FDR - Jean Edward Smith [261]
* In his 2003 biography of FDR, Conrad Black took issue with the school of historiography that asserts that recovery in the United States lagged behind that of other industrial countries. As Lord Black points out, American unemployment figures did not distinguish between those who had no job whatever and those working for the WPA, in the public works program, or enrolled in the CCC. All were lumped together as “unemployed.” When the relief workers are factored in, American unemployment totals drop by almost 60 percent. “None of the other Western democracies,” writes Black, “provided so much or such original emergency relief employment as the United States did.” Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom 430 (New York: PublicAffairs, 2003). Also see Black’s review article “No Bleeding Heart,” 5 Claremont Review of Books 27–29 (Spring 2005).
* The history of Reconstruction became the life work of the historian William A. Dunning and the graduate students who studied with him at Columbia University. Their factually dubious but influential writing championing white supremacy determined the way many Americans see Reconstruction even today. For a critique of the “Dunning School,” see Jean Edward Smith, Grant 699–700 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).
* Thomas Corcoran put it more succinctly: political calculus took precedence over moral outrage; antilynching was too hot for FDR to touch. “He does his best with it, but he ain’t gonna lose his votes for it.” Corcoran, interview with Nancy J. Weiss, May 23, 1977, cited in Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR 119 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).
† Roosevelt’s concern about the constitutionality of Wagner’s bill was not entirely misplaced. In United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876), the Reconstruction-era Supreme Court invalidated the operative sections of the Enforcement Act of 1870, which made it a federal crime to deprive any citizen of his or her constitutional rights. “The power of Congress to legislate does not extend to the passage of laws for the suppression of ordinary crimes within the States,” said Chief Justice Morrison Waite. Whether the Hughes Court, which was pacesetting in matters of civil rights, would have invoked, overruled, or distinguished Cruikshank is a matter for speculation.
* On June 13, 2005, the Senate, by voice vote, formally apologized for its failure to enact antilynching legislation in the 1930s. “The Senate failed … our nation,” said Senator Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, the chief Democratic sponsor of the resolution. The New York Times, June 14, 2005.
† The incident occurred when Miss Bethune’s voice cracked while speaking at a benefit for Bethune-Cookman College. ER was on the platform and procured the water for Miss Bethune. “This is democracy in action,” said a black policeman at the event. “The wife of the President of the United States pouring a glass of ice water for a Negro woman who’s real black—she’s black as a black shoe.” Quoted in Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln 255.
* “I realize more and more that FDR is a great man,” Eleanor wrote to her friend Lorena Hickok in October 1936. “[H]e is nice to me but as a person I’m a stranger and I don’t want to be anything else.” Quoted in Doris Faber, The Life of Lorena Hickok 221 (New York: Morrow, 1980).
* “You and I know the average outsider does not receive such an offer,” wrote James many years later. “I was willing to take advantage of the fact that I was not the average outsider. I have always felt that, even if I accepted undeserved opportunity, if I worked hard to make the most of it on my own, any success I had would be deserved.” James Roosevelt, My Parents: A Differing View 252 (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1976).
* In contemporary figures, Elliott’s 1933 and 1935 salaries would be equivalent to $417,000 and $658,000, respectively. Considering the low tax rate of the period, the buying power would have been much greater.
* Black was nominated by FDR on August 12, 1937 to replace