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American politician

Francis Griffith Newlands (August 28, 1846December 24, 1917) was an American politician and land developer who served as United States representative and Senator from Nevada and a member of the Democratic Party. A supporter of westward expansion, he helped pass the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, which created the Bureau of Reclamation and boosted the agricultural industry by building dams to support irrigation in the arid Western states. Senator Newlands argued publicly for racial restrictions on immigration and repealing the 15th Amendment. As land developer, Newlands founded the neighborhoods of Chevy Chase, Washington, D. C.; and Chevy Chase, Maryland, and took steps to prevent non white people from moving there. To enable the development of these streetcar suburbs, he founded the Rock Creek Railway, which became one of the two major streetcar companies serving the Washington, D. C., area in the early decades of the 20th century.

Newlands was born in Natchez, Mississippi, on August 28, 1846 (or 1848; sources differ). He was the fourth of five children born to Jessie and James Newlands, immigrants from Scotland. His father, trained as a physician in Edinburgh, died in 1851. In 1869, he graduated from Columbian College, which is now George Washington University Law School, and was admitted to the bar in 1869. In 1901, he received an honorary M. A. degree.

In the late 1880s, Newlands and his partners began to acquire farmland in northwestern Washington, D. C., and southern Montgomery County, Maryland, in order to develop a residential streetcar suburb for the nation's capital. On June 23, 1888, Newlands chartered the Rock Creek Railway for a single track streetcar. Two years later, Newlands and his partners formed the Chevy Chase Land Company to develop their land, which by then totaled more than 1,700 acres, Between 1890 and 1892, the Land Company built a five mile extension of Connecticut Avenue from Rock Creek past the District line and into Maryland. The new road included two new bridges and streetcar tracks laid down the center. Newlands created the Chevy Chase Springs Hotel (later the Chevy Chase School for Girls, now the 4 H Youth Conference Center). Newlands ensured the community included schools, churches, country clubs, tree lined streets, a water supply and a sewage system. Groceries and daily purchases were brought from Washington, D. C., on the railway at no charge to residents. In 1893, Newlands began to subdivide some property he inherited in Burlingame, California. He started with the Burlingame Country Club and five cottages. The following year, he added the Burlingame train station.

Newlands represented Nevada in the United States House of Representatives from 1893 to 1903 as a member of the Silver Party. In 1898, he created the Newlands Resolution, which annexed the Republic of Hawaii, creating a new territory. He helped pass the Reclamation Act of 1902, also called the Newlands Act, which created what would become the Bureau of Reclamation. In 1916, he was the only Democratic senator to vote against the nomination of Louis Brandeis to the U. S. Supreme Court. Newlands held white supremacist beliefs and spoke publicly in favor of restricting the rights of African Americans.

Newlands was an outspoken white supremacist who advocated for those beliefs as a senator, and a white nationalist who sought to secure the United States as a homeland for whites. In 1905, he advocated for the paid resettlement of African Americans to the Caribbean. In a 1909 journal article, "A Western View of the Race Question" published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Newlands wrote that Black people were "a race of children" who threatened the United States. The country, he wrote, "should start immediately upon the serious consideration of a national policy regarding the people of the black race now within our boundaries, which, with a proper regard for humanity, will minimize the danger which they constitute to our institutions and our civilizations." At the 1912 Democratic National Convention, he proposed that the party's platform include a "White Plank" calling for the repeal of the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution and the restriction of immigration to whites.

Newlands was stricken with heart failure at his Senate office on the afternoon of December 24, 1917, and died that night at his home at 2236 Massachusetts Avenue NW. He was interred at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D. C.

The Francis Griffith Newlands Memorial Fountain is in Chevy Chase Circle, a federal park that divides D. C. and Maryland. In 2014, a member of the Chevy Chase advisory neighborhood commission proposed a resolution calling for the removal of Newlands' name from the fountain because of his white supremacist views on race, including his desire to remove the vote for African Americans. Others argued that Chevy Chase should not alter the monument because the change would belittle Newlands' legislative accomplishments. On July 27, 2020, the Advisory Neighborhood Commission of Chevy Chase, D. C., voted unanimously to ask the National Park Service to remove the plaque bearing his name from the Francis Griffith Newlands Memorial Fountain and create an exhibit documenting Newlands's racism. A similar renaming effort has begun around Newlands Park in Reno, Nevada. Newlands' former mansion in Reno is one of six properties in Nevada designated as a National Historic Landmark. Many notable people, including Barbara Hutton in 1935, stayed at the house while waiting for their divorce paperwork to be finalized by George Thatcher, a local divorce lawyer who purchased the home in 1920.