Carleton Putnam

Carleton Putnam
Error creating thumbnail:
Born	December 19, 1901 New York City, New York
Died	March 5, 1998(1998-03-05) (aged 96) Charlottesville, Virginia
Alma mater	Princeton University Columbia Law School (LLB)
Occupations	Businessman, writer
Spouse	Esther Auchincloss

Carleton Putnam (December 19, 1901 – March 5, 1998) was an American businessman, writer and advocate for racial segregation. He graduated from Princeton University in 1924 and received a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) from Columbia Law School in 1932. He founded Chicago & Southern Airlines in 1933 which, in 1953, merged with Delta Air Lines. Putnam later served as chief executive officer of Delta Air Lines and held a seat on its board of directors until his death.

Life and career

Putnam was born to a prominent family from New England, his mother Louise Carleton Putnam, was the daughter of New York publishing magnate George W. Carleton. Paternally, he was a lineal descendant of American Revolutionary War general Israel Putnam. He was also related to the physical anthropologist Carleton Coon, with whom he corresponded closely regarding theories of anatomical and biological differences between human races. He was raised as part of the American Episcopal Church and remained a lifelong member.

Race and Reason

Putnam's best known work is Race and Reason: A Yankee View (1961), a book critical of desegregation which originated in a letter he wrote to Dwight Eisenhower protesting about the end of segregation in U.S. public schools. According to Putnam, the immediate impetus for his letter to Eisenhower was the concurring opinion of Justice Frankfurter in Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958), which Putnam refers to as "the recent Little Rock case". Elsewhere in the book Putnam critiques Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), calling for its reversal.

Psychologist Henry Garrett wrote the introduction. In his review of the book for the American Bar Association Journal, Stuart B. Campbell wrote:

The purpose of the book is to direct public attention to the danger inherent in the integration decision (Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483), to demonstrate its fallacious foundation, and to point out the remedy available to prevent possible national disaster.

Putnam hoped the book would educate the American people "in the principles upon which our republic was based and through which it grew to greatness. Neither equality nor integration were among them."

After Race and Reason: A Yankee View was made required reading for high school students in Louisiana, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) passed a resolution condemning it. Louisiana-born Neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan leader and former politician David Duke has cited that reading Race and Reason in when he was a teenager in 1964 and taking in the assertions in the book led to what Duke called his "enlightenment", this book and what it purported convinced Duke that blacks were inferior to whites and that whites were superior to them in every way, leading to a racist worldview. Ultimately, it was Putnam's Race and Reason book that changed David Duke's life and led him to a lifetime of racism and by 1999, Duke was the most famous racist in the United States.

Putnam also wrote a biographical book on Theodore Roosevelt's youth that was praised by Edmund Morris, the author of the best known biography of that president. Putnam admired Roosevelt's belief that "Teutonic (and) English blood is the source of American greatness".

Carleton Putnam died of pneumonia on March 5, 1998. He was survived by his wife, Esther Mackenzie Willcox Auchincloss, a daughter, three grandchildren, a stepdaughter, and three step-grandchildren. He was previously married to Lucy Chapman Putnam.

Works

• High Journey: A Decade in the Pilgrimage of an Air Line Pioneer (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1945.)
• Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography. Volume One, The Formative Years, 1858-1886. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958.)
• Race and Reason: A Yankee View (Washington D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1961.)
• Framework for Love, A Study in Racial Realities: Address at the University of California at Davis with Subsequent Questions and Answers (Washington D.C.: National Putnam Letters Committee, 1964.)
• Race and Reality: A Search for Solutions (Washington D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1967.)

External links

• Princeton Alumni Weekly Memorials: Carleton Putnam '24
• Speech by Carleton Putnam, 26 October 1961