Soapy: A Biography of G. Mennen Williams by Thomas J. Noer

Abstract

Book Reviews 155 Leidenberger deftly shows the importance of organized labor in the politics of reform in Chicago. However, one wonders whether the CFL is properly caUed a trade union. By backing sympathy strikes, entering politics, preaching solidarity across trades, and including women and minorities, the CFL's trade unionism either evolved toward or became something more revolutionary. Given the proposed statist solution to the streetcar issue, the influence of socialistic people in the movement (e.g., Henry Demarest Lloyd, Clarence Darrow, and Upton Sinclair), and the city's strong socialist movement (which was downplayed in this book), perhaps a "socia?st moment" better describes the coalescence and fragmentation of forces in Progressive Era Chicago. Whatever one caUs it, popular democracy gripped Chicago irrespective of class just as in Hazen Pingree's progressive Detroit and Victor Berger's socia?st Milwaukee. Thomas F. Jorsch Ferris State University Thomas J. Noer. Soapy:A Biography ofG. Mennen Williams. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Pp. 419. BibHography. IUustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth, $35.00. G. Mennen "Soapy" WiUiams was the Democratic governor of Michigan from 1948 to 1960, head of the State Department's African Bureau from 1961 to 1966, ambassador to the PhUippines in 1968, and a justice on the Michigan Supreme Court from 1970 to 1986. Despite such an impressive r?sum?, Thomas Noer's Soapy is the first ftdl-length biography of a man who was one of the Hons of twentieth-century Michigan poHtical history. Soapy WiUiams was a comp?cated figure. He was an unabashed ?beral who openly espoused Christian principles. He was an outspoken champion of racial equa?ty when such a position was far from the norm. His down-to-earth campaign style, complete with his trademark green and-white bow tie and folksy demeanor, masked an aggressive poHtical infighter with a sometimes inflated sense of his own correctness. As Noer puts it, Soapy "claimed he could say 'heUo' in seventeen languages. He had a hard time saying, Tm wrong' in any" (p. 9). Soapy's career offered both remarkable successes and stinging setbacks. As governor of Michigan, WiUiams arranged for construction 156 Michigan Historical Review of the Mackinac Bridge and helped to prevent racial discrimination in employment, but he is often remembered most for his squabbles with the RepubHcan-controUed legislature that led Michigan to declare bankruptcy in 1959. He earned national attention for shouting down the otherwise unanimous selection of Lyndon Johnson as John Kennedy's running mate in 1960 due to Johnson's purportedly tepid support for civ? rights. According to Noer, Soapy's inabUity to compromise his ideals for poHtical gain Hkely destroyed his hopes for a shot at the presidency in 1960. Noer isn't shy about criticizing WiUiams for the poHtical cost this stubbornness exacted in terms of his personal ambitions, but he does find his intransigence honorable: "It is his very refusal to compromise, modify, or moderate his positions that makes him admirable. The very traits that doomed his poHtical career are those that are most deserving of praise" (p. 355). Noer is not afraid to stray from the conventions of poHtical biography either; he adds touching flourishes that include love letters from Williams to his wife, as well as excerpts from the thousands of testimonials that poured in from Michigan citizens upon Soapy's death in 1988. Displaying a solid grasp of the nuances of mid-century poHtics, international diplomacy, and Soapy's own character, Noer turns WilHams's Hfe into an engrossing story of power, idealism, and a passionate struggle for social justice. Soapy may be the first biography of WiUiams, but given the impressive nature of Noer's work itmay be the only one we need. John R. Thiel Kirtland Community CoUege Janet Sjaarda Sheeres. Son of Secession: Douwe J. Vander Werp. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2006. Pp. 231. Appendix. BibHography. IUustrations. Index. Paper, $25.00. The Reverend Douwe J. Vander Werp (1811-1876) was one of the people who helped sustain the Dutch-American colony Albertus C. Van Raalte founded in west Michigan in 1846. From the moment he arrived in 1864 to pastor a church near HoUand, Vander Werp began to influence...