Newlands' race views debated

White supremacist legislator Francis Newlands of California and Nevada, who served in the U.S. House and Senate, never let his official duties take up all his time. While in Washington, D.C., he and fellow Nevada legislator William Stewart founded the suburb of Chevy Chase in order to have an all-white enclave. That community is now having a debate on whether to remove Newlands' name from a Chevy Chase fountain.

Newlands' racism didn't stop with the founding of Chevy Chase—he also wrote the congressional resolution providing for the U.S. annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii, said the U.S. had “drifted into a condition regarding the black race which constitutes the great problem and peril of the future,” introduced an unsuccessful plank to the 1912 Democratic platform to “declare our purpose to maintain this as a white man's country,” was anti-Chinese and anti-Japanese, and proposed sending blacks “back” to Africa, though they were in fact born in the U.S.

Newlands [traffic] Circle in Reno is named for him. He had a mansion nearby.