THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW EXPLOSIVE developments in Berlin and Tokyo (see Pages 2 and 5) all but chased the story of the Democratic National Convention from the front pages of the nation's press last...
...National Boss Frank Hague of Jersey City, vice chairman...
...Thomas E. Dewey, by asserting that the issue is simply whether the nation "will turn over this 1944 job—this worldwide job—to inexperienced and immature hands, to those who opposed Lend-Lease and international cooperation against the forces of aggression and tyranny until they could read the polls of popular sentiment . . . or whether they wish to leave it to those who saw the danger...
...The National Negro Council was even more emphatic...
...The roll call vote gave him 1,086 votes, while Virginia's hard-shelled Tory Senator, Harry Byrd, received 89 votes, and bitter James Farley picked up one vote...
...President Roosevelt said he would "not campaign in the usual sense for the office...
...Robert Hannegan, chairman of the Democratic National Committee...
...Wallace polled his maximum strength on the first ballot—429% votes to 319 1/2 for Truman, with the rest scattered for a dozen "favorite sons"—but lost ground rapidly on the second ballot...
...Its director, Edgar G. Brown, decried the "dumping" of Wallace and the platform, asserting that these actions leave Negroes "deserted by the Democratic Party in the present all-out fight for freedom and justice...
...Congress should exert its full constitutional powers to protect those rights...
...Roosevelt did not appear personally to accept the nomination...
...We pledge our support to the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms and the application of the principles enunciated therein to the United Nations and other peace-loving nations, large and small...
...Such organization must be endowed with power to employ armed forces when necessary to prevent aggression and preserve peace...
...Fourth Term An 'Obligation' The bitter battle for the Vice Presidential nomination provided the only fireworks of the three-day Democratic National Convention...
...Tom Connally, Texas, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, attracted most attention, largely because of the extent to which it pledged blind acceptance of any peace settlement...
...Negro leaders, who had warned that 6,500,000 Negroes would vote for "men and measures" they felt were just, expressed disgust with the evasive nature of the Democratic Party plank...
...Negroes Denounce Platform The only other plank to command attention was the one on civil and political liberties...
...In these days of tragic sorrow, I do not consider it fitting...
...They lost their fight in committee, but while many of them professed to be distressed by the plank adopted, convention observers felt they were secretly satisfied...
...Mayor Ed Kelly of Chicago, and Boss Ed Flynn of the Bronx...
...Second, to form worldwide international organizations and to arrange to use the armed forces of the sovereign nations to make another war impossible within the forseeable future...
...When the break came and the band-wagon riders rushed to back the winner, the vote was 1,031 for Truman to 105 for Wallace, on the second ballot...
...Roosevelt took a shot at his Republican opposition, New York's Gov...
...Southern delegates sought to force acceptance of a "white supremacy" plank which would have left the entire problem of race relations to the states...
...Wallace hurried to Chicago to lead the fight for his renomination, but he ran into a solid phalanx of boss opposition led by the Messrs...
...it is best characterized as a splinter...
...Plank On Foreign Policy The Democratic Party platform presented to the convention was adopted without debate...
...In its final form the controversial plank read: "We believe that racial and religious minorities have the right to live, develop, and vote equally with all citizens and share the rights that are guaranteed by our Constitution...
...Third, to build an economy for our returning veterans and for all Americans—which will provide employment and decent standards of living...
...To make all necessary and effective agreements and arrangements through which the nations would maintain adequate forces to meet the needs of preventing war and making impossible the preparation for war and which would have such forces available for joint action when necessary...
...The President said that the voters must decide whether they will turn over the postwar tasks "to those who offered the veterans of the last war breadlines and apple-selling...
...The plank on foreign policy, hammered out under the watchful eye of Sen...
...Neither party platform is satisfactory to intelligent Negroes...
...He summed up the job ahead when he said that it consisted of these goals: "First, to win the war—to win it fast, to win it over-poweringly...
...who met it head on...
...Nominated to serve as President Roosevelt's running-mate was Sen...
...Walter White, able secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, summed up the reaction of many a Negro spokesman when he said: "To call the section on the Negro a plank is a misnomer...
...But press and radio did a sufficiently adequate job of covering the Chicago gathering to make it clear to the country that the Southern Tories and the Northern bosses, united in the person of Franklin D. Roosevelt, were very much in control of Democratic Party machinery as the 1944 campaign got under way...
...Badgered by professional bigots from the South and dictated to by Northern political machines more interested in votes than principles, the Democratic mountain labored and brought forth a mouse of evasion...
...The platform says nothing about a Fair Employment Practice Committee, the poll tax, lynching, mistreatment of Negroes in the armed services, discrimination in employment, or segregation...
...Harry S. Truman, Missouri, chairman of the famed Senate War Investigating Committee...
...Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated for a fourth term without important opposition...
...Besides, in these days of global warfare, I shall not be able to find the time...
...Always a resourceful campaigner, Mr...
...In keeping with his strategy to campaign as Commander-in-Chief, rather than as a fourth-term candidate for President, he bobbed up at a West Coast naval base the day he was nominated and accepted with a speech over coast-to-coast radio networks that night...
...I shall, however, feel free to report to the people the facts about matters of concern to them and especially to correct any misrepresentations...
...Wallace's cause was doomed when the President sent the convention a luke-warm endorsement (see Page 1), and followed this up with endorsements of Truman and Justice William O. Douglas of the United States Supreme Court...
...THE WEEK IN REVIEW EXPLOSIVE developments in Berlin and Tokyo (see Pages 2 and 5) all but chased the story of the Democratic National Convention from the front pages of the nation's press last week...
...See Page 1.) Noteworthy provisions in the plank on foreign policy were these: "That the world may not again be drenched in blood by international outlaws and criminals, we pledge: "To join with other United Nations in the establishment of an international organization based on the principles of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving states, open to membership by all such states, large and small, for the prevention of aggression and the main* tenance of international peace and security...
...The rejection of Vice President Henry A. Wallace's bid for renomination dramatized the complete restoration of right-wing control of the Party...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 31
