Niggers in the White House

[1] The poem was written in reaction to an October 1901 White House dinner hosted by Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, who had invited Booker T. Washington—an African-American presidential adviser—as a guest.

[4] It followed widespread news reports that President Theodore Roosevelt and his family had dinner with African-American presidential adviser Booker T. Washington at the White House on 16 October of that year.

[4] Several journalists and politicians condemned Roosevelt's action, claiming, among other things, that such an act made the two men appear equal in terms of social status.

[citation needed] A card-mounted copy of the poem cut from the Sedalia Sentinel forms part of the Theodore Roosevelt papers preserved by the Library of Congress.

However, the resolution, including the poem, was by unanimous agreement excised from the Congressional Record due to protests from Republican senators Walter Edge (from New Jersey) and Hiram Bingham (from Connecticut).

[10] Bingham described the poem as "indecent, obscene doggerel" which gave "offense to hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens and [...] to the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution".

[3] Scholar David S. Day argues that Blease's use of the poem may have been a populist gesture—"a normal Southern demagogic tactic"—but that Hoover's supporters saw it as something that went beyond even the "broad limits" of partisan political point-scoring.