Gilbert Hitchcock

Infobox Person
name = Gilbert Monell Hitchcock


image_size =
caption = Gilbert M. Hitchcock
birth_date = birth date|1859|09|18
birth_place = Omaha, Nebraska
death_date = death date |1934|02|03 Aged 75
death_place =
occupation = Editor, Publisher
spouse =

Gilbert Monell Hitchcock (September 18, 1859 – February 3, 1934) was a Representative and a Senator from Nebraska, and the founder of the "Omaha World-Herald".

Biography

Hitchcock was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of U.S. Senator Phineas Warren Hitchcock of Nebraska. He attended the public schools of Omaha and the gymnasium at Baden-Baden, Germany. He graduated in 1881 from the law department of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he was admitted to the Zeta Psi fraternity; [Baird, William Raymond (1915). "Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities," pp.349-355] he was then admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Omaha in 1882. He continued the practice of law until 1885, when he established and edited the "Omaha Evening World"; four years later, he purchased the "Nebraska Morning Herald" and consolidated the two into the morning and evening editions of the "Omaha World-Herald". Hitchcock was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1898; four years later, he was elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-eighth Congress (March 4, 1903-March 3, 1905). He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1904 to the Fifty-ninth Congress. Hitchcock was elected as a Democrat to the Sixtieth and Sixty-first Congresses (March 4, 1907-March 3, 1911).

He did not seek renomination in 1910, having become a candidate for the United States Senate. Hitchcock was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate January 18, 1911; he was reelected in 1916 and served from March 4, 1911, to March 3, 1923. During his two terms, he was the chairman of the Committee on the Philippines (Sixty-third through Sixty-fifth Congresses), the Committee on Foreign Relations (a portion of the Sixty-fifth Congress), and the Committee on Forest Reservations and Game Protection (Sixty-sixth Congress). Hitchcock was unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1922 and for election in 1930. After the end of his Senate service, he resumed newspaper work in Omaha. He retired from active business in 1933 and moved to Washington, D.C., where he died on February 3, 1934. He was interred in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Omaha.

Immediately following World War One, Hitchcock was extremely vocal in his racist opposition to French use of colonial troops in Germany, even going so far as to publicly state that:

"There are...quartered upon the German people...23,000 men of an inferior race. I am not attacking the American negro, for the American negro is far above these half barbaric, half-civilized representatives of African tribes who have been conquered by the French and are now incorporated in the French Army. There is no reason to make a distinction between Senegalese, Moroccans, and Algerians. They are of an inferior race, and are brutes when stationed among white people."

-New York Times, November 28, 1922.

See also

* Hitchcock Park

References

*Ryley, Thomas W. "Gilbert Hitchcock of Nebraska — Wilson’s Floor Leader in the Fight for the Versailles Treaty." New York: The Edward *Mellen Press, 1998
*Patterson, Robert. “Gilbert M. Hitchcock: A Story of Two Careers.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Colorado, 1940
*Wimer, Kurt. “Senator Hitchcock and the League of Nations.” "Nebraska History" 44 (September 1963): 189-204.