This is a book about Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., father of the famous aviator, who served as a congressman for the Sixth District of Minnesota and battled the money trust (Jewish bankers) in congress. Only 36 pages into it, there is evidence that he also had very concrete convictions about race.

The volume was discarded by the public library where I live, and I acquired it for free, like a little gift from heaven. Good thing, because someone else might have overlooked its historical significance and trashed it. I find it remarkable that the library of a big city would throw out this book, and I can find absolutely nothing else on Lindbergh, Sr. there in circulation now.

The race problem in America was the subject of several newspaper statements by Lindbergh in early 1903. After taking a trip to the South, he recorded his firsthand observations. Lindbergh believed that the Negro was destined to a subordinate role in American social and political life. His reasons were threefold: (1) "By nature he is inferior to the white race"; (2) "he is natural to a climate that tends to sluggishness"; (3) "there is not sufficient inducement for him to become progressive."

Lindbergh further viewed the Negro as the "happiest of all races," noting that this was a sustaining characteristic in that it helped to offset the "cloud of racial prejudice that holds them down." Politically, he stated the the Negro, despite his legal rights, was "nevertheless forever barred from hopes of being stamped with the glories accorded to complete American citizenship." Lindbergh pointed out that many Americans might criticize the South for its treatment of the Negro, but "we cannot condemn, for we in the north would, if we had an equal colored population, render the same treatment."

In his opinion it had been a mistake to extend the franchise [right to vote], and the only hope of the condition actually working might be the establishment of a separate state for the Negro population, where they might "exercise national character" and "rapidly improve to a higher morality." But the race matter was practically settled, Lindbergh contended, for the Negro "will be kept down."

The only long-range hope he saw was miscegenation. "It may not elevate the white race," he said, "but it will eventually lift the black." Lindbergh's views on the racial issue were formed largely as a result of his absorbing interest in Darwinian thought, but his interest in the problem may also have been prompted by Theodore Roosevelt's attention to the question at the same time. The president was disturbed with lynchings in the South and felt that total disenfranchisement was wrong, an opinion that was probably formed in part as a result of political and public pressure. According to scholars, it is also clear that Roosevelt accepted the basic notion of biological inferiority of the Negro. He did, however, believe that a better environment would improve the race, and he recognized the accomplishments of individual Negroes. Lindbergh, an admirer of Roosevelt, apparently endorsed the same type of physical-environmental analysis of the Negro. Considering this aspect of this thinking on race, he was not among the extreme racists of the period . . . [emphasis added]

Lindbergh of Minnesota, pages 36-37
It is shocking to see that he seemed to endorse race-mixing, but he was probably just stating their side of the issue at the time for political reasons. Maybe he had a vision of the future, because his prediction has come true. I am sure that he was thinking of his own people's posterity in congress while fighting passage of the Federal Reserve Act, and his grandson was probably murdered as revenge for that.

Another thread about him on this forum is here. More to come.

Downloadable book by Lindbergh, Sr.: Banking and Currency and The Money Trust