Soapy: A Biography of G. Mennen Williams

by Thomas J. Noer

Overview

"This is an important book about an important public official, G. Mennen 'Soapy' Williams---an unabashed liberal, a true humanitarian, and a great patriot."
---George McGovern

"Soapy Williams had a deep talent not only to compel but on occasion to repel."
---John Kenneth Galbraith

"Thomas Noer has written a model biography of a fascinating political figure. He brings Williams to life with all his contradictions, old-fashioned qualities, and admirable idealism."
---Robert Divine, George W. Littlefield Professor Emeritus in American History, University of Texas

"G. Mennen 'Soapy' Williams was not only a giant in the 20th century history of the Michigan Democratic Party, the history of the state of Michigan and our nation-he was a giant ahead of his time. Throughout his long and extremely distinguished career as Governor of Michigan, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, Soapy maintained an unwavering commitment to equality, justice and civil rights for all people."
---Senator Carl Levin

In this first complete biography of G. Mennen "Soapy" Williams, author Thomas Noer brings to life the story of one of the most controversial and colorful politicians in twentieth-century American politics and a giant in the Michigan Democratic Party.

In 1948, winning a stunning upset, Williams became Michigan's second Democratic governor since the Civil War and was reelected five times. He served under Kennedy and Johnson as Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, briefly held the post of U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines, and was a member of the Michigan Supreme Court from 1970 to 1986, serving as Chief Justice in his last term.

Sporting his instantly recognizable trademark green and white polka-dot bow tie, Williams was a flamboyant character. He was also known for his energetic campaign style: he could say "hello" in seventeen languages, would shake hands with as many as five thousand factory workers a day, and made seemingly endless diplomatic trips to Africa. All of this captured the attention of the media and the public and made Williams into a celebrity.

Beneath his showy public persona, however, Williams also made important contributions to American diplomatic and political history. He built an unrivaled political machine in Michigan, bringing organized labor, African Americans, and ethnic groups into a new coalition; influenced the shift in American policy toward support for African independence; and wrote landmark decisions as a jurist on the Michigan Supreme Court.

The fascinating story of a complex and complicated man, Soapy will introduce one of the great American political figures of the twentieth century to a new generation of readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472021970
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	08/03/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	456
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Thomas J. Noer is Valor Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Carthage College. He is the author of numerous articles and two previous books, including Cold War and Black Liberation: The United States and White Rule in Africa, 1948-1968.

Read an Excerpt

SOAPY

A Biography of G. Mennen Williams

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By Thomas J. Noer

The University of Michigan Press

Copyright © 2005 University of Michigan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-11508-2

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Chapter One

FROM POLO TO POLITICS

The Evolution of a Liberal, 1911-36

Would to God, I have exceptional powers-was a member of a resolute group of similar men striving to make the world a better place to live in.

-G. Mennen Williams, diary entry, February 3, 1931

The evolution of Gerhard Mennen Williams from conservative patrician to liberal politician began in Detroit, developed at Princeton, and finally emerged at the University of Michigan Law School. From his birth in 1911 to his completion of a law degree in 1936, Williams achieved brilliant academic success and considered a number of career options (the diplomatic corps, business, and the law among others). His deep religious convictions, the devastating impact of the Great Depression on America, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and the influence of his wife eventually combined to convince him to enter politics, and the same forces led him to the Democratic Party and an uncompromising liberal political philosophy. He was rich, smart, and well connected but became convinced that his role was to be the spokesman for the poor, the uneducated, and those facing discrimination in America. A millionaire and Ivy League graduate, he became the champion of industrial workers, African Americans, the mentally ill, the disabled, and other groups he felt were denied the American dream and the bitter enemy of individuals and groups he viewed as uncaring, selfish, and uncharitable in action and spirit.

Williams was part of a large group of twentieth-century American patricians who became liberal reformers. Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Averell Harriman, Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy, and Nelson Rockefeller, among others, were heirs to immense fortunes who became progressive politicians. There were two elements, however, that made Mennen Williams unique among his fellow "limousine liberals": his views on race and his refusal to consider political compromise.

Unlike his contemporaries Kennedy and Stevenson and even his political idol Franklin Roosevelt, Williams was an early and unwavering proponent of racial equality. Not only did he consistently attack legalized segregation in the American South long before the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional, but he spoke out against the more subtle racism prevalent in the North. A half century ago the racial issue was potentially devastating to any American politician, as it risked alienating not only the South but also many whites in the North. Williams was significant for both his early commitment to civil rights and his bluntness and consistent focus on the issue throughout his career.

Williams also refused to adjust his politics and policies to the seeming necessity of compromise. To him, politics was a moral crusade, and one could not abandon principle regardless of the potential political benefits. John Kennedy was willing to select Lyndon Johnson as his running mate as he calculated the need to win the South in the 1960 election. Similarly, Adlai Stevenson agreed to moderate his stance on civil rights to get votes in segregated states and Franklin Roosevelt refrained from endorsing an antilynching bill out of fear of losing the support of southerners in Congress. Mennen Williams viewed such strategic adjustments as a betrayal of ideals. Pragmatism must never include the abandonment of principle. In 1959 his rejection of any compromise with the Republican legislature drove Michigan into bankruptcy, but he remained convinced that he had been correct, as doing what was "right" was better than doing what was "possible." When State Department officials cautioned him against his repeated tirades against white supremacy in Africa and suggested that he restrain his rhetoric to avoid alienating American politicians and European allies, he was stunned by their comments. To him, minority rule was simply wrong and had to be denounced, regardless of the political damage. Silence indicated approval, and how could any person of conviction condone discrimination?

Williams's militant liberalism, his singular commitment to civil rights, and his refusal to temporize his ideas for political gain were a combination of governmental and religious ideology. The spiritual roots were formed in his childhood, but their political expression was in response to America's economic crisis of the 1930s. He found God early and Franklin Roosevelt later.

Detroit, Michigan, in the early twentieth century mirrored the recent transformation of the nation. In the half century following the Civil War, the United States changed from a largely rural, English-speaking, Protestant country to an urban, industrialized, multicultural society. The nation's population tripled in the period 1865-1915 as immigrants fled the poverty and wars of Europe for the dream of a better life in America. At the same time, southern blacks, desperate to escape segregation, and rural whites, lured by the prospects of factory jobs, also flocked to the city.

Detroit was typical of the "great transition" of America. From its beginnings as a fur-trading post, the city quickly developed into a major exchange center between the frontier and the East with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. The Great Lakes became the highway for the transport of lumber and grain from the West and manufactured goods from the East. With the coming of the railroad, Detroit rapidly industrialized, and its population jumped from 116,000 in 1880 to 466,000 in 1910. It would more than double to 993,000 by 1920 as European immigrants flocked to its factories. In 1920 nearly a third of its residents were foreign born and it had a significant and growing African American community.

Although Detroit produced a variety of manufactured goods, its identity quickly became linked to the automobile. In 1901 Ransom Olds established an automobile factory in the city, but it was Henry Ford's pioneering assembly line that would transform Detroit into "Motor Town." The automobile companies and their dependent industries quickly came to dominate the city's economy and control the state's politics.

As in Europe, American industrialization produced immense wealth and created vast economic inequities. While African Americans and immigrant workers struggled to survive on the meager wages of the new factories, the nation developed a new moneyed class with previously undreamed of affluence. It was into this economic elite that G. Mennen Williams was born and raised.

Williams's family had money on both sides. His grandfather, Henry Williams, was a Welsh veterinarian who migrated to Canada in 1848 but soon returned to Europe, leaving his wife and two sons in the New World. When he died in an accident, his widow, Letitia, opened a boardinghouse in Windsor, Ontario, just south of Detroit, and the two boys sold box lunches to factory workers. The eldest son, Henry P. Williams Jr., eventually found a job in a Detroit grocery store, and his brother William (G. Mennen's grandfather) and mother soon followed. All three worked in the expanding frontier city and eventually used their wages to buy a six-acre farm on Grand River and Kirby Streets (later known as Williams Square), where they raised fruits and vegetables. Letitia Williams canned jams and processed pickles, and her sons sold them from a pushcart. The business was a success, and they capitalized on the post-Civil War boom by opening a factory in 1865 that later occupied an entire block in Detroit. "Williams' Pickles" flourished, and the family expanded to a national market. (When asked about his nickname, Soapy, an indication of his mothers' connection to the Mennen Cosmetic Company, Williams joked that had he been named after his father's side of the family he would have been called Pickles.)

The Williamses shrewdly used the profits from their pickle factory to finance investments in real estate and by the turn of the century had become one of the wealthiest families in Detroit. In 1910 they sold the factory and lived off the earnings from their properties and investments. In 1880 William Williams married Sarah Phillips (a descendent of an American Revolutionary War hero, Joseph Delezenne, who had served under the Marquis de Lafayette), and they had three sons and a daughter. The eldest son, Henry Phillips Williams, enjoyed the results of his parents' hard work and successful real estate speculations to live a pleasant life of clubs, sports, travel, and philanthropy. He enjoyed riding, sailing, and nearly every other sport appropriate for a gentleman of his class. On Saturdays he played morning golf at the Bloomfield Hills Country Club and evening bridge and poker at the Detroit Club. Henry Williams became a regular at the city's social functions and even had a special ebony and ivory cane commissioned in Paris for opening night of the Detroit opera. Tall, handsome, and wealthy, he was one of the city's most eligible bachelors.

The wealth of the Williams family was substantial, but it was almost insignificant in comparison with that of G. Mennen Williams's maternal side. His mother was the daughter of one of the richest men in America. Elma Mennen's ancestors were landowners in East Prussia who married French women and fled from their estates after being accused of cooperating with the invading French in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. One group of Mennens settled in Holland, while another faction migrated to the United States.

Gerhard Mennen was fifteen when he and his two sisters arrived in New York City in 1871 and settled in an immigrant German community on First Avenue. Mennen worked as an errand boy, a surveyor's assistant, and finally as a clerk in Emil Lunitz's German Apothecary Shop in Hoboken, New Jersey. He also attended night classes at the College of Pharmacy of New York City. In 1878 he pawned his gold watch and leased a tiny pharmacy in the lobby of the Central Hotel in Newark. Twenty years later he was a millionaire.

Gerhard Mennen's money came from cosmetics he first developed in the back room of his small pharmacy: first, Mennen's Sure Corn Killer; then Mennen's Talcum Infant Powder; and eventually Mennen's Shaving Cream and Aftershave Lotion. He began selling his products in his pharmacy and eventually bought a building to serve as a production center, warehouse, and office and hired salesmen to expand sales into neighboring towns. By 1883, when his daughter Elma Christina Rebecca, was born, the Mennen Company dominated the cosmetics industry in America.

Gerhard Mennen symbolized the American dream of rags to riches, and like many successful immigrants he was determined that his children would receive a proper education and learn the social skills appropriate for his new class and country. Elma received private tutoring in languages, art, dance, and music and an unlimited line of credit in Newark's finest stores. Eventually she entered the National Park Seminary, an exclusive Episcopal girl's boarding school near Washington, D.C. There she met Henry Williams's sister Edna, who invited her to visit Detroit during Easter vacation. Edna Williams introduced her classmate to her brother, and Henry was smitten. After a year at Vassar, Elma accepted his proposal, and Henry Phillips Williams, "the pickle king," and Elma Mennen, daughter of the "shaving cream king," were married on January 20, 1909, in Newark. They moved into a house at 19 Merrick Avenue in Detroit (now a part of the Wayne State University campus). Two years later, on February 23, 1911, Gerhard Mennen Williams was born. A second son, Henry, followed in 1912 and another boy, Richard, in 1921.

Life for the three Williams brothers was typical of the American leisure class of their time. There were live-in servants, a cook, a butler, and a chauffeur. As a sophisticated easterner living in what she often viewed as the uncultured Midwest, Elma was determined that her children would attend a prestigious prep school and an Ivy League college and organized an exhaustive series of lessons and tutorials to prepare her sons for their future education. The boys faced a strict schedule of music, art, speech, and language lessons and weekly classes at the Annie Ward School of Dancing. Mennen Williams recalled that his mother "was an absolute perfectionist and demanded that in others." Elma, who was fluent in French and German, drilled the boys in the two languages (insisting that they sing Christmas carols in both) and hired a local actor, Sam Slade, to give them elocution lessons. The boys memorized famous speeches and recited them at the dinner table while Elma corrected them. She also lectured her sons about health and once made Mennen drink an entire pitcher of cream because he seemed too thin. Thursday was "family night," as it was the servant's day off, and Elma cooked and the boys set the table and washed the dishes.

Henry Williams was less concerned with dance and music lessons than with sports and physical fitness. He taught his sons squash, golf, and horseback riding, took them to polo matches, and hired a Detroit boxer named Jack Collins to teach them how to fight. The brothers built a boxing ring and weight room in the basement, and Mennen did far better in the gym than in Elma's endless tutorials. He never mastered the piano, was an awkward dancer (except for the square dances he loved), and was not a polished public speaker. Despite his later political success, even his closest friends noted that he was never a spellbinding orator.

Mennen did, however, become an impressive athlete. He spent several hours a day in the basement lifting weights, working on the punching bag, and reading Charles Atlas's bodybuilding books. He took swimming and rowing lessons at the Detroit Athletic Club and would later become a champion rower (a sport he would continue in prep school and college). He also was a star wrestler, a sprinter in track, and a good boxer. By the age of fourteen he was already over six feet tall and years of weight lifting had given him a muscular frame.

Henry Williams also wanted his sons to learn thrift and hard work. He gave them an allowance of only twenty-five cents a week, and they had to work for any extra spending money. Unlike the immigrant children a few miles away, however, they did not have to go into the factories, as their main job was repairing polo mallets. One of Henry's brothers, Robert, had lived on a ranch in California and had worked as a logger, and "Uncle Bob" took the boys to the family's cottage in northern Michigan every summer for several weeks of camping, hunting, hiking, and fishing.

Both parents shared a deep commitment to the Episcopal Church, and the Cathedral Church of St. Paul on Woodward Avenue was a focus for the Williams family. The parents, children, and servants attended every Sunday (even though most of the servants were Catholic). Henry was a vestryman and took the boy's choir on annual picnics in the country. Mennen not only attended Sunday services, where he served as an altar boy and crucifer, but he often went to church several other times during the week.

His early religious training would shape Mennen Williams's basic ideas for the rest of his life and become the cornerstone of his political philosophy. The sermons and Bible lessons he heard at St. Paul's stressed community and service. The priests argued that Christ demanded his followers not only seek their own salvation but to reach out to their neighbors to meet both their spiritual and material needs. Christians had a duty to be of service to society and to try to help those in their community. As a young boy, Williams became convinced that God has a plan for each person that involves using his or her talents to improve the world. He recalled that "from earliest childhood, I learned that God was a 'bulwark, never failing'" and that "Jesus summed up for us all the law and the prophets in just two commandments-thou shalt love the Lord thy God and thy neighbor as thyself." To Williams, Christianity was not just about individual piety but also involved the creation of a true community on earth through service to others. To Mennen, Christ's command to "love one another" demanded an individual commitment to express this injunction through daily life and social action, and he would later argue that politics was a means of honoring the biblical call for service and Christian love. He would attend church nearly every day of the rest of his life and remained an active member of the Cathedral Church even while living in Lansing and Washington, D.C.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from SOAPY by Thomas J. Noer Copyright © 2005 by University of Michigan . Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents

\rrhp\ \lrrh: Contents\ \1h\ Contents \xt\ Introduction: The Last American Liberal Chapter 1. From Polo to Politics: The Evolution of a Liberal, 1911---36 Chapter 2. Washington, War, Jimmy Hoffa, and the Michigan Miracle, 1936---48 Chapter 3. A New Deal for Michigan, 1948---52 Chapter 4. The "Conscience of the Democratic Party": Toward a National Presence, 1952---56 Chapter 5. Michigan's Financial Crisis and the Pursuit of the Presidency, 1956---60 Chapter 6. Africa for the Africans: Williams and the New Frontier, 1961---63 Chapter 7. From Washington to Michigan to Manila: The Johnson Years, Electoral Defeat, and Ambassador to the Philippines, 1964---69 Chapter 8. To Do Justly: The Supreme Court Years, 1970---86 Conclusion: Coming Clean with Soapy Notes Bibliography Index Illustrations following page 00