Howard W. Smith

File:Howard Worth Smith.jpg

Howard Worth Smith was born in Broad Run, Virginia, on February 2, 1883. He attended public schools and graduated from Bethel Military Academy in Warrenton, Virginia during 1901. He took his LLB at the law department of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville in 1903. Smith was admitted to the bar in 1904 and practiced in Alexandria, Virginia.

During World War I, Smith was assistant general counsel to the Federal Alien Property Custodian. From 1918 to 1922 he was Commonwealth's Attorney of Alexandria. He served as Alexandria's corporation court of from 1922 to 1928. From 1929 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.

{{clear left}}

He was elected in 1930 to the U.S. House of Representatives. He initially supported New Deal measures such as the Tennessee Valley Authority Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act. A leader of the conservative coalition, he led the opposition to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), established by the Wagner Act of 1935. Conservatives created a special House committee to investigate the NLRB that was headed by Smith and dominated by opponents of the New Deal. 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 with William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor. The AFL was convinced the NLRB was controlled by leftists who supported the rival Congress 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.Storrs, p. 212.

Smith proposed the Alien Registration Act of 1940, an anticommunist law, which became known as the Smith Act. It required resident aliens to register. It also banned advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government or its political subdivisions. American Communist Party chairman Gus Hall was one of many communists later convicted of violating its provisions. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Yates v. United States (1957) that the First Amendment protected much radical speech, which halted prosecutions under the Smith Act.

As chairman of the United States House Committee on Rules starting in 1954,{{cite news|title=People in the News...83, Runs Again|publisher=The Des Moines Register|date=March 3, 1966}} 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 1956 Southern Manifesto that opposed the desegregation of public schools ordered by the Supreme Court in Brown 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."{{Cite web|url=https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964|title=Civil Rights Act of 1964|website=www.encyclopediavirginia.org|access-date=July 21, 2019}}

When the Civil 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."{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YpFWUrynUl4C&q=%22The+Southern+people+have+never+accepted+the+colored+race+as+a+race+of+people+who+had+equal+intelligence%22&pg=PT154|title=Nobody Turn Me Around: A People's History of the 1963 March on Washington|last=Euchner|first=Charles|date=September 25, 2010|publisher=Beacon Press|isbn=9780807095522|language=en}} Others noted him as an apologist for slavery who used the Ancient Greeks and Romans in its defense.

Speaker Sam Rayburn tried to reduce his power in 1961, with only limited success.

Smith delayed passage of the Civil 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 a protected class of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Congressional Record shows Smith made serious arguments, voicing concerns that white women would suffer greater discrimination without a protection for gender. Reformers, who knew Smith was hostile to civil rights for blacks, assumed that he was doing so to defeat the whole bill.Clinton Jacob Woods, "Strange Bedfellows: Congressman Howard W. Smith and the Inclusion of Sex Discrimination in the 1964 Civil Rights Act," Southern Studies, 16 (Spring–Summer 2009), 1–32. 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."Leo Kanowitz, Sex-Based Discrimination in American Law III: Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Equal Pay Act of 1963, 20 Hastings L. Rev. 305 (1968). Kanowitz notes that Representative Edith 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.

File:Civil Rights Act of 1964 - amendment adding "sex" -- high-resolution.jpg clerk's record of markup session adding "sex" to bill.]]

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. The National Woman's Party (NWP) had used Smith to include sex as a protected category and so achieved their main goal.{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/onaccountofsexpo00harr|url-access=registration|title=On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women's Issues, 1945-1968|last=Harrison|first=Cynthia|publisher=University of California Press|year=1989|location=Los Angeles|pages=[https://archive.org/details/onaccountofsexpo00harr/page/178 178]–79}}

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.{{cite journal |author-link=Jo Freeman |last=Freeman |first=Jo |title=How 'Sex' Got Into Title VII: Persistent Opportunism as a Maker of Public Policy |journal=Law and Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice |volume=9 |issue=2 |date=March 1991 |pages=163–184 |url=http://www.jofreeman.com/lawandpolicy/titlevii.htm}} online version.{{cite book |author-link=Rosalind Rosenberg |first=Rosalind |last=Rosenberg |title=Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century |year=2008 |pages=187–188}}{{cite book|title= How We Got Here: The '70s|last= Frum|first= David|author-link= David Frum|year= 2000|publisher= Basic Books|location= New York, New York|isbn= 0-465-04195-7|pages= [https://archive.org/details/howwegothere70sd00frum/page/245 245–246, 249]|url= https://archive.org/details/howwegothere70sd00frum/page/245|url-access= registration}}

Smith expected that Republicans, 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 since labor unions opposed the clause.{{cite news |last=Gold |first=Michael Evan |title=A Tale of Two Amendments: The Reasons Congress Added Sex to Title VII and Their Implication for the Issue of Comparable Worth |work=Faculty Publications — Collective Bargaining, Labor Law, and Labor History |publisher=Cornell |date=January 1, 1981 |access-date=November 28, 2011 |url=http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=cbpubs}} from Duquesne Law Review.

Smith insisted that he sincerely supported the amendment and along with Representative Martha Griffiths{{cite book |first=Lynne |last=Olson |title=Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement |year=2001 |page=360}} was the chief spokesperson for the amendment. 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.Rosenberg (2008). p.187; notes that Smith had been working for years with two Virginia feminists on the issue.

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.Harrison 1989. p.179 The amendment passed with the votes of Republicans and Southern Democrats.{{cite news |date=July 2, 2014 |title=5 Things To Know About The Civil Rights Act Of 1964 |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/5-things-to-know-about-the-civil-rights-act-of-1964-race-blacks-african-americans-negroes-lyndon-johnson-50th-anniversary/ |work=CBS News |location=New York, NY}} Republicans and Northern Democrats voted for the bill's final passage.{{cite news |last=Kenworthy |first=E. W. |date=February 11, 1964 |title=Civil Rights Bill Passed By House in 290-130 Vote |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/02/11/archives/civil-rights-bill-passed-by-house-in-290130-vote-hard-senate-fight.html |work=The New York Times |location=New York, NY |page=1 |via=TimesMachine}}

When Bostock 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 protected sexual orientation and gender identity from employment discrimination.{{cite news|url=https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/trolling-is-a-terrible-way-to-write-laws/|title=Trolling Is a Terrible Way to Write Laws|last=McLaughlin|first=Dan|publisher=National Review|date=June 15, 2020|access-date=June 16, 2020}}{{cite news|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/does-civil-rights-act-protect-sexual-orientation/587881/|title=The Three-Letter Word That Triggered a Revolution|last=Purdum|first=Todd S.|publisher=The Atlantic|date=April 26, 2019|access-date=June 16, 2020}}

Smith had a part in temporarily blocking the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 because "Job Corps provision would allow coeducational and interracial job camps."{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yrLcOAKloIIC&q=%22Job+Corps+provision+would+allow+coeducational+and+interracial+job+camps.%22&pg=PA48|title=The Birth of Head Start: Preschool Education Policies in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations|last=Vinovskis|first=Maris A.|date=November 15, 2008|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=9780226856735|pages=48|language=en}}

After U.S. Senator Carter Glass died in 1946, Smith sought the nomination to succeed him. The Byrd Organization, of which Smith was a member, instead nominated A. Willis Robertson, who was elected to the Senate.

Smith was defeated in the 1966 primary by a considerably more liberal Democrat, State Delegate George Rawlings. Although Smith remained neutral in the general election, many of his supporters defected to Republican William L. Scott, who soundly defeated Rawlings in November.

File:Little Georgetown Church and Cemetery - grave of Howard Smith.jpg

Smith resumed the practice of law in Alexandria, where he died at 93 on October 3, 1976.{{Cite news |last=McQuiston |first=John T. |date=1976-10-04 |title=EX-REP. SMITH DIES AT HOME IN VIRGINIA |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1976/10/04/archives/exrep-smith-dies-at-home-in-virginia-former-head-of-rules-committee.html |access-date=2024-04-22 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}} He was interred in Little Georgetown Cemetery, Broad Run, Virginia.

In January 1995, the House Rules Committee chairman, Republican Congressman Gerald B. H. Solomon, had a portrait of Smith by Victor Lallier{{Cite web|url=https://history.house.gov/Collection/Listing/2002/2002-017-004/|title=Howard Worth Smith | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives|website=history.house.gov|accessdate=February 12, 2021}} hung in the Committee hearing room. The Congressional Black Caucus requested that it be removed. Georgia Congressman John Lewis said:{{cite web

|date=February 13, 1995 |url= http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_n14_v87/ai_16624572 |title= CBC members get portrait removed from House Rules Committee meeting room - Congressional Black Caucus |work = Jet|access-date=March 24, 2007}}{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jDkDAAAAMBAJ&q=%22race+of+people+who+had+equal+intelligence%22+education&pg=PA16|title=Jet|date=February 13, 1995|publisher=Johnson Publishing Company|language=en}}

{{blockquote|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.{{cite web |date=January 25, 1995 |author-link=David E. Rosenbaum |first=David E. |last=Rosenbaum |url= http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60610F93F580C768EDDA80894DD494D81 |title= Offending Portrait Succumbs To Black Lawmakers' Protest |work = New York Times |access-date=November 28, 2011}}

Smith was portrayed by American actor Ken Jenkins in the 2016 HBO TV movie All the Way, in which his segregationist views posed as a central and divisive opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's proposal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

{{reflist}}

• Brauer, Carl M. "Women Activists, Southern Conservatives, and the Prohibition of Sex Discrimination in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act", 49 Journal of Southern History, February 1983
• Dierenfield, Bruce J. Keeper of the Rules: Congressman Howard W. Smith of Virginia (1987)
• Dierenfield, Bruce J. "Conservative Outrage: the Defeat in 1966 of Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 1981 89 (2): 181–205.
• Freeman, Jo. "How 'Sex' Got Into Title VII: Persistent Opportunism as a Maker of Public Policy," Law and Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice, Vol. 9, No. 2, March 1991, pp. 163–184. [http://www.jofreeman.com/lawandpolicy/titlevii.htm online version]
• Gold, Michael Evan. A Tale of Two Amendments: The Reasons Congress Added Sex to Title VII and Their Implication for the Issue of Comparable Worth. Faculty Publications - Collective Bargaining, Labor Law, and Labor History. Cornell, 1981 [http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=cbpubs]
• Jones, Charles O. "Joseph G. Cannon and Howard W. Smith: an Essay on the Limits of Leadership in the House of Representatives" Journal of Politics 1968 30(3): 617–646. {{jstor|2128798}}
• Robinson, Donald Allen. "Two Movements in Pursuit of Equal Employment Opportunity." Signs 1979 4(3): 413–433. on alliance between Smith and Griffiths.
• Storrs, Landon R. Y. Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers' League, Women's Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era University of North Carolina Press. 2000.
• Woods, Clinton Jacob, "Strange Bedfellows: Congressman Howard W. Smith and the Inclusion of Sex Discrimination in the 1964 Civil Rights Act," Southern Studies, 16 (Spring–Summer 2009), 1–32.

{{Commons category}}

• {{congbio|S000554}}
• [http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id=410036 Howard Smith, former U.S. Representative - GovTrack.us]

{{s-start}}

{{s-par|us-hs}}

{{US House succession box

| state= Virginia

| district= 8

| before= R. Walton Moore

|after = District abolished
Himself after district re-established in 1935

|years = 1931–1933}}

{{US House succession box

|state = Virginia

|district = AL

|before = District re-established
John S. Wise before district eliminated in 1885

|after = District abolished

|years = 1933 – 1935}}

{{US House succession box

|state = Virginia

|district = 8

|before = District re-established
Himself before district abolished in 1933

| after= William L. Scott

| years= 1935–1967}}

{{s-off}}

{{succession box | title=Chairman of the United States House Committee on Rules | before=Leo E. Allen | after=William M. Colmer | years=1955–1966}}

{{s-end}}

{{US House Rules chairs}}

{{VirginiaRepresentatives08}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Howard Worth}}

Category:1883 births

Category:1976 deaths

Category:County and city commonwealth's attorneys in Virginia

Category:Virginia state court judges

Category:University of Virginia School of Law alumni

Category:Politicians from Alexandria, Virginia

Category:Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Virginia

Category:Farmers from Virginia

Category:20th-century Virginia state court judges

Category:20th-century American Episcopalians

Category:American anti-communists

Category:Anti-black racism in Virginia

Category:Signatories of the Southern Manifesto

Category:20th-century Virginia politicians

Category:20th-century members of the United States House of Representatives