Grand Old Partisan

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I salute Elbert Tuttle, born July 17th 1897. His father moved the family from Pasadena to Hawaii. He trained as an army aviator and reported for a newspaper. Graduating from Cornell Law School, Tuttle relocated to Atlanta. Though focusing on tax litigation, he also handled many civil rights cases. Having remained in the national guard, he entered active service a lieutenant colonel during WWII and retired a brigadier general. Opposed to racial segregation, Tuttle devoted his energies to building up the Georgia GOP. He chaired Dwight Eisenhower's state campaign. The incoming President named him general counsel at the Justice Department. In 1954, Eisenhower appointed him to the Court of Appeals, with jurisdiction over six southern states. Brown v. Board of Education he observed to be "a broad mandate for racial justice." He recalled...

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Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I spotlight a momentous instance of Republicans defending African-Americans from Democrat oppression. As civil war ended, the GOP-controlled 38th Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau. This federal agency managed schools and hospitals and legal clinics and food pantries. A year later, the GOP-controlled 39th Congress passed a second Freedmen's Bureau bill. It guaranteed to emancipated slaves "any of the civil rights or immunities belonging to white persons, including the right to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property, and to have full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and estate, including the constitutional right of bearing arms." Republican Congressman John Bingham noted that the bill enumerated the same rights and privileges enumerated in the 1...

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I honor Eunice Carter, born July 16th 1899. Her parents were a national leader of the Young Men’s Christian Association and a suffragist. Democrat oppression led the family to flee Atlanta, to Brooklyn. Governor Calvin Coolidge advised her at Smith College. In 1932, she became the first Black woman to graduate from Fordham Law School.  Two years later, as the Republican nominee, Carter only narrowly lost election for the state house. A year after that, Fiorello LaGuardia, the Republican Mayor of New York, named her assistant district attorney in the so-called "women’s court". Carter noticed that most prostitutes had the same attorneys and bail bondsmen. Further investigation revealed that they paid half their earnings to Lucky Luciano in return for legal representation. In effect, Luciano was their employer. She and her boss, district attorne...

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I salute Joseph Abbott, born in New Hampshire, July 15th 1825. He edited a newspaper after studying law. An anti-slavery governor commissioned him to reorganize the state militia. During the Civil War, Abbott commanded the state’s 7th Infantry. His regiment battled through Virginia and the Carolinas. Stationed at Wilmington when peace restored, he decided to remain. Abbott empathized with African-Americans and defended their rights at the 1868 constitutional convention. That year, the legislature elected him a U.S. Senator. Receiving his vote were the 15th Amendment, the [anti-] Ku Klux Klan Act and other GOP achievements. He also served on the Republican National Committee. Later years, Abbott worked in the lumber industry and founded a newspaper. President Ulysses Grant and President Rutherford Hayes named him to Treasury Department posit...

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I honor Maggie Walker, born in Richmond, July 15th 1864. Her mother was a slave. Walker started out teaching school, then established a laundry business. Age fourteen, the social activist joined the Independent Order of St. Luke, a fraternal society that cared for the sick and aged while encouraging self-reliance and integrity. She eventually rose to be its national leader. In 1903, Walker chartered the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank. She stayed on as chairman when, during the Depression, it merged with two other institutions to become the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company. This savvy entrepreneur also established a department store and a newspaper. Walker served on the NAACP board. In 1921, she was Republican nominee for superintendent of public instruction. There stands in downtown Richmond a statue of Maggie Walker, recogniz...