NEGROES HOLD BALANCE OF POLITICAL POWER
Villard, Oswald Garrison
Negroes Hold Balance Of Political Power By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD THE Negroes of the United States can decide the fate of Franklin Roosevelt and put Gov. Thomas E. Dewey into the White House if...
...Hence the colored people as a whole are confused and troubled as to how they should vote...
...According to the Bureau of Applied Social Research of Columbia University, of 580 Negroes interviewed, 30 per cent were undecided, while of the rest 74 per cent intended to vote for Roosevelt and only 26 per cent for Dewey...
...Ordinarily, therefore, there would be a tremendous turning back to the Republican Party...
...Dewey gets those votes he will be elected President...
...There is a tremendous dissatisfaction among the Negroes with the Roosevelt Administration...
...In the Army, too, there has been a marked improvement in the handling of the colored soldier...
...Obviously if Gov...
...Now how does the situation stand today...
...They felt so outraged by the late Secretary Knox's announcement at the beginning of the war that Negroes would never be allowed into the Navy except as servants, that is, messmen, and in other menial capacities that they compelled the Navy to alter its attitude...
...This is a drop from 82 per cent who voted for Roosevelt in 1940, and a rise from the 18 per cent of the same group who voted Republican in the last Presidential election...
...These bills were introduced but never pushed and finally the Governor sent a special message to the Legislature expressing his eagerness to do something about racial discrimination, but urging the appointment of a special legislative commission to study the situation further, although it had just been studied by his own committee on discrimination in employment...
...this time they have risen in racial self-consciousness to such a degree that they have fairly seethed with indignation...
...Confused And Troubled On the other hand, the President has never taken the vitally important steps that the Negroes demand, such as abolishing all discrimination in the Army and Navy —it has only just leaked out that the Army has done away with its policy of separate amusement places, but this has never been officially announced...
...It is true that he has come out for a permanent Federal Fair Employment Practices Commission, but he did not speak out emphatically on the poll tax or on the other questions especially stirring the Negro voter...
...There is therefore every reason why Gov...
...But this does not suffice to satisfy the Negro who is determined to have all the rights guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the United States, nothing more, nothing less...
...Thomas E. Dewey into the White House if they so determine...
...They have bitterly resented the discrimination against them in the armed services...
...This feeling is so deep in the colored people that the writer of this article, who has been working for them and with them for nearly half a century, has been perfectly astounded by it...
...The Republican leaders have not only not done that, but they have not even insisted that Mr...
...Dewey should have made a strong appeal to the Negro...
...They took this discrimination with few protests in the last war...
...Unless the Republicans do something drastic soon, Roosevelt is bound to get the bulk of the colored vote and it may elect him...
...If its leaders had seen the opportunity and seized it, and, for example, gone so far as to say that if Gov...
...Negroes Nettled It was formerly the historic policy of his party, which won the Civil War and freed the slaves, to champion the Negro, but in modern times the Republican Party has absolutely ignored the Negro, although it was not handicapped, like the Democrats, by comprising in its membership the reactionary Southern Bourbons...
...Hence it fell to Franklin Roosevelt to wean the Negroes away, which he did by numerous acts in their favor and by reason of Eleanor Roosevelt's outspoken advocacy of Negro rights...
...He never struck a real blow for the anti-lynching bill or the Federal poll tax bill...
...There are indications that this is going to be one of the closest elections in the history of the country and that it may turn on the vote of New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts— California is conceded to Roosevelt...
...Today they resent the fact that in camps where there are two sets of troops, colored and white, there have been separate amusement places apparently until lately, and that when white troops are brought back from Europe they are sent to delightful rest centers for recuperation and refreshment before given leave, while Negro troops are sent to Army posts or barracks, without any of the special privileges...
...Dewey was elected there would be no discrimination whatever in the armed services in their effort to conquer the foes of the United States, that if Negroes are fit to die in the American uniform for their country they are also fit to receive equal treatment with their white fellow soldiers, the colored people would have turned to them en masse...
...Those States have 20S electoral votes out of the 531 in the Electoral College...
...Negroes are being enlisted both in the Navy and the Marine Corps as never before, and also a small group of young Negroes is being trained to be ensigns...
...Dewey should straighten his relations out with the colored people in other directions, for he has not scored with the Negroes in his actions as Governor...
...But he did not do anything about two bills submitted by his own State Committee on Discrimination in Employment to create a civil rights bureau in the Attorney-General's office, and a fair employment practice commission in the Labor Department...
...They are not placated by the fact that a couple of squadrons of Negro aviators have been formed and a Negro has been appointed brigadier-general in the Army for the first time in history...
...They think that the latter was a political move and they want every avenue of advancement open to them...
...He never publicly chided the Southern Senators for filibustering against these measures and preventing the Congress, which would have voted for them, from having the opportunity to do so...
...One of their three greatest papers is for Dewey and one for Roosevelt, with the third vacillating...
...That is a startling statement, but the fact is that in eight Northern states they hold the balance of power...
...It is true that he appointed a brilliant colored man, Francis E. Rivers, to a high court in New York with a salary o£ $17,500, and C. B. Powell, publisher of the Republican Amsterdam News, as a member of the State Boxing Commission...
Vol. 8 • October 1944 • No. 43
