Джон Шарп Уильямс: Американ саяхатшысы (1854-1932)

American politician (1854–1932)

John Sharp Williams (July 30, 1854September 27, 1932) was a prominent American politician in the Democratic Party from the 1890s through the 1920s, and served as the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives from 1903 to 1908.

Williams was born in Memphis, Tennessee, but raised in Yazoo County, Mississippi, after he was orphaned during the American Civil War. After graduating from the Kentucky Military Institute in 1870, he studied at the University of the South before transferring to the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, where he was Phi Beta Kappa but did not complete all his science courses for his bachelor's degree. He spent two years in Europe at the University of Heidelberg and what is now the University of Burgundy before returning to the University of Virginia to receive his law degree in 1876. By beating one of Mississippi's leading racebaiters, James K. Vardaman, Williams moved to the United States Senate in 1911 after an early election on 21 January 1908. He became one of Woodrow Wilson's strongest supporters, from Wilson's nomination for the Presidency in 1912 to the losing battle to ratify American participation in the League of Nations in 1920. During his time as a senator, he also served as a chairman of the Committee to Establish a University of the United States. He made a notorious denunciation of the black race when he declared on December 20, 1898: "You could ship wreck 10,000 illiterate white Americans on a desert island, and in three weeks they would have a fairly good government, conceived and administered upon fairly democratic lines. You could ship wreck 10,000 negroes, every one of whom was a graduate of Harvard University, and in less than three years, they would have retrograded governmentally; half of the men would have been killed, and the other half would have two wives apiece." After retiring from the Senate in 1923, Williams returned to his family plantation, where he spent the last decade of his life, dying in late 1932.