race

SONOMA COUNTY AND EUGENICS

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

National news stories are off-topic here, but that 1905 Press Democrat headline, “Dr. Brown Would Drown the Idiots”, is irresistible, and also lends the opportunity to briefly discuss Sonoma County’s shameful role in the 20th century eugenics movement.

Like many other states, California had an institution for children that were diagnosed as “feeble-minded” (more about that offensive term below). Founded in 1883 by a pair of civic-minded women, the facility shuffled between four South Bay and East Bay towns until the state agreed to buy a ranch near Glen Ellen. With a band playing a cheery tune at the train stop, the first 148 children arrived in 1891 at what was then called The California Home for the Care and Training of Feeble-Minded Children. By 1904, the Home had 541 “inmates” and a staff of 70, making it the largest employer in the county. The state was also pouring money into the institution to expand it rapidly. (More on the history of the institution proper can be found in a November 19, 2000 Gaye LeBaron column available by searching the Press Democrat web site archives. The Home is still often referred to interchangeably as “Eldridge,” which was the name given to the train stop.)

“It was with the idea of providing a home for the purely custodial cases as well as undertaking the training and development of the epileptic feeble-minded that the management in the past ventured its memorable struggle…from its former inadequate quarters to the present unrivaled location,” the PD noted in a 1904 promotional insert that contained a full page on the Home, partially seen at right. But wait — read that section again: why the mention of the epileptic feeble-minded?” That’s because, according to a 1904 Census Bureau report, (PDF) about 18 percent of those institutionalized as feeble-minded were actually epileptic — by far the largest category of those considered “physically defective.”

Jack London visited the Home (which was adjacent to his ranch) in the summer of 1905, later writing a short story, “Told In the Drooling Ward.” Written from the viewpoint of a “high-grade feeb” (who sounds more like a cousin to Huck Finn), the story follows the attempted escape from the institution by two boys with epilepsy. London’s character described the world of the “epilecs” at the Home:


“You see that house up there through the trees. The high-grade epilecs all live in it by themselves. They’re stuck up because they ain’t just ordinary feebs. They call it the club house, and they say they’re just as good as anybody outside, only they’re sick. I don’t like them much. They laugh at me, when they ain’t busy throwing fits. But I don’t care. I never have to be scared about falling down and busting my head. Sometimes they run around in circles trying to find a place to sit down quick, only they don’t. Low-grade epilecs are disgusting, and high-grade epilecs put on airs. I’m glad I ain’t an epilec. There ain’t anything to them. They just talk big, that’s all.”

“Club house” or no, these children with epilepsy were still captives, warehoused until age 18 as “feeble-minded” alongside others with severe cognitive disabilities, such as microcephaly. What “training” they were given at the Glen Ellen facility is not apparent; photos from a few years later show inmates tending crops in fields surrounding the grounds. Contemporary pictures of East Coast institutions show girls sewing or doing needlepoint, and boys working in tailoring or leatherwork.

The children also may have faced a greater risk of harm from the institution itself than their disability. The late Victorian era believed that there was a dangerous form of epilepsy — use the Google ngram viewer and you’ll find “epileptic insanity” discussed in hundreds of articles and book chapters in medical literature up to the 1940s. Although there was no scientific proof that epileptic insanity was an actual physiological disorder, some authors at the time confidently reported that it accounted for 10-30 percent of all epilepsy cases. Some also claimed that everyone with epilepsy was, by definition, mentally unstable; a 1883 text on insanity stated, “There are those who, as soon as they find the slightest indications of epilepsy in the person under investigation, instantly jump at the conclusion that, ergo, that subject cannot be of sound mind.”

(Although their definition of epileptic insanity was fuzzy, it didn’t stop doctors from prescribing specific medical treatment: A 1917 medical text says epileptic insanity attacks can be treated with a regular enema cocktail of chloral hydrate, tincture of cannabis and digitalis, although “use of opium for a long period has been known to break up recurrent maniacal attacks.” Well, I should think so.)

Not only was their notion of “epileptic insanity” mistaken, but also was their certainty of precise underlying causes of epilepsy. According to our best science in 2008, about 100 diseases and conditions are thought to have possible links, but we admit today that no certain cause is discovered in 7 out of 10 cases. But a 1902 Clinical Psychiatry textbook noted “genuine epilepsy” was linked to unknown anatomical changes in the brain most of the time — with the insanity form, however, “defective heredity” was diagnosed as the cause in most cases. Such certainty that “defective heredity” caused a non-existent disorder was an early step down the very dark road of eugenics.

Eugenics was a popular debate topic in the 1890s and first years of the Twentieth Century. America’s leading popular scientist, Santa Rosa’s own Luther Burbank, contributed a widely-reprinted 1906 treatise, “The Training of the Human Plant.” To Burbank, “mingling of races” was healthy, but he thought it was a “crime against the state” if “degenerates” had children:


“Suppose we blend together two poisonous plants and make a third even more virulent, a vegetable degenerate, and set their evil descendants adrift to multiply over the earth, are we not distinct foes to the race? What, then, are we not distinct foes to the race? What, then, shall we say of two people of absolutely defined physical impairment who are allowed to marry and rear children? It is a crime against the state and every individual in the state. And if these physically degenerate are also morally degenerate, the crime becomes all the more appalling.”

(UPDATE: On closer reading, the context of “moral degenerate” was in reference to people who had syphilis and other STDs which were incurable at the time.) The truly appalling thing was Burbank’s flawed humans-as-plants metaphor. Aside from implying that some people are no better than weeds, he lost what scientific authority he had in this essay by sweeping “moral degenerate[s]” into his definition of “absolutely defined physical impairment.” As with his poorly-reasoned “kinetic universe” theory (see earlier post), Burbank didn’t seem aware that he was spoiling the stew by tossing a dollop of pseudoscience into his pot.

To his credit, Burbank stopped short of linking “moral degeneracy” to heredity. But in the years that followed, there was no shortage of medical experts who sought to blame criminality and other anti-social behavior on impaired brains or bad genes. A 1916 Boston Medical and Surgical Journal article reported that one examining doctor found 1 in 3 delinquents were feeble-minded. The author followed with a sweeping generalization that “every person who is called a criminal is now thought to have some mental variation from the normal.” Nor were epileptics exempt from this thinking. A 1918 study, “American Social Problems,” went even further: “Many feeble-minded, however, are also epileptic, and epilepsy is a common trait of criminals.”

Down the slippery slope of eugenics we tumble; if criminals usually had epilepsy (not true, of course), were epileptics usually criminals? If someone in authority, such as the 1916 “Special Investigator” for Massachusetts State Board of Insanity wrote in the article above that all criminals had some sort of mental disorder, wasn’t having a brain impairment suspect behavior in itself?

The stigma of once being labeled (or suspected) of feeble-mindedness also carried the risk of incarceration at a state hospital. The Insanity Board investigator — surely with the best of intentions of separating the disabled from the population of hardened criminals — believed that cops and other law-enforcement officials could be trusted to pick out the feeble-minded and send them to an institution without court hearings:


My belief is that the first mental examinations should be made by probation officers, judges and police officers…I think that an examination several hours long is not feasible or necessary. I think that a good history of the life, brief and easy to get from every man arrested, obtained before sentence, would in the majority of cases enable a non-medical man to separate out most of the insane and feeble-minded.

Those sent to the Sonoma State Home (the new name for the institution, as of 1909) possibly faced harsher punishment than a regular convict. A just-passed state law allowed for the “asexualization… [of] any person who has been lawfully committed to any state hospital for the insane, or who has been an inmate of the Sonoma State Home, and who is afflicted with hereditary insanity or incurable chronic mania or dementia.”

To be clear: The California law was authorizing forced sterilization of any inmate — and with no more review than a signature from two health board members. As the years progressed, they must have suffered writer’s cramp.

Although many other states followed suit before WWI, California was by far the most active. A 1922 study found 4 out of 5 forced sterilizations nationwide were performed in the state, with the justification being “mainly eugenic, also for the physical, mental or moral benefit of inmate, also partly punitive in certain cases.” Women usually had their tubes tied, and men were given vasectomies; but about 5% of the time, doctors performed hysterectomies or castrations.

(For details on sterilization in all states in this era, see the Carnegie Institution’s survey: “Eugenical Sterilization in the United States.” The Carnegie Institution — which, incidentally, was Luther Burbank’s patron for a few years at this time — actively promoted race-cleansing eugenics projects in the U.S. that were later studied approvingly by the Nazis, including a proposal for locally-operated gas chambers.)

Until 1918, sterilization was rare at Eldridge, with only 12 inmates forced to undergo the operation. But under new superintendent Dr. Fred O. Butler, it became virtually a factory operation, with about 5,400 sterilized between then and 1949, a thousand of the procedures performed by Dr. Butler himself. “We are not sterilizing, in my opinion, fast enough,” he said.

In examining admittance records from Butler’s tenure for her book, “Building a Better Race,” scholar Wendy Kline found there was also a marked shift in the types of patients arriving at the Home: “…a large proportion of Sonoma’s activities had nothing to do with the problem of mental deficiency and much to do with the problem of female sexuality.” Kline cited a 1926 study of the Sonoma Home that reported almost half of the women were there because they were classified as sexually delinquent, with notes in their records that they were “passionate,” “immoral,” “promiscuous,” or similar. The study found only 3 percent of the women were accused of actual crimes, such as prostitution. Male patients, however, were never found to have “sex delinquency;” most were adolescents sent to Eldridge for sterilization by their families because they were “masturbators” or “passive sodomists.”

Like all eugenics true-believers, Butler and his staff always sought evidence of physical deformity to “prove” their crackpot theories. Wrote Kline:


Doctors took note not only of patients’ sexual behavior but also of the sexual organs themselves. For example, of the eighty-two women admitted to Sonoma between January 1918 and August 1919 who were sterilized, forty-one, of 50 percent, were also noted for their “abnormal” genitals. Twenty-two of these patients were singled out specifically for enlarged genitals — the clitoris, vaginal wall, or labia — additional evidence (in the opinions of institutional physicians) of sexual deviance…and underscored the assumption that feeble-minded women were indeed “oversexed.”

The valuable chapter in Kline’s book aside, very little is written about Dr. Butler’s house of eugenic horrors. What happened there certainly wasn’t a secret; Butler was a prolific writer. And nothing is available (at least, nothing that I’ve found) about Sonoma County’s views on the doings behind the walls at the Home, which continued through WWII and after, even as Germans were being rightly condemned for the same practices. This is fertile ground for an American History grad student seeking a thesis topic.

As for our theme item about Dr. Brown and the idiots, not much else is known; several newspapers around the country printed a small item like this, also usually quoting a quip from the Richmond Times-Dispatch: If we were to drown all the idiots like rats, “some states would soon be mighty hard up for legislators.”

DR. BROWN WOULD DROWN THE IDIOTS
Special Dispatch to Press Democrat

New York, Jan. 28 — Dr. Brown of the Board of Health created a sensation while speaking of the proposed new system of education for the backward scholars when he declared that idiots should be drowned. He argued that there was no time these days to spend on children that were deficient in mental powers and said that as there was no hope for idots [sic] their lives should be extinguished.

– Press Democrat, January 29, 1905

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1905 MEDIA RACISM REPORT CARD

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

One cheer for the 1905 Press Democrat: Racism that year wasn’t nearly as awful as in 1904. But a hiss for the Republican newspaper: What did you have against Japanese-Americans?

News items demeaning Chinese, Black, and Native American local residents appeared repeatedly in the 1904 Press Democrat. Reports of simple events, even weddings, were sometimes expanded into racist vignettes by someone at the paper who mistakenly thought he possessed a talent for writing dialect humor. Race was also just below the surface in writings about the 1904 election, particularly as Finley expressed shock over an African-American child appearing onstage at the Republican Convention, warning it was a portent of dreaded racial integration. But aside from editorial outrage that President Teddy Roosevelt had appointed an African-American to a position of authority, the PD was mostly silent on matters of race in 1905.

Compared here is Press Democrat and Republican coverage of the same event in the Chinese community. Press Democrat coverage is restrained, almost indifferent, except for the two regrettable uses of the old-timey “Celestial” stereotype. Aside for an inappropriate stab at humor (“post mortem spirito-creature”?) the Republican’s offering was superior in every respect, and included details about participation of members of the white community that will likely be interesting to sociologists.

The Shame Award for 1905, however, goes to the Santa Rosa Republican. Their description of a party of drunken Japanese workers was a throwback to the sort of crap the Press Democrat published the year before, filled with racial slurs, fanciful details that the writer could not possibly have known, and told in a manner inviting ridicule.

Even with all its ethnic bashing in 1904, the Press Democrat held back from attacking Japanese-Americans. The Japanese community had deep social roots in the county, and it probably didn’t hurt that Japanese-American businesses, such as the “Japanese Employment Office,” were regular advertisers in the PD. Over at the Republican, racist slurs were never found under previous editor Allen B. Lemmon, and the new owners, transplants from the more cosmopolitan Oakland newspaper scene, appeared to share his progressive views. So why did the Republican trash its ethical standards to crudely insult the Japanese community? I’m puzzled, but can offer a few guesses.

Although unlikely, it’s worth considering that the story, factual or not, was published as some sort of a swipe at Ernest L. Finley and his Press Democrat. When this item appeared, the PD-Republican feud had escalated leagues beyond the “flapdoodle” between Finley and Lemmon the year earlier. Finley had started the fight with the new owners in March 1905, ridiculing them with a series of parody ads (blog post coming) that were probably side-splitting funny when read loudly in a saloon, but now just seem mean. The newsprint jousting turned serious in August, however, when the Republican charged the rival paper with tolerating criminal activities in town on behalf of its cronies (blog post coming about that, too). From then on, the editors took op/ed potshots at the other side nearly every day. The fumes were so toxic that anything that appeared anywhere in either paper at this time should be considered a possible veiled attack on their foe. Most of the tie-ins to their fusty newspaper war are no longer apparent today, of course. Honestly, interpreting these old papers is sometimes like being a Kremlinologist.

Another possibility is that the Republican’s shameful article was motivated by new anti-Japanese racism within the California GOP. Earlier that year, San Francisco labor unions had created the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League, seeking to expand the ban on Chinese “coolie” labor to include other Asian workers. Their champion in Congress was Rep. E. A. Hayes (R-San Jose), whose March 13, 1906 Japanese exclusion speech launched years of discrimination that would cumulate about twenty years later with a ban on virtually all Japanese immigration to America. Neither 1905 Santa Rosa paper mentioned the formation of the discriminatory League (which is odd, considering both took every opportunity to editorialize about other aspects of San Francisco politics), so it’s unknown what, if any, influence the organization had on the editorial position of the Santa Rosa Republican.

A third option is that the story was intended as a strained metaphor to lampoon the Russo-Japanese War, which had ended with Japanese victory just three weeks earlier. After being almost continuously on the front pages since the start of 1904, readers knew well the names of Yamamoto and Ito, both Japanese admirals. Also note the descriptions of the prizes: a statue of the “Emperor of Japan doing Hari-Kari to the Czar” and an oil painting of the Japanese flag flying on the courthouse in downtown Santa Rosa. Don’t think so.

But there’s yet another explanation that’s simplest of all, and thus the most likely: Was this noxious anti-Japanese story in the Republican authored by the same reporter who penned the racist stories in the Press Democrat a year earlier? Articles were never bylined in these papers, but the writing style here is quite similar to the hateful vignettes found in the 1904 PD, and this piece is likewise rich in fantastic details. That the reporter (let’s call him “Racist Ralph”) was hired away by the other paper would also explain the decrease of anti-Black, anti-Indian, and anti-Chinese reporting in the 1905 Press Democrat (again, the PD was hardly bias-free that year; it was just less contemptible). Even if the writing of the detestable stories of 1904 and 1905 all can be blamed on Racist Ralph, however, the disgrace of these articles appearing in the daily papers still falls to the editors.

Deceased Aged Chinese Woman Buried Yesterday

The aged Chinese woman, Kee Haw, who died on Second street last Wednesday, was buried yesterday by her countrymen in the county cemetery. She had lived in this city for some time and her death was from natural causes. The woman was very poor and a number of Chinese with some of the white neighbors provided the burial expenses and several of the white children in the vicinity of her late home placed a few flowers on the cheap coffin. Somewhat different was the Oriental contribution to the dead — a bowl of rice and two chop sticks for her post mortem spirito-creature wants.

On the way to the cemetery a Chinese rode on the hearse with the driver and scattered prayer papers along the way. These were propitiate the unseen attendant devils who play the star part in the Mongolian’s religious belief. After a time, if the deceased has any friends either in this country or in China, her bones will be disinterred, sewed up in a little white sack and shipped home across the wide Pacific. If not, her dust will lie and mingle with those of the occident.

– Santa Rosa Republican, April 21, 1905

Chinese Woman Buried

Mrs. Kee Haw, a Chinese woman, who died on Second street on Wednesday, was buried Thursday morning in the county cemetery. A Celestial rode beside the driver on the hearse and let the customary shower of slips of paper fall en route to the cemetery. On top of the grave the roast pork and chicken was placed in due form and Celestials carried out the other fancies of their burial exercises.

– Press Democrat, April 21, 1905

YAMAMOTO’S EUCHRE PARTY
His Guests Pulled Their Guns and Shot the Three Prizes Into Ruins

Mr. Oki Yamamoto, the proprietor of a Japanese boarding house in Cloverdale, gave a progressive euchre party at his spacious shack Sunday night. He invited all his countrymen from the surrounding vineyards and hop yards and the guests assembled early. Four large boxes helped out the three tables and by 8 o’clock the little brown players were pitching “jokers” and “bowers” at each other fast and furious.

Refreshments were served bountifully in large glasses and this had a tendency to make the games over-interesting. Landlord Yamamoto noticed a spirit of battle breaking out in spots among his growing-noisy guests but with a section of hop-pole he knocked down several of the most truculent of his fellow patriots and kept white-winged peace present through roosting p [sic] on the roof to be out of the storm center below.

Presently Mr. John Kinno, who had gone oftenest to the fountain — said fountain being the host’s demijohn of red, red wine — broke out. He thought he saw Mr. Ito Hikikito lifting two jacks from a cold deck in his jumper pocket. With a frying pan which he grabbed from a near-by stove he soaked [sic] Hikikito over his dark brown head. Ito, bubbling with the war spirit of his great namesake, climbed from the floor where he had laid down and slept for a few moments just subsequent to his meeting with the frying pan, hurled several loud “banzais” and pulled his gun. Other guns appeared and white-wing peace turned in her hat check and left. One Jap got a chunk of lead driven into his muscular brown arm and another son of Nippon had one of his ribs scraped by a Smith & Wesson ball. The lights were shot out in true Caucasian style and the mirror in the proprietor’s sleeping room was put out of commission. Several shot holes in clothing and walls were made.

But the most desperate damage was done the three euchre prizes which were on exhibition in the room. One was a tiny statue group representing the Emperor of Japan doing Hari-Kari to the Czar — a masterpiece of art, the second an oil painting of the Court House in Santa Rosa with the sunburst flag of the Jap flying over the building, a prophesy, and the third prize a small keg of rare old wine from the Fountaingrove winery. When the smoke had cleared away the first two prizes were found ruined, but the keg had disappeared.

The gunners and their guns had disappeared when the Constable’s posse broke in the door and only Mr. Yamamoto was present. He assured the “honorable” American gentleman that no trouble had occurred in his “dishonorable” habitation, in fact he had just awakened from a dream of peace in his “mean” sleeping place. No arrests.

– Santa Rosa Republican, October 17, 1905

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“GENERAL” OATES SPEAKS

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and politicians, even retired ones, gotta hear themselves talk, even when they know nothing more than Average Joe. And thus an editor at the Santa Rosa Republican found himself recording for posterity what General William C. Oates thought about foreign trade.

The general and his family were in town visiting his baby brother James Wyatt, who held a party in William’s honor as the formal housewarming at his home, which later would become known as Comstock House.

William C. Oates served seven terms in the House and was a one-term governor of Alabama. He was a “general” indeed, although he actually never ranked above lieutenant colonel on active duty, and even that wasn’t official; technically he was a captain, at best. As the Spanish-American War appeared on the horizon in 1898, W.C. Oates petitioned President McKinley to appoint him a Brigadier General. The White House approved the commission for the 64 year-old Oates, as it did requests from several other ex-Confederate officers (and even more Union vets). But the old man did little but bivouac and march in a few parades, and authorities in Washington must have thought him a crank for insisting that he was entitled to lead troops into battle.

In the Civil War, Oates lost an arm. He also lost his brother John, which would haunt him the rest of his life. He also lost a battle that just might have changed the course of history.

Captain Oates was commander of the 15th Alabama regiment. With the rest of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, Oates and his men invaded Pennsylvania in July 1863. Outside a town called Gettysburg and on a rocky hill called Little Round Top, it is not hyperbole to say that they all met their destinies.

During the second day of combat at Gettysburg, Oates was given a direct order to position his troops for a coordinated attack with other units. En route to that specified location, Union snipers began firing at Oates’ regiment. Oates ordered his troops to turn around and fight the sharpshooters, chasing them up a steep and heavily wooded hillside. At a top ledge, Oates and his men rested, but were soon confronted by an officer who galloped up the hill on horseback, and demanded to know why Oates had disobeyed orders. William argued that this was the highest spot in the valley, and if Confederate cannons could somehow be hoisted up to the top, they could command the battlefield. As author Glenn LaFantasie wrote in the definitive biography, Gettysburg Requiem, his idea “revealed his lack of artillery training, his poor assumption that high ground necessarily meant superior ground, and his wishful thinking.”

Ordered to follow orders, Oates and his troops trekked down and off to positions at the base of the smaller, adjacent hill, Little Round Top. But his pursuit of the snipers (who had melted away into the woods) and musings about having a Civil War equivalent to The Guns of Navarone had meant a critical delay in their arrival; by then, Union troops were already entrenched at the top. Oates and the men of the 15th Alabama would be in the unenviable combat position of charging the enemy uphill.

The fighting between Oates’ Alabama troops and the 20th Maine volunteers, commanded by Col. Joshua Chamberlain, was fierce and close. For over an hour the battle went back and forth with many dead, particularly among the Confederates. Both commanders wrote books about the experience with memorable quotes: “The blood stood in puddles in some places on the rocks” (Oates) and “At times I saw around me more of the enemy than of my own men” (Chamberlain). The battle is the dramatic climax of the first half of the movie, “Gettysburg.”

As the sun was going down and as Oates saw his troops were exhausted, out of water and low on ammunition, he ordered a retreat. But as they were starting to pull back, Chamberlain did something completely unexpected: He ordered his men to lock bayonets and charge screaming down the hill. The Southerners panicked and fled (“we ran like a herd of wild cattle,” Oates later wrote), leaving their wounded behind, among them Oates’ brother, John. Although William C. Oates is not portrayed or mentioned in the film, those are supposed to be his men that mustachioed actor Jeff Daniels (Chamberlain) is chasing.

The importance of the battle of Little Round Top became the sort of topic that Civil War buffs love to debate. In another book, Twilight at Little Round Top, Glenn LaFantasie argues that it was the key part of the battle of Gettysburg, and with it, hinged the War Between the States. Perhaps if Oates had not exhausted his men with the fruitless chase up that other hillside, or had arrived at Little Round Top just a few minutes earlier and thus before the Union forces had settled in, the outcome could have gone the other way, and General Lee might have had a wider range of options available on the final day of fighting. (Obl. Believe-it-or-Not sidebar: It was also the battle of the governors-to-be, as Oates became governor of Alabama, and Chamberlain became governor of Maine.)

In Santa Rosa forty-two years after that terrible battle, William was a mess of conflictions. To W. C. Oates and his ilk, race and slavery still had nothing to do with the Civil War, and the South had not “lost,” but merely had been “overwhelmed” by Yankees. To him, the core Confederacy “principles” — namely that blacks deserved to be enslaved because they were somehow lesser humans and that the Constitution granted absolute superiority to state’s rights — were never defeated, and someday, someway, the romantic ideal of Dixie would rise up again.

“He firmly believed in Southern institutions and ideas, such as white supremacy and black inferiority. Like many other white southerners, he seemed untroubled about keeping African Americans in subservient roles while exploiting them for personal gain and even sexual pleasure [Wm. Oates had a child with a house slave]…his heart was constricted by his hard attitudes toward blacks, immigrants, Northerners, Republicans, Populists, and practically anyone who was unlike him. He was, as one Alabama historian describes him, ‘a conservative among conservatives.’ In many respects, that’s putting it mildly,” LaFantasie wrote in the forward to Gettysburg Requiem.

His claim in the interview below that he “immediately advocated the gradual emancipation of the negroes” when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation is not exactly true. In his first foray into national politics, Oates went to the Confederacy’s capitol a few weeks after Lincoln signed the Proclamation and lobbied that the Confederate army’s shortage of soldiers would be solved if slaves were allowed to enlist, with a promise that they would be given their freedom after the war. “Oates journey to Richmond produced shock, disbelief, and impolite sneers,” noted author LaFantasie.

As for Oates’ optimistic views on contemporary race relations in the South, (“we are getting along pretty smoothly”), on the same day that William met with the Santa Rosa newspaper, Edward Lewis and “Kid” George were lynched in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, just two of the 57 blacks known to have been lynched that year. One week later, a black man named Tom Williams was burned alive “before an immense crowd of excited citizens” in Texas, according to a New York Times item. Doubtless the families of these murdered men did not share Oates’ cheery outlook.

The Exclusion Act comments refer to an announcement made earlier in 1905 that China intended to boycott American-made products because of the U.S. law that mandated openly racist discrimination. In response, President Teddy Roosevelt clarified that the ban only applied to “Chinese of the coolie, or laboring class” and not to businessmen, diplomats, or students. The boycott ended a few months later.

A VETERAN OF TWO WARS
Interesting talk with Gen. W. C. Oates, of Alabama, who is visiting in Santa Rosa

One of the most distinguished men of the New South, General W. C. Oates of Alabama, is being entertained by his brother, Colonel James W. Oates. He is accompanied by his wife and son, W. C. Oates, Jr. They like Santa Rosa very much and are meeting many friends with whom they became acquainted on a former visit. General Oates is a former Governor of Alabama and ex-Congressman, having represented his district with distinction at Washington and is a leading member of the legal profession of his State. During the Spanish-American War he was a brigader-general, serving with the same fearless loyalty with which he fought for the South in 1861-1865. He is the author of “The War between the Union and the Confederacy and its Lost Opportunities,” a work in which the subject is discussed in a way possible only to one possessing complete and intimate knowledge of the same.

General Oates is tall and soldierly in bearing, has the southerner’s easy grace of manner and is very entertaining in conversation. He was interviewed yesterday afternoon by the Republican in regard to the labor conditions in the South, as concerned with Oriental exclusion, and said:

“If there is anything this country is sensitive about it is its trade interests, and all this talk about modification of the Chinese exclusion Act is the result of an apprehension that its rigid enforcement, perhaps unreasonably rigid, may result in harm to American commerce.

“I think the proposed modification of the Exclusion Act will amount to very little. It will probably soften the rigidity of it, but very little, and will not increase the immigration of that people to this country to any very great extent. The statements to that effect and all the talk have grown out of the declaration of the President in response to the expressed apprehension that China would boycott trade, and my opinion is that the President only intends such modification as to meet the excessive rigidity, in some places, of the exclusion.

“Now, in the Southern States, the cotton States prosper, there is no particular demand for Chinese and Japanese laborers. Owing to the lately inflated prices and disturbance, or scarcity of labor in those States, there has been and is now going on considerable agitation in favor of the installation of white labor from European countries. The negroes, who constitute the chief laborers in the cotton States, are becoming less satisfactory — I think largely for the reason that it is so easy for them to get an abundance of money for their support by a limited amount of labor. They are not as a rule provident people who want to lay by something for a rainy day, but usually expend their earning as soon as obtained.

“From life-long experience and observation my opinion is that negro labor is the best adapted to the climatic and other conditions of the cotton States of any that is obtainable.

“The political agitation of the last three years, urging the negro to seek fields of industry in other countries, has had a very disturbing effect upon labor in many localities, but I think agitation in most of the States where there is a large negro population has resulted in the respective rights of the races becoming well defined. As these conditions become more settled and acquiesced in my each race, their relations will be more harmonious than now.”

As an indication of the very strong religious sentiment of the colored race in the South the General related a story of a planter friend of his, who managed the free negroes on his three plantations with very noticable success. When asked about it he said:

“If I am any more successful than my neighbors in dealing with negroes it is because when I hired them I found out what denomination they belonged to, built them a little church and provided them with a preacher.”

While many negroes go North to work in the large cities the larger wages they receive are really no better in the end. General Oates says, than those paid in the South, where house servants, especially, are exceptionally well treated, always receiving their board and room free. It is quite evident that General Oates has a strong liking for the colored people, and his desire that they should be given justice in every regard is apparent from the fact that, he is willing and anxious to see the race improve, and that he sees no reason why the intelligent negro should not have business and even political ambition. In Alabama the negroes have practically the same advantages as the whites, as the constitution which requires that there be a large sum used for educational purposes provides that the same amount per capita be used for colored schools and white.

It certainly might be said that General Oates was ahead of his time in his manner of thinking when the war began, because when Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation was made he immediately advocated the gradual emancipation of the negroes.

“I was only a young fellow then,” said the General, “‘and nobody paid any attention to me, but if they had, there would have been none of the horrors of reconstruction.”

After all the dismal newspaper and magazine articles about the race problem in the South, General Oates’ optimistic view of condidtions there is a welcome change.

“Race problem? Just let it alone,” he said, “we are getting along pretty smoothly and it will take care of itself.”

– Santa Rosa Republican, August 5, 1905

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