Leonidas C. Dyer
Leonidas Carstarphen Dyer was an American politician, reformer, civil rights activist, and military officer. A Republican, he served eleven terms in the U.S. Congress as a U.S. Representative from Missouri from 1911 to 1933. In 1898, enrolling in the U.S. Army as a private, Dyer served notably in the Spanish–American War; and was promoted to colonel at the war's end.
Working as an attorney in St. Louis, Dyer started an anti-usury campaign and was elected to Congress as a Republican in 1910. As a progressive reformer, Dyer authored an anti-usury law in 1914 that limited excessive loan rates by bank lenders in the nation's capital, then still governed by Congress.
Horrified by the East St. Louis riots in 1917 and the high rate of reported lynchings in the South, Dyer introduced the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill in 1918. In 1920, the Republican Party supported such legislation in its platform from the National Convention. In January 1922, Dyer's bill was passed by the House, which approved it by a wide margin due to "insistent countrywide demand". The bill was defeated by filibusters by white conservative, Southern Democrats in the U.S. Senate in December 1922, in 1923, and 1924.
In 1919, Dyer authored the motor-vehicle theft law, which made transporting stolen automobiles across state lines a federal crime. By 1956, the FBI reported that the law had enabled the recovery of cars worth more than $212 million. In terms of Prohibition, Dyer voted against various anti-liquor laws, including the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Dyer served in Congress from the 62nd Congress to the 72nd Congress. He was defeated for re-election in 1932.
Early life and education
Dyer was born near Warrenton in Warren County, Missouri, the son of James Coleman Dyer and Martha E. Dyer. His father's family had roots in Virginia, where his uncle David Patterson Dyer was born; he was elected as a Republican Congressman from Missouri.Leonidas attended common schools and Central Wesleyan College. He studied law at Washington University in St. Louis, received his LL.B. degree in 1893, and was admitted to the bar.
Service in Spanish–American War
When the Spanish–American War began, Dyer joined the United States Army and served in combat during the Santiago campaign as a private in 1898. He was promoted to colonel during the war, and served as a member of the staff of Herbert S. Hadley, future Governor of Missouri.St. Louis attorney and reformer
After the war, the young Dyer served as assistant circuit attorney in St. Louis, where he championed an anti-usury reform campaign that eventually gained national attention. Dyer successfully represented a railroad clerk who was being charged 34% monthly interest on a $100 loan after having paid $480 interest in 14 months. None of the interest payment to the money lender was used to pay off the principal. The money lender, in front of Att. Dyer, tore up the railroad worker's loan. Dyer organized a group of wealthy merchants in St. Louis who through investigations were able to keep interest rates low in Missouri.Congressional career
In 1910, Dyer successfully ran and was elected Congressman to the U.S. House of Representatives. He was repeatedly re-elected, though his time in Congress was briefly interrupted between 1914 and 1915 due to a dispute over 1912 election results, but was reelected in 1914.Dyer was defeated for re-election from his district in 1932, 1934 and 1936, and decided to retire from politics. Dyer represented the 12th District of Missouri, which had a majority African-American population. They were disappointed by the Republican failure to pass an anti-lynching bill during the 1920s, and attracted to Democratic candidates during the Great Depression, after Franklin D. Roosevelt had started some of his work and welfare programs. Dyer followed Harry Coudrey, also a Republican.
Anti-usury law
Dyer continued his anti-usury campaign in 1914 by authoring a law that prevented banks from charging excessive interest rates on loans in Washington, D.C., which was then governed by Congress. Dyer believed that money lenders went after financially vulnerable people, authorizing loan contracts for unnecessary purposes. Dyer stated that usury was "an ancient moral crime against the poor and helpless." He advocated for each state to pass similar anti-usury laws.Advocated postal pneumatic tube system
On March 29, 1916, Dyer spoke before a Senate Committee advocating H.R. 10484, to fund a U.S. Postal pneumatic tube service in St. Louis. Under the existing service, U.S. mail was transported by compressed air vacuum tubes in the St. Louis area. Dyer asked the committee to extend the pneumatic tube service from two to five miles, at a cost of $50,000. According to Dyer, the tube extension would promote business and private citizens in East St. Louis by reducing delivery time by 11 hours and 50 minutes. By comparison, the city of Boston had eight miles of U.S. Postal pneumatic tube service.Anti-lynching bill
St. Louis riots 1917
In May 1917, a riot broke out in St. Louis; white ethnic workers, out on strike, attacked black strikebreakers, brought in to replace them. In July, mob violence broke out in East St. Louis against blacks, also against a background of competition over jobs. Two white police officers were killed early in the confrontation. In retaliation, white mobs killed 35 blacks, mutilated the bodies, and threw them into the Mississippi River. White rioters openly targeted and lynched several blacks. Those who attempted to stop the lynchings were threatened by the white mob with physical violence. As blacks fled into St. Louis, white rioters threatened to kill them upon their return. White Illinois National Guardmen, sent to quell the riot either did nothing to stop the violence or participated in the attacks on the black community instead. One black child was shot and thrown into a burning building, while white prostitutes openly attacked black women. After the riots, of the 134 persons indicted, only nine whites who were put on trial went to prison while 12 indicted blacks who went to trial were imprisoned. Nearly one-third of the total 134 persons indicted were black. The conviction rate, mathematically, was more than doubled for blacks than for whites.Dyer was distressed by such mob violence, with its disregard for the courts and the rule of law. His district in St. Louis had mostly African-American residents and he wanted to protect his constituents and other citizens. Many black people from his district had migrated to St. Louis from the South, in the exodus known as the Great Migration. They settled in St. Louis along with immigrants from southern and eastern Europe where industrialization had led to a strong economy and an increase in jobs. Dyer also knew of the continuing high rate of lynchings, mostly of blacks by whites in the South. Working with W. E. B. Du Bois and Walter White of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who had been working on a national anti-lynching campaign, Dyer helped develop and agreed to sponsor anti-lynching legislation.
Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill introduced 1918
Calling for an end to mob violence, on April 1, 1918, Dyer introduced the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which would have made lynching a federal crime. In his speech, he anticipated some members likely objections about the federal government sponsoring "social" legislation, and noted that lynching violated individuals' rights under the 14th Amendment. In addition, he noted that Congress had passed child labor laws and the Prohibition amendment. He said:If Congress has felt its duty to do these things, why should it not also assume jurisdiction and enact laws to protect the lives of citizens of the United States against lynch law and mob violence? Are the rights of property, or what a citizen shall drink, or the ages and conditions under which children shall work, any more important to the Nation than life itself?
Black leaders in the North had insisted that the Republican Party National platform for the presidential election of 1920 include support for anti-lynching legislation. After the election, the black community complained when months passed without Harding's getting a bill introduced and passed by Congress.
Dyer introduced a revised version of the bill in the House of Representatives in 1921. U.S. President Warren G. Harding, a Republican spoke in favor of Dyer's anti-lynching bill at an appearance in Birmingham, Alabama, and stated he would sign the bill if it was passed by the Senate. With high interest in the bill across the country, described as an "insistent country-wide demand", the bill passed by a large margin on January 26, 1922. The first such federal legislation to gain House passage in the twentieth century, it would have enabled the federal government to prosecute the crime. Southern authorities seldom did so. In the South, most blacks had been disfranchised from 1890 to 1911 by constitutional changes and discriminatory legislation after southern Democrats regained power in the state legislatures. Unable to vote, blacks were disqualified from serving on juries or holding any political office; they had virtually no political power within the official system. In the few cases that came to trial, all-white juries generally never convicted a white of lynching a black.
Proponents of Dyer's anti-lynching bill believed that lynching and mob violence took away African-American citizens' rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. These rights included a speedy and fair trial by an impartial jury. Other citizen rights included the right to be informed of the nature of the crime accused, the ability to have witnesses in the defense's favor, and to be represented by counsel in court. Many blacks felt betrayed by the Republicans due to the bill's slow process to the Senate. A silent protest march by many blacks took place in front of the Capitol grounds and White House in 1922 while the bill's constitutionality was being contemplated. A protest sign read, "Congress discusses constitutionality while the smoke of burning bodies darkens the heavens."