Coolidge-president and racism-a Trumpian attitude

Does this remind you of anyone?

John Calvin Coolidge Jr. ~ 30th President (1923-1929)

President Bush’s FEMA response to Hurricane Katrina seemed prompt when compared to President’s Coolidge’s handling of the Great Mississippi (River) Flood of 1927. While most White communities were saved, riverside Black communities were flooded to reduce the pressure on the levees. And then these thousands of displaced Blacks were forced to work for their rations under the gun of the National Guard and area planters, leading to a conflagration of mass beatings, lynchings, and rapes. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who President Coolidge eventually appointed to head the relief efforts, capitalized on southern segregationists’ support for his flood mismanagement and succeeded Coolidge in the White House.

President Coolidge also signed arguably the most racist and ethnocentric immigration act in history, an act championed by Republican eugenicists and Democratic Klansmen. The Immigration Act of 1924 was co-authored by Washington Congressman Albert Johnson, well-schooled in theories of “yellow peril” that had rationalized discrimination against west coast Asians for decades. The bipartisan measure further restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe, severely restricted African immigrants, and banned the immigration of Arabs and Asians. “America must be kept American,” President Coolidge had said during his first annual message to Congress in 1923.