Eleanor (37 page)

You have not in any [way] aggravated my burdens. I chose myself to do this because I felt it was important that we have a nominee in the Democratic party who had not only a chance of winning but a chance of giving us a good administration.
¹⁶

During the White House years, Mrs. Roosevelt had always been on guard against the wiles and stratagems that her husband had employed in pushing for his goals lest the objectives be compromised. That had especially been the case in regard to Negro rights. When she saw a thing to be done, she had charged ahead asking, “Why not?” FDR, being the politician, approached his objectives with a circumspection and care that often shaded into deviousness, biding his time, looking for cracks in the wall or ways around it before he went driving into it frontally.
¹⁷

But having committed herself to seeing Stevenson elected president, she showed that she, too, could be a fox as well as a lion—to invoke the distinction drawn by James M. Burns in his biography of FDR. In her approach to the civil rights issue, she displayed Franklin’s toughness and maneuverability in balancing the political necessity of not alienating the South against the moral imperatives of the Negro cause.
¹⁸

Civil rights groups, especially the NAACP, were beginning to make life hard for Democratic politicians, even the liberals among them. They were demanding that the federal government enforce the landmark Supreme Court decision of 1954 on school desegregation even if it meant the withholding of federal funds and the sending in of troops. In Congress, Rep. Adam Clayton Powell had introduced a rider to the school construction bill that would deny federal funds to the states that refused to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision—at that time, almost the whole South. Rep. Richard Bolling, former head of the American Veterans Committee and a liberal congressman from Kansas City, wrote Mrs. Roosevelt that “despite the fact that I have supported all civil rights measures in the House during my term of service, I have concluded that I must oppose this rider in the interest of enactment into law of the bill itself.” He had heard that she had taken the same position. Was that the case, and could he say so? When the school construction bill had been discussed by the NAACP board in the spring of 1955, she replied,

Walter Reuther and I asked the Board to allow it to be brought out of committee without an amendment, stating that the
Federal aid should only go to school construction in unsegregated areas. We had the promise of Senators Lehman and Hubert Humphrey that as soon as it reached the floor of the Senate they would amend it. They asked that this be done in order that there would be an open debate on the floor so the whole country would know what the argument was about and who the people were who were taking sides. Otherwise it would be killed in the Rules Committee and never reach the floor and no one in the country would know anything about it.

The NAACP did not agree with our position at that time and therefore insisted that the rider should be attached in the Rules Committee.

She saw the dangers of a rider, she went on. It would invite a filibuster in the Senate and enable the Republicans to characterize the Congress, which was controlled by the Democrats, as a “do nothing” Congress.

So I think if I were a member of Congress, I would feel obliged to vote for the bill and prevent the amendment from being introduced if possible. I am, however, not a member of Congress nor a candidate for office. I have, therefore, an obligation, I think, to live up to the principles in which I believe. I believe that it is essential to our leadership in the world and to the development of true democracy in our country to have no discrimination in our country whatsoever. This is most important in the schools of our country. Therefore I feel personally that I could not ask to have this bill passed without an amendment since unless the situation becomes so bad that the people are worried about all education, I fear nothing will be done in the area of discrimination.
¹⁹

This answer was not wholly satisfactory. Although she was not a candidate for office, she was a principal backer of the Stevenson candidacy. He had to take a position on the Supreme Court
decision and the Powell rider. What should it be, and, if he did not satisfy the Negro leaders, where should she stand? Would she still refuse to accommodate principle to political realities? The problem soon confronted her. Stevenson, campaigning on the West Coast in early February, emphasized conciliation and gradualism. He did not believe that deeply rooted racial attitudes could be changed by “a stroke of a pen,” and he opposed “punitive (or coercive) action by the Federal Government.”
²⁰

Roy Wilkins, who had succeeded Walter White as chief executive of the NAACP and top strategist of the civil rights movement, was outraged by Stevenson’s emphasis on “moderation.” “To Negro Americans ‘gradual’ means either no progress at all, or progress so slow as to be barely perceptible,” he wrote Stevenson, sending a copy of his letter to Mrs. Roosevelt.
²¹

She did not like his statement as reported in the press, she wrote Wilkins. She had had a long talk with Stevenson, had made a careful study of his record in the Navy and as governor of Illinois, and had satisfied herself that “his stand on civil rights is the correct one in every way. . . .We will need great wisdom and patience in the next few months, not hotheaded bursting into print.” To Walter White’s widow, who protested that liberal Democrats like Stevenson might be expected to express views as strong, at least, as those of the Republicans, Mrs. Roosevelt replied, “Yes, but Stevenson is our best friend and we should not run him down.”

Ralph Bunche was the Negro leader in whom she had the greatest confidence. “I had a long talk with Ralph Bunche yesterday,” she wrote a protesting Pauli Murray, whose youthful militance she had treated so understandingly in the thirties and who was now a successful lawyer and writer,

and I don’t think that fundamentally there is any cleavage between my point of view and that of Mr. Stevenson and that of the really wise Negro leaders. I did not like Roy Wilkins’ hot-headed statement which I thought poorly thought out, nor did I like the garbled reporting of what Mr. Stevenson
said in Los Angeles. Unwittingly Mr. Stevenson used the word “gradual” and this means one thing to the Negroes but to him it was entirely different. However, Mr. Stevenson’s record remains remarkably good and he certainly was courageous in the statements he made in the last campaign. I think so far he has made no really deeply felt statement on the situation but I don’t think that is because of any political reaction that might come. I simply think that he is waiting for the time when he thinks it will be of most value. However, the more he seems to be under attack by the Negroes, the less possible it is for him to make such a speech because he will be accused of doing so in order to get the Negro vote.

The only thing on which Stevenson and I differ with some of the Negro leaders is in support of the Powell amendment. His feeling is that aid should not be withheld from the states that need education most in order to improve. . . .

I think it is a mistake for the Negro leaders to be tearing down Stevenson who is after all the only real hope they have, the President having told Mr. [Adam Clayton] Powell that he would make no statement on whether the Executive would refrain from allocating funds where schools were segregated. Yet the papers and the Negro leaders have not attacked the President. Why this discrimination?
²²

Her differences with Wilkins came to a head in April when, in a speech under NAACP auspices in Chicago, he suggested that Negroes were not wedded to the Democratic party. “Up here we can strike a blow in defense of our brothers in the South, if necessary by swapping the known devil for the suspected witch.” Some Negro papers interpreted this as a call to Negroes to desert the Democratic party if that was the only way to get around Sen. James O. Eastland of Mississippi, who, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, kept all civil rights legislation effectively bottled up in committee.

“I think you are being most unwise,” Mrs. Roosevelt wrote Wilkins.

You are losing the people who have done the most for you in the past few years. I agree that the teaming up of the reactionary Democrats with the reactionary Republicans is a very bad thing but if the Republicans win it is not going to change that and you will certainly have as much inaction with either President Eisenhower or Nixon or any other Republican candidate as you have had in the past four years.

She did not see how having Sen. William E. Jenner, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, become chairman would improve the prospect for civil rights legislation. She was angry. “I am unable to come to many meetings or spend the time to be an [NAACP] Board member,” her letter ended, “and so I am herewith tendering my resignation. I am telling you this because I am forwarding my resignation to Dr. Tobias.” Channing H. Tobias, a Negro leader with a long view, implored her not to resign, at least not before she had talked with Wilkins, who was out of town. “I am a registered Democrat and have voted for the party candidate consistently beginning with Alfred E. Smith,” Wilkins wrote her in a letter that was a model of dignity and firmness. But his concern was “first and last for civil rights. . . .My view is that the political parties have not hesitated to use the civil rights issue advantageously for themselves, and I see nothing wrong with our trying to use political developments in either party advantageously for our cause.” He asked her to reconsider her resignation. “I would consider it as a great personal loss, as well as an official one, if you should insist upon resigning.”
²³

She had her talk with Wilkins and was satisfied that in the future he would not make statements that seemed to be anti-Democratic and anti-Stevenson in their thrust. “He assures me that he will remember to make very clear his meaning in what he says and writes,” Mrs. Roosevelt notified Dr. Tobias, withdrawing her resignation.

In addition, he will try not to be tempted by the picturesque phrase into saying something that might excite the emotions
and actually might also be harmful. I feel, therefore, that with your help and close cooperation the Association will be nonpartisan and a little wiser in its approach to certain questions.
²⁴

After the California primary, in which he had scored so heavily in the Negro precincts, Stevenson asked Mrs. Roosevelt to embody her sensible and understanding views on civil rights in an article for
Colliers
or
Look
. Negroes, high and low, esteemed her, and he thought it would have an effect. She declined. She did better “talking to the Negro leaders. I am doing this at every opportunity, and I told Mr. Butler I will go down for a meeting and try to work on getting an agreed plank for the platform. Though I confess I think it very difficult!”
²⁵

She returned from Paul Butler’s meeting in Washington quite buoyed up. Although the draft plank would not meet all the demands of the Negro leadership, the two southerners on the committee had been quite reasonable. She was surprised by their acceptance of what she considered was

pretty good wording on both the planks on education and civil rights. It won’t be strong enough for Harriman, but I think it actually says all that needs to be said & would allow for any action one could take & still I think it won’t divide the party.
²⁶

Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., of the ADA got wind of what was going on and, as a militant advocate of pushing the Democratic party hard on the civil rights issue, suggested to Mrs. Roosevelt that the best formula for the plank would be to reaffirm the 1952 position “with the additional statement that the Supreme Court’s decision on school segregation is morally right and must be implemented with all deliberate speed by the executive and legislative branches of Government.”

She did not usually disagree with the ADA, of which she was honorary chairman, but now she did. “Dear Mr. Rauh”:

I have been working quite
sub rosa
and informally with some people on what might be acceptable to the South as well as the North. Neither one can have everything they want but if we can get the backing we want without mentioning the Supreme Court decision, we will be able to hold the South and hope for the backing we need to work with. I have worked out wording for the beginning of an education plank and the civil rights [plank] which is, of course, not all one would want but it is, on the whole, sufficiently good to give us the backing we want. Then, if we can get a candidate in the Democratic party who was willing to use the powers of the Presidency to do something, I think we will be all right.

I have no idea what Governor Stevenson would be willing to do but whatever he has said he will do, I know he will stick by. I am more interested in what we can present to him as ways in which we can get the law implemented.
²⁷

Her letter did not persuade Rauh. The ADA felt that the Democratic civil rights plank “must contain a provision endorsing the Supreme Court’s desegregation decisions as ones which are morally right and deserving of implementation by all branches of Government,” he replied. But in pressing for a strong plank, the organization wanted to be sure it would not embarrass her. There would be no embarrassment for her, she wrote on this letter. Mr. Stevenson would agree with the proposal on the Supreme Court, “but you won’t get it & the co-operation of the Southerners.” But Stevenson now veered toward the ADA position:

Mr. Stevenson came here for a couple of hours Thursday to discuss Civil Rights & he wants much more specifically said in the platform which I would love to see done but doubt if he can get by the Southerners.
²⁸

He wanted a “firm and clear statement of what we know is right,” Stevenson advised Butler, and enclosed a draft of what he thought should be said on civil rights, including the Supreme Court: