Some Historical Perspective For Anchorage's Prop 5

"The president opened the meeting with small talk and then, in typical fashion, turned raconteur, entertaining his audience with political anecdote.  To Roosevelt it seemed so natural that everyone should be fond of hearing his charming stories that he was somewhat taken aback when Randolph broke in.  "Mr. President, time is running out.  You are quite busy, I know.  But what we want to talk with you about is the problem of jobs for Negroes in defense industries."
"Well, Phil, what do you want me to do?"
"Mr. President, we want you to issue an Executive Order making it mandatory that Negroes be permitted to work in these plants."
"Well, Phil, you know I can't do that  . . . In any event I couldn't do anything unless you called off this march of yours.  Questions like this can't be settled with a sledge hammer  . . What would happen if Irish and Jewish people were to march on Washington?  It would create resentment among the American people because such a march would be considered as an effort to coerce the government and make it do certain things."
"I'm sorry Mr. President, the march cannot be called off."
"How many people do you plan to bring?"
"One hundred thousand, Mr. President."
The astronomical figure staggered belief.  Perhaps Randolph was bluffing.  Turning to White, Roosevelt asked, "Walter, how many people will really march?"  White's eyes did not blink.  "One hundred thousand, Mr. President,"  he affirmed. (p. 251)

I've been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time and I can't help but notice parallels between racial discrimination in the 1940s and sexual-orientation discrimination today.  The same sort of belief today that gays are less deserving of full equality was voiced openly about the group then known, politely, as Negroes or Coloreds.  The same "things have always worked this way, so don't change it" was heard both times. I'm sure that people who voted No on Proposition 5 say that it was a different situation.  They are kidding themselves if they believe that.  Listen to what went on then.  If they can't hear the parallels today, it's because they don't want to. 

The meeting above was the culmination of a number of policies and events where American blacks were discriminated against, outrageously (though then, perfectly acceptably to most white Americans) in the military and in the government funded defense industry.  Here's the build up to that meeting - and the result at the end.

In early September [1940], she had received a disturbing letter from a Negro doctor, Henry Davis.  "At a time when everyone is excited about increasing the size of the army,"  he told her, he had been refused an active commission simply because of his dark skin.  "I am greatly disappointed and am very much depressed,"  he admitted, "gradually losing faith, ambition and confidence in myself." (p. 165)

It was not until the porters' convention, however, when she talked at great length with Randolph*, that Eleanor came to appreciate the full dimensions of the situation.  The discrimination Dr. Davis had experienced, Eleanor was told,

*A. Philip Randolph had founded the journal The Messenger  in Harlem in his twenties and created the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and was a major black spokesperson at the time. See the video below.

was widespread.  In Charlotte, North Carolina, a Negro high-school teacher holding a master's degree from Columbia had been severely beaten by white soldiers stationed at a recruiting office when he sought information for his pupils.  At the University of Minnesota, Walter Robinson had successfully completed the Civil Aeronautics Authority flight-training program, finishing thirteenth in a class of three hundred.  But when he applied for enlistment in the Army Air corps, he was told that it was useless to complete the application.  "There is no place for a Negro in the Air Corps," the lieutenant in charge said.  Dr. Winston Willoughby, a Negro dentist had received an equally peremptory response when he sought a commission in the Dental Corps.  "Hell, if you said you were colored I would have saved you a trip,"  he was told.  "There are no colored dentists in the Dental Corps."

The situation in the navy, where four thousand Negroes served, was even more hypocritical.  To the extent the navy had opened its doors to Negroes, it was strictly as mess men, assigned to make the officers' beds, serve their meals, clean their rooms, shine their shoes, and check their laundry.  Unaware of this depressing situation, many Negroes had been drawn into the navy by false promises, only to find, once they were in, that there was no room for advancement.  (pp. 165-166)

Kearns goes on to write about 15 sailors aboard the USS Philadelphia who wrote a letter to a black newspaper - the Pittsburgh Courier. [It still exists, you can read it at the link.] They warned mothers and fathers to not let their black sons enlist because they too would be treated like servants.

The navy's reaction to the published letter was swift and severe.  The signers were placed in the brig, indicted for conduct prejudicial to good order, and given dishonorable discharges for "unfitness"  . . .

Despite the punishment exacted, the courageous action of the fifteen mess men, like a small rock tumbling over the side of a mountain, initiated an avalanche of protest that would eventually change the face of the navy.  With cynicism and hope existing side by side under the charged conditions of impending war, hundreds of Negro mess men in dozens of ships began to speak up.  "Since other mess attendants . . . are putting up such a stiff fight for equality,"  three Negro sailors wrote from the USS Davis in San Diego, "we feel it only right for us . . . to do our share . . . Before now, we were afraid of the consequences if we fought naval discrimination, but now that we have outside help which has given us new hope, we are prepared and determined to do our part on the inside to the last man."   . . . (pp. 166-167)

A bill in Congress, drafted because of the pressure mounting for better treatment of Negroes in the military declared,

"In the selection and training of men under this act . . . there shall be no discrimination against any person on account of race or color."  The problem, Negro leaders recognized, was the next sentence in the bill, which promised that "no man shall be inducted for training and service unless he is acceptable" to the army and "until adequate provision shall have been made for shelter, sanitary facilities, water supplies, heating and lighting arrangements, medical care and hospital accommodations."  (p. 167)

Earlier, Kearns had mentioned that while Eleanor argued for what should  be done, her husband was concerned with what could be done.

"I did not choose the tools with which I must work,"  he told Walter White in the mid-thirties, explaining his refusal to endorse a federal antilynching campaign [!].  "Had I been permitted to choose them I would have selected quite different ones.  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, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing.  I just can't take that risk." (p. 163)

Is Obama weighing Guantanamo decisions the same way?

A. Philip Randolph [see video] had been talking with Eleanor Roosevelt over the years and saw the outrage over how blacks were treated in the military as an issue that was uniting blacks like no other issue.  An initial meeting with Roosevelt and the Secretary of the Navy and Assistant Secretary of War produced little.  Goodwin quotes War Secretary Stimson's diary,

"I sent [Undersecretary Robert] Patterson to this meeting, because I really had so much  else to do," Stimson recorded.  "According to him it was a rather amusing affair - the President's gymnastics as to politics.  I saw the same thing happen 23 years ago when Woodrow Wilson yielded to the same sort of demand and appointed colored officers to several of the Divisions that went over to France, and the poor fellows made perfect fools of themselves . . .  Leadership is not embedded in the Negro race yet and to try to make commisioned officers to lead the men into battle is only to work disaster to both.  Colored troops do very well under white officers but every time we try to lift them a little beyond where they can go, disaster and confusion follow. . . I hope for heaven's sake they won't mix the white and colored troops together in the same units for then we shall certainly have trouble."

She goes on to say his remarks are mirrored in an Army War College Report from 1925 that included,

"In the process of evolution  . . . the American negro has not progressed as far as other sub species of the human family. . ." (p. 169)

Predictably, the policy statement that emerged was disappointing to Randolph and the other black leaders.  It promised to create Negro units within the branches of the military but not to

 "intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel in the same regimental organizations.  This policy has proven satisfactory over a long period of years and to make changes would produce situations destructive to morale and detrimental to the preparation for national defense."  (pp. 170-171)

 There were demonstrations against the policy in New York and Goodwin quotes an editorial in the Crisis,

"We are inexpressibly shocked. . . that a President at a time of national peril should surrender so completely to enemies of democracy who would destroy national unity by advocating segregation."

. . .What the Negroes wanted at that moment, Hopkins was told, was the promotion of Colonel Benjamin Davis, grandson of a slave, to brigadier general, and the appointment of William Hastie, dean of Howard Law School, as a civilian aide to Secretary Stimson.  Change in the structure of the military would only come, Negroes now believed, if strong black men were placed in positions of leadership. (pp. 171-172)

 Eleanor's agenda soon included concerns about the State Department not processing visas of Jewish refugees from the Nazis.  Goodwin quotes a memo from the State Department's man in charge of refugee matters, Breckinridge Long:

"We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the Untied States.  We could do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative advices which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas." (p. 173)

Can you see a familiar pattern here?  People who espouse flat out falsehoods that they may believe, but, nevertheless, are totally wrong.  People who prevent change and fight to keep things the way they have 'always' been.  People, apparently, oblivious or uncaring that their efforts bring tremendous harm and hardship to others.   People who obstruct justice any way they can.

The strategies and behaviors have been on display nationally and locally on the issue of LBGT rights.  Different falsehoods, but similar obstructions. Today we can't prove what they are doing in private, but if we look to history and the access time brings to past events, we can see that eventually many of today's duplicities will be revealed. But after how much unnecessary pain?

The 1940 election is over and Roosevelt is serving his unprecedented (and never to be repeated)  3rd term.  There is a strike at the Ford Motor company - the only auto company not unionized.  And the only company treating blacks relatively well, well enough that the company is able to convince them that if they unionize, the unions won't treat them as well.  Eventually though, black leaders convince them to come out of the plant and join the white workers on strike and the Ford strike ends in major victory for the union.  But not without a public relations cost because they are depicted as holding up the war effort.

That June of 1941, a storm was gathering in the black community.  Though some progress had been made in opening doors to blacks in the armed forces, discrimination in the mushrooming defense industry continued unabated.  All over the country, the new war plants were refusing to hire blacks.  "Negroes will be considered only as janitors,"  the general manager of North American Aviation publicly asserted.  "It is the company policy not to employ them as mechanics and aircraft workers."  In Kansas City, Standard Steel told the Urban League, "We have not had a negro working in 25 years and do not plan to start now."  And from Vultee Air in California a blanket statement was issued.  "It is not the policy of this company to employ other than of the Caucasian race." [Not only is the idea bad, but the prose is terrible too.]

 The black press abounded with stories of flagrant discrimination.  In early 1941, a hundred NYA trainees were sent to Quoddy Village to work in an aircraft factory near Buffalo.  One of the hundred was black, and he was the only one not hired, even though he had the best grades of the group.  "Negroes who are experienced machinists are being refused employment,"  the Pittsburgh Courier observed, "while white men and boys who have had no training in this work are being hired and trained later."

I would note that this is the reason that employment discrimination is unacceptable.  If enough of the employers hire (or refuse to hire) a group of people based on personal characteristics and NOT on merit, that group of people is shut out of good jobs.  People's personal feelings about having blacks mix with whites was just as emotional, if not more so, than some people's feelings about gays and lesbians today.

This is getting really long.  You can read this all in detail in Doris Kearns Goodwin's book  No Ordinary Time.  Let me get you back to that meeting between the President and Randolph. Randolph began organizing a black march on Washington.

The time had come, Randolph argued, setting the strategic stage for the civil-rights movement of later decades, to mobilize the power and pressure that resided, not in the few, not in the intelligentsia, but in the masses, the organized masses.  "Only power,"  he observed, "can effect the enforcement and adoption of a given policy, however, meritorious it may be." . . .

". . .we ought to get 10,000 Negroes and march down Pennsylvania Avenue and protest against the discriminatory practices in this rapidly expanding economy"    (p. 247)

Roosevelt tried to dissuade him.  He raised concerns about sanitation, housing, and violence if 10,000 blacks marched on the capital.  Eventually Eleanor convinced her husband that he needed to talk with Randolph again.  And they meet.

"The president opened the meeting with small talk and then, in typical fashion, turned raconteur, entertaining his audience with political anecdote.  To Roosevelt it seemed so natural that everyone should be fond of hearing his charming stories that he was somewhat taken aback when Randolph broke in.  "Mr. President, time is running out.  You are quite busy, I know.  But what we want to talk with you about is the problem of jobs for Negroes in defense industries."
"Well, Phil, what do you want me to do?"
"Mr. President, we want you to issue an Executive Order making it mandatory that Negroes be permitted to work in these plants."
"Well, Phil, you know I can't do that  . . . In any event I couldn't do anything unless you called off this march of yours.  Questions like this can't be settled with a sledge hammer  . . What would happen if Irish and Jewish people were to march on Washington?  It would create resentment among the American people because such a march would be considered as an effort to coerce the government and make it do certain things."
"I'm sorry Mr. President, the march cannot be called off."
"How many people do you plan to bring?"
"One hundred thousand, Mr. President."
The astronomical figure staggered belief.  Perhaps Randolph was bluffing.  Turning to White, Roosevelt asked, "Walter, how many people will really march?"  White's eyes did not blink.  "One hundred thousand, Mr. President,"  he affirmed. (p. 251)

Years later, NAACP leader Roy Wilkins suggested that it may well have been a bluff on Randolph's part, but what an extraordinary bluff it was.  "A tall courtly black man with Shakespearean diction and the stare of an eagle had looked the patrician FDR in the eye - and made him back down." . . . Never before in the history of the nation," the Chicago Defender observed, had Negroes, from illiterate sharecroppers in Arkansas to college students in Chicago, "ever been so united in an objective, and so insistent upon an action being taken."  When the president signed the executive order, "faith in a democracy which Negroes had begun to feel had strayed from its course was renewed throughout the nation."

When I read "illiterate sharecroppers in Arkansas" I regretted that my neighbor Mildred Nash is no longer alive. She was at the time a sharecropper in Arkansas. How I'd love to share this passage with her and have her tell me what she knew of these events then.

In any case, history, if we know how to read it, can enlighten us about the present. But we must be open to things that contradict what we believe as well as things that support what we believe.