EMILY TAFT DOUGLAS: UNITED
STATES REPRESENTATIVE, ILLINOIS 1899-1994
From
the Biographical Directory of the US Congress
Emily
Taft Douglas of Illinois recognized the dangers of fascism during
the mid-1930s and dedicated her public career to the cause of
collective security against aggression and the establishment
of a permanent machinery to insure international peace. The
daughter of sculptor Laredo Taft, she was born in Chicago on
April 10, 1899, and was graduated with a Ph. B. from the University
of Chicago in 1919. Following study at the American Academy
of Dramatic Art she worked in the theater and by 1926 was the
star of The Cat and the Canary on Broadway.
In 1931 she married University
of Chicago professor Paul H. Douglas, who at the age of fifty
enlisted as a Marine private in 1942 and later was elected to
three terms as Senator from Illinois. Disturbed by the rise
of fascism in Europe and by the Italian invasion of Ethiopia,
she returned from a trip abroad in 1935 to organize and chair
the Illinois League of Women Voters' department of government
and foreign policy. In 1942 she became executive secretary of
the International Relations Center in Chicago.
In February of 1944 Illinois Democrats
chose Douglas as their nominee for the state's at-large seat
in the House of Representatives. In the general election, Douglas,
who ran as a supporter of Roosevelt's foreign polices, faced
Republican Stephen A. Day, one of the staunchest isolationists
in the House. Despite the formidable opposition of the Chicago
Tribune and its powerful publisher, Colonel Robert McCormick,
she defeated Day by over 191,000 votes.
Emily
Douglas with Martin Luther King Jr., after a protest march
in Selma, Alabama, 1965
Shortly
after the opening of the Seventy-ninth Congress and in her first
House vote, Douglas opposed the establishment of a standing Committee
on Un-American Activities. She also helped rescue former Vice President
Henry Wallace's chances to become Secretary of Commerce by acceding
to the demands of Wallace's opponents and voting for legislation
to withdraw the Reconstruction Finance Corporation's lending bureau
from the jurisdiction of the Commerce Department.
During her term
in the Seventy-ninth Congress, Douglas served on the Committee
on Foreign Affairs and was widely recognized as a specialist in
the field. She joined several committee colleagues on a visit
to Europe in August 1945 to inspect the work of the United Nations
Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Along with California
Representative Jerry Voorhis, she proposed legislation to put
the United Nations in charge of international programs for arms
control and the abolition of atomic weaponry. She also called
for greater federal support for libraries, particularly those
in rural and low-income areas, and cosponsored a public library
service demonstration bill.
Weary and frustrated
by wartime controls and shortages and the strains of demobilization,
voters in the midterm elections of 1946 ousted fifty-four House
Democrats, among them Douglas who lost to William G. Stratton.
Following her husband's election to the Senate in 1948, she served
on the legislative committee of the Unitarian Fellowship for Social
Justice and as the Continental Moderator of the American Unitarian
Association. Douglas also wrote a book for juveniles, a biography
of Margaret Sanger and a book of biographical essays on famous
American women. She was a resident of White Plains, New York,
until her death on January 28, 1994.
The following article by Emily Taft Douglas was published in The
Unitarian Register, April 1958
FREEDOM'S
CHAMPION
Among
the trinity of American immortals, Unitarian Thomas Jefferson
at last has been generally accepted. If April 13 is not officially
celebrated, as are the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln,
there nevertheless has been a growing reverence for the man
who, more than any other, charted the course of our free institutions.
The delayed homage to Jefferson
was perhaps inevitable. After all, the "father of our country"
won his war for independence and the "great emancipator" won
his war to preserve the union, but Jefferson's battles were
never-ending and permanently controversial. They dealt with
civil rights and the freedom of the mind and spirit. His writings
remain the "arsenal of great ideas of democracy's most articulate
champion." Furthermore, his many-sided influence is hard to
gauge, for he was the American embodiment of the enlightenment.
This movement,
kindled by Newton and Locke, had unleashed not only a great zest
for knowledge, but also something new under the sun, scientific
evidence of an orderly universe. This meant that man was not merely
a pawn of whimsical or malignant gods and demons. For the first
time, people dared to believe in reason and its guidance to a
better life. The human mind, emerging from ancient fears and superstitions,
launched new experiments, many of which were fostered by Jefferson.
But in a democracy where the intellect often is suspect, it is
easier to honor the courage of Washington and the compassion of
Lincoln than the mind of Jefferson.
He
wrote his own brief epitaph, and it is remarkable for what he
omitted, as well as what he chose to have remembered. He did
not mention that he had served two terms as president or served
as vice-president, secretary of state, minister to France, governor
of Virginia, or member of the House of Burgesses. He did not
claim that almost single-handed he had carried Virginia forward
from a feudal state to a modern one by ending primogeniture
and entail, dissolving the union of state and church, and reforming
the penal code. He did not boast of the Louisiana purchase which
had more than doubled the nation's territory, and secured "an
empire for liberty." Nor did he list the many practical and
imaginative projects by which he had enriched his country. He
merely wrote, "Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of
American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious
Freedom and Father of the University of Virginia."
The last of these embodied his
faith in education. Never did he doubt that the people themselves
were "the only safe depositaries" of power, but to render even
them safe, their minds must be improved. Yet he had failed in
his long crusade for universal education, and Virginia had rejected
even his plan for free primary schools. Some day all states
would accept those basic views which had outraged wealthy taxpayers,
but at least in his last years he had realized the crowning
feature of his plan, a state university.
The Statute for Religious Freedom
contains phrases equal to those in the Declaration of Independence,
but its significance can only be grasped against the background
of the times. Under the established church, heresy was a capital
offense, and the denial of the trinity could mean prison. Towards
the close of his life, Jefferson still felt that his battle
for religious freedom was his hardest. This Unitarian who believed
that the sum of true religion was "to love God with all thy
heart and thy neighbor as thyself" argued that "speculative
differences" should be as freely accepted as physical differences,
and that "Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agencies
against error." His statute proclaims, "Almighty God hath created
the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it
shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint..."
The Declaration of Independence
launched a world-shaking idea that was to become a beacon of
hope to men in every land and age. In an era that believed in
the divine right of kings and the feudal system, the notion
that men were created equal and possessed inalienable rights
seemed either mad or inflammatory. Even the new world defied
the proposition with chattel slavery, poll taxes, lack of schools
for the poor, and lack of opportunities and rights for one-half
the race, the women. The declaration brought no immediate reform,
but it raised a standard towards which the young republic might
advance. Indeed, the best of American history has been the gradual
realization of the dream embodied in those words.
DOUGLAS,
Emily Taft,
(wife of Paul H. Douglas), a Representative
from Illinois; born in Chicago, Ill., April 10, 1899;
was graduated from the University of Chicago in 1919;
engaged in the theatrical profession; organizer and
chairman of the department of government and foreign
policy for the Illinois League of Women Voters; secretary
of the International Relations Center, Chicago, Ill.;
elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-ninth Congress
(January 3, 1945-January 3, 1947); unsuccessful candidate
for reelection in 1946 to the Eightieth Congress; United
States Representative to the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); author;
was a resident of White Plains, N.Y., until her death
there on January 28, 1994.
Bibliography
Douglas, Emily Taft. Margaret Sanger; Pioneer of the
Future. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970;
Douglas, Emily Taft. Remember the Ladies; The Story
of Great Women Who Helped Shape America. New York:
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1966.
Courtesy
of the U.S. House of Representatives Historical Office
UNITARIAN NOTE Article in The Unitarian Register,
February 1958
Emily Taft Douglas, who has
been nominated as moderator, highest lay office in the American
Unitarian Association, long has been active in Unitarian
affairs. She is a member of All Souls' Church (Unitarian),
Washington, D. C., and a member of the Board of Contributing
Editors of TheUnitarian Register. She is
active in the Unitarian Fellowship for Social Justice. In
1955, she was presented a Diamond Jubilee award by the General
Alliance of Unitarian and Other Liberal Christian Women.
Mrs. Douglas is a former United States representative from
Illinois. Her husband, Senator Paul Douglas (D., III.) also
is a Unitarian.
Her father is the late Lorado
Taft, noted sculptor, and she is a distant cousin of the
late President William Howard Taft.
As a United States representative,
Mrs. Douglas served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
In 1951 she was adviser to the American delegation to the
UNESCO conference. She is widely known as an author and
lecturer.
Among
lesser known facets of her career is the fact that she once
played the leading role of the mystery dramaThe Cat and
the Canary when it was on Broadway. Her biographies
attribute to her an especial skill in the baking of chocolate
cake.
Emily
Taft Douglas of Illinois recognized the dangers of fascism during
the mid-1930s and dedicated her public career to the cause of
collective security against aggression and the establishment
of a permanent machinery to insure international peace. The
daughter of sculptor Laredo Taft, she was born in Chicago on
April 10, 1899, and was graduated with a Ph. B. from the University
of Chicago in 1919. Following study at the American Academy
of Dramatic Art she worked in the theater and by 1926 was the
star of The Cat and the Canary on Broadway.
Among
the trinity of American immortals, Unitarian Thomas Jefferson
at last has been generally accepted. If April 13 is not officially
celebrated, as are the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln,
there nevertheless has been a growing reverence for the man
who, more than any other, charted the course of our free institutions.
He
wrote his own brief epitaph, and it is remarkable for what he
omitted, as well as what he chose to have remembered. He did
not mention that he had served two terms as president or served
as vice-president, secretary of state, minister to France, governor
of Virginia, or member of the House of Burgesses. He did not
claim that almost single-handed he had carried Virginia forward
from a feudal state to a modern one by ending primogeniture
and entail, dissolving the union of state and church, and reforming
the penal code. He did not boast of the Louisiana purchase which
had more than doubled the nation's territory, and secured "an
empire for liberty." Nor did he list the many practical and
imaginative projects by which he had enriched his country. He
merely wrote, "Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of
American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious
Freedom and Father of the University of Virginia."
DOUGLAS,
Emily Taft,
(wife of Paul H. Douglas), a Representative
from Illinois; born in Chicago, Ill., April 10, 1899;
was graduated from the University of Chicago in 1919;
engaged in the theatrical profession; organizer and
chairman of the department of government and foreign
policy for the Illinois League of Women Voters; secretary
of the International Relations Center, Chicago, Ill.;
elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-ninth Congress
(January 3, 1945-January 3, 1947); unsuccessful candidate
for reelection in 1946 to the Eightieth Congress; United
States Representative to the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); author;
was a resident of White Plains, N.Y., until her death
there on January 28, 1994. 