to suppress mob violence. I am opposed to this bill because it is unconstitutional and appeals for its support to the very spirit which it denounces the spirit of disregard for law and for the sacredness of the official oath. This bill can not pass this House unless it is put through by that same spirit which inspires the mob when, backed by the courage of numbers, excused in conscience by the law's delays and alleged miscarriage of justice, they crush through by the sheer weight of numbers the legal barriers which deny the right to proceed in the manner undertaken and do an unlawful thing. Sumners goes on to argue that the Dyer Bill is unconstitutional, wouldn’t work and “would all complete the reduction of the States to a condition of governmental vassalage awaiting only the full exercise of the congressional power.” Then it is back to a racist lecture about African Americans in which he asserts Africans were benefited by slavery in America. Gentlemen, I do not excuse the sixty-odd lynchings that occurred in the South in a year, but when you consider the millions of black people who live in that country, and when you consider the fact that we do have white men there who are not law-abiding, just as we do have black men there who are not law-abiding, and you measure what occur there by what occurred in East St. Louis, Chicago, and Omaha, it shows that the people in that great section of the country are doing the best they can. [Applause.] I realize that it is a bad situation down there for the black people. No black man or white man who lives in the South now is responsible for that condition. Away back yonder our ancestors, the men from New England, many of them, brought their shiploads of slaves from the jungles of Africa and sold them to my people. It was a tragedy, in so far as the white people were concerned. I do not know how you think about it, but it was not a tragedy in so far as the black man was concerned. Sometimes I think God Almighty had a hand in that, because slavery was the only door that swung open to give the black man a chance to get away from savagery of the jungle. There is not a black man in the gallery up there who does not owe to the institution of slavery his contact with
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civilization. It was a curse to the white man, but it so happened that under that institution of slavery these poor black people had a chance to come to America, and through the institution of slavery they got a species of coercion that enabled them in a few generations to break away from the habits of indolence that had grown upon them by reason of their centuries and centuries of tropical residence, and eventually it enabled their children to be sent to school under conditions of civilization. But during its continuance the institution of slavery was sapping the vitality of southern civilization. I have repeatedly said that while the Civil War was a terrible price to pay, yet it was not too big a price to pay if that alone could have served to relieve the white people from that terrible institution of slavery which was destroying the civilization of the South. Reconstruction is brought up and white supremacy. Sumners states, “Only a short time ago their ancestors roamed the jungles of Africa in absolute savagery” and makes other racist statements. He makes an appeal to white solidarity in the support of white supremacy. This vile speech continues as follows: Now, we had the negro population left on our hands. They were brought there. They did not come of their own accord and when they were freed the people of the North, not understanding the situation, just as they do not understand this situation now, under the passions engendered by the war. did that thing which had never been done before since the men of our blood first left northern Europe and started out to build up the civilization of the world. It was the first time in all the centuries when one branch of the white family tried to put the heel of another race upon the neck of men of their own blood. I do not hold any prejudice against you. I realize this was the aftermath of a great war, and what happens in such times must be judged in the light of the passions which war always engenders. And these millions of black people were turned loose as they were—with a responsibility they were not fitted to meet. I do not say this to their discredit, everything considered, or in criticism of them—of course they are more inclined to commit crimes than white men are—would be the most unreasonable thing not to expect it. Only a short time ago their ancestors roamed the jungles of Africa in absolute savagery. Now we have them here. I do not know what we are going to do about it, gentlemen. You can pass this bill if you want to, but I am giving you the judgment of a man who believes he knows. I am going to put the responsibility on your own consciences. My people get along the best they can with the situation. We are all sick and tired of this lynching and these outrages and with the propaganda of misrepresentation. There are many, many people in the South who are willing to say to the Federal Government, "If you can do it, for God's sake come and do it." Then African Americans are blamed for supposedly being more criminal and Sumners asserts that there will never be an end to white supremacy and somehow this bill is an attack of the maintenance of white supremacy as follows:
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These people say that. We are tired of it. We know it is not right. The conscience of the country is revolting against these conditions, and if we could get a little more help from yon people, exerted with the black people, to encourage them to run out the criminal element from among them while we work on the criminal element of the white people, instead of sending these negro agitators down there to preach social equality among my people, you would aid more than you are aiding now. [Applause.] We might just as well understand ourselves, gentlemen. That day never will come—there is no necessity for anybody mistaking it—that day never will come when the black man and the white man will stand upon a plane of social equality in this country, and that day never will come in any section of the United States when you will put a black man in office above the white man. [Applause.] That never will happen. It never can happen on the face of God Almighty's earth. It has not happened in 4,000 years and never will. Oh, you can elect one here and there in communities where you have them in control. You can give him a little recognition to keep the boys lined up, but he is under white control, and you never will surrender the control of your government in any community to the black race. It can not happen. Then Sumners is back to discussing African American men raping white women. Now, I will be very candid with you gentlemen about the situation in the South. The big difficulty is when the crime of rape is committed against a white woman. Millions of these people live there among us. We all live together. We understand one another. We have established a basis on which we can get along pretty well. We have our difficulties, of course. It is an unnatural situation. The big thing we dread, the thing we are working against, law-abiding white people and law abiding black people, is what happened in East St. Louis. These isolated cases of mob violence are bad. But if we can keep them isolated we can hope to bring them under control. In the district of the gentleman from Massachusetts a few weeks ago, up there at Barnstable I believe it was, three West Indian Negroes took a white girl from her escort and raped her. A mob was formed, bent on lynching them. It took the governor of the State three days to dispel the mob spirit. Just one thing prevented that from being a lynching and that is that they did not have a great sea of these people about them. That is what prevented it. It is pretty easy to talk about it, gentlemen. Of course, the number of black men who commit these "Crimes is very small, but you do not know where the beast is among them. Somewhere in that black mass of people is the man who would outrage your wife or your child, and every man who lives out in the country knows it.
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Then he asserts that mob violence is some type of American tradition from the pioneer days and hard to change. Then it is about racism being instinctive against interracial mixing as follows. I do not know why, but somewhere in the great purpose of God Almighty He has determined to preserve, for a while yet, at least, these lines of racial cleavage that He has drawn among the races of men. I do not know why, and you do not, either, but there is nobody up there in Yankeedom or down in my country that can obliterate those lines of racial distinction. God Almighty drew them in the councils of his infinite wisdom, and put the instinct of racial preservation there to protect them. You ask me what we will do to protect it. We will do whatever is necessary, that is all. Men who do not live in the presence of the danger do not hear the call. [Applause.] Nature does not waste her energies. When men respond to that call, they respond to a law that is higher than the law of self-preservation. It is the call to the preservation of the race. When men answer to that call, you can not reason with them. That law knows no reason. You can not appeal to their sense of justice. It knows no sense of justice. It is a blind, unyielding, uncompromising, all-sacrificing purpose of the dominant race to control the situation. When that call comes every man who is not a racial degenerate has to answer it. [Applause.] It is the call of the blood. Men do not count the cost under those circumstances when once the race passion is aroused. We will have to work at this thing from every angle. The face of society of his own race must be set against the black criminal, and the white hoodlum must be suppressed. But, above all, while we are working out these problems we must hold in leash the brutal passion of race conflict which inspires the mobs in the North. When a white woman is raped by a black man the call to the man is from his two strongest, most primitive instincts. No doubt when men lived in caves the strongest instinct of the man was to protect his woman. The next strongest instinct is to protect the blood. When the call comes from the woman, crying out from the depths of her outraged chastity, there comes to the man a call which reaches back to the days when he was a savage in the cave, and he goes. When that call comes from the woman who has been raped by a man of alien blood, woman, who in every age of the world has been the faithful guardian of the purity of the race-when that call comes it is the call of his woman and the call of his blood, and he goes. It is not an easy situation to deal with. [Applause.] He goes not alone. His neighbors, whose women live under the same danger, go with him. The impulse is to kill, to kill as a wild beast would be killed. Gentlemen, do not misunderstand me or misquote me. I understand we have to deal with this situation. One must yield to the law. But no attempt at Federal coercion can help. Let nobody misunderstand what it means to say in the
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presence of the victim, "Let the law take its course," when there comes down from the mountain tops of civilization and up from the deepest caverns of man's nature the mightiest force that ever beats against the battlement of self-restraint. [Applause.]
Persons who are not racists are asserted to be degenerates. This is something that was a fear in the 20th century and the Eugenics movement. Sumners argues that the Dyer Bill isn’t constitutional and encourage African American men to rape white women. Gentlemen, this bill is a remarkable piece of legislation. I see gentlemen before me who are going to say that they have defended the constitutionality of this bill, but they will be joking, because it can not be done. Certainly, Mr. Chairman, to put upon the statute book a measure of this sort which could serve no other purpose than to give encouragement to the ignorant and vicious, and to stimulate crimes which arouse prejudice against a minority race, which this legislation, if constitutional, could not protect, would be a crime against those people that can not be excused. Nobody can protect them against the mob except the white people with whom they live. The rest of Sumners speech is to argue that the bill will destroy states’ rights, he uses the word “vassalage,” that the law isn’t needed or is unworkable, or is at variance with the constitution or has some other defect. Sumners attacks the motivations of those supporting the bill as being for self-serving reasons and that their descendants will be ashamed of them and compares them to “Carpetbaggers,” those who Southerners saw as agents of oppression during Reconstruction when the federal government tried to implement a multi-racial democracy in the former slave states. What have you left under your system? You are welcome, gentlemen, to all the glory that you will get out of putting this sort of thing on the statute books of the country. It will be a fine thing for your children to read in the days that are to come that "My daddy on this bill answered ' aye ' on the vote when it came.” But this is not merely the enactment of a law. This is dynamiting the governmental structure. [Applause.] That is what it is, and if you folks show the people that this is the thing to do they will bring in some more dynamite. [Applause.] No, sir; you can not turn back on this course when you add to the public inclination this sanction of the Congress, sitting in solemn judgment under its congressional powers. You are welcome to do it, but I am going to put the responsibility where it belongs. In the early seventies the carpetbagger was in his
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glory; but still he had some sense left. I do not say you folks were alone to blame. We were all to blame for the situation that existed. But they had some excuse in that day for going crazy. You have not got any now. [Applause.]5
On Jan. 17, 1922 Sumners introduced what would over time be his major argument against anti-lynching legislation. That is that the rate of lynching was declining and federal action would not be necessary. This was the debate in the U.S. House: Mr. SUMNERS of Texas. Will the gentleman yield? Mr. BURTON. Yes. Mr. SUMNERS of Texas. The gentleman recognizes, of conrse, that Henry Grady and these women in Atlanta join the attitude of the people of the South with reference to lynching, but that does not mean that they believe that it is wise to do the thing that is contemplated here. Mr. BURTON. The ladies of Atlanta, as I understand, and the Atlanta Constitution certainly, while they regret the tendency toward United States jurisdiction, say that it is inevitable. Mr. SUMNERS of Texas. Yes; if the people do not do it. Mr. BURTOX. They have not done it. Mr. SUMNERS of Texas. Statistics which have been introduced here show 112 lynchings in a year, and notwithstanding the increase in population of this country they have been reduced to 63 in the last year. In view of this public opinion, does not the gentleman believe that it is going to extremes in having the Federal Government intervene? Mr. BURTON. But the public opinion has not progressed far enough. Mr. SUMNERS of Texas. But will you destroy the public opinion by having the Federal Government assume jurisdiction in these cases? Mr. BURTON. The question is, Does it exist in a sufficient volume and strength to be destroyed? There have been laws, but they have disregarded them, and when the legislatures have passed laws the mob has gone out and done its work. I now yield to the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. HILL].6
5 6
Congressional Record, 67th Congress, 2nd Sess., Vol. 62 Part 1, Jan. 4, 1922, pages 797-807. Congressional Record, 67th Congress, 2nd Sess., Vol. 62 Part 2, Jan. 17, 1922, page 1285.
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On Jan. 18, 1922 Sumners attempted to use prejudice against Asians to undermind the support of U.S. House Rep. Swing of California for the Dyer Bill. This was the exchange. Mr. SUMNERS of Texas. Mr. Chairman. Will the gentleman yield? Mr. SWlNG. Yes. Mr. SUMNERS of Texas: Does tile gentleman think it would be a good idea for the Federal Government to inject its policy into the situation out there in California on the Pacific coast with respect to the Japanese and the Chinese? Mr. SWING. I would say that if there were cases of lynching of the Japanese, I would agree. My State, I frankly confess, has not been an innocent state in the matter of lynching, but I think that a great majority of those cases happened in the days of ’49, before law and order and courts were carried into the far West. Since law and order and the courts have been instituted as the instrumentality for the punishment of crime it seems to me that no fair man to-day can defend the act of lynching. Nor do I believe there are any who do, even in the South, and I refer to the South, not because the South is defending lynching. It is not. The best men are attempting to stamp out lynching, but the instrumentalities through which they are working are ineffectual for the purpose? Sumners finding this tactic not working doesn’t bring up the Japanese and Chinese again. At the closing of the debate in the U.S. House on Jan. 25, 1922 Sumners gave one long speech where the constitution was mentioned intermixed with the most lurid racist arguments. The legislation against lynching was a threat to the safety of white women since it would encourage African American brutes to rape them. Living with African Americans was held to be a danger. The following is the speech. Mr. SUMNERS of Texas. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the House, we come to the conclusion of the debate upon one of the most important question which has challenged the attention of the American Congress during the last half century, and in some respects the most important. We, from the South, understand full well the position which we occupy. Deserted, in a measure, by the men of our own political faith in the North and in the East, undertaking to defend ourselves behind the clear provisions of the Constitution, challenging gentlemen of the majority to the observation of their official oaths, presenting to the Congress an unbroken line of decision by the Supreme Court of the United States against the constitutionality of this bill, we face its adoption by this body. Not one gentleman do I recall, save, perhaps, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee [Mr. VOLSTEAD], has stood in his place where I stand and claimed that this bill in all its provisions is constitutional. I challenge the history of legislation in the American Congress for a parallel.
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As the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. GARBETT] has said, the race question has no place in this discussion. The philosophy of Government, the constitutionality of the bill, the wisdom of the governmental policy which it embodies, are independent of any considerations of race or of section, but we of the South have an additional concern. By reason of that which was done by our ancestors we are confronted there with the most difficult and the most dangerous domestic situation which ever was visited upon a people. We are trying an experiment that has never before succeeded, trying to have two races live side by side as neighbors in a great section of the country; people who are diametrically opposed to each other racially. Now, gentlemen, you have the power. We understand that. You have the votes and you have the responsibility. You can do as you will, but you must answer to the country; you must answer to your God, and you must answer to history for what you do this day. God being my witness I believe that with this policy which you are inaugurating you will turn loose the passion of race conflict in my country and dye my country red with blood. I come to you upon my responsibility as a Member of the American Congress and upon whatever reputation for honesty I have, and I look you in the face and I tell you that I believe and every man from the South tells you that he believes, that this proposed legislation will add to the peril of our women, will weaken the sense of local responsibility, and lessen the power of our law-abiding people to stop mob violence. Yet in the face of tl1e judgment of witnesses whom you can not impeach you propose to do that which the decisions of the Supreme Court and the plain language of the Constitution says violates your official oaths. I uo not mean to be offensive, gentlemen. I would not say it if the Supreme Court of the United States had not said it. You propose to disregard the plain provisions of the Constitution, to undermine the structure of the Government itself. We are powerless. We understand that. We stand alone. This is our question. We know that we must settle it. We can not shift the responsibility. The Federal Government can not assume it. In justice to my people I declare it to be my judgment that no other people on this earth could have done better. We are working day and night to build up a local public opinion that will help us to wipe this blot from my country, and I come here and ask you gentlemen not to disturb the work that we are doing. Read the newspapers from the South. Head the appeals of the governors of the South. Read the record of lynchings. We have reduced lynchings, nothwithstanding the increase in population, from an average of 112 a year to 63 last year. I know it is difficult. I understand it: but, gentlemen, you must let us hold the responsibility upon the conscience of our community. That is what we appeal for. If you would abandon this superior, “holier than thou" attitude, stop your encouragement of southern
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negroes to violate the social adjustment essential to the living together of large numbers of people of irreconcilable racial differences, we could make more rapid progress. We do not want to have our people lynch black men or white men. We do not want it. You know we do not want it. No man who claims to be decent could want it, but we know and you know —I challenge your judgment—that there is not a hand on the face of God Almighty's earth that can hold back the passions of the mob except the hand of the man who feels that it is up to him to intervene, the man who lives in the community, who will get up out of his bed at midnight and go out there and stand side by side with the prisoner who has committed a crime that has outraged the community. He is the only man on this earth who can do it, and I ask you not to destroy the sense of responsibility of men like this. And I ask you as man to man, do not add to the perils of our women as you would not want the South if we were in control here to add to the perils of your women by creating the impression in the minds of the ignorant savage, tl1e brute bereft of every sense of social duty, of sympathy for the helpless, more brutal than the wild beasts of the fields, that the Federal Government is going to protect him against the people whose woman he violates. The solution of this problem must come from both ends. Racial divergencies, strained racial conditions which may develop in any community, out of which mob violence may arise, present their problems, but I believe it is the judgment of White men of the South generally that if the rape of white Women can be stopped we can soon stop lynching. During all this debate there have been but few words of sympathy for the victim. Gentlemen, you are hindering us. We can appeal to the necessities and to the duty of self-respect, but no progress can be made by denouncing as cannibalistic, as I understood the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. BURTON] to do the other clay. The impulse of the man to kill when in the presence of the brute whose crime against nature, against innocence, against helplessness, against his woman, stirs in his soul the deepest and most primitive passions of which a good man is capable. Those passions must be controlled, but when they die the civilization is dead, the race is dead. The battle of the man against those passions he knows, and every man whose blood is red knows, has no kinship with the degradation out of which the appetite of the cannibal grows. Mr. HERRICK. Will the gentleman yield for a question? Mr. SUMNERS of Texas. I regret that I can not yield. Now, gentlemen, what are you going to do about it? I am talking to you as man to man, face to face. I am not talking now about the constitutional questions, the questions of governmental policy. That has been exhaustedly discussed. Aside from the concern which I have expressed with reference to the white women of the South, and especially those far away from police protection, who live under the shadow of this danger and under its torture almost from the beginning of consciousness; I have no concern for my white people. They will take care of themselves and give the best protection to their women which true manhood can give. I know that the white
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people of the South will take care of themselves; I appeal for the millions of black men and black women who have got to depend upon their white neighbors and the sense of responsibility of their white neighbors for protection against mob violence and against the vicious of the white race. [Applause.] They are the people I am appealing for. Oh, you can giye them the shadow. You can pass this law. You can destroy the sense of local responsibility and get votes next election, but before God I say you have got no right to do it. You have no right to get your votes at the price of the security and the relatively happy situation of the millions of black people in the South. [Applause.] Mr. HERRICK. Will the gentleman yield now for a question? Mr. SUMNERS of Texas. No; I can not. I regret that I can not. Now, there is another thing that I want to say to you, and I hope I will not be misunderstood. I believe as firmly as I believe anything on this earth that the brutal, vicious black men, who are in the minority—there are relatively few of them—will misunderstand this legislation. I believe, men, that you are buying black votes with the safety of white women in the South. [Applause.] That is what I believe. I may be mistaken, but I know more about it than you do. Mr. UPSHAW. You are not mistaken. Mr. SUMNERS of Texas. I believe it. I have said all I can say in my opening argument in opposition to this bill. I discussed the constitutional questions involved and the governmental policy involved. It is up to you. We have come to the Congress and now we will go to the country. You can make your record here; you have got the power; but, believe me, gentlemen, if I know the American people we will not appeal in vain when we appeal from the judgment of the House to the judgment of the country. If there is anything left in the hearts · of the country that ring true to the principles of the American Government, you will not make anything out of this politically. But that is not it; I wish almost that I had not made that statement, because in our debates we have our party conflicts, but, after all, we are American citizens. [Applause.] After all, we love our country; after all, our hearts ring true to the great principles. We may forget ourselves sometimes; we may forget ourselves under the influence of party expediency. Gentlemen, you have forgotten yourselves. Oh, may the shades of the great statesmen whose legislative works have made so glorious the statesmanship of this; country come now within the Halls to guide the great party who under God's providence is charged with the responsibility of preserving the institutions of this country in this hour. O men, this a solemn moment in the history of this Government. You commit this Government to this policy and the institution and civilization of this country will not endure, because when yon destroy the sense of local responsibility you destroy the strength of the local government you destroy the foundations on which the institutions rest. [Applause.]
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I thank you, gentlemen, for the attention you have given us. It is your power and your responsibility. The section of the country from which I come seems to me yet regarded as an alien section under suspicion, because when the Representatives come before you and make a solemn statement on their responsibility as members of this Congress as to what they believe will be the effect of the proposed legislation their statements and their appeal falls on deaf ears. [Applause.] The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Texas has expired. The Dyer Bill was passed and went on to the U.S. Senate where it sate. XXXX give some more info here. It needs to be remembered while Sumners went on at length about being against lynching and how the South was against lynching, he refused to join up with the antiKlan faction in Dallas in their efforts against the Klan or take any action himself. Sumners had a substantial correspondence with supporters and others regarding the Dyer Bill revealing additionally his views and concerns regarding the bill and about African Americans outside the South. The correspondence also reveals how he had widespread support for his opposition to federal anti-lynching legislation within the Dallas establishment. One fear which Sumners repeated again and again in his letters was what he saw was the dangers of African Americans in the “North” where they weren’t subjugated and oppressed as they were in the South making demands on the Republican Party. Sumners in his Jan. 14, 1922 letters, one to the Whitley Brothers, editors of The Italy New-Herald, of Italy, Texas and one to J.M. Usry, editor of The Midlothian Argus, of Midlothian, Texas, opens both letters with the same identical paragraph as follows: I have always felt that a sort of cooperative working relationship obtains between myself and the papers of my district, and I am writing you as one of my coworkers in Texas for the purpose of directing your attention to a matter which, in my judgement is as vital to our people of the South as any other matter which has involved their interests since the Civil War. There isn’t a bit of doubt but that we are entering a new stage of development, not only with regard to the race issue in the South, but with regards to the general national attitude towards the South. Negroes have come to hold the balance of political power in many of the Northern States and have on food the definite purpose to coerce the Republican Party, to compel it to reflect with reference to the South the mental attitude of the
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Northern negro, whose aim is social equality and governmental control in those territories where he is in the majority.7 Sumners becomes more direct in expressing his fear in his later letters. In a Jan. 31, 1922 letter to W.A. Holford, editor of the Garland News thanking him for his political support, Sumners expresses this fear as follows: We have reached a new development with regards to the racial question, and one which brings with it the gravest of peril to the white people and the lawabiding black people of the South. For the first time in the history of this country the negroes of the North are organized along racial lines. They are demanding the right to determine the policy of the Republican Party towards the racial question of the South. These Northern negroes who live in sections of the country where their numbers are not large enough to develop the demand for racial segregation, when they visit the South where a different condition obtains, meet a condition which very much offends them. They hold the balance of political power in many of the Congressional districts of the North and hold the balance of power in the Presidential elections in many of the States. They no longer vote for individual members of the Republican Party out of gratitude for their liberation. They threaten the individual members with defeat in the primary elections unless they are permitted to control his vote in matters of this sort and hold the threat of opposition in the general election. I am not speculating about this. I have been told this by many Members of Congress from the North and the East. Unless we have a most fortunate development of circumstances, we are going to have the stress and the tragedy of the old carpet-bag regime reenacted in the South.8 [Boldface added.] Sumners in a Feb. 6, 1922 letter to Dallas Judge Wiley A. Bell repeats this fear. Sumners argues that Republican members didn’t want to vote for it but did because as follows: We were able to hold almost a solid Democratic vote against the bill and if it had been possible to have the Republicans vote their independent judgments, we would have defeated the bill by a much larger majority than it passed the House, but the unfortunate fact and the dangerous fact is that the negroes have organized in the North now for the first time and are demanding the right to control the legislative policy of the Republican Party with regard to matters of this sort, especially with regard to the race question in the South.9 [Boldface added.]
7
HWS to Whitley Brothers, editors The Italy News-Herald, to J.M. Usry, editor of The Midlothian Argus, Jan. 14, 1922. Both DHS Box 71.2.3. 8 HWS to W.A. Holford, Editor of The Garland News, Jan. 31, 1922. DHS Box 70.3.2. 9 HWS to Hon. Wiley A. Bell, Feb. 6, 1922. DHS Box 70.3.2.
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Sumners in a March 24, 1922 letter to the Texas Secretary of State S.L. Staples, thanking him for his support of Sumners’ opposition to the Dyer Bill, Sumners states again his fear. We have entered upon a very dangerous condition in the evolution of the race question. For the first time the negroes of the North are organized along racial lines. They are threatening present Members of Congress with defeat in the primaries and, in effect, are demanding of the Republicans the right to determine the national policy with regard to the race problems of the South. 10 This concern was also in Sumners’ letters concerning the federal education as quoted in the chapter on his opposition to bills providing for federal support for education. Sumners in a Feb. 1, 1922 letter to Alvah B. Flood of Camas, Montana in reply gives a lengthy account of Sumners’ views on race since Sumners likes Flood’s letter, “the spirit of which I appreciate more than that which runs through your entire letter.” Sumners responds as follows: I realize that it is very difficult for one whose contact with the race question is as limited as yours has been to understand the racial psychology which develops out of the situation in the South. In so far as I can myself analyze the attitude of the average Southern man, in so far as the social attitude towards the negro is concerned, that attitude grows out of the instinct of racial segregation rather than out of the attitude of animosity, and his attitude toward the negro politically is determined by racial psychology, which the individual does not control, which is no[t] dependent upon any voluntary mental conclusions on the part of the individual. The political domination of the South by the white man is essential to his own preservation and is probably to the best interest of the negro. I am not regarded here, and I believe I am not one of those profound anti-negro persons whom we sometimes find in the South, but I recognize that as a white man living under conditions which carry with them a threat against the dominant position of the white race, I am under the call of my race. The possibility of the whites living together with the negroes in such large numbers is dependent upon the development of a very high degree of racial segregation and upon white political domination. I am sending herewith copy of an address delivered by myself some time ago dealing somewhat with the fundamentals of this situation. As I have intimated in my address on the anti-lynching bill, there is much in what has happened to the negro to indicate the working out of some plan which makes up a part of the big 10
HWS to S.L. Stapes, Texas Secretary of State, March 24, 1922. DHS Box 70.3.3. chk XXXX.
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outlines of world development, which big outlines, as you must know, men do not control. He was a savage in Africa where climate and conditions of life were against his possibility of development. The negro has never shown any governmental ability when left to his own determination, nor any ability to develop free from the influences of coercion. Only the institution of slavery could bring him from the savage environments because he possessed neither brain nor the training, nor the inclination to work, which would have made him attractive as an employee. Slavery brought him into close contact with civilization and under a social relationship which made him work, and thereby learn how to work. When he was freed, he was deprived of the opportunity to make the government of the Southern States where he was numerically in the majority, governmentally what Haiti, what Cuba and what Liberia were. My judgment is that the final acute developments of the racial situation will come north of the Mason and Dixon line. We have established a social and political relationship with the black man which makes it impossible for his presence to imperil the whites as a race, or to imperil the governmental institutions which the genius of the white race has established. That is not true of the North, and when they increase, as they will increase in that section, the difficulties of adjustment will be very great. I note what you have to say with regard to the one negro who ate with you. Your attitude was entirely a natural attitude. It would have been my attitude under the same conditions and environments under which you have been raised. Not long ago I had occasion to travel for 1500 miles through the stock-raising section of my State. In many pastures I saw large numbers of cattle, with large numbers of sheep and a few cows in one herd and large numbers of cows and a few sheep in another heard, but in no pasture did I see large numbers of sheep and large number of cows in the same herd. After the deer in the western part of my State were greatly reduced in number, it was not unusual for a few dear to come up with the cow herds, but nobody ever saw a large herd of deer and a large herd of cattle together. God drew the lines of racial cleavage and no one can tell until the test is made whether or not the different races are so dissimilar that they cannot live together on the plan of social equality. They can no more tell about that than they could have told that water and oil would not mix until the test was made. But when the test is made and large numbers of different races are placed in contact with each other, the result settles the matter. It is not primarily a question of superiority or inferiority as shown by the attitude of the white man when large numbers of Japanese come among them.11
11
HWS to Alvah B. Flood, Feb. 1, 1922. DHS Box 71.2.4.
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Tom C. Gooch, editor of the Dallas Times Herald, in a Dec. 27, 1921 letter with a Dallas Time Herald letter head, writes in support of Sumners’ opposition to the Dyer Bill as follows: Thank you for your letter and excerpts from the Congressional Record. We are always glad to keep track of you and your achievements and you will be doing us a kindness by keeping us posted from time to time. I presume you saw The News’ cartoon on the anti-lynching bill. It was not fair to you nor the people of the various states. It did not reflect the sentiment of Texas.12 The cartoon is the one discussed earlier in this chapter. Sumners appreciates Gooch’s letter and replies: …, I found your communication of the 27th ultimo. I thank you very much for the same. I have also noticed the cartoon to which you refer. The position taken with regards to this matter is one of the most remarkable things which has ever come under my observation. I am glad to know that the TIMES-HERALD still believes that the people of the States ought to be required to deal with matters concerning their own police regulations. There isn’t one Member of Congress from the South who does not recognize this proposed bill as a revival of a spirit and policy akin to that of the “carpet-bag regime” and I know of nobody here, who has given the matter serious consideration, who does not recognize this proposed legislation, if enacted and if held constitutional, would not reduce mob violence, but on the contrary would aggravate the situation. When one is fighting against odds as we are fighting, it is very bad indeed to find influences in one’s own country aligned against him.13 The fact that there were Southern newspapers that did support federal anti-lynching legislation did aggravate Sumners. The Dallas Independent School District has an elementary school named after Tom C. Gooch. Sumners in his Jan. 14, 1922 letters, one to the Whitley Brothers, editors of The Italy New-Herald, of Italy, Texas and one to J.M. Usry, editor of The Midlothian Argus, of Midlothian, Texas, previously mentioned, in both letters has the same identical paragraph of complaint about Southern newspapers supporting the Dyer Bill as follows:
12 13
Tom C. Gooch to HWS, Dec. 27, 1921. DHS Box 70.3.1. HWS to Tom C. Good, Jan. 3, 1922. DHS Box 70.3.2.
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A great many papers, and I am sorry to say some of our most influential papers in the South, have endorsed this infamous proposition. They evidently do not understand the provisions of this bill, and I am writing to ask you to study the bill and to help to make our Southern papers and Southern people understand what it means. It is hard enough to fight the influences which we would expect to have lined up for this bill without being “shot in the back” by our own people.14 In the previously mentioned letter to Holford of Jan. 31st Sumners complains: I have been very much distressed by the attitude taken by some of the Southern papers who evidently do not understand what that measure means. The most serious feature of the whole matter is that the vast majority of Republican Members who voted for the bill did so against their judgment with reference to the governmental policy involved and with full believe that the provisions of the measure are in violation of the Constitution.15 Sumners in a Feb. 7, 1922 letter to Holford thanking him for the support of the Garland News editorial against the Dyer Bill complains: I resent in the most intense sort of way the fact that when I was here trying to defend the South and the rights of the States, I was compelled to meet the attack of a lot of these Southern papers lined up with the negro agitators and demagogue Republican politicians.16 Publically Sumners might be making all sorts of grand sounding statements but privately he is an angry racist. Sumners in his speeches and letters expresses his concern for African Americans in the South is one reason, of many, for his opposition to the Dyer Bill. He also states he has no animosity against African Americans. However, at the same time he has cordial correspondence with prominent politicians, Felix D. Robertson, member of the Klan and candidate for Criminal Court Judge, and Earl B. Mayfield, Klan backed Texas candidate for U.S. Senate. Felix D. Robertson had requested a copy of Sumners’ speech against the Dyer Bill and had praised it. This was Sumners’ Feb. 21, 1922 letter in reply.
14
HWS to Whitley Brothers, editors The Italy News-Herald, to J.M. Usry, editor of The Midlothian Argus, Jan. 14, 1922. Both DHS Box 71.2.3. 15 HWS to W.A. Holford, Editor of The Garland News, Jan. 31, 1922. DHS Box 70.3.2. 16 HWS to W.A. Holford, Editor of The Garland News, Feb. 7, 1922. DHS Box 70.3.2.
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Your letter of the 18th inst., has been received and I want to thank you very uch for the generous expressions with reference to my speech on the “Anti-Lynching” Bill contained therein. If I can serve you or any of your friends at any time you have but to command me. With kindest personal regards, I am Sincerely your friend.17 Sumners would know that Robertson’s “friends” were Klan members. Sumners’ Feb. 2, 1922 letter in reply to Mayfield’s letter praising his anti-Dyer Bill speech thanks him, and tells Mayfield “… the unfortunate fact and the dangerous fact is that the negroes have organized in the North now for the first time and are demanding the right to control the legislative policy of the Republican Party with regard to matters of this sort.”18 Former Dallas Mayor Ben E. Cabell wrote a lengthy Jan. 6, 1922 letter to Sumners praising Sumners’ speech in the U.S. House and expressing Cabell’s racist views as follows: It was with pride and pleasure that I noted your stand in opposition to what we understand as the anti-lynching bill, and your interpretation of the same is absolutely correct. It is a slap at our Southland, and it gives me great pleasure to know that there still are left patriotic defenders of this grand old Southland. I am certainly glad you brought to their attention that there had been a little lynching done in Duluth, Minn. The invasion on our states rights can only be checked by such patriots as yourself, and every man who lives in this country with any red blood in his veins should tip his hat to Hatton Sumners for the position he has taken in this matter. Should this bill pass, and the United States assume control of these matters, they could place a company of soldiers at every little hamlet in the southland, and as long as negroes or whites either ravish or attempt to ravish our womanhood they will be summarily dealt with. So will this be in many parts of the north; agitations such as this bill tends toward will do a hundred per cent more harm than good. The wrong interpretation will be put upon it by these negro brutes and it will be an encouragement.
17 18
HWS to Felix D. Robertson, Feb. 21, 1922. DHS Box 70.3.3. chk XXXX HWS to Earle B. Mayfield, Feb. 2, 1922. DHS Box 70.3.2.
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I was so pleased in seeing what I did of your action, and so proud of you, I thought I would drop you a few lines. Old Texas will appreciate you I am sure. Wishing you a happy and prosperous New Year, …19 Sumners’ Jan. 9, 1922 letter in reply to Cabell’s letter thanked him for his praise and was entirely without any rebuttal or criticism of Cabell’s letter. Instead, Sumners agrees with the main points of Cabell’s letter as follows: I am just in receipt of your favor of the 6th instant and desire to thank you very much indeed for your generous expression with regard to my position with reference to the anti-lynching bill. There isn’t one Member of Congress from the South who does not recognize this proposed bill as a revival of a spirit and policy akin to that of the “carpet-bag regime” and I know nobody here, who has given the matter serious consideration, who does not recognize that this proposed legislation, if enacted and if held constitutional, would not reduce mob violence, but on the contrary would aggravate the situation.20 As rabid as Sumners and his supporters were there was even worse. The Carrollton Chronicle, May 12, 1922 had an editorial titled, “What Negroes Fear.” The editorial argued that African American men guilty of offenses should be castrated stating, “if a law could be passed to so mutilate each black man attempting race equality, and every white man who tries to make a negro of himself, that then the two races would be able to occupy their proper places without so many deaths of our girls defending their lives.” He further claims that, “All good negroes would welcome and help such a law …”21 The editor and publisher of The Carrollton Chronicle, C.C. Hayley, had earlier written a Jan. 29, 1922 letter in support of Sumners’ efforts against the Dyer Bill.22 Numerous prominent persons of the Dallas area wrote Sumners of their support and a list is provided in the Appendix. Sumners’ vicious opinion was mainstream among white people in the Dallas area, the same people that elected the Klan slate to political office. Years later, when running for re-election in 1936 he had his campaign ads point out that he had opposed the Dyer anti-lynching legislation since the general white Dallas public would have believed it was a great meritorious thing to have done.23
19
Ben Earle Cabell to HWS, Jan. 6, 1922. DHS Box 71.2.2. HWS to Ben Earle Cabell, Jan. 9, 1922. DHS Box 71.2.2. 21 Editorial, “What Negroes Fear,” Carrollton Chronicle, hand written date May 12, 1922, DHS Box 126.1.7. 22 C.C. Hayley to HWS, Jan. 29, 1922. DHS Box 71.2.3. 23 Advertisement, “Hatton W. Sumners for Congress,” DMN, July 3, 1936, page 4. 20