Eleanor thought it was important to show African Americans they had a friend in the White House. Though the struggle was theirs, it was useful to have a backer who had the president’s ear. She kept her eye on New Deal legislation to make sure laws were evenly applied to both blacks and whites. She also tried to use her influence to make sure African Americans were placed in significant positions in New Deal agencies. Neither of these issues was always met with success.
There was one civil rights fight, however, that had particular urgency. It pitted Eleanor against Franklin, beginning in his first term in office and continuing throughout his presidency. It concerned a despicable American tradition: lynching.
Lynching was the hanging (sometimes with burning, torture, and dismemberment) of usually minority men, women, and young people by mobs. Lynchings were all too familiar after the Civil War and through the years leading into World War II. One of the most horrifying things about public lynchings was that they were often festive public spectacles, with both adults and children in the audience. One newspaper called them “carnivals of death.” Sometimes postcards were sold as souvenirs of the events.
Crowds gather in Waco, Texas, to watch the 1916 lynching of Jesse Washington.
Although about 85 percent of victims during this time period were blacks and the lynchings happened mostly in Southern states, other minorities, such as Mexicans and Chinese Americans—as well as whites—were also targeted, and states including Minnesota, California, and New York were places where lynchings occurred.
The NAACP, among other organizations, was anxious to have a federal law passed against lynching, and two senators, Robert F. Wagner of New York and Edward P. Costigan of Colorado, proposed a bill to make lynching a federal crime. Eleanor was a staunch backer of the law, and tried to get Franklin to put his considerable presidential weight behind its passage. But this turned out to be impossible.
It wasn’t that Franklin didn’t believe in the merits of the bill. He did. He had spoken out about lynching in one of his radio fireside chats on December 6, 1933, saying, “We know that it is murder . . . We do not excuse those in high places or low who condone lynch law.” But the Costigan-Wagner Bill posed a huge political problem for him. The Senate was controlled by Democratic senators from the South. If Franklin came out too strongly for the anti-lynching bill, he would anger those senators who felt the federal government had no right to interfere in what they considered issues of states’ rights.
It’s hard to understand how the murder of people in the most brutal way possible would be something that lawmakers could disagree about. But since the Civil War, the Southern states were hypersensitive to federal interference. It was also true that since Reconstruction, the Southern states were looking for ways to take away rights, including voting rights of African Americans. To that end, Southern state governments disenfranchised voters by charging poll taxes and administering literacy tests. When that didn’t work, there was always intimidation.
African Americans who were lynched were often not accused of any real crimes but rather of behavior considered impudent or inappropriate by the social structure, for instance, a black male whistling at a white woman or a person of color not acting with enough deference to whites. Sometimes the charges were made up or used to take property from African Americans. Lynching frightened people and kept them in their place.
In 1933, there were twenty-eight lynchings; twenty-four of the victims were black. Walter White of the NAACP continuously discussed with the First Lady the progress of the Costigan-Wagner Bill and asked her to press the president for his support. She tried, but in May of 1934, she wrote White a letter saying, “The President talked to me rather at length today about the lynching bill. As I do not think you will either like or agree with everything that he thinks, I would like an opportunity of telling you about it . . .” She also offered to set up a meeting with the president.
Franklin was famous for using his charming personality and telling amusing anecdotes to defuse uncomfortable situations. That’s what he tried to do when he joined Eleanor and his mother, Sara, during a meeting they had set up with Walter White on May 7, 1934. Franklin tried to explain why politics made it impossible to support the bill. Walter argued with him. The president became frustrated.
He turned to his wife. Had she coached Mr. White? Franklin asked. Eleanor mildly suggested they continue talking. Then the president turned to his mother, “Well, at least I know you’ll be on my side.” Sara “shook her head.” No, she was on Walter’s side.
Franklin threw up his hands. Finally, he firmly explained the political realities to Walter: “I did not choose the tools with which I must work. But I’ve got to get legislation passed by Congress to save America. . . . The Southerners, by reason of the seniority rule [in Congress], are chairmen or occupy strategic places on most of the Senate and House committees. If I come out for the anti-lynching bill now, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing. I just can’t take the risk.”
Walter White did get Franklin’s assurance that if the bill came to his desk he would sign it. But the bill was never passed.
In October of 1934, a black man, Claude Neal, accused of murdering a white woman, was taken from a jail in Alabama and moved back to Florida, where the crime had been committed. Neal’s captors were so bold, the lynching was advertised in advance, so people could come out to watch. News of the lynching spread across the country through newspapers and radio. Soon the Florida governor was receiving telegrams telling him to stop this tragedy in the making, but he and other local authorities did nothing. The crowd that came to watch numbered perhaps in the thousands, and those holding Neal, fearful of a riot, decided to lynch him in private. But first they tortured him in horrible ways, including cutting off parts of his body.
After the deed was done, the waiting crowd demanded the body and inflicted more damage. The mob’s anger spilled over, and people began burning whatever property they could find in the area that belonged to blacks. It took the arrival of the National Guard to quell the anger.
This horrifying event galvanized the black community and its supporters. In fact, this disgusting episode disturbed people all across the United States, and support for the anti-lynching bill grew.
A protest meeting at New York City’s Carnegie Hall was planned, and Walter White wanted the First Lady to speak. She informed Franklin about the meeting and told him she was inclined to take part, but said she would do whatever he thought best. The president told her that to make that speech would be political “dynamite.” Eleanor apologized to Walter and stayed away.
The relationship between Eleanor and Franklin was a complicated one, but they always respected each other and did their best to support one another, sometimes with varying degrees of success.
Franklin admired his wife and rarely told her not to do something. Eleanor had once asked Franklin if he minded her speaking out. “No, certainly not,” he answered genially. “You can say anything you want. I can always say, ‘Well, that’s my wife, I can’t do anything about her.’”
Yet he could also make it clear, as with the dynamite comment, when something was not in the best interest of him or his administration. One of Eleanor’s roles, as she saw it, was to be her husband’s conscience. She had a way of looking at him and saying, “Now, Franklin . . .” or leaving notes and articles for him. She expected him to learn about and hopefully act on the issues she brought to him. Yet she also understood—and often told those who wanted her support on a range of issues—that Franklin was the president, not she. He was the only one to make the ultimate decisions on matters of state.
During the early spring of 1935, the Costigan-Wagner Bill was brought to the Senate floor. The Southern senators prepared to filibuster the bill. That meant this bloc would hold the floor and make sure no other legislation could pass until the anti-lynching bill was killed. Franklin, who continued to need his New Deal legislation passed, would not say anything against the filibuster, which went on for several weeks before the sponsors of the bill agreed to withdraw it. Eleanor wrote to a disappointed Walter, “Of course, we will all go on fighting.”
The anti-lynching bill was debated again in 1937; Republicans in Congress supported the bill, and the House passed it, moving it along to the Senate. Eleanor implored her husband to support the bill, but the president once again insisted he needed the Southern Democratic senators for help with his other legislation. There was another filibuster. This time, during the long days of talking, the First Lady watched from the Senate gallery “in silent rebuke of the shameful tactic.” The bill died in the Senate later that fall. Other attempts were made to pass anti-lynching legislation during Franklin’s terms in office, but all met the same fate.
There were efforts to pass an anti-lynching bill in succeeding years. All failed until 1946, after Franklin’s terms had ended.
The failures of the anti-lynching bills were deeply disappointing, but Eleanor continued to push her husband for more support on the overall issue of civil rights. Louis Howe, her ally and supporter, had died in 1936, but she found several strong supporters in the administration, including Harold Ickes, the secretary of the interior, and presidential adviser Aubrey Williams, who called himself a Southern rebel because though he was from the South, he championed African Americans’ rights. Many other members of the president’s inner circle, however, disliked Eleanor’s outspoken views on race relations and resented the way she tried to push her agenda with him.
Eleanor never in doubted that Franklin respected her views and appreciated her efforts. It was also clear her husband often found her to be relentless and even annoying at times when it came to her pursuit of causes she believed in. She once noted, perhaps sadly, “He might have been happier with a wife who was completely uncritical. . . . Nevertheless, I think I sometimes acted as a spur, even though the spurring was not always wanted or welcome. I was one of those who served his purposes.”