By LORNA CHEROT LITTLEWAY
THE COLUMBIA COUNTY Libraries Association sponsored the webinar “The Roosevelts, Race, and Civil Rights” via Zoom February 10. Jeff Urbin, educator at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum, was the featured speaker. An exhibit, “Black Americans, Civil Rights, and the Roosevelts, 1932-1962” has been running at the Hyde Park museum for two years and is scheduled to close, February 28.
Urbin identified the years 1932, 1934, 1936, 1940 and ’41 as critical ones for the nation’s future 32nd president. Franklin Roosevelt was serving his second term as New York’s 44th governor when he laid the foundation for a presidential run in 1932. According to Urbin, Roosevelt recognized that African Americans were an “important voting bloc.” He courted the Black Press to promote his candidacy. But in order to win, African Americans would have to shift their political allegiance from the Republicans.
Urbin explained that after the Civil War ended (1865), African Americans gravitated to the Republican party because of President Abraham Lincoln’s actions and influence freeing enslaved blacks, abolishing slavery and bestowing citizenship and voting rights by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
However the euphoria was curtailed by the subsequent Jim Crow Era, which is mainly associated with the South although the “attitude permeated the United States.” Jim Crow laws were state statutes that effectively neutered the intent of the 14th and 15th Amendments. (“Jim Crow” was a popular 19th Century minstrel show.)
Urbin presented slides underscoring the stretch of Jim Crow: “Fox Theater for Colored People” and public water fountains with signs designating “white” and “colored.” Seeking relief from Jim Crow persecution and better economic opportunity, African Americans migrated north to urban centers like Chicago, Baltimore, the District of Columbia and Pittsburgh. All had thriving Black daily newspapers.
Urbin described the Roosevelts as “wealthy, not the average American family. [They] were not aware of what was happening to African Americans. They were guilty of benign neglect.”
Roosevelt met with African American leaders like A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Walter White, lead investigator for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); editors and publishers of African American periodicals to persuade them “to give him a chance.”
Roosevelt’s most enthusiastic backer was Robert Vann, editor and publisher of the Pittsburgh Courier. In one of his first editorials in 1914, Vann vowed to “abolish every vestige of Jim Crowism in Pittsburgh.” In a pre-election editorial in 1932, Vann exhorted African American voters writing, “My friends, go home and turn Lincoln’s picture to the wall.” Enough did, and in 1933 Roosevelt won the presidency with the support of African American voters.
Within two months of his first term Congress passed legislation launching two New Deal programs, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). Both programs had “unintended consequences” that were detrimental to African Americans.
AAA was designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The federal government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant all their acreage. White landowners benefited while Black farmworkers invariably lost their jobs.
A HOLC goal was to expand home buying opportunities. It created a housing appraisal system of color-coded maps rating the riskiness of lending to households in different neighborhoods by using demographic information — racial, ethnic, and immigrant composition — to determine credit worthiness. This methodology directed whites to more affluent neighborhoods and Blacks to poorer ones. The practice was called “redlining.” (Banks and other lending institutions continue to practice redlining.)
To underscore his point, Urbin presented a slide of such a map for Poughkeepsie. Little sliver areas of red indicated neighborhoods where African Americans would likely be directed. Studies conducted in the 1980s by Columbia University Professor Emeritus Kenneth T. Jackson found that HOLC was a key promoter of redlining and a driver of residential segregation. Said Urbin, “Redlining helped to create generational poverty and prevented African Americans from building generational wealth.”
By 1934 First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt “got over benign neglect” and became a “great influencer” on Franklin to “improve conditions” for African Americans. But President Roosevelt felt he had to maintain a “delicate balance” and “inched his way to correcting and solving their (African Americans) problems.”
Urbin explained that the “delicate balance” referred to Roosevelt’s relationship with southern Democrats collectively known as “Dixiecrats.” This block of senators and representatives held chairmanships of several powerful committees. While they supported substantive economic intervention they opposed racial integration and wanted to retain Jim Crow laws.
In his first two years the president appointed 45 African Americans to federal executive departments and New Deal agencies. The group was dubbed the “Black Cabinet.” Eleanor Roosevelt’s friend Mary McLeod Bethune, a sharecropper’s daughter, urged them to work collectively to influence Roosevelt more effectively regarding New Deal programs’ impact on African Americans.
However on one topic Eleanor could not influence Franklin. She supported anti-lynching legislation – a personal crusade of Bethune’s. The president did not. He reasoned that lynching was murder and the purview of local authorities. He also argued, “If I do this everything else I want to do won’t get done.” (Not until 2022 was the Emmett Till anti-lynching bill passed in Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden.)
The shift of Black voters away from Republicans and toward Democrats increased in the midterm election of 1934, when Democrats won both houses of Congress, for the first time since 1917, creating a political trifecta.
Two New Deal programs started in 1935 — the National Youth Administration (NYA) and Works Project Administration (WPA) — directly benefited African Americans, who were allowed to participate in the following year. Those programs targeted 16-25 year olds and provided education and work, paying $10-$40/month depending on age and if employed full or part time. Urbin added that projects funded with federal money were “required to hire African Americans and to allow them to compete for the higher paying jobs.”
By 1936 African Americans were a “solid New Deal constituency.” At the year’s Democratic nominating convention, held in Philadelphia, a rules change called for a simple majority rather than a 2/3rds vote to secure the nomination. Also, Reverend Marshall Shepherd, a local Black minister, delivered the invocation and 10 African Americans served as delegates for the first time. These developments prompted a “Dixiecrats walkout.” Urbin said Roosevelt’s response was “Let them go.”
According to Urbin the early years of World War II were critical to President Roosevelt’s relations with African Americans. Since 1925 official U.S. policy deemed “African Americans unfit for combat.” Black soldiers, generally, were restricted to kitchens and motor pools. American defense industries reflected the government’s policy in its hiring practices by limiting African Americans to low paying menial positions.
By the fall of 1940, the American economy, bolstered by defense industries, was recovering. Randolph and other Civil Rights activists lobbied Roosevelt to correct the inequities within the military and employment. The president’s initial remedy to integrate the military focused on their bands and was viewed as “unserious” by Randolph.
To pressure Roosevelt, who experienced some slippage in Black voters support in the 1940 election, Randolph and his cohorts made plans to organize a March on Washington that would attract 100,000 protesters for the following year. Roosevelt course corrected in 1940, and promoted Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., October 25, to Brigadier General making him the first and highest-ranking African American officer. Davis, a career Army man, served in the Philippine–American War and World War I. He commanded New York National Guard’s 369th Infantry Regiment, as well as the 4th Cavalry Brigade and 2nd Cavalry Division.
The following year, June 25, five days before the scheduled March on Washington, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802. It prohibited racial discrimination in the nation’s defense industries and federal agencies. It also set up the Fair Employment Practice Committee to promote equal opportunity and prohibit employment discrimination. Executive Order 8802 was the first executive civil rights directive since Reconstruction.
In light of Roosevelt’s actions, Randolph agreed to postpone the March on Washington. Eleanor Roosevelt continued to advocate publicly for African Americans. She joined the NAACP board, spoke out against white riots in African American communities while the president was mum, and befriended a young Martin Luther King, Jr. According to Urbin, Eleanor Roosevelt was “talking the talk and walking the walk.”
Eleanor Roosevelt advocated for Black pilots. A chance encounter in March 1941 between the First Lady and Colonel Charles “Chief” Anderson in Alabama propelled the Tuskegee Airmen onto the path of respect, courageous duty, and future historic fame. Passed in April 1939, Local Law 18 offered a glimmer of hope to African American soldiers. It called for the expansion of the Army Air Corps by creating training programs at Black colleges to prepare them for service in the Air Corps.
Military brass protested to Roosevelt that the “Army is not a sociological laboratory.” Urbin said that the president’s response was “Yes, it is if I say so.” The First Lady was in Tuskegee visiting at a Veterans Hospital and asked to see Tuskegee Institute’s Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), which had existed for 60 years, and was then under the leadership of Colonel Anderson, the nation’s first African American to earn a pilot’s license.
Despite secret service concerns, Anderson flew Mrs. Roosevelt in the Booker, a Piper Cub named after the Institute’s founder Booker T. Washington. Urbin said that Mrs. Roosevelt asked Col. Anderson, “Can you fly me to Montgomery? And he responded: Sure, I can take you anywhere you want.” Their trip lasted more than one hour. Mrs. Roosevelt was photographed with Col. Anderson in the Booker. The photo was widely circulated disproving the belief that Blacks could not fly.
The army chose Tuskegee’s Moton Field as the training grounds for its new segregated 99th Pursuit Squadron. The 99th was activated in May 1942 and flew 1500 escort missions over Europe and North Africa. They never lost a pilot. (Retired Lt. Col. Harry Stewart, an original Tuskegee Airman, was the last surviving pilot. He passed at the age of 100 on February 6, 2025.)
Passes for free admission to the FDR Presidential Library and Museum are available at https://columbiacountylibraries.libcal.com/passes.
