368 pages / 6.00 x 9.00 inches / 9 halftones
African-American Studies | Biography & Autobiography / Presidents & Heads Of State | History / United States - 19th Century | Political History / Civil Rights Studies
In Forgotten Legacy, Benjamin R. Justesen reveals a previously unexamined facet of William McKinley’s presidency: an ongoing dedication to the advancement of African Americans, including their appointment to significant roles in the federal government and the safeguarding of their rights as U.S. citizens. During the first two years of his administration, McKinley named nearly as many African Americans to federal office as all his predecessors combined. He also acted on many fronts to stiffen federal penalties for participation in lynch mobs and to support measures promoting racial tolerance. Indeed, Justesen’s work suggests that McKinley might well be considered the first “civil rights president,” especially when compared to his next five successors in office. Nonetheless, historians have long minimized, trivialized, or overlooked McKinley’s cooperative relationships with prominent African American leaders, including George Henry White, the nation’s only black congressman between 1897 and 1901.
Justesen contends that this conventional, one-sided portrait of McKinley is at best incomplete and misleading, and often severely distorts the historical record. A Civil War veteran and the child of abolitionist parents, the twenty-fifth president committed himself to advocating for equity for America’s black citizens. Justesen uses White’s parallel efforts in and outside of Congress as the primary lens through which to view the McKinley administration’s accomplishments in racial advancement. He focuses on McKinley’s regular meetings with a small and mostly unheralded group of African American advisers and his enduring relationship with leaders of the new National Afro-American Council. His nomination of black U.S. postmasters, consuls, midlevel agency appointees, military officers, and some high-level officials—including U.S. ministers to Haiti and Liberia—serves as perhaps the most visible example of the president’s work in this area. Only months before his assassination in 1901, McKinley toured the South, visiting African American colleges to praise black achievements and encourage a spirit of optimism among his audiences. Although McKinley succumbed to political pressure and failed to promote equality and civil rights as much as he had initially hoped, Justesen shows that his efforts proved far more significant than previously thought, and were halted only by his untimely death.
Benjamin R. Justesen is an editor and historian in Alexandria, Virginia. A former journalist, teacher, and U.S. Foreign Service Officer, he is also the author of George Henry White: An Even Chance in the Race of Life and Broken Brotherhood: The Rise and Fall of the National Afro-American Council.
“Benjamin R. Justesen has spent more than three decades restoring the hidden history of a generation of African American leaders who came to prominence in the decades after Reconstruction. In this compelling new study of the relationship between North Carolina congressman George Henry White and President William McKinley, Justesen shows in exquisite detail how two disparate Republicans grappled with the mounting racial tensions afflicting the South and the nation.”—Jeffrey J. Crow, coeditor of New Voyages to Carolina: Reinterpreting North Carolina History
“In Forgotten Legacy: William McKinley, George Henry White, and the Struggle for Black Equality, Benjamin R. Justesen investigates the complex relationship between the last black Republican congressman from the Reconstruction era and the last Republican president of the nineteenth century. Justesen cleverly recounts the history of that period while pinpointing how the promise of freedom was disrupted.”—Earl L. Ijames, curator of African American History, North Carolina Museum of History
“With Forgotten Legacy, Benjamin R. Justesen rewards his readers with another epic story that weaves the African American experience into the larger landscape of American politics. By expanding on the story of North Carolina’s congressman George Henry White, Justesen ties White even more closely to his ill-fated mentor, President William McKinley. He offers an engrossing portrait of two extraordinary men whose relationship challenged the prevalent mores of our turn-of-the-century country.”—Adele Logan Alexander, author of Parallel Worlds: The Remarkable Gibbs-Hunts and the Enduring (In)significance of Melanin
“Justesen argues, first, that biographers of McKinley have minimized his commitment to African American political equality; and second, that White and McKinley orchestrated the largest number of Black appointments to federal positions of any president. . . . the book’s detailed, thoroughly researched account of White’s national political career is useful to scholars of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era interested in learning how one prominent Black Republican continually pressed the party of Abraham Lincoln to uphold the Constitution.”—Journal of American History
Found an Error? Tell us about it.
