Herbert Hoover photo

The President's News Conference

February 07, 1930

THE HAITIAN COMMISSION AND THE MOTON COMMISSION

THE PRESIDENT. I have secured the consent of five members of the Commission to Haiti--Mr. W. Cameron Forbes as Chairman, Mr. Henry P. Fletcher, Mr. Elie Vezina of Rhode Island, Mr. James Kerhey of New Jersey, Mr. William Allen White of Kansas.

I am still having some conversations with Members of the Senate and House as to the advisability of additional membership from there. There has been some disinclination to join the Commission, but it has not yet been settled.

In cooperation with Mr. Forbes, I have requested Dr. [Robert R.] Moton, the president of Tuskegee Institute, on behalf of the institute and such other educational institutions as he may suggest, to undertake an exhaustive investigation into the educational system of Haiti with view to recommendations for the future.

And there is a little statement here as to the five--points of biography on these five members of the Commission.

Q. Mr. President, how many would be added from Congress--two each ?

THE PRESIDENT. I should think so.

Q. Mr. President, is Dr. Moton to be attached to the Commission ?

THE PRESIDENT. Separately. Tuskegee Institute I have asked to take charge of any educational ends. Dr. Moton, being the head of the institute, I have thought could handle the educational matters better than anyone else.

Q. Mr. President, will they dispatch investigators to Haiti ?

THE PRESIDENT. Tuskegee? Oh, yes.

Note: President Hoover's eighty-ninth news conference was held in the State, War, and Navy Building at 4 p.m. on Friday, February 7, 1930.

On the same day, the White House issued biographical sketches for each of the appointees to the Haitian Commission.

The White House also issued a text of the President's statement on the appointment of the members of the President's Commission for the Study and Review of Conditions in the Republic of Haiti (see Item 51).

Herbert Hoover, The President's News Conference Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/211316

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