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Henry Woodfin Grady (May 24, 1850 – December 23, 1889) was an American journalist and orator who helped reintegrate the states of the Confederacy into the Union after the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...
. Grady encouraged the industrialization of the South. He was praised by contemporaries and by authors Shavin and Galphin as a civic promoter, political strategist and captivating speaker, and by Atlanta journalist Frederick Allen as a visionary. However, in modern times, Grady's arguments for the need for white supremacy in the post–Civil War South have resulted in his legacy being seen as mixed and overtly racist. Grady's name has been removed from several schools including Atlanta's former Grady High School. Grady was the father-in-law of Federal Reserve Chairman
Eugene Robert Black Eugene Robert Black I (January 7, 1873 – December 19, 1934) was an American attorney and businessman who served as the 6th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1933 to 1934. Before and after his term as chairman, Black also served as the g ...
and grandfather of banker and World Bank President Eugene R. Black Sr.


Early life

As a teenager, Henry Grady experienced fierce Civil War fighting in his home state of Georgia and his father William was killed by a Union soldier. After his father's death, he was raised by his mother Anne in Athens, Georgia. He was educated in the classical tradition of a southern gentleman of the time at the
University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...
(
Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
in 1868). In 1867, he became a member of the
Phi Kappa Literary Society The Phi Kappa Literary Society is a college literary society, located at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, and is one of the few active literary societies left in America. Founded in 1820, the society continues to meet every academ ...
, and later attended the
University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...
to study law, but became especially interested in the Greek and
Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...
languages, history, and literature, which led to a career in journalism. Grady was a lifelong devoted member of the
Chi Phi Fraternity Chi Phi () is considered by some as the oldest American men's college social fraternity that was established as the result of the merger of three separate organizations that were each known as Chi Phi. The earliest of these organizations was for ...
. He was a charter member of the Eta Chapter of Chi Phi at the University of Georgia. In 1882 he was elected as the first Grand Alpha (National President) from the south after the union of the Northern and Southern Orders of Chi Phi in 1871.


Journalist and editor

Upon graduation, he held a series of brief journalistic jobs with the '' Rome Courier'', the ''Atlanta Herald'', and the ''
New York Herald The ''New York Herald'' was a large-distribution newspaper based in New York City that existed between 1835 and 1924. At that point it was acquired by its smaller rival the '' New-York Tribune'' to form the '' New York Herald Tribune''. Hi ...
''. After working in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, Grady returned to the South as a reporter-editor for the '' Atlanta Constitution''. In 1880, with $20,000 borrowed from
Cyrus West Field Cyrus West Field (November 30, 1819July 12, 1892) was an American businessman and financier who, along with other entrepreneurs, created the Atlantic Telegraph Company and laid the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean in 1858. Early ...
, Grady bought a one-fourth interest in the paper and began a nine-year career as one of Georgia's most celebrated journalist-publishers. On the business end, he quickly built the newspaper into the state's most influential, with a national circulation of 120,000. In the tumultuous decades following
Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology * Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...
, when hatreds lingered and many whites worked to re-establish white supremacy, Grady popularized an antithesis between the "old South" which "rested everything on
slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
and agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth," and a " new south" – "thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and prosperity:"
The new South presents a perfect democracy...; a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on the surface, but stronger at the core; a hundred farms for every plantation, fifty homes for every palace; and a diversified industry that meets the complex needs of this complex age
as he said in an 1886 speech in New York. His audience included J. P. Morgan and H. M. Flagler at Delmonico's Restaurant, at a meeting of the New England Society of New York. From 1882 to 1886, along with Nathaniel E. Harris, Grady promoted the founding in
Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,7 ...
of the
Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part ...
(Georgia Tech), a state vocational education school intended to train workers for new industries.


Orator and spokesman for the "New South"

Grady was also praised for his great passion for political oratory (he supported
Prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholi ...
and a Georgia veterans' home for disabled or elderly Confederate soldiers), commitment to the new peace, and well-known sense of humor. To a large crowd in Boston, Grady said "I am a talker by inheritance: my father was an Irishman and my mother was a woman." That sense of humor got Grady through more than one difficult situation. Once at a banquet of northern elites, he was waxing eloquent about the brilliant prospects for northern investments in a New South determined to rise from the ashes of defeat. Grady spotted General William T. Sherman in the audience, the celebrated Yankee soldier who was credited with defeating and burning much of Georgia, and particularly Atlanta, on his infamous march to the sea. Without missing a beat, Grady acknowledged the general by noting that the people of Georgia thought Sherman an able military man, "but a mite careless about fire." In another speech, Grady wanted to gently chastise his Southern audience for what he believed to be Georgia's economic shortcomings. Rather than pounding them with statistics, he entertained them with stories that made the points. He said:
I attended a funeral once in Pickens county in my State. This funeral was peculiarly sad. It was a poor "one gallus" fellow, whose breeches struck him under the armpits and hit him at the other end about the knee—he didn't believe in decollete clothes. They buried him in the midst of a marble quarry: they cut through solid marble to make his grave, yet a little tombstone they put above him was from Vermont. They buried him in the heart of a pine forest, and yet the pine coffin was imported from Cincinnati. They buried him within touch of an iron mine, and yet the nails in his coffin and the iron in the shovel that dug his grave were imported from Pittsburg. They buried him by the side of the best sheep-grazing country on the earth, and yet the wool in the coffin bands and the coffin bands themselves were brought from the North. The South didn't furnish a thing on earth for that funeral but the corpse and the hole in the ground. There they put him away and the clods rattled down on his coffin, and they buried him in a New York coat and a Boston pair of shoes and a pair of breeches from Chicago and a shirt from Cincinnati, leaving him nothing to carry into the next world with him to remind him of the country in which he lived, and for which he fought for four years, but the chill of blood in his veins and the marrow in his bones.
The ''
Georgia Historical Quarterly The Georgia Historical Society (GHS) is a statewide historical society in Georgia. Headquartered in Savannah, Georgia, GHS is one of the oldest historical organizations in the United States. Since 1839, the society has collected, examined, and ta ...
'' brought that story full circle, noting Grady's response to the eventual growth of quarries in Pickens County. He boasted that the grave he had so often referenced in his speeches lay less than 100 yards from one of the quarries. Grady believed, according to the ''Quarterly'', that he had lived long enough to see his vision of an industrially independent New South come true. Grady's prestige reached such a height that he became the only non-member ever to adjourn the
Georgia Legislature The Georgia General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is bicameral, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each of the General Assembly's 236 members serve two-year terms and are directly ...
. It occurred on the election of
Grover Cleveland Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837June 24, 1908) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American ...
to the presidency. News of the close contest arrived at 11 a.m. during the Legislature's session. In his exuberance, Grady rushed to the Capitol with the announcement. He brushed past the doorkeeper and into the chamber shouting in senatorial tones, "Mr. Speaker, a message from the American people." Sensing the purpose of the intrusion, the Speaker offered Grady a place by his side. However, Grady strode up the aisle to the Speaker's desk, grabbed the Speaker's gavel, and cried out, "In the name of the American people, I declare this House adjourned in honor of the election of the first Democratic President in twenty-five years."


White supremacy

Grady's conception of the New South was based on the social supremacy of whites over blacks, according to his own words: Grady stated in 1888, "the supremacy of the white race of the South must be maintained forever, and the domination of the negro race resisted at all points and at all hazards, because the white race is the superior race... his declarationshall run forever with the blood that feeds Anglo-Saxon hearts". This was not the first time that Grady had advocated for the supremacy of whites over blacks. In his 1887 speech to the State Fair of Texas in Dallas, Grady stated:
Standing in the presence of this multitude, sobered with the responsibility of the message I deliver to the young men of the South, I declare that the truth above all others to be worn unsullied and sacred in your hearts, to be surrendered to no force, sold for no price, compromised in no necessity, but cherished and defended as the covenant of your prosperity, and the pledge of peace to your children, is that the white race must dominate forever in the South, because it is the white race, and superior to that race by which its supremacy is threatened.
Some argue other Henry Grady quotes paint a different picture. In December 1886, he opened his famou
New South speech
by repeating the words of Georgia Senator Benjamin H. Hill: "There was a South of slavery and secession -- that South is dead. There is a South of Union and freedom -- that South, thank God, is living, breathing, growing every hour." Under Grady's editorial guidance, the Constitution wrote about lynching with levity, condoning and even encouraging it. One headline read, "The Triple Trapeze: Three Negroes Hung to a Limb of a Tree." Another rhymed, "Two Minutes to Pray Before a Rope Dislocated Their Vertebrae."
University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, ...
Journalism Professor Kathy Roberts Forde, sees it this way: "Grady may have united Southern and Northern whites, but he did not unite the country. Rather, he excluded black Americans from the union of North and South and the national democratic project that union represented."


Death

On December 12, 1889, he delivered a speech in
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
at
Faneuil Hall Faneuil Hall ( or ; previously ) is a marketplace and meeting hall located near the waterfront and today's Government Center, in Boston, Massachusetts. Opened in 1742, it was the site of several speeches by Samuel Adams, James Otis, and others ...
, on "The Race Problem in the South". Grady was already ill, and the weather was terrible. His health worsened to the point that he barely made it back to Georgia. By the time he made it to the depot at Atlanta, he was too exhausted to appreciate the reception prepared for him and had to be shielded from the crowd and escorted home by his physician. By December 23, he was diagnosed with
pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severit ...
and died that day at his home in Atlanta. He was buried on Christmas Day 1889, first in a friend's crypt at Oakland Cemetery because of family finances. His body was re-interred at Westview Cemetery when it opened soon afterward.


Legacy and honors

Grady County in Georgia and Oklahoma were named in his honor, as was
Grady, Alabama Grady is an unincorporated community in Montgomery County, Alabama, United States. Grady is located about south of Montgomery. It is at the intersection of Montgomery County Road 28 (Meriwether Trail) and Montgomery County Road 1 (Ramer-Grady Ro ...
. Places in Atlanta named for him include Grady Memorial Hospital, the now-demolished Henry Grady Hotel, and the
Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication The Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication is a constituent college of the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, United States. Established in 1915, Grady College offers undergraduate degrees in journalism, advertising, public re ...
at the
University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...
.
Henry W. Grady High School Midtown High School, formerly Henry W. Grady High School, is a public high school located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It began as Boys High School and was one of the first two high schools established by Atlanta Public Schools in 1872. I ...
was renamed in December 2020 to Midtown High School, due to Grady's white supremacist philosophy. The city erected a
statue A statue is a free-standing sculpture in which the realistic, full-length figures of persons or animals are carved or cast in a durable material such as wood, metal or stone. Typical statues are life-sized or close to life-size; a sculpture t ...
in his honor in 1891, which still stands today on
Marietta Street Marietta Street is a historic street in Downtown Atlanta. The street leads from Atlanta towards the town of Marietta, as its name indicates. It begins as one of the five streets intersecting at Five Points, leading northwest, forming the sou ...
in the heart of downtown Atlanta. Other places include Henry Woodfin Grady Elementary School in
Tampa, Florida Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and the seat of Hillsborough ...
. Henry W. Grady Middle School in
Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 ...
, Texas, was renamed in 2016. In 1931 Grady was the first person inducted into the Georgia Newspaper Hall of Fame, memorialized via a bust by artist Steffen Thomas. During
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
the Liberty ship was built in
Brunswick, Georgia Brunswick () is a city in and the county seat of Glynn County in the U.S. state of Georgia. As the primary urban and economic center of the lower southeast portion of Georgia, it is the second-largest urban area on the Georgia coastline after S ...
and named in his honor. Grady's family grave site in Atlanta was desecrated in June 2020.Gravesite of Henry W. Grady desecrated
/ref> File:Henry W Grady High School Atlanta.jpg, Midtown High School in Atlanta (formerly
Henry W. Grady High School Midtown High School, formerly Henry W. Grady High School, is a public high school located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It began as Boys High School and was one of the first two high schools established by Atlanta Public Schools in 1872. I ...
) File:Henry grady hotel.jpeg, Henry Grady Hotel, 1924-1972 File:Gradymemorial.JPG, Grady Memorial Hospital


References


Further reading

*Clark, E. Culpepper. 2021. ''The Birth of a New South: Sherman, Grady, and the Making of Atlanta.'' Macon, GA: Macon University Press. *Davis, Harold E, ''Henry Grady's New South: Atlanta, a Brave Beautiful City'', 1990, Tuscaloosa,
University of Alabama The University of Alabama (informally known as Alabama, UA, or Bama) is a public research university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Established in 1820 and opened to students in 1831, the University of Alabama is the oldest and largest of the publ ...
Press. *Grady, Henry Woodfin. ''Complete Orations and Speeches''. Edited by Edwin Dubois Shurter. 1910. South-West Pres
Online at Hathi Trust.
*Nixon, Raymond, ''Henry W. Grady: Spokesman of the New South'', 1943, NYC, Knopf.
''History of the University of Georgia'', Thomas Walter Reed, Imprint: Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia, ca. 1949 pp.847-856


External links

*
Henry W. Grady
''New Georgia Encyclopedia'' online *
Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grady, Henry W. 1889 deaths The Atlanta Journal-Constitution people Georgia Tech people 19th-century American newspaper editors Writers from Athens, Georgia Writers from Atlanta University of Georgia alumni Deaths from pneumonia in Georgia (U.S. state) 1850 births American white supremacists American temperance activists American male journalists 19th-century American male writers Burials at Oakland Cemetery (Atlanta)