Josephus Daniels

Josephus Daniels (May 18, 1862 – January 15, 1948) was a newspaper editor, Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson, and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

He managed The News & Observer in Raleigh, at the time North Carolina's largest circulation newspaper, from the 1890s until his death. Daniels was a vehement white supremacist and segregationist; he and his newspaper "championed the white supremacy cause in frequent news reports, vigorously worded editorials, provocative letters, and vicious front page cartoons that called attention to what the newspaper called the horrors of 'negro rule.'"

Along with Charles Brantley Aycock and Furnifold McLendel Simmons, he was a leading perpetrator of the Wilmington insurrection of 1898, in which white mobs overthrew the legitimately elected biracial government in Wilmington, expelled black and white political leaders from the city, destroyed the property and businesses of black citizens built up since the American Civil War, and killed between 60 and 300 black people. He was highly influential in the state legislature's passage in 1900 of a suffrage amendment that effectively disenfranchised most blacks in the state, excluding them from the political system for decades until the late 20th century.

A Democrat, he had been a leading progressive in the early 20th century, supporting public schools and public works, and calling for more regulation of trusts and railroads. He supported prohibition and women's suffrage, and used his newspapers to support the regular Democratic Party ticket.

He was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to serve as Secretary of the Navy during World War I. He became a close friend and supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, then the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. As Secretary of the Navy, Daniels handled policy and formalities in World War I while his top aide, Roosevelt, handled the major wartime decisions. After Roosevelt was elected President of the United States, he appointed Daniels as his U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, serving from 1933 to 1941. Daniels worked to repair relations with the government that had been damaged during the Mexican Revolution as part of Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor Policy". In accordance with that policy Daniels and the Roosevelt Administration took a less adversarial position toward the government's 1938 expropriation of American and other foreign oil holdings than other foreign governments had. In 1941, Daniels resumed the editor's post at The News & Observer.