Spencer in a different context

Chapel Hill Herald, March 19, 2004 - Letter to the Editor

With respect to Cornelia Phillips Spencer, Chancellor James Moeser suggests that she be judged in the context of the time (i.e., Reconstruction, that period of U.S. history when racial views were most fluid). That's fine. How about going one step further and judging her in the context of her own family?

Samuel Field Phillips, Mrs. Spencer's brother, did such a good job at prosecuting the Ku Klux Klan when he was a federal attorney in Raleigh that President Grant appointed him solicitor general, the second highest position in the Department of Justice. He served for 12 years under four presidents.

As solicitor general he defended civil rights legislation before an increasingly conservative Supreme Court. And then, late in life, Phillips came out of retirement in 1896 to represent Thomas Plessy, a man of color from Louisiana who wanted a better seat on a train. Unfortunately Phillips, Plessy and all of us lost -- in Plessy v. Ferguson.

So when it came to racial matters central to the democratic struggle in the late 19th century, who can deny that Samuel Phillips (and not his sister Cornelia) is the better American hero -- for then and now.

P.S. We should all thank Yonni Chapman for helping us appreciate our past.

Joe Herzenberg
Chapel Hill