A Movement Comes to Maturity

...At the same time, some key administration figures—Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, W. Frank Parsons—demonstrated a keen interest in the dismal position of black Americans...

...But such an approach clearly misses the most important aspect of the malady—its social nature...

...Reviewed by Bayard Rustin President, A. Philip Randolph Institute Some well-meaning individuals see American racism as personal meanness or coarse stupidity...

...But blacks scarcely benefited...

...The so-called relief payments to blacks were frequently about half of those paid to unemployed whites...

...By the midterm elections of 1934, it was clear that this would no longer work...

...Of course, racial animosity did not magically disappear from the ranks of the working class...

...Relatively weak, isolated and racially-oriented, they lacked any larger vision of the problems affecting black people...

...As Sitkoff writes: "With many middle-class whites and farmers returning to the Republican fold, Roosevelt's dependence on the urban coalition of liberals, labor and blacks increased...

...Roosevelt's landslide re-election cost Southern Democrats much of their power...

...Certainly the President was fearful of antagonizing the old-line Southerners in control of half the Congressional committees and a majority of the leadership positions...

...White workers began to realize that blacks were not enemies but fellow victims...

...Employers frequently—and successfully—used racist appeals to destroy the unity of their employees...

...Roosevelt the Liberator remained a cruel myth...

...Black people learned several important lessons during the 1930s...

...By carefully interweaving the political, economic, legal, and social trends of the Depression decade, Sitkoff has produced a study that uncovers the true nature of racism and delineates the strategy that toppled Jim Crow...

...When Franklin D. Roosevelt became President in 1932, only a few blacks deserted the Republicans, the traditional heirs of Lincoln...

...Yet on the whole the situation improved immensely...

...As Sitkoff puts it, "Afro-Americans received no deal from the first Roosevelt Admi-istration...

...Sitkoff observes that the growth of interracial unions in the CIO "helped politicize blacks and increase the militancy of civil rights groups," and that as a consequence of the labor-black combination, the civil rights movement "Now communicated its needs to millions of whites, not just thousands...

...They recognized that the pursuit of racial justice requires a broad vision of society's direction—involving, among other issues affecting everyone, economics, education, employment, and human rights...

...A complex phenomenon, racism is deeply rooted in the economy and the political system: It is not simply a matter or irrational hatred and prejudice...

...In 1936, the shift to the Democrats was even more massive...

...The Wagner-Lewis Social Security bill, for instance, offered nothing to those who worked on farms or as domestics...

...For the first time in history, a national Democratic Administration could push through legislation without a single Southern vote...

...Harvard Sitkoffs insightful book, A New Deal for Blacks, focuses on this radical transformation of the civil rights struggle...

...especially among union members, white public opinion turned toward support for such essential civil rights goals as anti-lynching laws and the elimination of the poll tax in Southern and border states...

...But that was soon to change...

...And once the Administration consolidated its position, it slowly moved toward greater—albeit highly inadequate?support for black demands...

...The Republican resurgence in 1938 then forced Roosevelt into another alliance with the Southerners, again dropping civil rights issues to the bottom of the Administration's list of priorities...

...Finally, civil rights activists became aware that their struggle could never be waged successfully in isolation...

...Just as the segregationist Democrats held Roosevelt on a leash with their almost sacrosanct veto rights, blacks began to use their newly-found political power to protect past gains and push forward to more significant advances...

...Early civil rights organizations—the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Urban League, Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association—did not understand this either...

...An old black tenant farmer addressing an interracial meeting of the farmer's union, quoted by Sitkoff, seemed to sum up the new mood when he said to the whites present: "The same chain that holds you holds my people too...

...In forging the new coalition with the Democrats, the growing civil rights movement built an even more important alliance with the trade unions, particularly the affiliates of the newly-formed Congress of Industrial Organizations...

...Sitkoff correctly concludes that the drive for civil rights embarked on a new and creative course in the 1930s...

...First, they came to realize that power can only be countered by power...

...Special provisions in the NRA allowed various agencies to establish subminimum wages for blacks...

...A cautious feeling started to develop that Roosevelt's unorthodox economic programs offered at least some hope for the future...

...Bitter memories of Woodrow Wilson—who, notes the author, presided over "the most Southern-dominated, anti-Negro national Administration since the 1850s"—resulted in the miniscule number of voting blacks still preferring the GOP, despite the hasty retreat it had beaten from pro-black stances...

...Except now that was easier said than done...

...Thus although the importance of black concerns suffered a decline in the Administration's eyes after 1938 they could no longer be ignored completely...

...When A. Philip Randolph and other civil rights leaders approached FDR and demanded an end to segregation in the Armed Services and defense industry, few expected the President to make any serious concession...

...In their view, it is primarily a disease of the soul, best cured by the conversion and honest repentance of the afflicted...

...Indeed, the developments of that decade shaped the movement as we know it today and will continue to influence its direction in the future...

...The Republicans, meanwhile, continued to cynically trade on Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln...

...Faced with the Depression, Southern Democrats did solidly back the adoption of FDR's initial economic programs, including the national Recovery Act, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration...

...Following the onset of the Depression in the '30s, civil rights advocates gradually transformed themselves from an inconsequential group of blacks and sympathizers to a mass movement that had important allies in government and among major American institutions...

...76 per cent of Northern blacks voted for FDR...

...Roosevelt' s first two years in office seemed to confirm their suspicion that Democrats, whether from Alabama or New York, had no interest in challenging segregation and aiding the poverty-stricken black underclass...

...But when Randolph began organizing the March on Washington Movement in 1941, Roosevelt capitulated...

...Second, blacks learned about the tremendous potential of mass organization...

...In a sense, the Depression and its aftermath made interracial unionism possible...

...If we're chained together on the outside we ought to stay chained together in the union...