Remarks at Veterans For Peace Convention, St. Paul, Minnesota, August 26, 2018.
There are a lot of things named Kellogg around here, and few who know why. The two biggest names in the news in 1928 were those of future white supremacist Charles Lindbergh and of Frank Kellogg. One of those names has lasted longer.
Frank Kellogg was a U.S. Secretary of State, and probably the one most worth teaching people about.
The list of U.S. Secretaries of State is quite a rogues’ gallery. There have been 108 of them, but 38 of those have been so-called “acting” secretaries of state, filling in until someone could actually be nominated and confirmed. Some names of secretaries of state might be recognizable because they were also presidents, like Jefferson or Madison, or almost presidents like William Jennings Bryan, or would have killed to become president like their husband had been. John Calhoun had a lake in this town named for him until it got its Dakota name back this year. I bet a lot of people could accurately tell me whether Daniel Webster was a politician, a celebrity chef, or a whale trainer. George Marshall and Henry Kissinger and John Foster Dulles have a little blood-soaked name recognition. Some will recall Alexander Haig claiming to be in charge when Ronald Reagan was in the hospital, and some could name the past 20 years’ worth of hucksters, weapons dealers, and thugs. Depending on your team loyalty you may take the most pride or shame in Madeline Albright defending the murder of a half million children or Colin Powell telling the United Nations fairy tales to unsuccessfully legalize a genocide in Iraq. Others have a little name recognition because they were part of this country’s favorite catastrophe ever, World War II. But who has ever heard of Frank Kellogg?
Of the 34 regular secretaries of state since there has been a Nobel Peace Prize, five have grabbed one. None of the five was qualified. The prize is meant to fund the work of war abolitionists, not to honor powerful Western officials who do something right that stands out primarily due to its contrast with the horror of what they usually do. The best you can say for Marshall, Root, or Hull getting the prize is that they weren’t consistently awful. You can’t even say that for Kissinger. But what about Kellogg?
You can walk down Kellogg Boulevard in St. Paul and not find anyone who can tell you who Kellogg was. If Frank Kellogg had launched a major war, he might be better known. But he is the only Secretary of State with his name on a treaty that bans war, and the only one buried in a section of the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. dedicated to peace. When people visit Charlottesville, where I live, they’ll find that everyone from local liberals to visiting Nazis worships at the shrine of Thomas Jefferson. When I come to St. Paul I don’t find the same recognition of Frank Kellogg. I think it’s largely thanks to the work of Veterans For Peace that anybody has heard of him at all. Wikipedia does not list him as a notable person from St. Paul. The Wikipedia page on the Kellogg-Briand Pact is, however, somewhat less dishonest and dismissive than it was some years back, largely due to the publication of a book called The Internationalists, about which more in a minute.
I think the answer to the movement to take down racist war monuments (and rename lakes) is, first, hell yes; second, unless you can find me a non-racist war monument, that means the war monuments are all coming down; and third, we need monuments to movements and moments and causes and accomplishments and principles, not to individuals. Individuals are always flawed, always participate in some of the popular outrages of their time and place. So, I’d rather celebrate the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the movement that compelled Kellogg to create it, the good it has done the world, and the good it could yet do the world. I’d rather not celebrate Frank Kellogg as a hero or a deity. But he is the connection that the Twin Cities have to the Peace Pact, and if we must celebrate individuals and identify cities with individuals, he should be bumped up to the top of the list as a symbol of peacemaking.
The real Frank Kellogg was, like every other human being, quite a mixed bag.
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