Howard W. Smith | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Portrait of Smith,c. 1960 | |
| Chair of theHouse Rules Committee | |
| In office January 3, 1955 – January 3, 1967 | |
| Speaker | Sam Rayburn John W. McCormack |
| Preceded by | Leo E. Allen |
| Succeeded by | William M. Colmer |
| Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromVirginia | |
| In office March 4, 1931 – January 3, 1967 | |
| Preceded by | R. Walton Moore |
| Succeeded by | William L. Scott |
| Constituency |
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| Judge of theVirginia Circuit Courtfor the 16th Judicial Circuit | |
| In office July 1928 – April 19, 1930 | |
| Preceded by | Samuel G. Brent |
| Succeeded by | Walter T. McCarthy |
| Judge of the Alexandria Corporation Court | |
| In office October 26, 1922 – July 1928 | |
| Preceded by | Robinson Moncure |
| Succeeded by | William P. Woolls |
| Commonwealth's Attorney forAlexandria | |
| In office September 1, 1918 – October 26, 1922 | |
| Preceded by | Samuel G. Brent |
| Succeeded by | William P. Woolls |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Howard Worth Smith (1883-02-02)February 2, 1883 Broad Run, Virginia, U.S. |
| Died | October 3, 1976(1976-10-03) (aged 93) Alexandria, Virginia, U.S. |
| Resting place | Little Georgetown Cemetery Broad Run, Virginia, U.S. |
| Party | Democratic |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 2 |
| Education | University of Virginia (LLB) |
| Occupation |
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| [1][2] | |
Howard Worth Smith (February 2, 1883 – October 3, 1976) was an American politician. ADemocraticU.S. Representative fromVirginia, he was a leader of the informal but powerfulconservative coalition.[3]
Smith offered an amendment to insert "sex" after the word "religion" as aprotected class ofTitle VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. TheCongressional Record shows Smith made serious arguments, voicing concerns that white women would suffer greater discrimination without a protection for gender.[4] Reformers, who knew Smith was hostile to civil rights for blacks, assumed that he was doing so to defeat the whole bill.[5]
The prohibition of sex discrimination was added on the floor by Smith. While Smith strongly opposed civil rights laws for blacks, he supported such laws for women. Smith's amendment passed by a vote of 168 to 133.[6][7][8]
Howard Worth Smith was born inBroad Run, Virginia, on February 2, 1883. He attended public schools and graduated fromBethel Military Academy inWarrenton, Virginia during 1901. He took hisLLB at the law department of theUniversity of Virginia atCharlottesville in 1903. Smith was admitted to the bar in 1904 and practiced inAlexandria, Virginia.
DuringWorld War I, Smith was assistant general counsel to the FederalAlien Property Custodian. From 1918 to 1922 he wasCommonwealth's Attorney for Alexandria. He served as judge of Alexandria's corporation court from 1922 to 1928. From 1928 to 1930, Smith served as judge of Virginia's sixteenth judicial circuit. Smith was often referred to as "Judge Smith" even while in Congress, and his additional ventures included banking, farming, and dairying.
He was elected in 1930 to the U.S. House of Representatives. He initially supportedNew Deal measures such as theTennessee Valley Authority Act and theNational Industrial Recovery Act. A leader of theconservative coalition who opposed the New Deal, he led the opposition to theNational Labor Relations Board (NLRB), serving as head of a special House committee dominated by members of the coalition. The committee conducted a sensationalist investigation that undermined public support for the NLRB and, more broadly, for the New Deal. In June 1940, amendments proposed by the Smith Committee passed by a large margin in the House, partly because of Smith's new alliance withWilliam Green, president of theAmerican Federation of Labor. The AFL was convinced the NLRB was controlled by leftists who supported the rivalCongress of Industrial Organizations in organizing drives. New Dealers stopped the Smith amendments, but Roosevelt replaced the CIO-oriented members on the NLRB with men acceptable to Smith and the AFL.[9]
Smith proposed the Alien Registration Act of 1940, ananticommunist law, which became known as theSmith Act. It requiredresident aliens to register. It also banned advocating the overthrow of theU.S. government or its political subdivisions. American Communist Party chairmanGus Hall was one of many communists later convicted of violating its provisions. TheU.S. Supreme Court ruled inYates v. United States (1957) that theFirst Amendment protected much radical speech, which halted prosecutions under the Smith Act.
As chairman of theUnited States House Committee on Rules starting in 1954,[10] Smith controlled the flow of legislation in the House. An opponent of racial integration, Smith used his power as chairman of the Rules Committee to keep much civil rights legislation from coming to a vote on the House floor.
He was a signatory to the 1956Southern Manifesto that opposed the desegregation of public schools ordered by the Supreme Court inBrown v. Board of Education (1954). A friend described him as someone who "had a real feeling of kindness toward the black people he knew, but he did not respect the race."[11]
When theCivil Rights Act of 1957 came before Smith's committee, Smith said, "The Southern people have never accepted the colored race as a race of people who had equal intelligence and education and social attainments as the whole people of the South."[12] Others noted him as an apologist for slavery who used theAncient Greeks andRomans in its defense.[11]
SpeakerSam Rayburn tried to reduce his power in 1961, with only limited success.
Smith delayed passage of theCivil Rights Act of 1964. One of Rayburn's reforms was the "Twenty-One Day Rule" that required a bill to be sent to the floor within 21 days. Under pressure, Smith released the bill.
Two days before the vote, Smith offered an amendment to insert "sex" after the word "religion" as aprotected class ofTitle VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. TheCongressional Record shows Smith made serious arguments, voicing concerns that white women would suffer greater discrimination without a protection for gender.[4] Reformers, who knew Smith was hostile to civil rights for blacks, assumed that he was doing so to defeat the whole bill.[13][6] In 1968, Leo Kanowitz wrote that, within the context of the anti-civil rights coalition making "every effort to block" the passage of Title VII, "it is abundantly clear that a principal motive in introducing ["sex"] was to prevent passage of the basic legislation being considered by Congress, rather than solicitude for women's employment rights."[14] Kanowitz notes that RepresentativeEdith Green, who was one of the few female legislators in the House at that time, held that view that legislation against sex discrimination in employment "would not have received one hundred votes," indicating that it would have been defeated handedly.
In 1964, the burning national issue was civil rights for blacks. Activists argued that it was "the Negro's hour" and that adding women's rights to the bill could hurt its chance of being passed. However, opponents voted for the Smith amendment. TheNational Woman's Party (NWP) had used Smith to include sex as a protected category and so achieved their main goal.[15]
The prohibition of sex discrimination was added on the floor by Smith. While Smith strongly opposed civil rights laws for blacks, he supported such laws for women. Smith's amendment passed by a vote of 168 to 133.[6][16][8]
Smith expected thatRepublicans, who had included equal rights for women in their party's platform since 1940, would probably vote for the amendment. Some historians speculate that Smith, in addition to helping women, was trying to embarrass northern Democrats, who opposed civil rights for women sincelabor unions opposed the clause.[4]
Smith insisted that he sincerely supported the amendment and along with RepresentativeMartha Griffiths[17] was the chief spokesperson for the amendment.[4] For 20 years, Smith had sponsored the Equal Rights Amendment, with no linkage to racial issues, in the House. He for decades had been close to the NWP and its leader,Alice Paul, one of the leaders in winning the vote for women in 1920 and the chief supporter of equal rights proposals since then. She and other feminists had worked with Smith since 1945 to try to find a way to include sex as a protected civil rights category.[18]
Griffiths argued that the new law would protect black women but not white women and so was unfair to white women. Furthermore, she argued that the laws "protecting" women from unpleasant jobs were actually designed to enable men to monopolize those jobs, which was unfair to women who were not allowed to try the jobs.[19] The amendment passed with the votes of Republicans and Southern Democrats.[20] Republicans and Northern Democrats voted for the bill's final passage.[21]
WhenBostock v. Clayton County was decided in 2020, legal scholars postulated that Smith's insertion of "sex" into Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964 protectedsexual orientation andgender identity from employment discrimination.[22][23]
Smith had a part in temporarily blocking theEconomic Opportunity Act of 1964 because "Job Corps provision would allow coeducational andinterracial job camps."[24]
AfterU.S. SenatorCarter Glass died in 1946, Smith sought the nomination to succeed him. TheByrd Organization, of which Smith was a member, instead nominatedA. Willis Robertson, who was elected to the Senate.[2]
Smithwas defeated in the 1966 primary by a considerably more liberal Democrat,State DelegateGeorge Rawlings. Although Smith remained neutral in the general election, many of his supporters defected toRepublicanWilliam L. Scott, who soundly defeated Rawlings in November.
Smith resumed the practice of law in Alexandria, where he died at 93 on October 3, 1976.[25] He was interred in Little Georgetown Cemetery, Broad Run, Virginia.
In January 1995, the House Rules Committee chairman, Republican CongressmanGerald B. H. Solomon, had a portrait of Smith by Victor Lallier[26] hung in the Committee hearing room. TheCongressional Black Caucus requested that it be removed.Georgia CongressmanJohn Lewis said:[27][28]
It is an affront to all of us ...[Smith is] perhaps best remembered for his obstruction in passing this country's civil rights laws. A man who in his own words never accepted the colored race as a race of people who had equal intelligence and education and social attainments as the White people of the South...
Solomon said he displayed the portrait to acknowledge Smith's co-operative work with Republicans when he was chairman but that he was unaware of his segregationist views. The portrait was later removed.[29]
Smith was portrayed by American actorKen Jenkins in the 2016HBO TV movieAll the Way, in which his segregationist views posed as a central and divisive opposition toPresidentLyndon B. Johnson's proposal of theCivil Rights Act of 1964.
| U.S. House of Representatives | ||
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| Preceded by | Member of the U.S. House of Representatives fromVirginia's 8th congressional district 1931–1933 | Succeeded by District abolished Himself after district re-established in 1935 |
| Preceded by District re-established John S. Wise before district eliminated in 1885 | Member of the U.S. House of Representatives fromVirginia's at-large congressional seat 1933 – 1935 | Succeeded by District abolished |
| Preceded by District re-established Himself before district abolished in 1933 | Member of the U.S. House of Representatives fromVirginia's 8th congressional district 1935–1967 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Chairman of the United States House Committee on Rules 1955–1966 | Succeeded by |
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