HAMMERSTEIN, OSCAR, II (1895–1960). Born in New York City to a theatrical family, Oscar Hammerstein went to Columbia University, where he met Richard Rodgers. In 1918, Hammerstein became a stage manager for his uncle, and in 1920 he wrote the play Always You. With Otto Harbach, he wrote Wildflower (1922), Rose-Marie (1924), Sunny (1925), Song of the Flame (1925), and The Desert Song (1926). In 1927, he wrote Show Boat with Jerome Kern, which included “Ol’ Man River.” He was less successful in the 1930s, and in 1943 he began to work with Rodgers. They wrote nine musicals together, including the enormously successful Oklahoma! (1943), Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), and The Sound of Music (1959). See also LITERATURE AND THEATER; MUSIC.
HAMMETT, (SAMUEL) DASHIELL (1894–1961). Born in Maryland, Dashiell Hammett had a perfunctory education, and after a series of clerical jobs, in 1915 he found work with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Baltimore. In 1918, Hammett joined the army and served for a year. After the war, he moved to San Francisco, where he worked briefly as a Pinkerton agent once more. However, he also began to write short detective stories, which helped establish a genre in American fiction. In his stories of the “Continental Op” published in Smart Set and Black Mask and the novels Red Harvest (1929) and The Dain Curse (1929), Hammett introduced the cynical hero without illusions who reached his most developed form as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1930). Cool detachment of a more sophisticated style was the characteristic of Nick Charles in The Thin Man (1934).
From the mid-1930s onward, Hammett wrote mainly for Hollywood and with his partner, Lillian Hellman. He also became involved in various left-wing causes. In 1942, despite his age and health problems (he had bronchial problems after a bout of influenza in 1918 and 1919), Hammett joined the army in 1942 and served until 1945. In 1951, he refused to give information about donors to a bail fund established to aid political defendants charged under the loyalty laws and was jailed. In 1953, he was called to give evidence before Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, and in 1955 he also had to give evidence before the New York State Joint Legislative Committee with regard to groups with supposed communist sympathies. For most of these years, Hammett was deprived of income due to action by the Internal Revenue Service to reclaim unpaid back taxes and forced to depend on the charity of friends. Because of his political views, some of his books were withdrawn from public libraries, but his work continued to be popular in Europe and was rediscovered by American readers in the 1970s and 1980s. See also LITERATURE AND THEATER.
HARBURG, EDGAR YIPSEL (“YIP”) (1896–1981). The son of Jewish Russian immigrants, Yip Harburg was born Isidore Hochberg in New York City. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1917 and traveled and worked in Latin America before returning to New York, where he helped establish an electrical supply business in 1920. The company failed following the Wall Street Crash, but Harburg was already writing songs and in 1932 scored a major success with “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” He also wrote, with Vernon Duke, “April in Paris” (1932), and, with Harold Arlen, “It’s Only a Paper Moon” (1932). He worked with Ira Gershwin on the review Life Begins at 8:40 in 1934, and again with Arlen on the movie The Wizard of Oz (1939). One of the songs for which he provided the lyrics in The Wizard of Oz was “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” which won an Academy Award. He and Arlen also wrote songs for the film Cabin in the Sky (1943). Harburg’s greatest success came after the war with the stage musical Finian’s Rainbow (1947) and his hit songs “How Are Things in Glocca Mora?” and “Old Devil Moon.” However, in the 1950s Harburg was blacklisted because of his membership in organizations sympathetic to the Soviet Union in the 1940s. Unable to work in Hollywood, he returned to writing for Broadway and was successful with Arlen once more with Jamaica in 1957. His later work was not as well received. See also MUSIC.
HARLEM RACE RIOT, 1935. Harlem, in New York City, is an area a few blocks north of 125th Street bounded by Seventh Avenue and Lenox Avenue that became the center of the city’s African American population from the early 1900s onward. In 1914, the black population was estimated to be 50,000. This number increased dramatically following the Great Migration of African Americans from the South during World War I. By 1930, Harlem was almost an entirely black community numbering more than 200,000, and it had become the cultural capital for African Americans—the center of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. The migration of black Americans into New York continued during the 1930s, and by 1940 the total black population of the city was 458,000, of which about 300,000 lived in Harlem.
Conditions in this ghetto were deplorable, with many families crammed into tenement buildings, sharing toilet facilities, and in some cases lacking such amenities all together. Thousands lived in cellars and basements. Much of the property and businesses in Harlem were white-owned, while African Americans worked low-paying jobs, often as menials. As black unemployment soared during the Great Depression, resentment against the discrimination and prejudice increased until finally, following an incident involving a black youth in a white-owned store, the anger exploded into a riot on 19 March 1935. After two days of chaos, primarily directed at property, three African Americans were dead, 30 people had been injured, and more than $2 million worth of property had been damaged. See also DETROIT RACE RIOT; HARLEM RACE RIOT, 1943.
HARLEM RACE RIOT, 1943. Following an incident involving an African American soldier and a white police officer in which the soldier was shot and wounded, rioting broke out among the black community in Harlem—the black ghetto in New York City—on 1 August 1943. Angered by this and similar reported incidents, as well as the continued discrimination against black New Yorkers and African Americans in the armed forces, hundreds of Harlemites attacked white-owned shops and property, creating an estimated $5 million worth of damage. After three days of rioting, five African Americans had been killed, 500 wounded, and another 500 arrested. See also HARLEM RACE RIOT, 1935.
HARRIMAN, (WILLIAM) AVERELL (1891–1986). Born to a wealthy New York City family, Averell Harriman was educated at Groton and Yale. In 1941, he was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to supervise the Lend-Lease program to Great Britain. In 1943, he became ambassador to the Soviet Union and in 1945 ambassador to Britain and then administrator of the Marshall Plan. In 1952, he announced his intention to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, but he lost to Adlai Stevenson. In 1954, Harriman was elected governor of New York, where he worked to improve civil rights and extend antipoverty programs. He failed to get reelected in 1958, losing to Republican Nelson Rockefeller. He spent the rest of the 1950s speaking on foreign policy issues. In 1968, Harriman was chosen by President Lyndon Johnson to head the U.S. delegation in peace talks with North Vietnam, a position he relinquished when Richard M. Nixon took office.
HART, LORENZ MILTON (1895–1943). Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart was born in New York City and educated at Columbia Grammar School and Columbia University’s School of Journalism. Shortly after World War I, Hart met Richard Rodgers, and the two formed a songwriting partnership and began to write for Broadway. Their first success was in writing for the revue The Garrick Gaieties in 1925, which included their first hit, “Manhattan.” A string of successful stage productions followed, and in the early-1930s Hart and Rodgers moved to Hollywood and scored immediate hits with Love Me Tonight (1932), The Phantom President (1932), and Hallelujah, I’m a Bum (1933). They also wrote “Blue Moon” for Bing Crosby in 1934.
Hart and Rodgers returned to Broadway in 1935, where they wrote numerous hit songs for stage musicals. Among their best known songs are, “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” (Jumbo [1935]), “It’s Got to Be Love” (On Your Toes [1936]), “My Funny Valentine” (Babes in Arms [1937]), “Falling in Love with Love” (The Boys from Syracuse [1938]), and “I Could Write a Book” (Pal Joey [1940]). Hart’s final collaboration with Rodgers was the musical By Jupiter in 1942. He gradually succumbed to alcoholism and ill-health but did provide some of the lyrics for A Connecticut Yankee in 1943. See also LITERATURE AND THEATER; MUSIC.
HASTIE, WILLIAM HENRY (1904–1976). Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, William Hastie graduated from Amherst College in 1925 and Harvard Law School in 1930. Having passed the bar exams, he practiced law in Washington, D.C., with Charles H. Houston and also taught at Howard University. He obtained his doctorate in judicial science from Harvard Law School in 1933 and joined the faculty at Howard, where he remained until 1946. Hastie also worked for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People with Thurgood Marshall and notably helped argue the cases Smith v. Allwright (1944) and Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia (1946).
In 1933, Hastie joined the New Deal’s black cabinet when he became an assistant solicitor in the Department of the Interior. He became the first African American appointed to the federal bench when he became judge of the U.S. District Court for the Virgin Islands in 1937. He returned to the United States in 1939 to become dean of Howard Law School. From 1940 to 1943 Hastie was civilian aide to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, but he resigned in frustration with the lack of progress in the racial policies of the military, particularly the Army Air Force. In 1946, he was appointed governor of the Virgin Islands and in 1949 judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. He subsequently became chief justice and served until 1971.
HAUPTMANN, BRUNO RICHARD (1899–1936). Born in Germany, Bruno Hauptmann served in the German army in World War I. After the war, he became a small-time criminal. He twice attempted to enter the United States illegally, finally succeeding in 1923. He married and settled down as a carpenter in New York City. In September 1934, he was arrested for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s infant son in March 1932. Notes traceable as part of the ransom money were found in Hauptmann’s possession. The trial, described by the journalist H. L. Mencken as “the greatest story since the Resurrection” and regarded at the time as “the trial of the century,” lasted from 2 January to 13 February 1935. Found guilty on circumstantial evidence, Hauptmann was electrocuted on 3 April. Despite some inconsistencies in the evidence, it seems likely that he was guilty.
HAWKS, HOWARD WINCHESTER (1896–1977). Born in Goshen, Indiana, film director, producer, and writer Howard Hawks grew up in a wealthy family that moved to California while he was young. He attended Throop Polytechnic Institute, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Cornell University, where he graduated in 1918. Hawks briefly served in the U. S. Army Air Service, and after a number of jobs he moved to Hollywood and began work in the film industry in 1924. He wrote his first screenplay, Tiger Love, in 1924 and directed his first film, The Road to Glory, in 1925. Hawks made a number of classic films across different genres. In 1932 he directed Scarface, based on the life of the gangster Al Capone, and starring Paul Muni. In 1938 he had success with the comedy, Bringing Up Baby, starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. His film based on the life of World War I hero Sergeant York won Gary Cooper an Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1944, Hawks directed the first film coupling Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, To Have and Have Not, based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway. Bogart and Bacall also starred in Hawk’s The Big Sleep, a Raymond Chandler novel. Hawks also made a few classic Westerns, most notably Red River (1948) and Rio Bravo (1959). His Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) starred Marilyn Monroe. Hawks last film was Rio Lobo, made in 1977. He was given a lifetime achievement award by the Academy of Arts in 1975. See also CINEMA.
HAYES, ROLAND (1887–1977). African American singer and composer Roland Hayes was born the son of former slaves in Georgia but moved with his family to Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1898. He studied at Fisk University, where he joined the Jubilee Singers in 1911. After touring nationally, Hayes traveled to London in 1920, and following a royal command performance, he toured throughout Europe performing a mixture of classical music with spirituals and other folk music and establishing his international reputation as the foremost black performer. He returned to the United States in 1923, became the first black singer to perform at the Carnegie Hall, and was awarded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Spingarn Medal in recognition of his achievements in 1924. In 1931, he sang at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., although his insistence on performing before an integrated audience apparently led to the subsequent all-white policy that led to his protégé Marian Anderson’s exclusion in 1939.
In 1942, Hayes and his wife were involved in a confrontation with police officers in Rome, Georgia, when the singer refused to accept segregation. He was beaten by the police and subsequently moved out of Georgia. He continued to give limited performances up until and through to the 1960s, and his farewell concert at Carnegie Hall took place in 1962. See also MUSIC.
HAYS, ARTHUR GARFIELD (1881–1954). Born in Rochester, New York, Arthur Hays graduated in law from Columbia University and became a successful corporate lawyer. He became counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union and was involved in the Scopes Trial (1925) and the defense of the Italian anarchists Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1927). In 1931, he was briefly involved in the case of the Scottsboro Boys but refused to accept the restrictions imposed by the International Labor Defense team. In 1933 Hays helped represent Georgi Dimitrov, one of the people accused of setting the Reichstag fire in Berlin. He wrote Let Freedom Ring (1928), Democracy at Work (1939), and his autobiography, City Lawyer (1942).
HAYWORTH, RITA (1918–1987). Born Margararita Carmen Cansino in Brooklyn, New York, to parents who were both dancers, future movie star Rita Hayworth moved to California with her family in 1927. From 1936, she appeared in several films as Rita Cansino, but from 1937 onward she used the name Rita Hayworth. Like Betty Grable, Hayworth primarily appeared in musicals as a dancer. Her early successes were in Only Angels Have Wings (1939) and Blood and Sand (1941). She also appeared with Fred Astaire in You’ll Never Get Rich (1941) and You Were Never Lovelier (1942). Also like Grable, Hayworth became a pin-up girl for servicemen during World War II and appeared on the cover of Life magazine. She was also an active fundraiser for the war effort. Appropriately, she starred in Cover Girl in 1944. After the war, Hayworth received considerable acclaim for her performances in very different roles in Gilda (1946) and The Lady from Shanghai (1948). Although she continued to appear in movies through 1971, including Salome (1953), Miss Sadie Thompson (1953), and Pal Joey (1957), she was increasingly in the news for her stormy personal life. Hayworth was married five times, and her husbands included Orson Welles and Prince Aly Khan, head of the Shia Muslims. Her later performances were also affected by the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. See also CINEMA.
HEARST, WILLIAM RANDOLPH (1863–1951). Future news magnate William Randolph Hearst was born in San Francisco, California. After studying at Harvard University from 1882 until 1885, he began a career as a journalist and gradually built up a newspaper empire, acquiring ownership of the San Francisco Examiner, Chicago American, New York Journal-American, and Daily Mirror. Hearst also owned several magazines, including International-Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, and Good Housekeeping, and he created nationwide news syndicates. His papers became known for their sensationalism that earned the description “yellow journalism.” They were also known for their nationalism. He was reported to have said to artist Frederic Remington, who was in Cuba in 1898, “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.”
Hearst entered politics as a Democrat, becoming a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1903 to 1907. He failed in his bid to become mayor of New York City in 1905 and 1909 and also in his attempt to become governor of New York in 1906. In 1908, he created his own Independence League in another attempt to win the gubernatorial race but failed again.
During World War I, Hearst’s press adopted a passionately anti-British line that was abandoned once the United States entered the conflict. Hearst strongly opposed the League of Nations and U.S. participation in the Permanent Court of International Justice. He continued to be an influential voice during the 1920s, supporting Republican Calvin Coolidge. However, in 1932 the Hearst press initially backed Democrat John Nance Garner for the presidency but was persuaded to switch support to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Hearst gradually turned against the New Deal because of its regulation of business and taxation policies. In 1934, he visited Nazi Germany and returned as a committed crusader against communism. In 1936, he supported the candidacy of Alf Landon, but following Roosevelt’s victory he seemed to lose interest in politics. His newspapers continued to back the Republican candidates in 1940, 1944, and 1948.
The Hearst empire was badly hit by the Great Depression, and he was forced to surrender control in 1937. Nonetheless, the company emerged from the crisis as the biggest publishing organization in the United States. Hearst’s great wealth was evident in the huge art collection he amassed at his home in San Simeon, California, and he provided the model for the fictional character in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941).
HEMINGWAY, ERNEST MILLER (1899–1961). Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Ernest Hemingway was arguably the most significant voice of the “lost generation” of alienated Americans after World War I. He did not go to college, but in 1917 he began work as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. In 1918, Hemingway went to Italy as a volunteer ambulance driver for the American Red Cross. He was wounded and hospitalized shortly after his arrival. In 1920, he found work with the Toronto Star, and he continued to submit articles first from Chicago and then after 1922, from Paris, France.
Hemingway published a number of short stories while he was in Paris, where he became one of a group of expatriate writers and artists. His first collection of stories, In Our Time (1925), was followed by The Sun Also Rises (1926), Men without Women (1927), and A Farewell to Arms (1929). It was in the latter that he famously wrote that after the war “all gods were dead.”
Hemingway returned to America in 1928 and settled in Key West, Florida, where he wrote a study of bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon (1932), followed by Winner Take Nothing (1933) and Green Hills of Africa (1935). He also published short stories and magazine articles. In 1937, Hemingway went to Spain to report on the civil war. His book To Have and Have Not was published the same year.
In 1939, Hemingway went to Havana, where he wrote his novel about the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls, published in 1940. He wrote little of substance after this point, but he went to Europe as a war reporter for Collier’s in 1944 and took part in the D-Day landings. Another novel set in Italy, Across the River and into the Trees, appeared in 1950. In 1952, The Old Man and the Sea was published to considerable acclaim, and Hemingway was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953. In 1954, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Despite these successes and twice surviving airplane crashes in Africa in 1954, Hemingway increasingly suffered from depression, and in 1961 he committed suicide.
HENDERSON, LEON (1895–1986). Born in Millville, New Jersey, Leon Henderson enrolled in Swarthmore College in 1915 but left in 1917 to serve in the U.S. Army. He returned to college in 1919, and following his graduation in 1920, he studied economics at the University of Pennsylvania until 1922. He taught economics at the Carnegie Institute of Technology until 1925, when he became an assistant to Governor Gifford Pinchot. After two years, Henderson became director of consumer credit research at the Russell Sage Foundation. He was particularly involved in research in loans and loan-sharking.
In 1934, he was appointed director of the Research and Planning Division of the National Recovery Administration (NRA) by Hugh Johnson, and he became a considerable influence in the New Deal. When the NRA was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935, Henderson became economic adviser to the Senate Committee on Manufacturers and in 1936 served as adviser to the Democratic Party’s National Committee. That same year he was appointed to the Works Progress Administration, and he became an advocate of deficit spending and antimonopoly legislation. Following the “Roosevelt Recession,” Henderson helped persuade Franklin D. Roosevelt to increase federal spending and establish the Temporary National Economic Committee to examine the issue of monopoly. Henderson served as the executive director of the committee from 1938 to 1941. He was also appointed to the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1939, and in 1940 he served on the National Defense Advisory Commission.
In 1941, Henderson was placed in charge of the Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply, which once America entered World War II became the Office of Price Administration. Because of the criticism of the price controls, particularly from farmers, Henderson resigned in 1942 and became head of Civilian Supply for the War Production Board (WPB). After the war, he became president of the International Hudson Corporation, chair of the Americans for Democratic Action, and chief economist for the Research Institute of America.
HENDERSON, LOY WESLEY (1892–1986). Loy Henderson was born in Arkansas. He entered Denver Law School in 1915 but left to serve in the Red Cross during World War I. He remained with the Red Cross in Europe until 1921 when he joined the U.S. Consular Service in 1922. After two years in Ireland, Henderson joined the Eastern European Affairs section of the State Department and in 1927 was posted to Riga, Latvia, and in 1934 he went to Moscow, where, with fellow officers like George F. Kennan and Charles Bohlen, he was able to observe developments in the Soviet Union. Henderson returned to Washington in 1937 and was given responsibility for Eastern European Affairs. He was an expert advisor to U.S. and British diplomats during the Moscow Conference in 1943 but was reassigned to become minister to Iraq. In 1945, he became director of the division for Near Eastern Affairs, and he helped formulate the policies in response to the Soviet threat in Azerbaijan and Turkey and assisted in drafting aspects of the Truman Doctrine. However, in 1948, Henderson objected to the division of Palestine to create the independent state of Israel and was assigned first to Nepal and then as ambassador to India in 1948. His critical view of India’s recognition of the communist People’s Republic of China led to his transfer to Iran in 1951. While there, he assisted with the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh and the return of the shah in 1953. Henderson returned to Washington in 1954 and was undersecretary of state until his retirement in 1961. See also COLD WAR; FOREIGN POLICY.
HEPBURN, KATHERINE (1907–2003). Born in Hartford, Connecticut, and educated at Bryn Mawr College, Katherine Hepburn began her acting career in 1928 and made her debut on Broadway in 1932 in The Warrior’s Husband. Not particularly successful in theater, she made her first film, A Bill of Divorcement (1932), and was an immediate hit. In 1933, she won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Morning Glory. She also starred in Little Women (1933) and Alice Adams (1935). After a decline in popularity due to her high-handed attitude, Hepburn returned to Broadway in 1939 in The Philadelphia Story. Both her regal bearing and strong personality came through in roles that portrayed strong, independent women.
In the 1940s, Hepburn starred in a number of films with her long-time lover, Spencer Tracy, most notably the comedies Woman of the Year (1942) and Pat and Mike (1952). She also appeared again on Broadway in As You Like It (1950) and The Millionairess (1952). One of her most successful films was The African Queen (1951), in which she costarred with Humphrey Bogart. Hepburn went on to win three Oscars for Best Female Actor in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) (Tracy’s last film), The Lion in Winter (1968), and On Golden Pond (1981), with Henry Fonda. Throughout her career, Hepburn received 12 Academy nominations, making her one of the most successful female stars. See also CINEMA.
HICKOK, LORENA ALICE (“HICK”) (1893–1968). Born in East Troy, Wisconsin, Lorena Hickok had an unhappy childhood and a broken education. She became a reporter in 1913 and worked for a succession of newspapers, including the Milwaukee Sentinel, Minneapolis Tribune, and New York Daily Mirror. In 1932, while covering the election campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Hickok met Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom she formed a close long-term, and possibly even sexual, friendship. Among the more than 2,000 letters from the First Lady to Hickok in the library at the Roosevelt’s home in Hyde Park are some that point to a romantic and physical relationship. From 1933 to 1936 Hickok was sent as an investigator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration to report back to Harry Hopkins on conditions in the country and the public’s response to the “First Hundred Days” of the New Deal. Her reports helped persuade the administration of the need for more relief and led to the creation of the Civil Works Administration. Hickok left the New Deal after Roosevelt’s reelection in 1936 to become a publicist for the New York World’s Fair, but she returned in 1940 and lived in the White House for four years. She joined the Democratic National Committee as executive secretary for the Women’s Division. She resigned in 1945 due to ill-health and became a writer. She wrote books based on her knowledge of politics, including The Story of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1956), The Story of Eleanor Roosevelt (1959), and Reluctant First Lady (1962). During her later years, she lived in a cottage on the Roosevelt estate, where she died.
HILLMAN, SIDNEY (1887–1946). Sidney Hillman was born in Lithuania. He came to the United States in 1907 after being arrested for his labor activities, and he found work in the clothing industry in Chicago, Illinois. In 1915, he became president of the newly created Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union. During the 1920s, Hillman espoused a New Unionism, which stressed cooperation with employers and workers’ educational, social, and welfare programs. Hillman supported Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal during the Great Depression and had some influence on aspects of the National Industrial Recovery Act. He was a member of the board of the National Recovery Administration and worked with other unionists to secure Roosevelt’s reelection in 1936. In 1935, Hillman was a cofounder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and became one of its vice presidents. In 1936, he helped found the American Labor Party, a left-wing group based in New York. During World War II, he headed the labor section of the Office of Production Management and then was vice chairman of the War Production Board. He established the Political Action Committee within the CIO to support Roosevelt. See also TRADE UNIONS.
HIRABAYASHI V. UNITED STATES (320 U.S. 81 1943). Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi was a Japanese American student born in Seattle, Washington, who was convicted in 1942 of breaking the curfew and evading the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. On 21 June 1943, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld his conviction for breaking the curfew but did not rule on the legality of internment. Hirabayashi was sentenced to 90 days in prison. When historical research subsequently made clear that there was no evidence to suggest that the Japanese Americans posed any military threat—the basis on which the relocation order had been justified—Hirabayashi’s convictions were overturned by a court in Seattle in 1987. See also ENDO V. UNITED STATES; KOREMATSU V. UNITED STATES.
HIROSHIMA. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a Japanese naval and military center, on 6 August 1945. More than 60 percent of the city was destroyed, and 80,000 people were killed immediately. Many more died later as a result of radiation sickness. The city was largely rebuilt after the war, but its name is a constant reminder of the danger of nuclear weapons. See also NAGASAKI.
HISPANIC AMERICANS. Hispanic Americans were the more than 2 million Spanish-speaking Mexican, Puerto Rican, and other people from Latin America living in the United States in 1930. The largest group was the Mexican American population, mainly concentrated in the southwest, while Puerto Ricans were located primarily in New York City. Long welcomed as a source of cheap agricultural labor but despised for their ethnic difference, during the Great Depression they faced increasing resentment from poor or unemployed white Americans. Many Mexican laborers were displaced by the “Okies,” and approximately 500,000 of them returned to Mexico either voluntarily or as a result of expulsion by local officials. Those who remained worked for meager wages, and when they attempted to organize to protest in strikes in California in 1935 and 1936, they were easily defeated by the powerful fruit growers’ and farmers’ organizations.
Large numbers of Mexican Americans, displaced from the land, moved to cities looking for work, particularly Los Angeles. During World War II, this urban population increased as new workers, “braceros,” were imported to work on the land. In Los Angeles, ethnic tension focused on Mexican youths wearing “zoot suits,” and in June 1943 they were subjected to physical attacks by resentful white servicemen. Despite the discrimination, some 350,000 Mexican Americans served in the armed forces, and a disproportionate number won awards for their courage. More than 50,000 Puerto Ricans also served in the military, the majority either in the Puerto Rico National Guard or in the predominantly Puerto Rican 65th Infantry Regiment. During the war, the number of Puerto Ricans living on mainland America rose, and by 1950 this number had risen from about 70,000 in 1940 to 300,000. Like Mexican Americans, they too suffered discrimination and segregation, most living in the barrio of East Harlem in New York City.
HISS, ALGER (1904–1996). Born and educated in Baltimore, Maryland, Alger Hiss went to Powder Point Academy, Johns Hopkins University, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1929. He worked briefly as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes before joining a Boston law firm in 1930. In 1933, he became an attorney with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and then with the Justice Department before joining the State Department in 1936. Working with Dean Acheson and Edward Stettinius Jr., Hiss was executive secretary at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944, became director of the Office of Special Political Affairs in 1945, attended the Yalta Conference, and was secretary general at the United Nations organizing conference in 1945. In 1947, he became president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a body that exemplified the liberal establishment targeted by Senator Joseph McCarthy and his allies.
In 1948, in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Time magazine editor and former communist Whittaker Chambers accused Hiss of having been a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America. In a dramatic HUAC appearance, Hiss confronted Chambers and denied the charges. Hiss sued Chambers for libel, and Chambers further accused him of passing secret documents to the Soviet Union during the 1930s. Chambers produced microfilms that he had concealed in a pumpkin on his Maryland farm that included State Department material written or copied by Hiss. Because of the three-year statute of limitation on espionage, Hiss was indicted by a grand jury in December 1948, not for spying but for perjury during HUAC testimony. His first trial in July 1949 resulted in a hung jury. A second trial in January 1950 resulted in conviction. His appeal failed, and he was imprisoned from 1950 to 1954.
Hiss’s conviction was enormously damaging to Harry S. Truman’s administration and the Democratic Party. While senior politicians like Acheson and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter stoutly defended him, Republican politicians like freshman congressman and HUAC member Richard M. Nixon insisted on pursuing the charges and in doing so helped raise his own national profile. The outcome of the trial helped lend sustenance to the charges later made by McCarthy and cast doubt on the loyalty of a generation of politicians. Although Hiss continued to protest his innocence, evidence from the Soviet archives after the end of the Cold War convinced many historians that he had indeed committed espionage.
HITLER, ADOLF (1889–1945). German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was born in Austria. After serving in the army in World War I, he joined the right-wing National Socialist German Workers’ Party in 1919 and quickly assumed leadership. Jailed following a failed putsch in Munich in 1923, he and the Nazi Party later rose to prominence when Germany was hit by the effects of the Great Depression. On 30 January 1933, he was appointed chancellor of Germany and was able to establish a one-party state. On 2 August 1934, Hitler was proclaimed führer. His regime was marked by virulent anti-Semitism and racism that led to the persecution and eventual attempted extermination of the Jews, Gypsies, and other groups regarded as inferior. Intent on overturning the Versailles Treaty of 1919, Hitler built up the German armed forces, established an Axis with Mussolini’s fascist Italy, and in 1938 began a policy of territorial expansion. German forces occupied Austria followed by Czechoslovakia. His attack on Poland led to the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. Easily victorious in the west, with only Great Britain remaining undefeated, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1940. When the United States declared war on Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941. By 1945, Germany was under attack on two fronts, and as the Allies closed in on Berlin, on 30 April 1945 Hitler shot and killed himself. Only with his defeat did the full horror of Nazi rule and the Holocaust become known. Some of Hitler’s closest associates stood trial and were executed following the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials after the war.
HOLLYWOOD TEN. The Hollywood Ten were a group of 10 scriptwriters and producers in the film industry who were cited for contempt of Congress in 1947 when they refused to answer the question “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). HUAC called some 41 people, but only 10 refused to respond, appealing instead to the First and Fifth Amendments. The 10 individuals included Dalton Trumbo, Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biverman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, and Adrian Scott. They were each fined and sentenced to jail and served their sentences in 1950. They were subsequently blacklisted by the film industry and unable to work under their own names. Several adopted pseudonyms or worked abroad. The blacklist lasted until 1960. See also CINEMA; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (CPUSA).
HOME OWNERS’ LOAN ACT, 1933. Passed in June 1933, the Home Owners’ Loan Act enabled the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation to offer government bonds to lenders to cover defaulted mortgages, preventing foreclosure and loss of homes.
HOME OWNERS’ LOAN CORPORATION (HOLC). Established under the Home Owners’ Loan Act in 1933, HOLC was created by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board set up by Herbert Hoover in 1932 to provide loans to enable homeowners to pay mortgages or secure advances for home repair. By 1936, when HOLC ceased giving loans, almost 1 million loans totaling $3 billion had been made, covering almost one-fifth of all mortgaged homes. Operations finally came to an end in 1951.
HOOVER, HERBERT CLARK (1874–1964). 31st president of the United States. Born in West Branch, Iowa, Herbert Hoover was orphaned at the age of nine. He grew up with relatives and went on to qualify in geology at Stanford University in 1895. Hoover became a millionaire working as a mining engineer in various western states and in Australia and China between 1895 and 1913. In 1914, he became chair of the American Relief Commission in London and from 1915 to 1919 chair of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. In 1917, Hoover rose to national prominence when Woodrow Wilson appointed him to head the United States Food Administration. He launched a massive national effort to maximize production and minimize private consumption through a program of propaganda that encouraged voluntary controls. Such was his public appeal that both political parties considered him as a potential presidential candidate in 1920, but he declined to run. President Warren Harding appointed Hoover as secretary of commerce in 1921, and he was reappointed by Calvin Coolidge in 1924.
As secretary of the Department of Commerce, Hoover modernized the department and made it one of the most important federal agencies of its day. Hoover was in many ways progressive in that he hoped to bring about economic and social improvement through programs of education and voluntarism. He chaired the unemployment conference in 1921 to encourage business and local voluntary initiatives to counter the postwar recession. In 1921, he helped persuade United States Steel to accept the eight-hour work day. Hoover also backed the postwar “Own Your Own Homes” campaign and the Better Homes of America organization. He supported children’s concerns and was president of the American Child Health Association from 1923 to 1935. He is generally credited with drawing up the Children’s Bill of Rights in 1923 that was later incorporated in the 19-point Children’s Charter drawn up at the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection in 1930.
In 1927, Hoover led the mobilization of relief following the Great Mississippi Flood. Again relying on voluntary and charitable relief, he raised $17 million in assistance for the thousands affected and further enhanced his reputation. When Calvin Coolidge declined to stand for reelection in 1928, Hoover won the Republican Party’s nomination and defeated Democrat Alfred E. Smith by a massive margin of 58 percent to 41 percent of the vote, carrying 40 states to Smith’s eight. While awaiting his inauguration, Hoover embarked on a six-week “good will” tour of Latin America and laid some of the foundations for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor” Policy.
Upon taking office, Hoover’s activity contrasted with his predecessor’s inertia. He supported labor legislation that resulted in the Norris-La Guardia Antiinjunction Act of 1932, set limits on oil drilling and withdrew all federally held oil lands from further leasing, and ordered all large government rebates on income, estate, and gift taxes to be made public. The new president took action against corrupt patronage practices, supported land conservation, and attempted to win the support of black voters with his “southern strategy.” However, Hoover’s administration fell victim to the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and was quickly overwhelmed by the Great Depression that followed.
Hoover attempted to address some of the economic problems facing the United States early in his administration. In an effort to deal with the problems of agriculture, he called a special session of Congress that passed his Agricultural Marketing Act in 1929. A second special session was called to revise the 1922 tariff to help farmers. After 14 months of deliberation, the result was the Hawley-Smoot Tariff that in the end proved counterproductive.
Following the Wall Street Crash, Hoover held a series of conferences at the White House with industrialists, representatives of agriculture, and trade union leaders to try to ensure the maintenance of production, employment, and wage levels by voluntary action. The president called upon state and city officials to increase public works expenditure, and in 1930 he secured federal appropriations of $150 million for river and harbor improvement, new public buildings, and the building of the Boulder Dam (see HOOVER DAM). The federal government spent an unprecedented $700 million on public works, but Hoover insisted that there would be no direct federal relief. Publicly Hoover tried to restore confidence with comments like the forecast in March 1930 that, “the worst effects on unemployment will have passed in the next 60 days.” In May he observed, “we have now passed the worst,” and later remarked, “at least no one has starved.” All of these statements came back to haunt him as the Depression deepened.
In 1931, Hoover attempted to ease the international economic crisis by declaring a moratorium on the payment of reparations and Allied debts. At home, the earlier President’s Emergency Committee for Unemployment in 1931 became the President’s Organization for Unemployment Relief, but this proved increasingly ineffectual given the lack of resources at state level. More effective were the Federal Home Loan Banks and the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act stabilizing credit and banking passed with Hoover’s support in 1932. Equally significant was his approval of the Emergency and Relief Construction Act in 1932, which appropriated $2 billion for public works and $300 million for direct loans to states for relief purposes. However, he also called for increased taxation to balance the budget and the 1932 Revenue Act, which raised taxes by one-third, further restricting consumption.
In 1932, Hoover established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend money to banks, industries, and railroads to stimulate the economy, but this had a limited effect and was seen by many Americans as a “rich man’s dole.” As discontent increased across the country, Hoover’s name became synonymous with the Depression. Tramps lived in shanty towns often referred to as “Hoovervilles” and the newspapers they covered themselves with for warmth were “Hoover blankets.” When the Bonus Army was driven out of Washington, D.C., in 1932 Hoover’s popularity plummeted even further. Despite this, an unenthusiastic Republican Party renominated him for the presidency. The outcome of the election in 1932 confirmed the voters’ disapproval. Franklin D. Roosevelt gained 22.8 million votes to Hoover’s 15.7 million, and Hoover won only 59 Electoral College votes from six states.
After his defeat, Hoover dropped from the public’s view for two or three years. However, from 1935 onward, he was openly critical of the New Deal. He tried to win the Republican nomination in 1940 but lost to Wendell Willkie. Hoover was a critic of U.S. Cold War policies. He opposed the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949 and involvement in the Korean War from 1950 until 1953. However, President Harry S. Truman utilized the former president in several roles. In 1946, he chaired the Famine Emergency Committee, and in 1949 he was appointed chair of the Hoover Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of Government. Many of his recommendations were implemented by Truman’s administration.
HOOVER, JOHN (J.) EDGAR (1895–1972). J. Edgar Hoover was born in Washington, D.C. He earned his law degree from the National University Law School (now George Washington University) night school in 1916 and in 1917 joined the staff of the Alien Enemy Bureau in the Justice Department, where he was active in the campaign against radicals during and after World War I. As head of a newly created Radical Division, Hoover played a leading role in the postwar “Red Scare,” planning and directing the raids in November 1919 and January 1920 that resulted in the arrest and deportation of suspected revolutionaries. In 1921, he became assistant director of the Bureau of Investigation, which later became the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
As director of the Bureau of Investigation and then the FBI from 1924 until his death, Hoover achieved enormous power. During the 1930s, he became a national figure in leading the attack on organized crime and against such infamous criminals as John Dillinger and “Baby Face” Nelson. Hoover was also involved in the investigation and trial of American Nazis after 1938 and German saboteurs in 1942. An adept self-publicist, Hoover encouraged the Public Relations Department to publicize the role of the FBI through the making of films like G-Men (1935) and The FBI Story (1959), a book titled The FBI in Peace and War (1943), and a television series, The FBI, which ran from 1965 to 1974.
Hoover played a key role in postwar anticommunist campaigns and provided evidence for the prosecution of leaders of the Communist Party of the United States of America in 1949. He worked closely with the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy and was also involved in the spy investigations that led to the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953. Hoover authored a book about the communist threat entitled Masters of Deceit in 1958. In the late 1950s, he developed a Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) that was used successively against communist groups, the Ku Klux Klan, and in the 1960s against black organizations. Hoover personally led investigations to undermine the position of the civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and even threatened him with blackmail. In the 1970s, Senate investigations produced a report highly critical of Hoover, his failure to tackle organized crime (the Mafia), and many of the FBI’s domestic activities, but such was his power that no president was able to remove him from office. Since his death, he has been the subject of several critical studies, including, among other things, revelations about his sexuality.
HOOVER COMMISSION. Established in June 1947 by Congress, the Commission on the Organization of the Executive Branch of Government took its name from its chair, former president Herbert Hoover. The aim of the commission was to improve the efficiency of the Executive Office, and when the 12-man body reported in 1949, it made a total of 274 recommendations. More than 100 were enacted by 1951, many as a result of the Reorganization Act of 1949. Among the recommendations were appointing a staff secretary, establishing an Office of Personnel within the Executive Office, replacing the Council of Economic Advisers with an Office of the Economic Adviser, and transferring various financial bodies to the Treasury Department. It also proposed reorganizing various departments, including the Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, and Department of the Interior. A second Hoover Commission sat during the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1955.
HOOVER DAM. Formerly known as the Boulder Dam, construction of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in Black Canyon between Arizona and Colorado began in 1931 and was completed in 1936. It created one of the largest artificial lakes, Lake Mead, and provided power to several southwestern states, including southern California and the city of Los Angeles. Planning for the dam began in the 1920s, but it was named after Herbert Hoover in 1931 as the sitting president. However, it was referred to as the Boulder Dam after 1933 until its original name was reconfirmed by Congress in 1947.
HOPE, BOB (1903–2003). Famous actor and comedian Bob Hope was born Leslie Townes Hope in England. His family immigrated to the United States in 1907 and settled in Cleveland, Ohio. Hope found a variety of casual jobs after leaving high school but turned to performing in vaudeville in 1921. He formed various partnerships and appeared on Broadway before he went solo and took the name “Bob” in 1928. He appeared in Ballyhoo on Broadway in 1932 and had success with the musical Roberta in 1933. He went on to appear in Say When in 1934 and in the Ziegfeld Follies in 1936. Hope’s first major film appearance was in The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938), which included the song that was to become his trademark, “Thanks for the Memories.” In 1940 Hope appeared in the first of the successful series of comedy films with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, The Road to Singapore. He went on to star in more than 50 films, including Lemon Drop Hit (1951), which included the hit song with Marilyn Maxwell, “Silver Bells.” The Road to Hong Kong (1962) was his last Road series film, but he also appeared in The Muppet Movie (1979) and Spies Like Us (1985). Hope received two honorary awards from the Film Academy, including a Lifetime Achievement in Award in 1965.
Hope’s radio career lasted from 1937 through 1956. He also made more than 500 television appearances, beginning with his first major appearance in 1950. Hope was also famous for his role in United Service Organizations shows to entertain U.S. troops overseas. He began the performances in 1941, and from 1943 onward many of his radio broadcasts came from military bases. Beginning in 1943 he toured installations in Great Britain, Africa, and Sicily. In 1948, Hope gave the first of many Christmas shows for troops when he performed in Berlin. His contribution was recognized when Congress made him an Honorary Veteran in 1997. In 1998, Queen Elizabeth gave Hope, who became a U.S. citizen in 1920, an honorary knighthood. See also CINEMA.
HOPKINS, HARRY LLOYD (1890–1946). Famous New Deal administrator Harry Hopkins was educated at Grinnell College. In 1912, he moved to New York City, where he became a social worker. He became executive secretary of New York’s Board of Child Welfare and during World War I was involved in civilian relief for the families of servicemen for the Red Cross. In 1923, Hopkins became president of the American Association of Social Workers and in 1924 director of the New York Tuberculosis Association. In 1931, he was appointed by Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt to direct New York’s Temporary Emergency Relief Administration and then in 1933 to head the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which spent $1 billion in two years providing jobs for the unemployed.
When initial relief measures proved too slow, Roosevelt put Hopkins in charge of the Civil Works Administration, which employed 4 million people in six months working on public building projects. From 1935 to 1940 Hopkins directed the Works Progress Administration, which put more than 8 million workers on the federal payroll and spent $10.5 billion. He became secretary of commerce in 1938 and considered running for the presidential nomination in 1940. However, ill health forced him to abandon such ambitions, and he supported Roosevelt before resigning from the administration.
During World War II, Hopkins became a diplomat. He was first sent as a special envoy to Great Britain in 1941 and then to the Soviet Union. He organized Lend-Lease to the Allies before the United States entered the war and after 1941 headed the Munitions Assignments Board to allocate war material to different Allied powers. Hopkins continued to work in the war administration despite poor health and the death of a son in combat. He was an influential figure at the Tehran Conference in 1943 and the Yalta Conference in 1945, and he played a part in ensuring Soviet participation in the San Francisco Conference that established the United Nations in 1945. That same year Hopkins resigned from government and was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.
HOPPER, EDWARD (1882–1967). Born in Nyack, New York, Edward Hopper attended art school in New York City and then the New York School of Art in 1906. That year he made his first visit to Paris, where he would return again in 1909 and 1910, but he ultimately rejected European painting styles. He initially struggled as an artist, but in 1918 he won a prize from the U.S. Shipping Board for his poster Smash the Hun. In the 1920s, he worked on etchings and had a successful exhibition of water colors, and his House by the Railroad (1925) brought him some acclaim. Like Charles Burchfield, Hooper developed as a contributor to the “American Scene,” and his work can be divided into landscapes and seascapes from the Maine coast and Cape Cod, where he established his home and studio, and his urban paintings, ranging from Automat (1927) to Chop Suey (1929) to Nighthawks (1942). His work captured the sense of alienation and isolation in modern society, yet also the beauty of buildings and locations using bold color and a uniquely American style.
HOUSE UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES COMMITTEE (HUAC). HUAC had its origins in a House committee formed in 1934 by John W. McCormack, a Democrat from New York, and Samuel Dickstein, a Democrat from Massachusetts, to investigate the influence of Nazi propaganda in the United States. It was reestablished in 1938 by Martin Dies, a Republican from Texas, ostensibly to investigate Nazi influences and the role of the Ku Klux Klan. However, it was dominated by conservative opponents of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, some of whom were themselves Klan members or sympathizers, who, finding no evidence relating to the Ku Klux Klan, instead charged that federal agencies, particularly the Works Progress Administration and the Federal Theater Project, were dominated by communist sympathizers. Such charges helped contribute to the Republican Party’s resurgence in the 1938 mid-term elections, and the charges reappeared after World War II.
In 1946, HUAC became a permanent committee, and in 1947 it began to investigate communist influence in the film industry, issuing 43 subpoenas to a variety of people working in Hollywood. The subsequent Hollywood hearings resulted in the jailing of 10 screenwriters and directors, known as the Hollywood Ten, for contempt and led to a blacklist of more than 300 people in show business. During the course of the hearings, Whittaker Chambers named former State Department official Alger Hiss as a former Soviet agent. The investigation and trial resulted in Hiss being jailed for perjury, brought Richard M. Nixon, a committee member, to national attention, and contributed to the rise of McCarthyism. Later investigations into trade unions and atomic scientists did not attract as much interest, and in 1969 the committee was renamed the Committee on Internal Security. It was finally abolished in 1975.
HOUSING ACT, 1949. The 1949 Housing Act extended federal mortgage insurance for low-cost rural housing and provided mortgage insurance for cooperative housing projects. It increased housing loans for World War II veterans and provided financial assistance for student and faculty housing at colleges and universities. See also HOUSING ACTS, 1934, 1937.
HOUSING ACTS, 1934, 1937. The Housing Act established the Federal Housing Administration to encourage banks and building loan associations to provide loans for home building and repairs. The second act in 1937 established the U.S. Public Housing Authority to encourage slum clearance by providing loans to local authorities to build public housing. See also HOUSING ACT, 1949.
HOUSTON, CHARLES HAMILTON (1895–1950). Born in Washington, D.C., Charles Houston graduated from Amherst in 1915 and taught literature at Howard University before joining the artillery and serving as an officer in France during World War I. After the war, he went to Harvard Law School and became the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated in 1922 and became the first African American to obtain the doctorate in judicial science at Harvard in 1923. From 1924 until 1950 Houston practiced law in Washington, D.C., and taught at Howard Law School from 1924 to 1936. He became head of the law school in 1929. In 1935, he became special counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and it was Houston who devised the long-term legal strategy of challenging the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that underpinned the system of segregation in the South. Although suffering from ill-health, he assisted his successor as chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall, in a number of cases that culminated in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision in 1954.
HOWE, LOUIS MCHENRY (1871–1936). The “devoted friend, adviser, and associate” of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Louis Howe was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. He worked as a journalist beginning at age of 17 and joined the staff of the New York Herald in 1906. It was in this role that he met Roosevelt, and in 1912 he became his manager. When Roosevelt became assistant secretary of the navy, Howe joined him as his chief of staff and helped manage patronage appointments. He was Roosevelt’s campaign manager in the vice presidential campaign of 1920 and also advised Eleanor Roosevelt. Howe continued as Roosevelt’s manager through the gubernatorial campaign in 1928 and presidential campaign in 1932. He lived in the White House until 1935 when he was moved to the hospital due to failing health. When he died, he was given a state funeral in the White House.
HUGHES, CHARLES EVANS (1862–1948). The future associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1910 to 1916, secretary of state from 1921 to 1925, and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1930 to 1941 was born in Glen Falls, New York. Hughes attended Madison University (now Colgate University) and then Brown University before graduating from Columbia Law School in 1884. He practiced law in New York City and served as counsel for the New York State Legislature’s committee investigating gas companies in 1906. He achieved national prominence when, as counsel for a similar committee investigating insurance companies in 1905 and 1906, he exposed corrupt practices. In 1906, Hughes defeated William Randolph Hearst to become the Republican governor of New York. He established the public service commission and introduced insurance law reforms and several pieces of labor legislation. From 1910 he served as associate justice to the U.S. Supreme Court until 1916, when he stood as the Republican presidential candidate. He lost the election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson by one of the narrowest margins in history.
Hughes was appointed secretary of state by President Warren Harding and President Calvin Coolidge from 1921 to 1925. In 1926, he became a member of the Hague Tribunal and also a judge on the Permanent Court of Internal Justice from 1928 to 1930. He was appointed chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by Herbert Hoover in 1930. As chief justice, Hughes generally held a moderately conservative position. He ruled in favor of the Scottsboro Boys in 1932 in the decision that those tried in capital cases were entitled to proper counsel, and again in 1935 against trials in which black people had been systematically excluded as jurors. However, Hughes had a mixed record with regard to the New Deal. In 1935, he led the majority decisions in three crucial cases against New Deal measures: Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States against the National Industrial Recovery Act, Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford against relief for farm debtors; and Hopkins Federal Savings & Loan Assn. v. Cleary against the Home Owners’ Loan Act. In United States v. Butler in 1936, Hughes joined with Owen J. Roberts, and the four consistently conservative justices, Willis Van Devanter, James McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Pierce Butler, in declaring the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional.
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted what was seen as “court packing” with a proposed Court Reorganization Plan in 1937, Hughes publicly and crucially criticized the president’s argument and contributed to the act’s defeat. However, he was aware that the court needed to respond to the times, and in 1937 he led the “switch in time that would save nine” in heading the decision to sustain minimum wage laws (West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish) and later in approving the National Labor Relations Board (National Labor Relations Board v. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp.). He also voted with the majority in subsequent decisions approving the Social Security Act, the revised Agricultural Adjustment Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. He retired from the Supreme Court in 1941 after a life of public service.
HUGHES, (JAMES MERCER) LANGSTON (1902–1967). Prolific black poet and writer, Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, raised in Lawrence, Kansas, and later moved to Lincoln, Illinois, and then Cleveland, Ohio, where he went to high school. He entered Columbia University in 1921 but left to find work as a merchant seaman in 1922. After a brief stay in Paris, he returned to the United States in 1924. His first significant poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” was published in 1921. In 1925, “The Weary Blues” won first prize in Opportunity magazine’s literary contest. His collection The Weary Blues was published to some acclaim in 1926. He entered Lincoln University in 1926 and graduated in 1929.
An established part of the Harlem Renaissance, in 1927 Hughes published Fine Clothes for the Jew and began his relationship with Charlotte Mason, a wealthy, elderly white widow who was his patron for the next three years. His first novel, Not without Laughter, was published in 1930 and won the Harmon Gold Medal for Literature.
During the 1930s, Hughes visited Cuba, Haiti, and the Soviet Union, and the communist influence was apparent in some of his writing of the period. His collection of short stores, The Ways of White Folks, was well received when it was published in 1934. He also wrote several plays, including Mulatto, which opened on Broadway in 1935. Hughes continued to travel and was a reporter during the Spanish Civil War in 1937, and Paris in 1938. His autobiography, The Big Sea, appeared in 1940, and in 1942 another volume of poetry, Shakespeare in Harlem, was published. During the 1940s, he began to publish his popular Jesse B. Semple stories in newspapers (they were later produced in edited collections in the 1950s) and continued to write poetry and plays. His musical Street Scene was a financial success on Broadway in 1947, and the opera The Barrier, written with Jan Meyerowitz, was produced with mixed success in 1950. More poetry appeared in Montage of a Dream Deferred in 1951, and Fight for Freedom, the history of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was published in 1962. Hughes also wrote several other works of nonfiction and numerous children’s stories. He is regarded as one of the most significant black writers of the 20th century. Despite this, his work was often criticized by African American intellectuals because of its use of the folk, blues idiom and his honest portrayals of ordinary black life. His left-wing political sympathies led to investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His work won various prizes and awards, and in 1966 he toured various African countries for the State Department.
HULL, CORDELL (1871–1955). Born near Byrdstown, Tennessee, Cordell Hull attended Cumberland Law School and was admitted to the bar in 1892. He practiced law until 1903 when he became a circuit judge. A Democrat, Hull was elected to the state legislature in 1893. In 1906, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and was a supporter of Woodrow Wilson. Defeated in the elections of 1920, he served as chair of the Democratic National Committee and then returned to Congress in 1922. In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Hull as secretary of state, despite his lack of experience with foreign policy. He attended the abortive London Economic Conference in 1933 but was able to assert his authority over the president’s personal adviser, Raymond Moley, who was forced to resign as assistant secretary of state. Later in 1933 Hull became the first secretary of state to attend an inter-American conference when he went to the meeting of American States in Montevideo, where the United States announced a future policy of nonintervention in Latin America.
A long-time advocate of tariff reduction, Hull was able to secure the passage of a Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act in 1934, which enabled the president to grant “most favored nation status” to trading partners and agree on tariff reductions without consulting Congress. In 1936, Hull attended a second inter-American meeting at the Buenos Aires Conference.
Hull contended with continued intervention in foreign policy matters by the White House, particularly by Sumner Welles. Hull considered running for the presidency for some time. However, he continued in his position and urged restraint with regard to the growing conflict between Japan and China, and he held many secret meetings with Japanese envoys but could not prevent the coming of war.
The conflict between Hull and Welles continued, and eventually Hull successfully demanded the removal of the undersecretary on grounds of his sexual proclivities. Although active in the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944, Hull’s health was deteriorating, and he resigned in November that year. He was too ill to travel to Oslo, Norway, to accept the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945.
HUMPHREY, HUBERT HORATIO (1911–1978). 38th vice president of the United States. Born in South Dakota, Hubert Humphrey attended the University of Minnesota but left before graduating and worked as a pharmacist from 1933 to 1937. He completed his degree in 1939, and after further study at Louisiana State University, he taught at the University of Minnesota. During World War II, Humphrey was state director of public war service and assistant director of the state War Manpower Commission. He also taught political science from 1943 to 1944. Active as a Democrat in state politics, Humphrey helped bring about the merger of the Democratic Party and Farm-Labor Party in Minnesota. From 1945 to 1948, he was mayor of Minneapolis, where he had already begun to establish his liberal credentials. At the Democratic National Convention in 1948 Humphrey urged the adoption of a strong civil rights plank, asking the party to “get out of the shadow of states rights.” In 1948 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and he held his seat until 1964 when he became vice president.
Humphrey was a liberal but anticommunist. He was one of the founders of Americans for Democratic Action. He also tried unsuccessfully to defeat the Taft-Hartley Act. In 1964, he was chosen by Lyndon Johnson as his vice presidential running mate. Although he initially disagreed with Johnson about Vietnam, Humphrey remained loyal and later supported the escalation of the war. However, when Johnson indicated that he would not seek reelection in 1968, and following the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Humphrey became the Democratic presidential candidate, promising to end the war. He was defeated by Republican Richard M. Nixon. After briefly teaching political science at Macalester College and the University of Minnesota, in 1970 he was reelected to the Senate. He was given the specially created post of deputy president pro tempore of the Senate in 1977 not long before he died of cancer. Humphrey was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1979 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.
HURSTON, ZORA NEALE (1891–1960). Born in Alabama, African American novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston grew up in Florida in a community she later turned into a subject of her writing. Hurston attended Howard University from 1919 to 1923 and then Barnard College in New York City where she studied with anthropologist Franz Boas. She later began but did not complete a Ph.D. at Columbia University. Joining the growing literary movement of the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston published a number of short stories in magazines like Opportunity and several pieces on southern folklore based on her fieldwork in Florida and other parts of the South. Her first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, was published in 1934. Her second book, Mules and Men (1935), is based on her field trips. Hurston’s most acclaimed novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, appeared in 1937 and focuses particularly on the plight of black women. Moses, Man of the Mountains (1939) is a version of the book of Exodus written in black vernacular. Dust Tracks on the Road (1942) is an autobiographical work. Although Hurston continued to publish in newspapers and journals through the 1950s, her career declined from the 1940s onward, and she died in relative obscurity. Author Alice Walker, who did much to inspire a revival of Hurston’s work in the 1970s, subsequently found and marked her grave. See also LITERATURE AND THEATER.
HYDROGEN BOMB. Known as the H-bomb or super bomb, the hydrogen bomb was a development in thermonuclear weaponry that relied on fusion rather than the fission used in the atomic bomb and was a thousand times more powerful than original nuclear bombs. Although a number of advisers, including Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer, counseled against it, on 31 January 1950 President Harry S. Truman announced that he had ordered the development of the hydrogen bomb. The first full H-bomb test took place on Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean on 1 November 1952 following earlier tests in May 1951. The Soviet Union successfully tested its own H-bomb on 12 August 1954, and Great Britain and France followed soon afterward.