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 Wendell Willkie Photo courtesy of IU Archives |
| If this small world was one world and all peoples were connected, then Willkie argued, Americans needed to prepare for change. Necessary to the new postwar world was not only a United Nations, but also a new spirit of understanding and equality across lines of race, ethnicity and culture. |
Most of my Indiana heroes are a bit out of the mainstream. I like Abraham Lincoln because there was an edge in his relationship to the Indiana frontier; I like Eugene Debs, who challenged the convictions of Hoosiers with ideas, radical then, now fairly conventional; I like Ada Schweitzer, who pushed Indiana's public health program toward lower infant mortality; I like Robert L. Bailey, a black attorney who fought racial injustice even if the hours of labor were not billable; I like Matthew Welsh, governor and gentleman, who challenged George Wallace when he came crawling in search of Hoosier votes.
These heroes furthered ideals of democracy by helping us to examine more carefully who we are and who we want to be as Hoosiers and as Americans.
As hard as it is to choose one hero, I like Wendell Willkie. But not for the 1940 presidential campaign. I like Willkie because of what he did after he lost that election, when he challenged some of America's central traditions and helped folks think a bit more broadly and deeply.
Willkie became a hero to many when he popped out of nowhere to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1940. Born in Elwood, in 1892, and educated at Indiana University, he was a wealthy lawyer and corporation executive by the 1930s.
I would not have voted for him in 1940; I would rather not imagine this political innocent as the leader of World War II America. Franklin D. Roosevelt's combination of politics and statesmanship was far better suited to America's needs at the time.
By losing the election in 1940, Willkie avoided what might well have been a dreadful presidency and grew in the next four years to make two great and enduring contributions.Willkie's first contribution was embodied in his book One World. To appreciate his achievement, it is essential to recall how isolated and provincial Indiana and America were as late as 1940.
The times were marked by isolationism. Many Hoosiers in 1940 had seldom traveled outside the state, some no further than their county seat. They were little different in this regard from other Americans. Most welcomed distance from the rest of the world, even the rest of the country.
One World was Willkie's report to America of a grand voyage of discovery. In 1942, in 49 days, he traveled 31,000 miles in a converted military bomber. He visited heads of state and ordinary people in North Africa, the Mideast, the Soviet Union and China.
One World was published in April 1943. Within a year, it sold two million copies. Willkie recounted his trip in a plain language that made these exotic places less foreign to folks back home. Running through his account was his feeling not "of distance from other peoples, but of closeness to them."
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The message of One World was also a call to Americans to meet the challenges of race at home.
Willkie drew attention to the inferior place of black Americans and to the fact that the rest of the world was carefully watching this unfinished part of America's experiment in democracy.
In public speeches, radio addresses and magazine articles, Willkie challenged white America's insistence that blacks stay in their place. He decried the discrimination and segregation that prevailed in America's military and the embarrassing irony of showing the world American GIs fighting in segregated units.
As chairman of the board of Twentieth Century-Fox, Willkie pushed Hollywood to end the stereotyping of blacks in films. And despite his reluctance to see government grow more powerful, Willkie advocated federal action to guarantee voting rights, equal employment opportunity and public housing for blacks. In public and behind the scenes, he worked closely with black civil rights leaders.
Wendell Willkie is one of my Hoosier political heroes. In his commitment to one world and to civil rights for black Americans, he walked far in advance of his contemporaries. His greatness comes not in his own time, but in his relationship to our time.Wendell Willkie is a Hoosier hero for today.
Editor's Note: IU historian James Madison wrote about Willkie in an article that appeared in the Fall 1996 issue of "Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History," a publication of the Indiana Historical Society. We thank Madison and the society for permission to run this abridged version.
Visit the Traces' Web site at:
http://www2.indianahistory.org/ihs1830/traces.htm
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