Those who’ve taken a moment to read the home page of this site will stumble upon a quote at the very bottom from my favorite President, Calvin Coolidge. The quote captures the core concept of this blog, that there is always something we can do to advance our causes. As I write this final installment in the Octob-her series focused on women in advocacy, I thought it would be fitting to share a bit of history about President Coolidge’s wife, Grace and her lasting lesson in the role of soft advocacy.
In modern politics, we’ve become accustomed to an activist/advocate role for First Ladies (and someday, a First Gentlemen) that we can expect to carry forward as successive spouses identify causes they can advance through the influence of that particular station. But this was not always the historical norm. Prior to Eleanor Roosevelt, advocacy from the personages within the first family was exceedingly rare. Grace Coolidge was one of the first to take an interest in the history of the preceding first ladies and once bemoaned the lack of material available on her predecessors and their activities.
In many ways, Grace adhered to the precedent laid out before her, drawing distinctions between her role in managing the personal staff of the White House and her own inclinations on involvement in public policy. Strategically, however, she was an early interpreter of how modern media (radio, early video reels) could be leveraged to appeal to the broader public without a direct call for action.
In 1924, after assuming the Presidency in the wake of Warren G. Harding’s death, Coolidge was seeking election to the office in his own right. The campaign was challenging on a deeply personal level due to the July 1924 death of the Coolidges’ son, Calvin. In the midst of her own mourning and bolstering her taciturn husband, Grace used her office to reinforce the importance of women participating in voting. In a non-partisan event, she filled out her personal absentee ballot on the South Lawn of the White House grounds while the press photographed her in the act. This simple, lead-from-the-front gesture was an early example of her mastery of soft advocacy.
In a time when the vote was still new, and in some ways unfathomable, to women across the country, Grace found a way to elevate awareness in a way that testifies to the power of pursuing what is possible.
But she didn’t stop there.
Prior to marrying “Silent Cal”, Grace served as a teacher at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Massachusetts. According to an online biography available through firstladies.org, Grace steered clear of using the station of First Lady to become a spokesperson for the Clarke school. Yet, public knowledge of her past as an educator for the hearing-impaired drew attention to the issue – as we would undoubtedly expect in the age of modern media.
In one event, without an overt ask presented to the public, Grace Coolidge and Helen Keller brought the dilemma of hearing and sight impairment to the forefront of the national consciousness.
As always, a picture is worth a thousand words. Above, you see Grace Coolidge allowing the visually and aurally impaired Keller to read her lips in, I believe, one of the most intimate examples of empathy ever demonstrated on the national stage. This one moment, captured for posterity through the press corps, spread across the country in an early demonstration of what it means to go viral.
I was never taught about Grace Coolidge in school. The Coolidge administration as a whole is largely overlooked when classes turn to the broader topics of the time such as prohibition and the, by puritan standards, lasciviousness of the 1920’s. But here, in the midst of all that made the ’20s “roaring”, we have a soft, quiet moment captured solely through silent imagery, that conveys a clear message of humanity and decency.
Despite her restrained activism, Grace’s soft touch inspired a nation. She was a tremendously popular public persona throughout Cal’s time in office. Quietly, and with a clear separation between her role as First Lady and her personal life, she raised more than $2,000,000 toward an endowment for her former employer, the Clarke School for the Deaf. Converted to today’s dollars that’s more than $30 million.
Dollars are easy to capture as a metric, but how much more priceless is the impact of bringing the challenges of physical disability to the national stage, and demonstrating such…grace.
I’m floored by this story. There is much more to learn about Grace Coolidge, and I’d encourage you to look her up. She was renowned for her sense of style and her approachable demeanor. More importantly, I think we can all learn a little more about how to succeed as advocates if we remember the power of a soft touch in advocacy.
In today’s politics, bombast seems to win the day. I remain hopeful and trust the pendulum will swing back toward decorum in public life – but that starts with each of us. If enough of us commit to being just a little bit better, we’ll push that pendulum a little further, a little faster. After all, circumstance may not allow us do do everything at once, but we can always do something at once.
Part of the Possible 