William Allen White

William Allen White
William Allen White
Born	February 10, 1868(1868-02-10) Emporia, Kansas, United States
Died	January 29, 1944 (aged 75) Emporia, Kansas
Education	College of Emporia and University of Kansas
Occupation	newspaper editor, author
Spouse(s)	Sallie Lindsay
Children	William, Mary
Parents	Allen, Mary Ann

William Allen White (February 10, 1868 – January 29, 1944) was a renowned American newspaper editor, politician, and author. Between World War I and World War II White became the iconic middle American spokesman for thousands throughout the United States.

Life

Born in Emporia, Kansas, White moved to El Dorado with his parents, Allen and Mary Ann Hatten White, where he spent the majority of his childhood.^{[1] [2]} He attended the College of Emporia and University of Kansas and in 1892 started work at The Kansas City Star as an editorial writer.

Emporia Gazette

White purchased his hometown newspaper, the Emporia Gazette for $3,000 in 1895.^[2] He rocketed to national fame and influence in the Republican Party with an August 16, 1896, editorial entitled "What's the Matter With Kansas?"^[3] The paper is still run by the descendants of White.

Progressive politics

White developed a friendship with President Theodore Roosevelt in the 1890s until Roosevelt's death in 1919. Roosevelt spent several nights at White's Wight and Wight-designed home, Red Rocks, during trips across the United States. The house is now a museum and is on the National Register of Historic Places. White was to say later, "Roosevelt bit me and I went mad."^[4] The two would be instrumental in forming the Progressive (Bull-Moose) Party in 1912 in opposition to the forces surrounding incumbent Republican president William Howard Taft.^[5] Later, White supported much of the New Deal, however, opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt in the three of Roosevelt's four elections as president, as White died before voting in the election of 1944.

Personal life

White married Sallie Lindsay in 1893. They had two children, William Lindsay, born in 1900, and a daughter Mary, born in 1904. Mary died in a 1921 horse-riding accident, leading White to write a famous eulogy "Mary White" on August 17, 1921.^[6][7]

Sage of Emporia

The last quarter century of White's life was spent as an unofficial national spokesman for middle America. This led President Franklin Roosevelt to ask White to help generate public support for the Allies before America's entrance into World War II. White was fundamental in the formation of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, sometimes known as the White Committee.^[8] White spent much of his last three years involved with this committee.

Sometimes referred to as the Sage of Emporia, he continued to write editorials for the Gazette until his death in 1944. He was also a founding editor for the Book of the Month Club along with long time friend Dorothy Canfield.

Famous visitors to Red Rocks

• Theodore Roosevelt
• Herbert Hoover
• Calvin Coolidge
• Edna Ferber
• Henry J. Allen
• Frances Louise Tracy and Anne Morgan; wife and daughter of J.P. Morgan
• Douglas Fairbanks
• Dorothy Canfield

Success

He won a 1923 Pulitzer Prize for his editorial "To an Anxious Friend", published July 27, 1922, after being arrested in a dispute over free speech following objections to the way the state of Kansas handled the men who participated in the Great Railroad Strike of 1922.

Objecting to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the state, he made an unsuccessful run for Kansas Governor in 1924. White was an early supporter of the Progressive Party led by Robert M. La Follette, Sr.

After death

His autobiography, which was published posthumously, won a 1946 Pulitzer Prize.

Life described him:

He is the small-town boy who made good at home. To the small-town man who envies the glamour of the city, he is living assurance that small-town life may be preferable. To the city man who looks back with nostalgia on a small-town youth, he is a living symbol of small-town simplicity and kindliness and common sense.^[9]

The University of Kansas Journalism School is named for him. There are also two awards the William Allen White Foundation has created: The William Allen White Award for outstanding Journalistic merit and The Children's Book Award.

Quotations

From editorial Mary White:

A rift in the clouds in a gray day threw a shaft of sunlight upon her coffin as her nervous, energetic little body sank to its last sleep. But the soul of her, the glowing, gorgeous, fervent soul of her, surely was flaming in eager joy upon some other dawn.^[6]

From 1933 editorial about the futility of war (referring to World War I):

The boys who died just went out and died. To their own souls' glory of course -- but what else? ... Yet the next war will see the same hurrah and the same bowwow of the big dogs to get the little dogs to go out and follow the blood scent and get their entrails tangled in the barbed wire.^[10]

From an editorial published in February 1943, shortly after President Franklin D. Roosevelt returned from the Casablanca Conference with Winston Churchill:

"We who hate your gaudy guts salute you."

Trivia

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (November 2009)

• Starting in the 1980s, an alternative rock group, They Might Be Giants, used large cardboard cutouts of White's face during concerts, as well as in the video for "Don't Let's Start". His image also appears on the compact disc (CD) single, several other videos, and is used at live performances.^[11]
• White and wife Sallie took special tour of Soviet Union in the early 1930s
• Once met Benito Mussolini
• Visited six of the seven continents at least once in his long life
• Part of Committee within Book of the Month Club which translated Mein Kampf into English and distributed it to Americans in 1939
• Received 10 honorary degrees, including one from Harvard with Albert Einstein and one from Northwestern with Dr. W.W. Mayo, one of the founders of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota
• The 1958 Paramount Pictures film Teacher's Pet makes reference to a White-like character named Joel Barlow Stone.

Published works

White had 23 works published throughout his life. Many of these works were collections of short stories, magazine articles, or speeches he gave throughout his long career.

Poetry

• Rhymes by Two Friends, with Albert Bigelow Paine (1893)

Biographies

• Woodrow Wilson, The Man, His Times, and His Tasks (1924)
• Calvin Coolidge, The Man Who is President (1925)
• Masks in a Pagaent (1928)
• A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge (1938)
• The Autobiography of William Allen White (1946)

Fiction

• The Real Issue: A Book of Kansas Stories (1896)
• The Court of Boyville (1899)
• Stratagems and Spoils: Stories of Love and Politics (1901)
• In Our Town (1906)
• A Certain Rich Man (1909)
• God's Puppets (1916)
• The Martial Adventures of Henry & Me (1918)
• In the Heart of a Fool (1918)

Political and social commentary

• The Old Order Changeth: A View of American Democracy (1910)
• Politics: The Citizen's Business (1924)
• Some Cycles of Cathay (1925)
• Boys-Then and Now (1926)
• What It's All About: Being A Reporter's Story of the Early Campaign of 1936 (1936)
• Forty Years on Main Street (1937)
• The Changing West: An Economic Theory About Our Golden Age (1939)

See also

• Theodore Roosevelt
• Progressive Party
• Progressives
• William Lindsay White
• Emporia Gazette
• Pulitzer Prize
• editorials
• Great Railroad Strike of 1922
• William Allen White Cabins, the Whites' summer retreat, now in Rocky Mountain National Park and listed in the National Register of Historic Places

Notes

External links

• Emporia Gazette & Museum
• William Allen White
• Profile from Kansas State Historical Society
• Works by William Allen White at Project Gutenberg
• William Allen White House
• William Allen White's printing press, Kansas Museum of History