During President Roosevelt’s second term, a huge dark cloud was looming on the horizon: war. Across the Pacific, Japan was arming itself and preparing to invade China. Across the Atlantic, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party had risen to power in Germany. The Nazis were terrorizing their country’s Jewish population and casting covetous eyes on neighboring countries. Germany annexed the Rhineland in 1936 and then Austria in 1938. It took Czechoslovakia in 1939. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, England and France, who had a mutual protection pact with Poland, declared war on Germany.
Hitler and officers stand in front of the Eiffel Tower after the Nazis stormed into Paris in June 1940.
President Roosevelt understood that he would have to prepare the United States for war, even though there was strong sentiment against fighting a war in Europe. There had been more than fifty thousand U.S. combat deaths in World War I (and a total of more than ten million military deaths for all countries), and the feeling in the United States was one of isolationism. Americans did not want to fight foreign wars.
Franklin had to be careful how he presented the issue of foreign affairs to the public. It was like walking a political tightrope. He had to strengthen the country and ready it for war if war should come. But he was also considering something no other president had ever done—running for a third term in office. He had to convince the potential voters of the 1940 election that war was neither inevitable nor his first choice as a course of action.
As the world situation grew increasingly tense, the First Lady was also worried. She had seen firsthand the horrors caused by World War I. But she was also well aware of the tragedies that were unfolding in Europe and elsewhere. On a personal level, she was concerned because she had four sons who would be eligible for military service. Her children were all grown by now. Their childhoods, which they remembered as troubled, had not made them happy adults. All five experienced marriage, divorce, and remarriage. They sometimes felt torn between their parents, especially Anna, who was a confidant to both Eleanor and Franklin. The Roosevelts had five grandchildren by 1939, with more to come. Eleanor worked hard to be a more confident and compassionate grandmother than she had been a mother.
She decided the best thing she could do at this time was to be more “everywhere” than ever, hitting the road on speaking tours where she discussed everything from foster care to New Deal progress to civil liberties. As with her former racial bigotry, it had not been unknown for Eleanor to display the strains of anti-Semitism she had grown up with and that were prevalent throughout the United States. Now, however, after all that she had seen and heard, her eyes were wide open to the horror of prejudice.
In a major speech delivered to the American Civil Liberties Union in March 1940, she said that religious and racial prejudice “are a great menace because we find that in countries where civil liberties have been lost, religious and race prejudice are rampant.” Freedoms of speech, of religion, of the press, and the freedom to follow one’s own conscience were precious and needed to be defended not just by the government, but by everyone. These truths, as she saw them, became Eleanor’s moral pillars for the rest of her life.
With the turbulent world situation, Eleanor understood why the president had to focus his attention on foreign affairs. But she was also concerned that domestic problems like civil rights would fade into the background as events heated up in Europe and around the world.
She was right. World events did inevitably take center stage. But there were also many civil rights issues that affected the run up to World War II, and Eleanor was ready to offer her help as always. As one historian put it, “Eleanor refused to be insulated and shielded from a problem. The more perilous it was politically, the more twisted its roots in history, custom, and law, the more urgent [she thought] that it be ferreted out, confronted, and dealt with.”
Racial injustice was one of those problems that not only affected people at home, but also elicited an uncomfortable and unwelcome response in the world. Adolf Hitler, for instance, pointed out that the United States had little standing to complain about Germany’s treatment of Jews when it had such a sorry record on its black citizens. Eleanor sorrowfully noted his point: “It seems incredible when we are protesting the happenings in Germany to permit intolerance such as this in our own country.”
Despite the prejudice African Americans faced in the United States, they answered the call to serve their country in times of war. African Americans had fought in all American wars. Through the Civil War, they fought in both all-black and integrated units. After the Civil War, segregation entered the armed services. Nevertheless, thousands of African Americans volunteered to fight during World War I. Few, however, saw combat because the army believed they were more suited to manual labor than fighting. After the war, interest in serving plummeted, and the number of African Americans in the armed services was dismal.
The situation in the navy was uniquely unfair. Young black men were in the service, but they were only allowed to be messmen. As messmen, all they were allowed to do was make beds, do laundry, and perform menial tasks for other sailors. In essence, they were servants—with no chance for advancement.
In September 1940, Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act. It required men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five to register with their local draft boards. The armed services were also encouraging men to enlist. Nevertheless, not everyone was being encouraged.
Eleanor began to receive letters and hear about the indignities—and sometimes the dangers—that faced African American men who wanted the right to fight. A letter came from a doctor who was refused a commission because he was black. A high school teacher, in Charlotte, North Carolina, who had gone to a recruitment center to get information for his students, was beaten by whites. A dentist who came to enlist was informed, “Hell, if you said you were colored I would have saved you a trip . . . There are no colored dentists in the Dental Corps.”
One group of enlisted men decided to make their dissatisfaction known. Fifteen navy messmen wrote an open letter to the Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper. “Our main reason for writing is to let all our colored mothers and fathers know how their sons are treated after taking an oath pledging allegiance and loyalty to their flag and country. . . .” The letter went on to describe what awaited African Americans in the navy and advised parents not to let their sons join. They ended by saying, “We take it upon ourselves to write this letter regardless of any action the Navy authorities may take.”
The authorities were quick to take action. The men were jailed and then dishonorably discharged from the navy. That didn’t stop messmen from other ships from writing their own letters in solidarity detailing their own similar experiences.
Congress did pass a law in 1940 that made it easier for African Americans to enlist in the armed services, but there were provisions in the law that also made it likely they could also be turned down. For instance, the law said men inducted into the army had to be deemed “acceptable,” a nebulous term that could be used to turn black enlistees away. Civil rights leaders wanted to make sure there would be some teeth in this law.
Eleanor urged a White House meeting. Nothing happened. So in September of 1940, she wrote a pointed memo to her husband from the Greenwich Village apartment she kept in New York. She’d just finished speaking to a conference of African Americans. She’d begun her speech, “You know, better than any other people, that [American Democracy] is not perfect . . .” But she told the audience how hopeful she felt that Americans were moving along “the road to better understanding.” Finally, she pledged her “faith and cooperation to make this a better country.”
In writing to Franklin, she told him that public sentiment was growing among blacks and whites about the unfairness that was apparent in the armed services. Eleanor also noted, “This is going to be very bad politically, besides being intrinsically wrong.”
The president listened. He called a meeting for September 27, 1940. Among the participants was A. Philip Randolph, “a commanding figure,” who had organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (the first labor union led by African Americans) in the face of great obstacles. Walter White was also there. Walter, interestingly, had been pushing a proposal to have a volunteer, integrated army, since there were many white men who said they were willing to serve alongside blacks. Also attending were the secretary of the navy, Frank Knox, and assistant secretary of war, Robert Patterson.
Eleanor with A. Philip Randolph (left) and New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia
Randolph told the assembled group that blacks felt they weren’t wanted in the services. White “emphasized that . . . an army . . . fighting allegedly for democracy should be the last place to find undemocratic segregation.”
Franklin tried to counter by saying the new law passed by Congress would give blacks more opportunities to serve, but Randolph pointed out the law’s deficiencies. The president offered a few suggestions that seemed to indicate he was moving forward on the issue of integrating the services, and Randolph and White left with high hopes for progress. Nevertheless, the military men in attendance, and others who had gotten wind of the meeting, all gave a thumbs-down to the idea of integration.
One of the army’s top generals, George Marshall, deplored the idea of “experiments which would have a highly destructive effect on morale.” Secretary of the Navy Knox firmly told the president that his job was to prepare the navy for a war on two oceans. If he had to spend his time trying to integrate it as well, he would have to resign.
Despite the controversy over integrating the armed services, African Americans were instrumental in the fight to win World War II. Here, Miles Davis King, a crewman on the U.S.S. Tulagi carries a loaded magazine for his gun en route to Southern France in 1944.
A week after the meeting was held, nobody was satisfied. Randolph and White had heard nothing from the White House. Once again they asked the First Lady to intervene, which she did, but the statement the War Department finally issued merely said that Negro units would be formed in the major branches of the services and that there would eventually be a flight training program for blacks.
And then this blow: “The policy of the War Department is not to intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel . . . This policy has been proved satisfactory over a long period of years . . . to make changes would produce situations destructive to morale.” Integration of the armed forces, the policy said, was not in the best interest of the country or of national defense.
This caused an uproar in the African American community. Adding insult to injury, one of the president’s advisers made it seem as if the civil rights leaders at the meeting were in agreement with the War Department’s statement—which they certainly were not!
Franklin had to issue a statement denying this was the case, but that was just a small bandage on a big problem. The NAACP encouraged its members to organize protests. The 1940 election was just around the corner, and the president again needed black votes. He quickly promoted one of the only blacks of high rank in the army, Colonel Benjamin Davis, to brigadier general and gave assurances that desegregation options were still being looked at.
These efforts calmed things somewhat in the African American community, but sentiment was also running high in other parts of the country that did not want integration. The president and First Lady once again received angry letters, some calling them horrible names. Nevertheless, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did win his third presidential term in 1940. The race against Republican Wendell Willkie, who was for integration of the armed services, was hotly contested, but Franklin won handily. Still, after the election, some of Eleanor’s closest friends in the African American community remained angry about the president’s hesitations on civil rights issues.
Pauli Murray wrote to the president and First Lady comparing Franklin, who used “vague and general language” about race, to Willkie, who clearly stated racial prejudice was like “imperialism.”
Eleanor fought back. “I wonder if it ever occurred to you that Mr. Willkie has no responsibility whatsoever? He can say whatever he likes and do whatever he likes, and nothing very serious will happen.” Had he been elected president, she noted sharply, Willkie would have had to deal with the Southern bloc in Congress and angry segments of the public, just as Franklin did. She let her personal bitterness show when she added that for someone as well versed in the political system as Pauli, “your letter seems to me one of the most thoughtless I’ve ever read.”
In her reply, Pauli admitted that, yes, her letter was rude and reckless. But it was written from a place of “desperation and disgust.” She wrote a long letter, detailing her frustrations, and the First Lady’s anger softened. She invited Pauli to New York to talk things over in person. A nervous Pauli was relieved when Eleanor greeted her at the door of her apartment with a hug. She had come to argue but left with her “militant armor replaced by unreserved affection.” They agreed to continue their dialogue.
President Roosevelt spent a good deal of time during the first two years of his unprecedented third term trying to rally support for England, which was virtually alone in the fight after Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands were invaded by Germany in May of 1940. France was lost in June. Germany turned on its ally, the Soviet Union, invading in June of 1941. It seemed inevitable that the United States would soon be dragged into another world war.
Just as the armed services needed to be mobilized, the defense industries that would build the ships and planes, manufacture guns and ammunition, and provide numerous other necessities of war, had to be beefed up. This meant that for the first time since 1929, there would now be plenty of jobs, and African Americans expected they would benefit. Individual lives and whole communities would be vastly improved with more employment opportunities. Many African Americans had been trained in New Deal programs for more skilled jobs, and were now ready to take them.
But instead of opportunity, what they often received was more racism. One Kansas City steel company noted that they hadn’t had a black employee in twenty-five years and didn’t intend to start now. An aviation company stated that “Negroes will be considered only as janitors.”
There were many ways of keeping people out of jobs. Black applicants would receive high scores on defense companies’ entrance exams, but they still wouldn’t be hired, or they’d be pushed aside by whites who had much lower scores or who had no training at all. This happened throughout the country.
The African American community decided to take things into their own hands. A. Philip Randolph went to several civil rights groups, including the NAACP and the Urban League, with an idea. They would organize a ten-thousand-man march on Washington, right down Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol building, to protest racial discrimination in war industries, as well as the larger issue of segregation.
There were doubters among some who Randolph approached. Could ten thousand people really be counted on? But in African American communities, the enthusiasm for the march grew. This was a chance for people who felt they were being ignored to make their voices heard. Randolph upped the number of how many would come to Washington, D.C., on July 1, 1941, to march. Now it would be one hundred thousand!
This caught the White House’s attention. The last thing Franklin wanted was a massive march in a summer-hot city that could lead to violence. Eleanor, who had been speaking at African American colleges and other venues during the spring, apprised the president of what was happening in the black community. Eleanor told Franklin about how upset people were about the difficulties they had getting access to defense jobs, and he agreed that the walls put up against them weren’t fair.
As July 1 grew closer, it became clear to those in the Roosevelt administration that the march was happening. The president had already taken the unheard-of step of making, as one historian put it, “the first official call for what later became known as affirmative action.” He wrote his aides ordering them to take “Negroes up to a certain percentage in factory order work. Judge them on quality.” The president didn’t like the fact that “first-class Negroes are turned down for third-class white boys.”
This request went out to companies, but Randolph and others knew the time for requests was over. Eleanor was not in favor of the march. She too worried that there would be violence on the streets of Washington. The First Lady made direct pleas, in meetings and in person, to call off the march. Randolph, while appreciating her position, declined. Finally Franklin agreed once again to schedule a meeting between Randolph, Walter White, and members of his administration.
It took place at the White House on June 18, a few weeks before the march. As usual, Franklin tried to charm and placate Randolph and White, but Randolph remained firm. When asked by the president what he wanted done, Randolph replied, “We want you to issue an executive order making it mandatory that Negros be permitted to work in these plants.”
The president demurred. He couldn’t do it. What if other groups asked for the same thing?
Well, one of his aides who was present wondered, so what if they did? Maybe it would be best to include all groups in the executive order.
The negotiating went back and forth over the next day. Eleanor became involved, too. She was up on remote Campobello Island, but she walked the half mile down to the telegraph office where there was a telephone to read the last draft to Randolph. Executive Order 8802 stated that both employers and labor unions were “to provide for the full and equitable participation of all workers in defense industries, without discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin.” A Fair Employment Practice Committee would be set up to oversee the order.
The one-hundred-thousand-man march was called off.