Roscoe Conkling Murray Simmons was an American orator, journalist, and politician.
Background
Roscoe Conkling Murray Simmons was born in Monroe County, Mississippi, the son of Emory and Willie Murray Simmons. His mother was the sister of Margaret Murray Washington, the third wife of Booker T. Washington. Simmons grew up in rather comfortable circumstances in Aberdeen, Mississippi.
Education
In 1899 he graduated from Tuskegee Institute and became a reporter on the Pensacola Daily Press.
Career
In 1900 he moved to the Washington Daily Record and became involved in Republican politics. In 1902 Simmons moved to the all-black town of Mount Bayou, Mississippi, where he worked for Isaiah T. Montgomery, founder of the town, publisher of the Demonstrator, and the state's leading black Republican. Simmons was a reporter on the Demonstrator and also assisted Montgomery in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent white Republicans from forcing blacks from leadership positions in the state Republican party.
In 1905 Simmons moved to New York City to become associate editor of the Colored American Magazine. An ardent supporter of Theodore Roosevelt's bid for the presidential nomination in 1912, Simmons rounded up delegate support for Roosevelt among blacks in New York City and throughout the South.
By 1913 his national reputation as a spellbinding orator had won him considerable prestige among Republican politicians. In that year Robert S. Abbott, editor and publisher of the Chicago Defender, hired Simmons as a columnist and sales representative-at-large. Capitalizing on his popularity as a speaker, the Defender sent Simmons on promotional tours of southern towns with sizable black populations. Simmons established a network of agent-correspondents, who distributed the paper and reported hometown news.
Partly through his efforts the Defender achieved the widest circulation of any black paper in the country. During this period Simmons established close political and personal ties with Joseph Medill McCormick, editor of the Chicago Tribune and later Republican senator from Illinois. As his protégé, Simmons expanded his contacts among influential Republicans and became a spokesman for black interests within the party.
After American entry into World War I, he went to Europe to report on conditions facing black troops and to counter among them the effects of German propaganda describing the mistreatment of American blacks at home. In Chicago in 1920 Simmons met with delegates from thirty-one states to organize the Lincoln League of America, which later elected him president. The goals of the organization were to teach Americanism and to protest the lynching of blacks in the South.
During the presidential campaigns of 1920, 1924, and 1928 Simmons served as chairman of the colored speakers' bureau of the Republican National Committee. As an interpreter of the black community to white America he conferred at the White House with presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. Although his oratory attracted large crowds wherever he spoke, Simmons could not translate his popularity into victory at the polls, and in the 1930 Republican primary he lost to Chicago Congressman Oscar DePriest by a plurality of 12, 000.
At the 1932 Republican national convention Simmons seconded the nomination of President Herbert Hoover and was appointed to head Hoover's presidential campaign among blacks.
At the 1936 Republican convention Simmons led a successful fight to replace an all-white delegation from South Carolina with an integrated one. During the Great Depression Simmons was dismissed by the Defender in an economy move. He was, however, able to draw upon his ties with the McCormick family to obtain a job as a feature writer for the Chicago Tribune.
During the 1940's his column "The Untold Story" stressed the historic cooperation between whites and blacks and the exploits of successful Negroes. Simmons' "last hurrah" in politics came in the 1950 senatorial race in Maryland, when he made fifty-six speeches supporting John Marshall Butler against the incumbent, Democratic Senator Millard E. Tydings.
Observers credited Butler's margin of victory (43, 000 votes) to the effectiveness of Simmons' campaigning.
He died in Chicago, Illinois.