Education as a Gateway into the Middle Class: President Coolidge Opens the Door for African-Americans

The civil rights movement has long understood the importance of education. Indeed, although the era from the early 1950s to the late 1960s is often called the ‘civil rights era,’ Blacks knew that education was a major opportunity decades earlier.

President Calvin Coolidge saw a link between the ascent into the middle class and contributions to society: as African-Americans rose into white-collar college-educated professions, they also played more important roles in the country.

Encouraging Black students to become physicians would benefit not only the African-American community, but the entire nation. So Coolidge worked to inspire Black students to go to medical school, as historian Kurt Schmoke writes:

In his First Annual Address to Congress in 1923 he wrote: “About half a million dollars is recommended for medical courses at Howard University to help contribute to the education of 500 colored doctors needed each year.” This appropriation was to grow over the years, leading to the production of healthcare and other professionals who would stimulate the growth of an African-American middle class and develop leaders in all walks of life, nationally and internationally.

Coolidge also understood that professional advancement is closely associated with political liberty. When Charles Gardner, otherwise unknown to history, wrote to Coolidge to protest the fact that the Republican Party was nominating Black candidates for Congress, Coolidge defended the party’s promotion of African-American engagement in the political process, as a publication from the Coolidge Foundation makes clear:

Not only that, but Coolidge spoke out in defense of the political enfranchisement of blacks. In 1924 Army Sergeant Charles Gardner wrote to Coolidge in protest when Republicans nominated a black dentist as their candidate in New York’s 21st Congressional District, based in Harlem. Coolidge’s response encapsulated his disdain for racism: “th­e suggestion of denying any measure of their full political rights to such a great group of our population as the colored people is one which, however it might be received in some other quarters, could not possibly be permitted by one who feels a responsibility for living up to the traditions and maintaining the principles of the Republican Party.”

In September 1923, Coolidge hosted leaders of the Negro National Educational Congress at the White House. Calvin Coolidge’s civil rights strategy emphasized the connection between advancement into the educated professions and participation in the electoral process.