by Annabel Green ’26

This is the first in a two-part series about racist propagandist Carleton Putnam, Class of 1924. The first part in this series considers his involvement with Princeton University and beyond during the 1960s. The second post in this series will consider his involvement during the 1970s.

Introduction

The story of Princeton University’s interactions with Carleton Putnam, Class of 1924, illuminates the broader importance of upholding free speech. In allowing controversial figures like Putnam to speak, the argument in favor of segregation was brought to light. From there, Putnam’s allies, adversaries, and neutral observers could evaluate his claims as they saw fit. While Putnam’s beliefs provoked significant conflict, Putnam’s interactions with Princeton and its community echo the importance of freedom of expression so that one’s beliefs can be truly understood for what they are worth.

1960s

The 1960s at Princeton University

Analogous to Southern racial sentiments in the mid twentieth-century, Princeton maintained racially exclusive admissions practices, which at the time, barred potentially qualified African American students from admission.

Beginning in the 1950s, when the Civil Rights Movement began, and continuing through the ’60s, Princeton University and the nation at large underwent drastic social change which reshaped public thought about legalized segregation and discrimination against African Americans. During this time, Princeton confronted tensions between maintaining Princeton’s traditional demographics and allowing racially diverse applicants equality of opportunity. There was a further, new push for equality of outcome policies such as affirmative action. 

Putnam was a particularly prominent alumnus within the discourse on race. While at Princeton, Putnam majored in history and politics. After graduation, he started a small, single-state airline in 1933 which became Chicago and Southern Air Lines. In 1953, his airline merged with Delta, where he eventually served as Board Chairman for two years. Throughout his lifetime, he published four books: one on his early aviation days, one on the first 28 years of President Theodore Roosevelt’s life, and two on what he referred to as the “race problem” (Race and Reason: A Yankee View and Race and Reality: A Search for Solutions). As will become evident, Putnam’s definition of the term “race problem” differs significantly from the way more prominent figures like Frederick Douglass defined it.

Putnam on Race

Putnam emerged as a proponent for racial segregation four years after 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education in response to a Life magazine editorial supporting the decision. He wrote a reply which received a wave of support and which was published in the Commercial Appeal. Later, Putnam composed a lengthier message to President Dwight D. Eisenhower which was published in the Richmond Times-Democrat. This letter became known as the Putnam Letter. He infamously argued that segregation must be sustained, even if a constitutional amendment is necessary to enforce it. He insisted that white people should have the right not to associate with African Americans on the basis of their supposed racial superiority.

Putnam was a self-proclaimed “racial realist.” These “realists” assert that there are in fact inherent and biological differences between races, hence justifying forms of discrimination between races. Putnam would use research by psychologist Dr. Ward C. Halstead, an integrationist who did not conduct racial studies, to support his arguments. He would also use “evidence” from his own cousin, Dr. Carleton S. Coon, a physical anthropologist. Contrary to public statements Coon had made, he privately sent support to Putnam in the form of scientific evidence to back Putnam’s claims about the inferiority of people of African descent. Coon’s research looked into supposed anatomical differences between races, specifically differences in the brain’s structure between races. He theorized that races had different evolutionary histories and different evolutionary trajectories in terms of intelligence. Putnam also relied upon findings presented by Dr. Audrey M. Shuey in The Testing of Negro Intelligence.

In 1963, sociologist Melvin Tumin and his colleagues published Race and Intelligence: An Evaluation. Essentially, Putnam’s entire argument on race was dismantled. At the time, a majority of scientists testing and measuring intelligence favored the view that differences between the average scores of “Negroes” and whites were largely, if not totally, the result of differences in their backgrounds, environments, and cultures. The book was released as a response to the viewpoints of Putnam and like-minded segregationists. Among psychologists, scholars, and anatomists; Putnam was the only layman mentioned as being a “leading [spokesman] of the major scientific societies concerned with various aspects of Negro-white differences.” In conducting this evaluation, four scientists representing the professions concerned with matters of genetic and social differences among humans were asked to read Shuey’s and Putnam’s books and to respond to a series of questions about them. After the evaluation, the four scientists were in substantial agreement that Putnam’s claims could not be supported by any substantial scientific evidence. 

Southern Support of Putnam

Nevertheless, The Putnam Letter circulated in newspapers all over the South. There soon became a large demand for reprints and the publication received thousands of letters of support.

His best known book, Race and Reason: A Yankee View (1961), originated from his ideas expressed in the Putnam Letter. Here, he advocated for racial segregation and for the notion of inherent racial inequalities. By the time he had published the sequel, Race and Reality, in 1967, Race and Reason had sold more than 150,000 copies, was being widely embraced by Southern politicians, and was even made required reading for teachers and advanced students in the state of Louisiana. Putnam received praise from laudatory reviews like this one quoted in the Princeton Alumni Weekly: “Many are calling it the sharpest weapon yet forged in the fight for racial integrity.” Race and Reason was pivotal for some; American politician David Duke said that reading the book as a self-proclaimed “liberal” junior high school student sent him down the course of becoming a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Putnam’s Visit to Whig Hall

In line with the American Whig-Cliosophic Society’s value of free speech, Princeton’s debating society did not shy away from socially contentious speakers, evidenced by Putnam’s invitation to Whig Hall. Putnam often expressed his disdain for Princeton’s overarching perspective on integration; his visit to Whig Hall would provide him the avenue to flesh out his stance on race. In an article in the Daily Princetonian entitled “Putnam Says Anthropological Facts Prove Genetic Inferiority of Negroes,” Putnam was quoted saying, “whoever controls the opportunities at Princeton is not seeing both sides of the questions, and does not want both sides seen.” In the same vein, Physicist and Nobel laureate William Shockley praised Putnam’s ability to analyze “how liberal dogmatism has paralyzed the ability to doubt popular views even in academic cloisters with resultant prevention of publication of research on racial questions.”

On May 13, 1964, Putnam spoke at Whig Hall and demanded segregation in areas of the country with heavy concentrations of Black people. He said that there was no advantage in “forcing racial integration of biologically incompatible populations” in these areas. Putnam further argued that “the damage to the Negro from segregation is less than it is from integration” due to the purported psychological pressures when they are integrated into communities.

Debate on Segregation Continues

Putnam’s involvement with Princeton continued after Whig Hall. In 1964, the Senate of the American Whig-Cliosophic Society held a debate which drew significant attention on campus. The Senate debated the resolution: “The Senate Chamber of Whig-Clio recognizes an inherent difference in mental capacity between the races.” The Clios gathered statistics to support the resolution. The Whigs relied on Biology Professor Colin S. Pittendrigh to show that statistics “relating to current performance may have no connection with any inherent deficiency” and that the problem was too complex for “even scientists to unravel at this time”. The resolution was defeated (27-12, with eight abstentions). However, the consensus of the debate was that neither inferiority nor equality could be proven. Professor Pittendrigh said that the whole proposition “implied public insult of the Negro race.”

The day after the debate, a group of undergraduates announced the formation of the Princeton Committee for Racial Reconciliation. According to the self-appointed President Marvin L. Gray ’66, Princeton undergraduates should be acquainted with the Southern viewpoint of the racial problem in America, and furthermore that “informed people can favor continued racial segregation.” The Committee was composed of about 15 undergraduates, most of whom were from the South. Founder Marshall I. Smith ’66 stated that “We just want to show that in the midst of all this sympathy for the Negro there exists some opposition on campus. […] Segregationists are not going to give up by default.” Four days after the formation of the group, Smith announced his resignation from the committee.

Smith’s resignation followed a coup against the segregation advocates, in which integrationist supporters overtook a Committee meeting and elected a Black student, Robert F. Engs ’66 as vice-president of the Committee. The coup was later named the “McCosh Hall Putsch.” Gray noted that despite the Committee’s lack of success, it did “succeed in serving notice that not everyone on campus agreed with the prevailing liberal attitude on the race question.” […] He conceded, however, that it produced “no practical result.” President Goheen and the Prince criticized the liberal take-over of the organization as being against the spirit of free assembly.

Following Smith’s public expressions of segregation support, Colonel Thomas J. Ahren, the commander of the local NROTC unit, requested Smith, a NROTC (full scholarship) contract student to resign “in the best interests of the service.” Smith agreed to resign but had passed on the news to Putnam, who then relayed this decision to Sen. Richard Russell, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Putnam felt that in requesting Smith to resign, Col. Ahern had “overstepped his authority.” Russell contemplated an inquiry and Smith then asked that it be halted, and Russell complied “reluctantly.” To Smith, the situation and the attention it received seemed to be an annoyance. According to the Prince, which gave this issue considerable attention, they deplored the formation of the committee in the first place, Col. Ahern’s request for Smith to resign, and the permission of the Navy to interfere in a student’s campus activities. The University had “no comment.”

After the tumultuous 1960s, Princeton had another fraught decade. The next installment in this series will examine the 1970s.

Sources:

Office of the President Records: Robert Goheen F. Subgroup (AC193)

Papers of Princeton

Princeton Alumni Weekly

Putnam, Carleton. High Court’s “Arrogance” Is Viewed by a Northerner: A Letter to the President. Greenwood, Mississippi: Educational Fund of the Citizens’ Councils, 1958.

Putnam, Carleton. High Journey: A Decade in the Pilgrimage of an Air Line Pioneer. New York: Scribner’s, 1945.

Putnam, Carleton. Race and Reality: A Search for Solutions. Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1967.

Putnam, Carleton. Race and Reason: A Yankee View. Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1961.

Putnam, Carleton. Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography. New York: Scribner’s, 1958.

Shuey, Audrey M. The Testing of Negro Intelligence. Lynchburg, Virginia: J.P. Bell Co., 1958.

Tumin, Melvin M. Race and Intelligence: An Evaluation. New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1963.

Undergraduate Alumni Records (AC199)