Religion Episcopalian Spouse(s) Esther Auchincloss | Name Carleton Putnam Role Biographer | |
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Born December 19, 1901 Manhattan, United States Alma mater Princeton UniversityColumbia Law School (LLB) Books Race and reason, Race and reality, Theodore Roosevelt Education | ||
Carleton Putnam (December 19, 1901 – March 5, 1998) was an American businessman, biographer, writer, and segregationist. He graduated from Princeton University in 1924 and received a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) from Columbia Law School in 1932. He founded Chicago & Southern Airlines in 1933, which in 1953 was merged with Delta Air Lines. He would later serve as chief executive officer of Delta Air Lines and hold a seat on its board of directors until his death.
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Life and career
Born to a prominent family of Yankee background, his mother Louise Carleton Putnam, was the daughter of New York publishing magnate George W. Carleton. Paternally, he was a lineal descendant of American Revolutionary War general Israel Putnam. He was also the cousin of physical anthropologist Carleton Coon, with whom he corresponded closely regarding theories of anatomical and biological differences between human races. He was raised as part of the American Episcopal Church and remained a lifelong member.
His best known written work is Race and Reason, an apology of racial segregation that originated in a letter he wrote to President Dwight Eisenhower protesting the end of segregation in U.S. public schools. Psychologist Henry Garrett wrote the introduction. In this book, Putnam wrote:
In the next 500,000,000,000 years I would be quite prepared to concede the possibility the Negro may, through normal processes of mutation and natural selection within his own race, eventually overtake and even surpass the white race. [...] When the Negro has bred out his limitations over hundreds, or thousands, of years, it will be time enough to consider absorbing him in any such massive doses as would be involved in the South today. (p.53)
He also wrote a biographical book on Theodore Roosevelt's youth that was praised by Edmund Morris, the author of the best known biography of that president. Putnam admired Roosevelt's belief that "Teutonic (and) English blood is the source of American greatness".
Carleton Putnam died of pneumonia on Mar. 5, 1998. He was survived by his wife, Esther Mackenzie Willcox Auchincloss, a daughter, three grandchildren, a stepdaughter, and three step-grandchildren. He was previously married to Lucy Chapman Putnam.