Carleton Putnam

Carleton Putnam b. 19 Dec 1901 in New York City, New York, USA; d. 5 Mar 1998: was an American airline pioneer, writer, and biographer. He was educated at Princeton and Columbia University. He was a founder and president of Chicago & Southern Airlines, which was merged with Delta Air Lines. He was chief executive and, later, a director of Delta. His best known written works are Race and Reason, a defense of racial segregation, and his biography of Theodore Roosevelt. In Race and Reason he 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.21) "The mulatto who was bent on making the nation mulatto was the real danger. His alliance with the white equalitarian often combined men who had nothing in common save a belief that they had a grudge against society. They regarded every Southerner who sensed the genetic truth as a bigot [...]. Here were the men who needed to be reminded of the debt the Negro owed to white civilization." (p.44)

He was a descendant of American Revolutionary War general Israel Putnam. He remained on the board of Delta Air Lines until his death in 1998.

Carleton Putnam died of pneumonia on Mar. 5, 1998. He was survived by his wife, Esther MacKenzie Willcox Aughincloss, a daughter, three grandchildren, a stepdaughter, and three step-grandchildren. He was previously married to Lucy Chapman Putnam.

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