Today it is the 95 years ago that Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, and as regular readers will know, I always do something extra on Reagan-related days. Today, not long after Martin Luther King Day and the death of Coretta Scott King, I thought it would be a good idea to look at the Gipper’s attitude to race. Interestingly, it was he who signed MLK Day into law, a move that has often been interpreted as politically expedient. There is probably some truth to that, but an incident during his years at Eureka College probably sheds some light on Reagan’s pure and original attitudes to race. Here’s a moving anecdote, excerpted from Lou Cannon’s Governor Reagan:

In 1931, the Eureka team traveled by bus to play undefeated Elmhurst. McKinzie left the bus and went inside to check the team into a hotel. This took so long that Reagan left the bus to find out what was happening. He found the coach arguing with the hotel manager, who told McKinzie that the hotel wouldn’t accommodate Burghardt and the team’s other colored player - and neither would any other hotel in town. McKinzie didn’t know what to do. The coach thought the entire team should sleep on the bus, but Reagan said that would embarrass the black players because everyone would be discomforted. He had a better idea, Dixon was nearby, Reagan told McKinzie, and Burghardt and Jim Rattan, the other black player, could come home with him. “Are you sure”?” McKinzie asked. Reagan insisted that the players would be welcome at his home and McKinzie provided the cab fare to Dixon.

What always struck me is that it was Reagan, out of a full bus, who took the initiative to salvage the situation and in doing so acted without any agenda or any political need to do so. It was a totally natural response that instinctively opted for the ‘good’ over the clear and apparent ‘wrong’. Of course Reagan’s response can also been explained by looking at his upbringing by Jack and Nelle Reagan. Both parents abhorred intolerance up to the point where young Ron and elder brother Neil were at one point barred from attending a screening of D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation because of its favorable treatment of the Ku Klux Klan.

Reagan with mother Nelle and father Jack.

Burghardt stayed in touch with Reagan over the years and contributed to his 1980 election campaign. He made another appearance in one of the Gipper’s speeches on race at Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School in 1986:

And one day we played a team that didn't have any mix in its lineup. And playing opposite Burgie -- his name was Franklin Burghardt, but my nickname for him was Burgie -- playing opposite Burgie was a fellow that was filled with hatred and prejudice, and it was very obvious. And he was very vocal about it when we would line up against each other. He also played dirty against Burgie. In the huddle I looked across once and saw Burgie, and his lip was bleeding where he was biting it. He had already an injured knee before the game, and this fellow had found out about it -- evidently he groaned at the wrong time -- and he was using his dirty tactics to further hurt that knee. And Burgie was biting his lip to not show the pain. And in the huddle, we were so mad -- and all of his teammates -- we wanted to go after the fellow. And Burgie said, ``No, this is my problem; this is my fight.''

William Franklin Burghardt died in 1981.

UPDATE: James Na elaborates on race in the Midwest and has another remarkable Reagan anecdote while Marathon Pundit has more about Reagan's native village, Tampico.