June, 2020
Lincoln and Washington – In a recent blog post, I suggested taking down the portrait of John C. Calhoun in the U.S. Senate Reception Room and replacing it with George W. Norris. Thanks to Don Walton of the Lincoln Journal Star for quoting from it in his popular column.
I also heard from others, one of whom wrote: "That's a noble goal....I spent 28 years on Capitol Hill, 18 in the Senate, and regret not trying to do something about that.... "
The obvious justification for the change is that Nebraskan George Norris, of McCook, was once chosen by a large panel of scholars and historians as the greatest senator in the history of the U.S. Senate, expressly for the purpose of placing his portrait in the prominent entryway. That it never happened is not a happy chapter in Nebraska political history.
Of course the question must be raised, if pro-slavery advocacy is reason to re-locate the portrait of John C. Calhoun, whether Senator Norris's own history on race questions makes him a suitable replacement in 2020.
George Norris was a defender of all disadvantaged classes of Americans and sought social changes through governmental actions. His advocacy for African Americans had a personal connection, he once explained, because his older brother John Henry Norris died in the Civil War, in the cause to end slavery.
Norris was instrumental in creating the Tennessee Valley Authority. When the huge construction projects were undertaken during the Great Depression, the contracts were to contain anti-discrimination provisions, by law. Unfortunately, the effort was undermined by an unhappy confluence of local Jim Crow practices with a TVA chairman of the board, Arthur Morgan, who was progressive but also eugenicist, more common at the time than we now acknowledge.
Norris was defeated by Kenneth S. Wherry in the 1942 elections in a contrast of opposites. Wherry never met a minority group he didn't discriminate against, or try to make fun of. When Wherry's name was put into nomination in 2004 for the Nebraska Hall of Fame, to which George Norris had been selected decades earlier as its first member, Nebraska earned unwanted national attention for even considering Wherry as an addition.
George Norris's legacy on race relations has become more apparent through his influence on fellow Nebraskan Herbert Brownell. Brownell was a follower of Norris who became an advisor to Dwight Eisenhower and subsequently U.S. Attorney General. He was instrumental in appointing judges that ended separate-but-equal policies.
Whatever happens to the portrait of John C. Calhoun, the portrait of George Norris needs placement where it was intended to be, on its own merits. Norris must be understood in 2020 as a senator who chose honor over political expediency, who was not afraid to work across the aisle for the good of the country, even if it cost him an election.
That is a lesson that needs teaching in today's United States Senate.
