INTRODUCTION: Hatton W. Sumners, And Advocate of a Constitution to Support White Supremacy.

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Hatton W. Sumners: An Advocate of a Constitution to Support White Supremacy — Ed Sebesta 3/21/2020 INTRODUCTION At first glance the story of Hatton William Sumners might seem to be a minor story of a Dallas U.S. House congressional representative who might only be of interest to those who are engaged in detail with local Dallas history or because since he was the head of the U.S. House Judiciary committee in the 1930s and 40s might be of interest for those doing legislative history on one issue or another.

His records have lain at the Dallas Historical Society largely unexamined except for legal historians who review the Sumners material for information regarding various issues for very specialized histories regarding the law.

These records are extraordinary. About 140 boxes so far, with additional newly acquired material that is being organized in 2020, contained detailed records of his political life, they are both extensive and intensive. They are extensive since they cover his long political career from the early 20th century to his retirement in 1947, and intensive since they contain copies of letters and documents and other records candidly covering in detail his thoughts and ideas and actions for everything he did. With the additional newly acquired material the documentation will be even more extensive and intensive.

You don’t have to make inferences that one position or advocacy on one issue is related to his position or advocacy on another issue, Sumners in some letter, makes it clear that they are related.

Examining the Sumners material in regards to issues of race, labor and immigration reveals not just Sumners’ views and actions, but how American and Texas historians write history, explodes some fables in American and Texas history, and reveals collusion with historical erasure or just atrocious irresponsibility of Texas institutions of higher education and the Texas State Historical Association. It provides a whole new view of Dallas in the past of a whole city in support of vicious racism rather than that of marginal racist elements. It shows how much of Dallas history, excepting that of Jim Schutze and Michael Phillips, is really nostalgia engaged with the erasure of race and white supremacy in Dallas history.

Sumner himself as been portrayed as a great expert on the American constitution and as some courageous Horatio at the Bridge, defending the American constitution against an onslaught rather than a strategist formulating a theory of the American constitution to get allies outside the South to defend an understanding of the constitution which will uphold racial hierarchy in the South. Also, his rabid racism has been erased from the historical record.

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The Sumners records show a willingness of anti-New Dealers to be the allies of Sumners’ constitutional project.

These show how the Dallas establishment accepted and promoted the idea that Sumners was a great hero defending the Constitution and hence colluding with Sumners’ efforts to support white supremacy.

Some of the major issues involved in a real history of Sumners are detailed as follows.

In 1944 the Supreme Court ruled against the white only primary in Texas which made white supremacists in Texas furious and they demanded that Sumners take certain actions as will be discussed later in this history of Sumners. Sumners in multiple letters in response to multiple inquires relates his long history of defeating civil rights legislation and maintaining the system of white hierarchy in the South and the necessity of his re-election to preserve white supremacy. In a letter to his long term political confidant Cleo Thompson, April 24, 1944 Sumners writes: It has been my responsibility almost ever since I have been in Congress to protect the South is so far as the House is concerned, and to a definite degree in so far as the Congress is concerned, against the policies and the measures directed definitely against it. We had the proposition to destroy the Jim Crow law of the South, another to reduce our representation on the score that we did not permit negroes to vote, the anti-lynching bill, the poll tax bill, and all the rest of them, which we have not been able to defeat in the House but they have gone to the Senate pretty groggy. We have got the most serious situation now that we have had since the days of reconstruction, dangerous to the solidarity of the country as a whole and to the security of the races, especially in the South, and more specially the colored people.1

Sumners in a June 8, 1944 letter to Sam P. Harben writes: All the signs indicate that we are moving into another period of inter-sectional attack on the South. I have had the leadership in repelling each of these attacks, except that we were never able to defeat the anti-lynching bill, although we were able to hold it in the Judiciary Committee of the House. It never reached the floor 1

Hatton W. Sumners to Cleo Thompson, letter dated 4/24/1944, Dallas Historical Society Box 106.2.6. Holdings at the Dallas Historical Society. Here after I will refer to Hatton W. Sumners as HWS and the Dallas Historical Society as DHS in the footnotes. Additionally the folder and box numbers will be just listed as one number as it is on the tabs. For example Box 106.2.6 means that it was in Box 106 and the folder tab had 106.2.6. My photo records have additionally applied letters to the file names mostly to provide differentiation of different items for my indexing that has attempted to be systematic but has also been somewhat ad hoc. I am going to donate my indexed photos records to the Dallas Historical Society so that others can find things.

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except by petition discharging the Rules committee, and always when it was petitioned out we were able to send it to the Senate mighty groggy instead of blowing off and raising the dickens like so many people do in the South. I make my defense of the South upon a sound basis, public interest. Everybody who has any intelligence knows that the Chairmanship of an important committee, like the Committee on the Judiciary, held by a man of my length of service, is worth as much or more than ten new men. If I am defeated the Chairmanship moves to New York. The next most important position in a committee is the ranking minority position, which I would hold even if the Republicans controlled the House. I can command more influence outside the South, in the event of our attack, probably than any other man in the House.2 Sumners’ racist views were known from the beginning of his career to the end.

During his first term, in a June, 13, 1913 Dallas Morning News (DMN) article, “Hatton W. Sumners at Home, Dallas Congressman Says Japanese Problem One of Gravest— Enthusiastic Over President,” reports Sumners’ views of races living together as follows: The Japanese problem with which Congress has been confronted through the California anti-alien land bill has been given considerable study by Mr. Sumners and he considers it one of the gravest situations which the United States is confronted.

“Members of Congress generally,” he said, “recognize the situation with reference to Japan as one of potential gravity. While not acute at this time it looms big on the horizon of the future. It is one of the big problems with which we must deal. I believe it is generally recognized in this country and that Japan recognizes either that the white and yellow races must indulge in a warfare that will exterminate one of the other races or they must adjust themselves to certain portions of the earth which each will occupy. Because of an inborn racial antipathy it seems necessary either that each race should take certain territory, or that there must be a struggle to determine for all time which shall be the master. Because of the general appreciation of this truly vital problem I believe it will be adjusted with the second deplorable alternative.3 After he retired from the U.S. Congress toward the end of his life the DMN reported in an Oct. 15, 1957 article, about a meeting of the Public Affairs Luncheon Club at the Hotel Adolphus, that, “Sumners defied anyone to draw a substantial difference between the situation in Little Rock and that in Poland when the Russians when in with guns. He said there’s not a split hair difference.” Sumners is referring to president Eisenhower 2

HWS to Sam P. Harben, letter dated, June 8, 1944. DHS, Box 106.2.1.

No author, “Hatton W. Sumners at Home,” Dallas Morning News, June 13, 1913, page 6. In the footnotes the Dallas Morning News will be referred to as DMN. 3

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calling out the National Guard to support the integration of the school system in Little Rock, Arkansas because of the violent resistance.4 Yet, if you go to the Texas State Historical Society (TSHA) handbook entry for Sumners, the issue of race is absolutely missing, with no mention directly or implied or indirect towards any issue of race.5 Though the TSHA handbook is a laughable train wreck regarding race in Texas history, it still is striking that this lengthy entry, much longer than most in the TSHA handbook, entirely omits the issue of race.

Similarly the website for the Hatton W. Sumners Foundations, whose offices are in Dallas, entirely omits the issues of race and Sumners is portrayed as the great defender of the Constitution.6 Race isn’t brought up as an issue in “The Wisdom of Hatton W. Sumners and the Sumners Foundation Scholarships,” by Elmore Whitehurst, 1981 or “The Private Citizen and His Democracy,” by Hatton Sumners, 1959. Though it does come up in a 1987 pamphlet for the Hatton W. Sumner papers published by the Dallas Historical Society (DHS) with the front cover with gold foil letters and artwork. In the book in a section about his congressional career it says: As a staunch supporter of states’ rights, Sumners’ major concern was the growning government bureaucracy, and he denounced, “this great big, expensive bureaucratic Federal machine.” His view of democratic government was one in which power flows upward from the people at the bottom to the Federal government at the top. He felt that Federal intervention would lessen local responsibility and make the states shirk their duty. According to Sumners, “The right of states to govern was never important, but the necessity of states to govern was important and always will be important because they are the agencies of the government in which private citizens have greater power and responsibility.” He led the opposition to three major bills that were aimed against the South and state’ rights: The Railroad Bill, which provided that blacks and whites should ride in the same cars in interstate transportation the Anti-Lynching Bill, to provide for the levying of a fine upon any country which allowed a lynching to take placed; and the bill proposing a reduction of Southern representation in Congress on the claim that blacks were not being allowed to vote.7 4

McKee, Ruby Clayton, “Speaker From Virginia Raps Supreme Court,” DMN, Oct. 10, 1957, Final Edition, page 2.

Monroe, Mary Catherine, Texas State Historical Association, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fsu04, 3/27/2019.

6 https://www.sumnersfoundation.org/ 7 Box 1 File 19, DHS. This is not in the regular Sumners papers, but in a separate collection of the Baylor Univ.

Sumners papers which were donated and are now being re-organized. The booklet is, “The Papers of Hatton W. Sumners,” Collection Index by Casey E. Greene, Publication Text by Sarah Lilly Hunter, Dallas Historical Society Research Center, Fair Park, Dallas, Texas 1987, unpaginated booklet, second page of section titled, “Congressional Career.”

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So excepting an obscure pamphlet in a folder tucked away in an archive, Sumners’ career as a leader in upholding the white supremacist order is erased from memory.

Sumners’ claim to be a leader in the opposition against civil rights is not an over statement. He is perhaps more than anyone person responsible for the blocking of federal anti-lynching legislation and being the reason that it wasn’t passed in the 20th century but instead in the 21st century in 2018.

The history of the attempts to pass federal anti-lynching legislation and the history of President Franklin D. Roosevelts (FDR) attempt to expand the Supreme Court are given as two separate and unrelated stories. There is sometimes a vague sentence or two about some Southerners worried that expanding the Supreme Court will endanger white supremacy in the South.

In the 20th century the two major campaigns to get federal anti-lynching legislation were the Dyer bill in 1922 and the Wagner-Costigan Act in 1937. Sumners was prominent in opposing both bills, and in particular for 1937 was the leading figure in opposing federal anti-lynching legislation.

In 1937 he also was a leading figure in opposing FDR’s attempt to expand the Supreme Court. Histories of the attempted expansion like to quote Sumners’ statement, “Boys, here’s where I cash in my chips,” where he is declaring his commitment to defeating the proposed court expansion. As head of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee he was in a position to do so and histories detail how he did it.

In looking at the time line of both campaigns they largely overlap and Sumner was prominent in both of them.

If there was anyone who would be conscious on how changes in government could endanger white supremacy in the South it would be Sumners. In a Feb. 5, 1923 letter to Helen H. Groce of Waxahatchie, Texas, Sumners details how the passage of a federal act to aid education for poor districts would in the end will result in a vulnerability to white supremacy in the south where, “… it will require only one little act of the national Congress to compel the South to break down the racial barriers, in total or in part, in its school systems, before it is entitled to receive its share of this money.”8 It was in 1954, with the appointments of new Supreme Court justices, just 17 years later, that there was a decision of Brown vs. Board of Education leading to the integration of the schools in the South.

Southern Senators were explicit in how expanding the Supreme Court was a threat to white supremacy. An Associated Press story, reported on a March 2, 1937 address by 8

Letter HWS to Helen H. Groce, Feb. 5, 1923, DHS Box 71.1.13.

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Texas U.S. Senator Tom Connally to the Texas legislature. Connally states in the address that, “A brave, impartial United States supreme court is the very citadel of our liberties.”

He also explains why an independent Supreme Court is important to maintain white supremacy. The article states that, “Connally credited a republican supreme court with saving the white civilization of the south in ‘that dark period of reconstruction after the war between the states.’”9 Virginia U.S. Senator Carter Glass also brought up the issue of race in his denunciation of the proposed Supreme Court expansion. Referencing an unnamed individual in the FDR administration who was critical of white supremacy Carter warns: He added that this government spokesman, whose name he did not mention, also has urged repeal of “every statue and ordinance of segregation.”

“Should men of his mind have part in picking the six proposed judicial sycophants,” Glass said, “very likely they would be glad to see reversed those decisions of the court that saved the civilization of the south.

“It was the supreme court of the United States that validated the suffrage laws of the south which saved the section from anarchy and ruin in a period of the unspeakable outrages of which nearly all the nation recalls with shame.”10 The DMN did report Carter Glasses racial arguments in his radio address on 3/30/37 also in a front page article.11 Surely Sumner would be aware of these opinions. Though Sumner doesn’t himself link the issue of the Supreme Court expansion to that of race in opposing federal antilynching legislation and against Supreme Court expansion he argues that both will undermine the constitution and results in the further centralization of power. In Sumners’ denunciation of the federal anti-lynching bill in the U.S. House on April 15, 1937 he states that it is unconstitutional.12 The implication would be that it would be challenged in court and an expanded court might very well find it constitutional.

But also, Sumner himself saw his opposition to federal anti-lynching legislation as part of his general theories about the American constitution and government. In a Jan. 16, 9

Associated Press story, March 3, 1937, in the Longview News-Journal of Longview, Texas, March 3, 1937, page 5, downloaded Nov. 13, 2019. The DMN article of March 3, 1937, though lengthy, entirely omits any reference to race in Connally’s speech. “Connally Wants People to Decide On Court Revision,” DMN, 3/3/1937, page 2.

10 Associated Press story, “’Abominable,’ Says Glass of FDR’s Court Pad Plan,” March 30, 1937, in the Longview News-Journal of Longview, Texas, 3/30/1937, page 11. Downloaded Nov. 13, 2019.

11 No author, “Glass Sees Plan To Shift Court As Abominable,” DMN, 3/30/1937, page 1, 12.

12 April 15, 1937, Congressional Record, Proceedings and Debates of the First Session of the Seventy-Fifth Congress of the United States of America, Vol. 81 Part 3, March 18, 1937 to April 15, 1937, Government Printing Office, pages 3531-3536, question of constitutionality is brought up on page 3531 2nd column.

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1940 letter by Sumners to Amon Carter, editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in discussing his governmental philosophy of opposition to centralism, where he lays out his theories government, where he grandly mentions, “The Habeas Corpus Act, the Magna Carta, the Petitions of Rights, the Bill of Rights and the Acts of Settlement,” he concludes this exposition with the paragraph: I touched on some of those things in my anti-lynching speech which appeared in the Congressional Record of January 9, page 252. When you have time, I wish you would look over it, and give me the benefit of your opinion. 13 In a May 10, 1922 letter to Herbert M. Greene of Dallas, in discussing his opposition to the Sterling-Towner Bill to have federal financial support to be given to poor school districts he again relates his opposition to the federal Dyer anti-lynching act to his general philosophy of government and the American constitution. As follows: I note what you have to say concerning the fact that this proposed legislation does not violate states rights. In so far as I am concerned, I have regarded states rights -- that is the right of the states to govern -- as of primary importance. I have regarded always as being of primary importance the preservation of the necessity to govern and the holding of that necessity as close to the people as possible. I am taking the liberty of sending to you under separate cover copy of a speech delivered by myself on the “Anti-Lynching” Bill, in which my idea with regards to that phase of the matter is fairly well set forth. It is my judgment that if we shift the responsibility to any considerable degree from the States to the Federal government, with regard to education, we will have the absorption by the Federal government of the powers of the States with regard thereto, and will have another great Bureau here in Washington entirely beyond the reach of the collective influence of the individual citizen located back in the States. 14 A May 24, 1935 letter from Sumners to N.C. McPherson Jr., at the School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in reply to McPherson’s letter asking that Sumner support federal anti-lynching legislation besides being condescending to McPherson has the following angry conclusion.

By your other letter I feel that you have given me the liberty to try to impress you with what I know to be for the best interest of the people. You have an opportunity to do good for your Government and for a cause. I think you are doing harm, and I base that opinion on twenty-odd years given to no other business than to the study of the problems of Government, the nature of Government, and the important thing in our system of Government, which is to develop the governmental capacity of the people. That capacity, like all capacity, 13 14

Letter HWS to Amon Carter, Jan. 16, 1940, DHS Box 34.7.15.

Letter HWS to Herbert M. Greene, May 10, 1922. DHS Box 71.1.11.

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is developed by its exercise. Any person who would shift from the people of the communities responsibility to discharge governmental duties which they have the capacity to perform, in my judgment – and I hope you will permit me to say very plainly, is doing more to destroy the Government than any Red Agitator in this country can do.15 In a June 19, 1922 letter from Sumners to Wm. R. Harris, again Sumners positions his opposition to federal anti-lynching legislation as follows: My speech on the Anti-Lynching Bill, by the agreement of representatives of the press and the Members of the House, is classified as one of the greatest constitutional discussions ever delivered in Congress.16 This leads into a third major issue. Sumners was revered as a great constitutional expert. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked him to help write the 1935 Philippine colonial constitution on the basis of him being supposedly a great constitutional expert.17 During Sumners’ last term before he retired the American Bar Association (ABA) presented Sumners the 1944 medal for “conspicuous serve to the cause of American jurisprudence” at their annual convention.18 As reported in the ABA Journal, it was presented to Sumners by William L. Randolph, former president of the ABA, who glowing recounted Sumners “services” saying: “… a devoted public servant; a lawyer learned in the art of law-making and wise in the ways of making legislation come to pass; a staunch defender of the Constitution of his country and of government within and according to the Constitution; … stalwart fiend of the rights of states, of local self-government, … courageous leader in all efforts to preserve constitutional government and resist the inroads of arbitrary power in the hands of governmental or private groups.”

The article concludes that, “Many members of the large audience took individual opportunity to greet and felicitate Judge Sumners, and to assure him of their support of his non-partisan efforts to maintain constitutional government as the foundation for American jurisprudence.”19 Of course there was never anything non-partisan about Sumners’ efforts. The ABA heaped praise on Sumners even though Sumners was well 15

Letter HWS to N.C. McPherson, Jr., May 24, 1935. DHS Box 78.8.18. The letters that McPherson sent to HWS are: 4/6/1935, DHS Box 75.8.18; 5/20/1935, DHS Box 75.8.23. HWS spells McPherson’s name both “W.C.” and “N.C.” in different letters.

16 Letter HWS to Wm. R. Harris, June 19, 1922, page 4. DHS Box 101.2.9.

17 No author, “Roosevelt Urges Dallas Man to Aid Filipino Freedom,” DMN, June 22, 1934, page 1, 16. See editorial, “Joe for Hatton Sumners,” DMN, June 23, 1944, page 2, in which the DMN editorializes that Sumners is seen as being best qualified by president Roosevelt to “help prepare” the Philippine constitution.

18 No author, “National Bar Cites Sumners For His Service,” DMN, Sept. 14, 1944, page 16.

19 No author, “Medal for ‘Conspicuous Service’ Given Congressman Sumners,” American Bar Association Journal, Vol. 30, Oct. 1944, pages 558-59, 574, Randolph quote on pages 559. DHS Box 141.1.25.

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known as an opponent of civil rights legislation and employed his theories of government and the constitution to oppose civil rights legislation including federal antilynching legislation.

Sumners’ theories of constitution and government was also developed in opposition to the New Deal20 as well as civil rights. By doing this he developed a coalition in support of his constitutional ideas which would serve to oppose both civil rights and the New Deal. The importance of this coalition is explained by Sumners in letters to his key supporters in 1944 when the Supreme Court struck down the white only primary in Texas and he was urged to be more outspoken about it and be part of an effort to ask for a rehearing by the Supreme Court. Sumners sees this plan as destroying this alliance.

Sumners in a April 24, 1944 letter to Hon. C.F. O’Donnell, explains this as follows: The present situation presents special difficulties because many of my friends are angry and want me to do a lot of head-cracking. That might be very entertaining and cheer-provoking. But we have got only one-fourth of the membership of the Congress. We are, therefore, in the same situation as a small power, a small nation, which has to have some allies. People in such situations have to use strategy, to keep their feet on the ground and move as good judgement suggests, having in mind their objectives and their own danger. As I have said, that is presenting to me a pretty difficult situation just now. Some of my best friends are getting impatient because they think that my failure to act immediately and in the spirit of their own attitude is doing to me political hurt. While I feel that it is my duty to come back to Congress if I can, this situation is too delicate and too dangerous to our section of the country for me to forget that thing in attempting to do political service to myself.

I had a talk with Dan Moody Saturday, and he agrees fully with my strategy. My best friends there wanted me to get in on this attempt to procure a rehearing. But as I see it, that would put me before the country in the attitude of trying to play politics with this matter. The country would know that I could contribute nothing by being conspicuous in this connection, and I would be putting myself, as I see it, in the attitude of presuming that I could exercise some influence with the Court independently of what was incorporated in the brief. This, of course, would tremendously reduce the possibility of the country at large consider what I may be able to say with reference to what is being done to bring on a serious crisis between the white and the black people of this country at this time, when we are at war and need all the solidarity and strength which we can command.21

20

The New Deal was a term used for president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s program of progressive legislation upon his election in 1932.

21 Letter HWS to Hon. C.F. O’Donnell, April 24, 1944, DHS Box 106.2.6. Quote from page 2 of the letter.

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To summarize what Sumners is explaining in detail is that getting involved this court action and ranting in the media would smash his credibility arguing against civil rights on the basis of being concerned about the general welfare of the nation or the constitution.

In Sumners’ June 12, 1944 letter to Cleo Thompson he explains: As I wrote you before with regards to the Supreme Court decision concerning the negroes voting in the democratic primary, I have to keep in mind all the time that I am from the South. The South is in definite minority, and I have got to handle myself in such a way, with regards to matters of that sort, as to appeal to the people who are willing to consider a matter on the basis of principle and general governmental policy. I waited until one of those in high responsibility – the late Secretary Knox, to be exact – had said something about the necessity of our being a united people, and from that angle I was able to discuss it. We of the South will have to watch our step or we will get jockeyed into position of isolation.22 World War II was still underway. Sumners using the pretext of national unity during the war did give a speech prior to this letter asserting that civil rights efforts were destroying national unity in time of war.23 Sumners in his June 14, 1944 letter to Earnest Tennant explains the situation as follows: The most difficult thing I had to deal with was the professional Southern attitude of some of our people who, forgetful that we have only one-fourth of the vote in Congress, were make the sort of speeches to bring a great deal of applause from the South, but mighty little support from the other sections of the country which we had to have. I am experiencing that same difficulty now in trying to fortify our position before we come under the real attack which seems to be certain to come.24 Sumners is saying that an explicit appeal to racism and white supremacy needs to be avoided. Instead a defense of white supremacy needs to be hidden behind the language of government and the constitution and great principals and general philosophical questions otherwise the system of white supremacy would be destroyed. Sumners widely praised thinking about the constitution and government was understood by himself as being a system to support white supremacy in the South.

22

HWS to Cleo Thompson, June 12, 1944. DHS Box 106.2.11.

“Race Relations,” HWS, speech in the U.S. House, Cong. Record, April 27, 1944, page 3832-33. Also, DHS Box 51.7.5.

24 HWS to Ernest Tennant, June 14, 1944. DHS Box 106.2.12.

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Sumners was a staunch opponent of the unions, in particular the Congress of Industrial Organizations known as the C.I.O. He was well known during World War II to have advocated in a U.S. House speech that labor leaders should be electrocuted if they called for a strike in the defense industry.25 His arguments against centralization, bureaucracy, and excessive governmental power would both serve to oppose the regulation of business and undermine the New Deal but also would support an idea of a federal government without power to change race relations in the South. His opposition to the labor movement would make him in particular popular with conservatives and business interests who weren’t concerned with his white supremacist program, which seems to be all of them, and provide Sumners with an additional audience to promote his constitutional theories.

Surely others could put the puzzle pieces together and Sumners’ racism was very much on the surface and apparent. It wasn’t a matter of “dog whistles” and coded statements.

Before there was a Southern Strategy to get votes in the South resisting the civil rights movement there was this Northern Strategy of Sumners to get support for the racial order in the South and his efforts can be seen as a forerunner of the Republican Party and conservatives seeking the support of a South alienated from the Democratic Party because of its support for civil rights. Sumners was part of a movement that eventually overthrew the New Deal.

Sumners’ strategy might well have worked except for the Cold War in which white supremacy in the South would undermine the United States of America in its global struggles against powerful communist major powers and a worldwide communist movement. Where the racial order in the South would be indefensible in a world of collapsing European colonial empires.

Given the rather obvious nature of Sumners’ strategy the issue of collusion with Sumners’ campaign to preserve white supremacy in the South and the nation is also obvious. The ABA leadership is not made of obtuse individuals and surely understood what Sumners was doing. It is the same for others who praised him as a great constitutionalist. It surely was apparent to the people running Southern Methodist University when they appointed Sumners after he retired to be the research director of the Southwestern Legal Foundation in 1949.26 This comes to the fourth issue is the continuing collusion of the present day. It isn’t just the entry for Hatton W. Sumners in the TSHA handbook and the erasures of the issues of race or the erasure of race in the webpages of the Hatton W. Sumners Foundation.

25

King, John E., “Sumners Warns U.S. of Dangers: Challenges Patriotism of Labor; Threatens Electric Chair for Obstructionists,” DMN, March 3, 1941, page 12.

26 No author, “Hatton Sumners to Direct Research at Legal Center,” DMN, March 29, 1949, page 1.

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The Texas State Bar office in Austin has a Hatton Sumners Conference Room dedicated in 2007 with an Texas Bar Journal article praising both Sumners and his white supremacist political colleague Cleo Thompson.27 In their guide, “State Bar of Texas 2018-2019 Volunteer and Staff Guide,” there are dozens of Hatton Sumners events at schools districts across the state, such as the Hatton W. Sumners Institute on the Founding Documents, which hopefully doesn’t involve any of Sumners’ ideas.28 There is the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, with their Hatton W. Sumners Scholars who participate in the New Politics Forum.29 In 2019 Hatton W. Scholars at Texas Wesleyan University attended the Hatton W. Sumners Leadership Conference at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.30 Here and there in the educational institutions and legal institutions you will find Hatton W. Sumners scholarships, events and programs which of course imply he was a hero. You will also find total erasure of his record on race.

The Texas Tribune accepts Hatton W. Sumners Foundation money and continues to do so even though the author has written them asking them to refuse the foundation’s money and received no reply.31 Finally, Dallas provides a case study on how racism in the past is presented versus the historical reality of racism. For Dallas, the history of violent racism has been attributed to non-elite members of society and events such as the lynching of Allen Brooks are that of nameless mobs. The story of the Ku Klux Klan in Dallas is a little confection and misrepresents the history.

However, Sumners kept an extensive collection of his correspondence and along with the newspapers supporting him, you can see that it was Dallas’ elites and leaders that supported his white supremacist agenda. In 1938 when Sumners has once again achieved fame in opposing the Wagner-Costner anti-lynching bill, Herbert Marcus, on the Neiman-Marcus store stationary, writes him a letter of support for his re-election.

Dear Congressman Sumners:

27

No author, “Conference Room Dedicated to the Hatton W. Sumners Foundation,” Texas Bar Journal, Vol. 70 No. 4, April 2007, pp. 362-64.

28 “State Bar of Texas 2018-2019 Volunteer and Staff Guide: General Information, “

https://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Volunteer_and_Staff_Guide&Template=/CM/Co ntentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=42455, downloaded 3/30/2020.

29 https://moody.utexas.edu/centers/strauss/new-politics-forum/hatton-w-sumners-scholars, downloaded 3/30/2020.

30 https://txwes.edu/academics/sumners/department-news/hatton-w-sumners-scholars-attend-2019leadership-conference/#.XoIxR4ieGiM, downloaded 3/30/2020.

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XXX

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I want to assure you of my sincerest support in your campaign for Congressman. Will be very much interested in assisting you in any way that I can, if at all need.

Will be back home in about ten days.

With best wishes.

Very truly yours, Herbert Marcus32

When a speech in the U.S. House attracted nationally attracted favorable attention Alfred Knopf, the distinguished publisher offered to Sumner to publish a book on government. To help induce Sumners to take the offer, Harold Stanley Marcus, referred to as Stanley Marcus locally in Dallas, also wrote Sumners a Sept. 9, 1943 letter on Neiman-Marcus stationary on behest of Knopf, urging Sumners to accept Knopf’s offer.

Marcus assures Sumners that, “I know there would be a wide market for a book you might write – not only in Texas, but throughout the country,” and that Knopf “would properly promote it for its widest circulation.”33 Stanley Marcus surely knew that Sumners’ philosophy of government was to a great extent involved opposition against civil rights.34 Tom C. Gooch, who was the publisher, editor-in-chief, and president of the Dallas Time Herald, the other major daily newspaper for Dallas, was very much a supporter of Sumner and in particular Sumners’ opposition to civil rights legislation and in particular Sumners’ opposition to federal anti-lynching legislation.35 The Dallas Independent School District (ISD), has a school named after Tom C. Gooch and one named after Herbert Marcus.36 To what extent the collusion or active support with white supremacy and lynching extends in the naming of the Dallas built landscape will have to be accessed. It is more than just the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan, though that is extensive also.

32

Herbert Marcus to HWS, June 21, 1938, on Neiman-Marcus stationary, DHS 103.2.13.

Harold Stanley Marcus to HWS, Sept. 9, 1943. DHS Box 48.3.2.

34 I can hear the wailing now of Dallasites on how could I say that Stanley Marcus was complicit with racism and a torrent of ordinary and inventive excuses. We like to believe that racists are lower class individuals unlike ourselves.

35 This is a rather extensive record. However, an example is a Dec. 27, 1921 letter from Tom Gooch to HWS, DHS Box 70.3.1 complaining that a DMN cartoon of Dec. 22, 1921, page 1 ridiculing the states’ rights argument against federal anti-lynching legislation was unfair to Sumners.

33

36

https://www.dallasisd.org/gooch, saved 3/30/2020; https://www.dallasisd.org/marcus, saved 3/30/2020.

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Dallas society and government along with the Texas state government made up a white supremacist regime. The issues of civil rights and the oppression of racial minorities wasn’t a side issue in a drawer somewhere, it was integral to Dallas society and permeated it. Because of Sumners’ extensive documentation we can show this.

In writing this history of white supremacy of Hatton W. Sumners I expect as part of it to demolish all the vanities and mythologies infused with nostalgia about the Dallas past. I expect to show how Texas history as popularly believed can just be rubbish and so-called historical societies can be nothing put promoters of rubbish.

There are also stories of local interest. Sumners was presented as courageous, but during the struggle against the Ku Klux Klan taking over Dallas he was a coward with ridiculous rationalizations.

Also, Sumners’ biography includes that he was an opponent of giving women the vote until it became obvious it was going to pass. He spoke out against immigration. Though these stories do show an individual that was instinctively against human rights whenever or wherever it would arise in political discussion.