Charles Curtis was the 31st Vice President of the United States, serving under Herbert Hoover from 1929 to 1933; before becoming the Vice President, he was the Senate Majority Leader from 1924 to 1929. Charles Curtis was the only multi-racial person to serve as Vice President prior to the election of Kamala Harris.
Source: (Wikipedia/colorized).
Curtis was born on January 25, 1860, in North Topeka, Kansas Territory. In 1861, Kansas became a state. Curtis’ mother, Ellen Papin (also spelled Pappan) was Kaw, Osage, Potawatomi, and French. On his mother’s side, he was a descendent of chief White Plume of the Kaw Nation and chief Pawhuska of the Osage. His father, Orren Curtis, had English, Welsh, and Scottish ancestry. Thus, Curtis was three-eighths Native American and five-eighths European American.
Curtis's First Words Were Not In English
Curtis with Hoover. Source: (Library of Congress/colorized).
His mother died in 1863 when he was three years old, but before she died, she taught him his first words, which were in French and Kansa. His father remarried but divorced soon after. Orren Curtis served in the Civil War, during which he was captured and imprisoned. At that point, Curtis lived on the Kaw reservation (the tribe is also known as Kanza or Kansa) with his maternal grandparents. After the war, Orren Curtis married a third time and had a daughter, Dolly Curtis Gann.
He Was First A Prosecuting Attorney
Source: (Library of Congress).
After the federal government moved the Kaw out of Kansas into Indian Territory in 1873, Curtis wanted to go with them. However, his maternal grandmother convinced him to remain with his paternal grandparents so he could continue his education. Despite his talent and fame as a horse rider, both sets of grandparents encouraged him to pursue a different career and he did, becoming a lawyer and later, a politician. He worked part-time in a law firm and was admitted to the bar in 1881, beginning his practice in Topeka and serving as Shawnee County’s prosecuting attorney from 1885.
Entering Politics As A Representative
In the summer of '29. Source: (Wikipedia/colorized).
He knew how to win the voters over, as he made sure that he could greet each Republican in the various Kansas townships by name and inquire about their families. This political acumen, combined with the fact that he had a lighter complexion, allowed him to win over voters despite the racist treatment of the Kaw by white Kansans.
He began his political career as a congressman, before climbing the political ladder. In 1892, at 32, he entered politics as a Representative and was re-elected for several terms. In 1906, the Kansas Legislature elected Curtis to the Senate. He was later elected by popular vote until he became the vice president, developing a reputation for being able to be one of the politicians best able to work across the aisle. In December 1926 Time featured Curtis on the cover and said of him that “it is in the party caucuses, in the committee rooms, in the cloakrooms that he patches up troubles, puts through legislation.”
His Work In Congress
Vice President Curtis receives peace pipe from Chief Red Tomahawk, slayer of Sitting Bull. Source: (Wikipedia/colorized).
During his career as a Congressman, Curtis advocated for women’s suffrage and child labor laws; he also proposed a version of the Equal Rights Amendment with Daniel Read Anthony Jr. in 1923. As a politician, he had a complicated relationship with his Native American heritage. He honored it by having a Native American jazz band play at the 1928 inauguration, and he proudly displayed Native American artifacts in his vice-presidential office. However, throughout his political career, he advocated for policies that unfortunately were not favorable for the Native Americans. He favored the Dawes Act of 1887, which was passed before he was in Congress. Under the Dawes Act, the federal government could divide tribal lands into separate plots. While a member of the Committee on Indian Affairs, he drafted an act that became known as the Curtis Act in 1898. This act extended the provisions of the Dawes Act to the tribes in Oklahoma; it ended the tribes’ self-governance, and under the act, communal land had to be allotted to individual households. Any land which was not allotted was considered surplus and then sold to non-natives. Eventually, in 1907, this led to Oklahoma becoming a state. Curtis, who was an assimilationist, believed that Native Americans could benefit from mainstream education, supported Native American boarding schools; children were sent to these schools where they were forced to assimilate as they could not access their own language or culture.
Becoming The Vice President
Vice President Curtis receives peace pipe from Chief Red Tomahawk, slayer of Sitting Bull. Source: (Wikipedia).
Curtis had the opportunity to run for president after Coolidge announced that he would not seek reelection. Prior to the election, Curtis, who was a leader of the anti-Hoover movement, said of Hoover, he was someone “for whom the party will be on the defensive from the day he is named until the close of the polls on election day.” Even though Hoover and Curtis had an uneasy relationship, the Republicans ran the two on the same ballot because Hoover was unpopular with farmers, but Kansas loved Curtis. Hoover did not like Curtis though and kept him away from policy. Since Curtis’s wife died in 1924, by the time he took office, he was a widower. His half-sister, Dolly, acted as the official hostess for social events. Curtis remains the last vice-president who was unmarried throughout his time in office.
After the onset of the Great Depression, Curtis endorsed the five-day workweek without a reduction in wages. Hoover and Curtis did not win reelection, but Curtis remained in Washington, working as a lawyer. He continued to live there until his death from a heart attack in 1936.
