William Howard Taft: From the White House to the High Court

Taft Birthplace

On February 3, 1930, William Howard Taft stepped down from his position as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The resignation ended what was an impressive run in public service, as Taft is the only person to serve as both head of the Executive branch of government as President (1909-1913) and as head of the Judicial branch, as Chief Justice (1920-1930). By most accounts, he enjoyed his time as a Justice more than he did his time as President.

As president, Taft faced the problem of succeeding the popular Theodore Roosevelt, who initially supported Taft as his successor. But eventually, Roosevelt would challenge Taft when Taft ran for reelection in 1912, splitting the vote and giving the victory to Woodrow Wilson.

I recently visited Taft’s childhood home at the William Howard Taft National Historical Site near Cincinnati, Ohio. Taft came from a relatively powerful family, and the house showed that the family did well for themselves, even if they were not extremely rich.

The home is worth visiting. The tour of the house takes around 30 minutes, and there is a film about Taft’s life. The National Park Service and the people who worked on the house to restore it to its current state did a great job. At one point, the building had been converted into apartments, but now it is easy to imagine the Tafts living there. For example, in addition to the historic furniture, many rooms have the same carpet and wallpaper designs as when the Tafts lived there.

In contrast to presidential homes like those of Abraham Lincoln or of Franklin D. Roosevelt, there is no aura of awe and wonder. But a visit is a nice modest introduction to Taft’s political and public service career.

Taft Cincinnati

When Taft resigned from the Supreme Court in February 1930, he had been facing medical issues for some time. He had several heart attacks in 1924 and he had memory problems in the years after that. At the beginning of 1930, he experienced hallucinations, and after his retirement was often semi-conscious. He died on March 8, 1930, only about a month after his retirement from the Supreme Court.

Photos of Taft home by Chimesfreedom. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Thurgood Marshall’s 1967 Appointment to the Supreme Court

    Justice Thurgood Marshall On August 30, 1967, the United States Senate confirmed Thurgood Marshall for the U.S. Supreme Court by a vote of 69-11. Thus, after almost 200 years, the country had its first African-American Supreme Court Justice. It would be even longer until the first woman, Sandra Day O’Connor, joined the Court in 1981.

    Marshall, of course, made history in a number of ways. While on the Court, he sided with the rights of the oppressed, becoming a fighter for equal treatment of all Americans while leading on such issues as his opposition to the death penalty.

    The following newsreel footage covers President Lyndon B. Johnson’s nomination of Marshall to the Court.

    This short video captures some images and a few short interview excerpts from Senators involved in the nomination process. Early on, you may see New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy next to Marshall, and Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy speaks about the nomination.

    Marshall’s fight for equal rights went back long before President Johnson nominated him to the Supreme Court. After becoming chief counsel at the NAACP at the young age of 32, he oversaw many important cases. He also won 29 cases before the Supreme Court, including the landmark 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, where the Court struck down “separate but equal” school segregation.

    By all accounts, Marshall also was a decent man and fun to be around, as he often regaled his colleagues with stories of his experiences. I have been reading Gilbert King’s Devil in the Grove, which recounts a fascinating period where Marshall was involved in a case helping defend four black men accused of a 1949 crime in Florida.

    In the following video, Mike Wallace interviews Thurgood Marshall on 60 Minutes. The video is undated, but the conversation and the reference to “President Eisenhower” (and apparently to his 1956 re-election) place it within several years after Brown. I like Marshall’s response to the question about who he voted for, as well as Wallace’s promotion of the game Jotto at the end. Check it out.

    A few years back, I caught the HBO one-man show Thurgood, where Laurence Fishburne portrayed the legendary lawyer and jurist. Fishburne does a very good job of capturing various sides of Marshall and his long career, and it is worth tracking down. Here is the trailer.

    Thurgood Marshall remains one of the giants of American history. Although I did not learn about him while I was in grade school or probably even high school, every school child should learn about his life.

    Photo: Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

    What is your favorite story about Thurgood Marshall? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Justice Byron White on the Football Field

    Jutice Byron Whizzer White Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White was born on June 8 in 1917. White, who passed away on April 15 in 2002, has the distinction of being the only U.S. Supreme Court Justice to also have a distinguished football career.

    Justice White served on the U.S. Supreme Court from April 1962 to June 1993. In his obituary in 2002, the New York Times wrote that while White often voted with the conservative justices, such as dissenting in Miranda v. Arizona (1966) and Roe v. Wade (1973), other times he went a different direction, so on the Supreme Court “no ideological label ever fit Justice White comfortably.” Where one could label Byron White was on the football field, where he was a stellar athlete.

    byron whizzer white In college, White played football halfback for the Colorado Buffaloes of the University of Colorado at Boulder, where a newspaper columnist gave White the nickname “Whizzer.” After graduation, starting in 1938, White played in the NFL for the Pittsburgh Pirates (now the Steelers) and the Detroit Lions. He played in the NFL for three years at high pay while leading the league in rushing for two seasons before he went in the Navy during World War II.

    After returning from the war, White decided to pursue a law career, enrolling in Yale Law School and starting the trajectory that would take him to President John F. Kennedy appointing him to the U.S. Supreme Court. Although he left his football days behind, White could not escape the nickname he disliked, as people continued to call him “Whizzer.”

    A video of the game was recorded by J. Rudolph Jaeger, who became famous as an esteemed brain surgeon. The video shows White on the football field in the 1938 Cotton Bowl of Rice Institute (later Rice University) vs. Colorado University. Most of the video shows the game from a distance, but White is in the lighter colored uniform with number 24, playing halfback at a time the position featured all kinds of responsibilities like running, throwing, kicking and playing defense. Near the beginning of the video, though, the camera catches the young White in close-up preparing for the game.

    [February 2016 Update: Unfortunately, the video is no longer available on YouTube, but you may see some clips of the game on the Rice Owls website.]

    In that 1938 game, Rice ultimately won what was only the second Cotton Bowl Classic. Byron White had led the Colorado Buffaloes through an unbeaten season, and at the beginning of the Cotton Bowl, it looked like that run of wins would continue. The Buffaloes jumped off to a 14-0 lead after White caught an interception and ran 47 yards for a touchdown, which would be the longest interception run in Cotton Bowl history for 50 years. White even kicked the extra point.

    But after that score, Rice’s halfback Ernie Lain, who had come in off the bench, took control of the game, leading the Rice Owls to a 28-14 victory. No one would match Lain’s feat of throwing three touchdowns in the Cotton Bowl until Doug Flutie did it in 1985.

    Lain went on to play for the Washington Redskins and passed away in 1987 while White was serving on the Supreme Court. But on that date in 1938, without any idea of what paths their lives would take or whatever other accomplishments would come, White and Lain played like football gods.

    Today, the NFL Players Association annually presents the Byron “Whizzer” White Award, its highest honor, to recognize “players who go above and beyond to perform community service in their team cities and hometowns.”

    What is your favorite story of a changed career? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Pop Culture Roundup (for Early February 2012)

    Arrested Development In case you were too busy with watching all of the Super Bowl commercials or with getting dumped from X Factor, here are some of the recent pop culture stories you might have missed.

    – Movies –

    If you are excited about multiple superheroes in the upcoming Avengers film, check out the trailer.

    The Chicago Tribune has a review of Big Miracle, i.e. the whale movie, by Michael Phillips.

    Great Scott! Back to the Future may become a Broadway musical.

    Adam Sandler is in talks to create a film based on the board game Candy Land. Where is the checkers movie?

    Bill Wyman wrote an interesting critique of the films of Steven Spielberg (“he hasn’t said anything new”).

    A new documentary about Bob Marley premieres at SXSW.

    Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin? — check out the new trailer for the movie Game Change.

    Still shaken. . .This year marks 50 years since James Bond first appeared on film. . .

    Monty Python members are reuniting for a science fiction film.

    Sarah Jessica Parker will play Gloria Steinem in biopic, replacing Demi Moore.

    Uggie, the dog in The Artist, is retiring. Unfortunately, the reasons for the retirement is ill health. (thanks @poochface)

    Kermit & Miss Piggy held a press conference to address accusations from Fox Business that they promote a liberal agenda.

    – Music –

    Salon considered how Madonna liberated America.

    R&B singer David Peaston (‘Two Wrongs (Don’t Make a Right)’) passed away at the age of 54 this week.

    A new Graceland exhibit looks at Lisa Marie Presley’s relationship with Elvis.

    Cover Lay Down posted 18 different covers of the Townes Van Zandt classic, “If I needed You.”

    The Flaming Lips sing with Suri from the Apple iPhone.

    Ringo 2012 Ringo Starr Ringo Starr discussed his 17th solo album. Read the Los Angles Times review of Ringo’s new album, Ringo 2012.

    An unreleased ABBA song will be released.

    Soul Train host Don Cornelius has passed away in an apparent suicide. RIP.

    Pres. Obama’s cover of Al Green boosted sales of “Let’s Stay Together” by 490%. Nice job Mr. President, but you can’t top Al Green:

    – Television –

    Roseanne Barr has filed papers for the Green Party’s presidential nomination.

    A video refresher course on why David Letterman is funny.

    How Stephen Colbert is beating the Supreme Court by illustrating the effects of its Citizens United decision.

    Kevin Bacon will star in a serial killer drama pilot for Fox.

    New episodes of Arrested Development are in the works.

    Check out some past stories about life on the set of Saturday Night Live.

    Robert Hegyes, who played Sweathog Juan Epstein on Welcome Back Kotter passed away. I hope he has a note to get into heaven. In other death news, Ian Abercrombie, who played “Mr. Pitt” on Seinfeld, passed away. RIP.

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    Ayn Rand, Justice Thomas, & The Fountainhead

    John Aglialoro, the producer of the movie Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 (2011), recently announced that due to bad reviews and poor box office, he is abandoning the plans for parts two and three of the story. As someone who read Ayn Rand’s long book Atlas Shrugged many years ago, I was interested when I heard they were making a movie version. But when I saw the trailer, the movie looked terribly boring, so I am not among the few who have seen it. I might have watched it on DVD when it came out, but now that I know it may leave me hanging without any resolution, maybe not. Yet, some recent reports indicate the second movie still may be coming out next year.

    Justice Clarence Thomas

    One person who might be disappointed if the sequels are abandoned is Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. In the book The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (2007), Jeffrey Toobin (p. 119) wrote that Justice Thomas often requires his law clerks to watch the movie, The Fountainhead, which is based upon another book by Ayn Rand and directed by King Vidor. That one sentence in Toobin’s book jumped out, raising questions about the connection between the movie and Justice Thomas’s judicial philosophy, and what it means for America.

    Ayn Rand incorporated her philosophy of Objectivism into her novels. The philosophy has several parts, but she described one of the basic tenants this way: “Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.”

    One may debate the value of a philosophy of self-interest. A number of conservatives have embraced the philosophy as connected to laissez-faire capitalism, so one might understand why the conservative Justice Thomas admires Ayn Rand’s work. In his memoir, My Grandfather’s Son, he wrote about reading Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and how the books affected him: “Rand preached a philosophy of radical individualism that she called Objectivism. While I didn’t fully accept its tenets, her vision of the world made more sense to me that that of my left-wing friends.” (p. 62) A website devoted to Ayn Rand’s fiction writing, The Atlas Society, has more about Justice Thomas’s connection to Ayn Rand.

    Still, The Fountainhead (1949) is an odd movie choice, even though it features excellent actors like Gary Cooper, Raymond Massey, and Patricia Neal. One reviewer summed it up as “one of the strangest and most florid pictures of its time, possibly of all time.” The Fountainhead is about an architect named Howard Roark (Cooper) who has his own vision and does not want to compromise his beliefs and art to popular ideas. When the people who hired him to create a public housing building do not let him do it his way, he blows up the modified building. And he’s the hero of the movie. Okay, I get the idea about not compromising, but isn’t blowing up the building going too far?

    One might wonder why Justice Thomas loves this unusual movie so much that he has the recent law school graduates who work for him watch it. And one might speculate what message the new lawyers take from the self-interest theme of the movie regarding one’s lack of compassion for the poor and underprivileged.

    Considering Roark’s destruction of the building in the movie, and in today’s atmosphere of terrorism, I hope Justice Thomas has selected another movie. Maybe watching the new Atlas Shrugged will lead him to opt for another movie to show his clerks. And he could even stick with films featuring Republican and anti-Communist Gary Cooper. If Thomas wants an excellent movie that teaches about the importance of the individual and duty, he might select High Noon (1952). Or if he wants to go further, he might choose Cooper in Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) or Meet John Doe (1941), both which would give the new lawyers lessons on the importance of common people and the corrupting influence of power.

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