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CHAPTER SIX JAZZ AND GOVERNMENT – Ed Sebesta 10/10/2020 Hatton W. Sumners saw the American constitution as being Anglo-Saxon1 and deriving ultimately from Germanic influences which worked their way through English history and such documents as the Magna Carta. In opposite to this Anglo-Saxon constitution he saw “Jazz thinking,” “Jazz philosophy.” He conceptualized Texas white people having an Anglo-Saxon civilization. Sumners’ conceptualizations of Texan and American society would also be useful to characterize Eastern and Southern European white immigrants who weren’t AngloSaxon and their labor unions as alien, but that will be reviewed in a chapter on Sumners’ opposition to unions and their leadership. This chapter will focus on Anglo-Saxonism versus “Jazz thinking.” Sumners gave an address to a meeting of former Tennesseans on Tennessee Day at the Texas State Fair in 1907. In this speech he defines Texas pioneer identity and hence the ideals of current white Texans with an emphasis of a violent white masculinity. Pioneering Sumners explains, “… has appealed not to the sluggard and the effeminate, but the brave and the strong,” combining effeminacy with laziness and defining it as opposite to strength and bravery. Pioneering is for those who are prepared to be violent and face violence since these Tennesseans “consecrated by blood” Texas. Their invasion of the lands of non-white Native Americans is set up as heroic with Sumners pointing out that they risked the dangers of “hostile savages” who lacked the Tennesseans’ “standards of Christianity and Anglo-Saxon civilization” and hence are inferior. The history of Texas is that the Native Americans faced the depredations of white Americans coveting their land. The Tennesseans are also heroic for their participation in battles against the British in the War of 1812, in fighting for the Confederacy, and fighting for Texas secession from Mexico.2 Sumners holds up these Tennesseans as ideals to be emulated by the public in fighting corruption in government. Since women were not allowed to vote in 1907 this speech was to set an ideal for white men to emulate in civic life. In 1915 in a speech to the Old Soldiers and Old Settlers’ Reunion in Hillsboro, Texas Sumners repeats many of these themes. Sumners states that it was a “sturdy, virile folk who in the early days turned their faces westward,” referring to Texas pioneers, and in Texas “established Anglo-Saxon civilization, and under the shadow of Mexican oppression established the foundation of a great republic.” 1
Anglo-Saxon is a reference used in modern times to refer to English racial identity. Though it doesn’t have a basis in historical fact. Many different groups have been part of the origins of the English from invading Vikings, Normans, Romans, Germanic tribes as well as pre-Roman peoples. Two of the Germanic groups were Angles and Saxons. There was a time when Germanic tribes migrated to Britain starting in the 5 th century and from that period to the Norman Conquest of 1066 is the Anglo-Saxon period of time in English history. 2 No author, “Meet at the Fair,” DMN, Nov. 3, 1907, page 6.