Benjamin Muse

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Benjamin Muse
8th district
In office
January 8, 1936 – September 11, 1936
Preceded byRobert Gilliam Jr.
Succeeded byMorton G. Goode
Personal details
Born
Benjamin Muse

(1898-04-17)April 17, 1898
Lieutenant colonel
UnitKing's Royal Rifle Corps
Adjutant General's Corps
Battles/warsFirst World War
Second World War

Benjamin Muse (April 17, 1898 – May 4, 1986) was an American lawyer, soldier, diplomat, newspaper publisher, author and politician. He briefly served as a member of the

Massive Resistance crisis fostered by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd and Richmond newspaperman James J. Kilpatrick as they fomented opposition to the United States Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education which overturned racial segregation in public schools.[1][2]

Early and family life

Muse was born in Durham, North Carolina, on April 17, 1898. He was raised in Petersburg, Virginia and attended Trinity College (now Duke University). After his wartime service discussed below, Muse attended graduate school at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

While serving in Mexico in 1925, Muse married Beatriz de Regil (1901-1983) from

Vienna, Austria. Benjamin and Beatriz bought the Parnassus Bookstore in Yarmouth Port, Cape Cod, for Benjamin Jr., who ran it until his death, and the bookstore is maintained and run by his children.[4][5] Many of the children Phillipa Millard and her husband Jim Millard, (who both attended Georgetown in Washington, DC), had become artists, photographers, painters, and educators, including educator and painter Elizabeth Harris,[6] Virginians for the Arts' executive director and painter Trisha Poupore,[7] Reston-based painter and social worker Ann Millard,[8] photographer Mary Schmidt,[9]
and educator Peter Millard. Phillipa Millard's grandchild is the writer and multimedia artist Elena Botts [10] who has created art surrounding Hacienda Uayalceh and family histories.[11] Other grandchildren include musicians and illustrators.

Military and diplomatic careers

As

Secretary of State Cordell Hull declared the Good Neighbor policy and which led to the Montevideo Convention.[12]

After selling shoes near Petersburg and the part-time political career discussed below, in 1939, the elder Muse enlisted in the U.S. Army as World War II began. He served in the Adjutant General Corps, assigned to Washington, D.C. until 1945, and retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel. His son and namesake enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1944, and served in the Pacific, including patrols on the Yangtze River in China.[13]

Political career

Upon resigning from the Foreign Service and returning to the United States in 1934, Muse settled in

8th district.[14] However, he switched parties nine months into his term, and resigned after heavy criticism, then ran for his former seat as an independent and lost. Muse changed parties because he came to oppose President Roosevelt's New Deal
.

In 1941, Muse became the Republican Party's nominee for

Byrd Organization and won 80.6% of the votes cast.[15] Darden later became a good friend, and later, as President of the University of Virginia
, led it through the Massive Resistance crisis discussed below.

Writer, publisher and opponent of Massive Resistance

During his World War II service in the U.S. Army, Muse, assigned to Washington, D.C., bought a farm in Manassas, Virginia (then a distant suburb). He founded and published a local newspaper, the Manassas Messenger, selling it in 1950 (it later became the Journal-Messenger) but continuing a related printing business until 1966.

During the 1950s and early 1960s, Muse wrote a weekly "Virginia Affairs" column for

Byrd Organization. He also criticized the NAACP for pushing for rapid school desegregation, especially in Prince Edward County. Muse also wrote about Southern affairs in The Nation and The New Republic
.

After both a three-judge federal panel and the Virginia Supreme Court declared most of the Stanley Plan (a package of laws designed to support Massive Resistance) unconstitutional on January 19, 1959 (birthday of Robert E. Lee and a Virginia state holiday), Muse (who considered himself a "fighting moderate" rather than a liberal) directed the Southern Leadership Project of the Southern Regional Council, an early private civil rights organization. For four years Muse toured the South urging voluntary compliance with court desegregation orders. President John F. Kennedy also appointed him to a commission to monitor racial equality in the armed forces.[16]

Muse published his first book, Virginia's Massive Resistance[17] in 1961, and Ten Years of Prelude (also about Massive Resistance) in 1964. He also published Tarheel Tommy Atkins(1963) about World War I. He later published The American Negro Revolution: From Nonviolence to Black Power, 1963-1967.[18] His last book was The Twentieth Century as I Saw It (1981).

Death and legacy

Retiring from both farming and publishing in 1966 (as President

Civil Rights Act of 1965 and funding desegregating schools), Muse and his wife moved to the newly developed Reston, Virginia. He died at his home two decades later, and was interred at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church cemetery in Prince William County
.

His papers from 1934 through 1966 are held in the Special Collections section of the library of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville.[19]

See also

Brian J. Daugherity, Keep on Keeping On: the NAACP and the Implementation of Brown v. Board of Education in Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016)[20]

References

  1. ^ "Muse, Benjamin (1898–1986) – Encyclopedia Virginia".
  2. ^ J.Y. Smith, Benjamin Muse Dies at 87in Washington Post obituary, May 6, 1986 at p. B6
  3. ^ "Beatriz de Regil Muse".
  4. user-generated source
    ]
  5. ^ Washington Post obituary
  6. ^ http://elizabethharris60.tripod.com/
  7. ^ "Trish Poupore".
  8. ^ "Ann Millard-2". Archived from the original on 2020-06-15. Retrieved 2020-06-15.
  9. ^ https://www.mary-schmidt-photography.com/
  10. ^ "Elena botts - bio".
  11. ^ "Uayalceh, by mourning dove, reagan, luke rovinsky, danielle, brenna".
  12. ^ UVA library bio
  13. ^ "Benjamin Muse Obituary - South Dennis, MA".
  14. ^ Dodson, E. Griffith (1939). The General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1919-1939: Register. Richmond: Virginia State Library. Retrieved March 7, 2014.
  15. ^ "Virginia Elections Database » Search Elections".
  16. ^ Washington Post obituary
  17. ^ Benjamin Muse, Virginia's Massive Resistance (1961) available at https://archive.org/stream/virginiasmassive013514mbp#page/n0/mode/2up
  18. ^ in 1968 in the original unsourced article here; in 1971 per his Washington Post obituary
  19. ^ "A Guide to the Papers of Benjamin Muse, 1934-1966 Muse, Benjamin, Papers 10031".
  20. ISBN 9780813938899
    .

External links

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