LEGACY

WASHINGTON — The new Roosevelt Memorial in Washington features a quoted endorsement of civil rights by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which has been criticized, justifiably, as a bow to political correctness.

Yes, Roosevelt did write: “We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background.” But the quote comes from a letter to the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, and had nothing directly to do with African Americans.

Rather than trying to make Roosevelt into a 1997-style defender of racial equality, the memorial makers would have been better advised to consider Roosevelt’s racial policies in the context of his own time, for that history is important and fascinating in its own right.

When Roosevelt became president, a political alliance between blacks and the Republican Party had existed since the Civil War. By the time he died, blacks, along with white Southerners, Northern liberals and trade unionists, had become the four cornerstones of the Democratic political structure. With the recent defection of the conservative white South, that structure has become a sort of tripod.

Political historians have long since concluded that the historic shift in black alignment was attributable to Roosevelt’s economic program rather than to the civil-rights record of the president who never got around to endorsing a federal anti-lynching bill.

Yet, Roosevelt’s civil-rights record is far richer and more complex than is generally recognized. Roosevelt acknowledged the legitimacy of the black political agenda and welcomed its advocates to the White House. He appointed blacks to execute jobs in his administration, came to insist that minorities receive fair treatment in most programs established to combat economic depression, issued the first executive order against race discrimination in defense-sector jobs and took at least some tentative steps in the direction of a more equal if not integrated military establishment.

The New Deal did not begin auspiciously in the area of civil rights. Black tenant farmers were often the first forced off the land as the Agricultural Adjustment Administration preached acreage reduction as a way to drive up crop prices. Under its “Blue Eagle” symbol, the National Recovery Administration forced black workers to accept lower pay or forfeit job opportunities to whites. The Tennessee Valley Authority hired blacks only as unskilled labor. The Federal Housing Administration wrote restrictive covenants into its leases.

As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in “The Politics of Upheaval,” things began to change when Roosevelt designated Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes, a former president of the Chicago NAACP, as his point man on black opportunity. Ickes brought brilliant young blacks like William H. Hastie and Robert C. Weaver into his department. They, in turn, began integrating federal cafeterias, a major task given the segregation imposed by Woodrow Wilson.

Hastie would become the first black federal judge appointed since Reconstruction. Weaver would form with others a “black cabinet” that endeavored to ensure minorities were included in programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps and WPA. The great educator, Mary McLeod Bethune, became director of the Office of Minority Affairs of the National Youth Administration, which taught more than 300,000 black children to read and write. She would say of Roosevelt’s record, “Never before in the history of America has the Negro youth been offered such opportunities.”

It is true, unfortunately, that while condemning “that vile form of public murder,” Roosevelt never endorsed federal anti-lynching legislation. The reason was the power wielded by Southern opponents on critical House and Senate committees. As he explained to the black advocate Walter White, “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.” But when the bill finally reached the Senate floor, it was the opposition of such progressives as George Norris, Hugo L. Black and William E. Borah--who questioned the constitutionality of a federal approach--that ensured its defeat.

White and his fellow members of the political “black brain trust” swung into high gear during World War II. Their symbol was the “Double V”--victory both overseas and at home. They eventually prodded Roosevelt into taking some significant civil-rights steps. For example, White saw Congress enact legislation allowing servicemen to vote in primary and general elections without paying a poll tax--over objections of Southerners.

In point of fact, that victory was rather small. The October 1940 decision of the administration to maintain strictly segregated military units under the new Selective Service Act was a calamitous setback even more central to society’s future than the anti-lynching bill. The biggest issue--significant participation in war industry jobs--was still to be determined.

Under intense pressure from civil-rights leaders spearheaded by A. Phillip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, who threatened an all-black 50,000-man march on Washington, Roosevelt, in 1941, issued an executive order proclaiming a new policy of nondiscrimination in federal employment and defense contracts. The order established a five-person Committee on Fair Employment Practice (FEPC) to investigate complaints of discrimination and take “appropriate” steps to remedy a valid complaint. But as Hugh Davis Graham noted in “The Civil Rights Era,” the FEPC suffered from inadequate staffing, the absence of control over labor-union discrimination and a lack of statutory enforcement authority.

To address some of these failings, Roosevelt, in 1943, issued Executive Order 9346, which included labor unions and gave FEPC the right to conduct hearings, gather evidence and “take appropriate steps,” to remedy any discrimination found. Despite a continuing lack of clout, the FEPC settled satisfactorily about a third of the 14,000 complaints it received. More significantly, the explosion of economic opportunity in defense plants provided blacks with their steepest rise in real income this century.

Under the Roosevelt administration, the Army trained black and white officers together, and the Air Force opened its doors to black fighter and bomber pilots--the celebrated “Tuskeegee airmen”--though they were trained separately and segregated by unit.

Ultimately, the Roosevelt contribution to civil rights involves more of a political legacy than a record of legislative achievement. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s support for opera signer Marian Anderson after she had been barred by the Daughters of the American Revolution from Constitution Hall contributed to what became a mighty statement on the Mall against racial discrimination.

By defeating Nazism on the battlefield, FDR struck a serious blow at the moral and intellectual underpinnings of racism. By accelerating the participation of blacks in the mainstream economy, he made it difficult to bar their participation in the political mainstream. And by engineering the inclusion of blacks as a critical force in Democratic Party affairs, he made the party far less hospitable to white Southern conservatives, who, for the most part, are now completing the realignment Roosevelt set in motion by finding a “permanent” home in the GOP.