While the election of Kamala Harris to vice president was historic, she isn鈥檛 the first person of color to hold the position. The first was actually , who took office nearly a century ago.
Curtis was a member of the Kaw Nation who served as Herbert Hoover鈥檚 vice president from 1929 to 1933, and he has a complicated historical legacy. Curtis supported women鈥檚 voting rights, child labor laws and the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act. At the same time, he promoted assimilationist policies that harmed many Native Americans. One of his most significant impacts on U.S. policy is the Curtis Act of 1898, which weakened Native governments and helped break up Indigenous reservations.
HISTORY This Week Podcast: The Complicated Political Legacy of VP Charles Curtis
Growing Up in Kansas
Curtis was born in Topeka in 1860, one year before the Kansas Territory became the 34th state. Around age three, his mother died and his father joined the Union Army to fight in the Civil War. He lived at various times with his non-Native paternal grandparents and his Native maternal grandparents, Louis and Julie Pappan Gonville, who lived on the Kaw reservation in Kansas. As a young boy, he became known for winning races as a horse jockey.
Around 1873, when Louis and Julie were moving with the Kaw Nation to the Indian Territory in the current state of Oklahoma, Curtis planned to go with them. But his grandmother dissuaded him from joining them.
鈥淗is grandmother basically just says, 鈥榊ou鈥檙e bound for more important things,鈥欌 says , a professor of Indigenous studies and history at the University of Kansas who is a Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Shawnee and Potawatomi descendant from the Blanket, Panther and Smith families. Blansett notes that Curtis鈥 grandmother wasn鈥檛 telling Curtis to turn away from his people, but to help his people by taking another path.
Curtis followed his grandmother鈥檚 advice and stayed in Topeka, becoming a lawyer and a politician. His Native heritage, something white politicians and journalists often referred to disparagingly, was public knowledge during his entire political career. In 1884, he won an elected seat as the Shawnee County attorney. Eight years later, he won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican.
The Curtis Act Built on the the Dawes Act
It was in the House that Curtis introduced 鈥淎n Act for the Protection of the People of Indian Territory,鈥 commonly known as the Curtis Act of 1898. This act built on the Dawes Act of 1887, which had introduced the policy of 鈥渁llotment.鈥 Under this policy, the U.S. government forcibly broke up Native American reservations鈥攚here land and resources were communally shared鈥攊nto privately-held properties. Native people who couldn鈥檛 afford to maintain their 鈥渁llotments鈥 lost them, allowing white Americans to buy the land and move into what was once a reservation.
The Curtis Act forced allotments onto the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole nations (known to white Americans as the 鈥淔ive Civilized Tribes鈥), who had been exempt from the Dawes Act. This allowed white Americans to take over more of the five nations鈥 territory, setting the stage for the incorporation of Oklahoma into the U.S. as a state. The act also called for the dissolution of Native governments, asserting the U.S. government鈥檚 sovereignty over theirs.
鈥淭he Curtis Act was something that caused irrevocable damage,鈥 Blansett says. 鈥淓ven years later, [Curtis] would do a radio show with the famous Cherokee Will Rogers in the 1930s, and Will got booed for having Curtis on. Because in Oklahoma, Cherokees especially couldn鈥檛 stand what the Curtis Act did [to the Cherokee nation].鈥
So why had Curtis, one of the first Native congressmen, sponsored the act in the first place? Colonization led him to believe 鈥渢hat assimilation and acculturation was inevitable for Native peoples,鈥 Blansett says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 kind of impressed upon him that our traditions were something that could possibly be holding us back [from full citizenship], and this was a very popular sentiment at the time鈥濃攖hough Blansett notes 鈥渋t鈥檚 not to excuse some of the things that he did and/or didn鈥檛 do in that office.鈥
Vice Presidency
Curtis went on to be a U.S. Senator and then, in 1929, the first person of color to serve as vice president. He and President Herbert Hoover didn鈥檛 have a close relationship, and many Americans had the impression that Curtis didn鈥檛 really have a role in the White House. In any case, Curtis鈥 vice presidency was overshadowed by Hoover鈥檚 disastrous response to the stock market crash and the Great Depression.
During the 1932 election, Hoover campaign slogans like 鈥淧lay Safe with Hoover,鈥 鈥淲e Are Turning the Corner鈥 or 鈥淒on鈥檛 Change Now鈥 did little to inspire public confidence in his administration; and Hoover and Curtis lost in a landslide to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Curtis continued working in politics by becoming chairman of the Republican senatorial campaign committee in 1935. He died the next year at age 76, leaving behind a complex political legacy.
