If FDR absolutely wanted, could he have killed or substantially diminished segregation?

[Barry Bull]

Ok this is irrelevant

The thread assumes that FDR cares about civil rights. If he did, could he have done something significant about it or if he had tried would he have been voted out and his successor repealed them.

The answer is yes. A president doesn't have absolute power but it doesn't mean he can't act

Local laws are local and beyond him. On federal matters he had some discretion

He could have desegregated the military. It wouldn't have been the political disaster you suggest

The Navy had been integrated just twenty years earlier and the army was small and made of volunteers.

Sure, some wouldn't have liked it but it would appeal to northern blacks.

In any event, FDR won reelection by 12 million votes. Strom Thirmond got less than 2 million He could have still easily won

The term "done" in such discussion usually mean a successful result, otherwise it is "tried".

What's your source of "It wouldn't have been the political disaster you suggest", esp. when the army can be said to be a social club of whites?

 

[elkarlo]

I have always felt that the horrors of the Nazis racial policies made people realized that a lot of the same ideas was being used to discriminate against blacks. That realization made it easier for the presidents after FDR to take the steps that they took.

Yeah wwii made it hard to be blatantly racist. You still could be, but it wasn't as socially acceptable . Before wwii it's a no go, change wise

 

[Aphrodite]

The term "done" in such discussion usually mean a successful result, otherwise it is "tried".

What's your source of "It wouldn't have been the political disaster you suggest", esp. when the army can be said to be a social club of whites?

1) As noted, FDR won reelection in 1932 by 12,000,000 votes. Strom Thurmond would win less than 2,000,000 on the racist platform so FDR had a huge margin of error

2) Northern blacks were the essential voting block of the Republican Party at the time. Anything to weaken the GOPs grip on t he black vote would have been politically beneficial

3) Many of the acts of segregation were quite new, especially at the Federal level. Woodrow Wilson was the leading racist of the time and enacted many things (segregating the Navy and toilets in Federal buildings for example). Repealing them wouldn't have had the dire consequences at the polls many predict

4) the US army number 139,000 men in 1939 and was all volunteer before Roosevelt instituted the draft. So it was small and if you didn't want to be around blacks, you just didn't have to join

What's the basis for thinking it would have killed him politically? In 1941, before the war, he issued an executive order ending discrimination in federal hiring. What had changed other than he needed northern black votes by then?

What's the basis for thinking FDR gave a damn about civil rights or blacks for that matter?

 

[Ricardolindo]

When the USA finally did away with segregation (at least de jure) starting with Truman in 1948 and ending with civil rights legislation in the 60s, there was an increasing base of support for doing this. In the 1930s, even in the "liberal" areas there was tremendous "racial" discrimination of all sorts even by those who thought the worst excesses in the south like lynching were distasteful. Several suburbs around New York City, as an example, had entire towns where Jews and orientals, as well as blacks were not allowed to buy or rent property and such discrimination was open in the city itself. Unemployed white workers outside the south would have been "unhappy" with the prospect of blacks competing on a level ground for the limited jobs.

During the war, the need to achieve victory allowed FDR to make some progress on racial issues - opposing obviously practical changes put you in the position of being against "our fighting men". After WWII the Nazi crimes made some racial thought untenable in public. With the burden of the Great Depression in the 30s, and without the evidence of Nazi race based crimes that came out after the war the ability of FDR to make sweeping changes in Jim Crow were simply not there. (1)

(1) It should be noted that the American public shrugged off pretty much everything the Nazis did between 1933 and 1939, which was mostly in the open. The Nuremburg racial laws, mass firings of Jews from universities and civil service, the yellow star etc was all well known and publicized. To the extent the average (non-Jewish) Americans thought about it it was mostly "it's distasteful but not my concern" or often "well, the Jews have too much power/influence and they had it coming".

To be fair, the Soviets were probably more anti-Semitic than the Americans, were, read the Reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...any_troops_who_liberated_concentration_camps/.

 

[jerseyguy]

One of the more uncomfortable patterns in history is the dependency of major egalitarian reforms on massive, bloody wars happening first. It might be a corollary to the "war is the health of the state" idea. Women's suffrage came in the aftermath of WW1, and Civil Rights were fundamentally a consequence of WW2. There's a similar pattern in Europe with expansion of the franchise after the carnage of WW1.

I don't think civil rights could've happened by the '60s without a brutal meat grinder of a conflict like WW2.

 

[Mikestone8]

It should be noted that the American public shrugged off pretty much everything the Nazis did between 1933 and 1939, which was mostly in the open. The Nuremburg racial laws, mass firings of Jews from universities and civil service, the yellow star etc was all well known and publicized. To the extent the average (non-Jewish) Americans thought about it it was mostly "it's distasteful but not my concern" or often "well, the Jews have too much power/influence and they had it coming".

And it didn't end at once even in 1945. The Gregory Peck film Gentleman's Agreement vividly portrays what American Jews still had to put up with even at mid-century.

I also remember another film of similar vintage, in which the central character's daughter is taken out to dinner by her (Jewish) boy-friend, only for him to be publicly humiliated because the restaurant is "restricted". Iirc the boy commits suicide. Wish I could remember the title.

 

[Ricardolindo]

And it didn't end at once even in 1945. The Gregory Peck film Gentleman's Agreement vividly portrays what American Jews still had to put up with even at mid-century.

I also remember another film of similar vintage, in which the central character's daughter is taken out to dinner by her (Jewish) boy-friend, only for him to be publicly humiliated because the restaurant is "restricted". Iirc the boy commits suicide. Wish I could remember the title.

That movie was restricted to upper middle class experience. Also, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews, the German Jews were in a better position in New York than the Eastern European Jews were.

 

[sloreck]

@Ricardolindo : "better position" meant more assimilated (having been present as a group in the USA longer), less obviously "Jewish" and as a group better off financially than the Jews of the Eastern European migration who came 1880s-pre-WWI. All of the quotas in university admissions, restrictions on housing, restaurants, clubs, limits in hiring still applied with equal force to them. No matter what if you were Jewish in one of the large urban centers with a significant/large Jewish population like NYC, Philadelphia, Boston, etc you could avoid some of the worst discrimination simply by staying in your "community" which was large enough to have your own amenities. Amenities like the YMHA versus the YMCA, Jewish social and country clubs and so forth.

Outside of Jewish "enclaves" things could be much worse ranging from ignorance ("Jews have horns") to viciousness. In the south many of the sundown towns had signs that excluded Jews as well as blacks from being in the town after dark. The former existed in to the 1970s (and much later) and the latter in to the 1960s (until civil rights laws made the signs come down), both to my personal knowledge.

 

[Ricardolindo]

@Ricardolindo : "better position" meant more assimilated (having been present as a group in the USA longer), less obviously "Jewish" and as a group better off financially than the Jews of the Eastern European migration who came 1880s-pre-WWI. All of the quotas in university admissions, restrictions on housing, restaurants, clubs, limits in hiring still applied with equal force to them. No matter what if you were Jewish in one of the large urban centers with a significant/large Jewish population like NYC, Philadelphia, Boston, etc you could avoid some of the worst discrimination simply by staying in your "community" which was large enough to have your own amenities. Amenities like the YMHA versus the YMCA, Jewish social and country clubs and so forth.

Outside of Jewish "enclaves" things could be much worse ranging from ignorance ("Jews have horns") to viciousness. In the south many of the sundown towns had signs that excluded Jews as well as blacks from being in the town after dark. The former existed in to the 1970s (and much later) and the latter in to the 1960s (until civil rights laws made the signs come down), both to my personal knowledge.

Ok but many segregationists would not support a genocide and it was better to be a Jew in the USA than in the USSR.

 

[sloreck]

Basically it was better to be a Jew in the USA than elsewhere in the world, if for no other reason that the USA was an immigrant society and also the Constitutional freedom of religion/separation of church and state and "no religious test" for office. IMHO, other than Israel (which has its own issues) this remains the case. Antisemitism never went away in the USA, in the wake of the Holocaust and the general civil rights movement it decreased and became much less socially acceptable, sadly the pendulum is swinging back the other way.

 

[Ricardolindo]

Basically it was better to be a Jew in the USA than elsewhere in the world, if for no other reason that the USA was an immigrant society and also the Constitutional freedom of religion/separation of church and state and "no religious test" for office. IMHO, other than Israel (which has its own issues) this remains the case. Antisemitism never went away in the USA, in the wake of the Holocaust and the general civil rights movement it decreased and became much less socially acceptable, sadly the pendulum is swinging back the other way.

I have read, that, in the late 19th Century and in the early 20th century, much of Western and Central Europe was good for Jews. As for the "swinging back the other way" thing, should we really consider some extremists to be representative of the general population?

 

[sloreck]

This is a complex issue...and I won't say more simply because it is veering in to contemporary politics. Let me say remember that an iceberg is mostly underwater.

 

[Wendell]

He absolutely could have had he wanted to do so.

 

[SsgtC]

Women's suffrage came in the aftermath of WW1

Woman's suffrage was gaining momentum well before that however. Theodore Roosevelt made it part of his platform in the 1912 election to grant the vote to women. WWI arguably slowed the expansion of the franchise to women.

 

[Ricardolindo]

He absolutely could have had he wanted to do so.

I'm not sure, he couldn't even support something as popular as an anti-lynching bill, because he needed Southern Democratic support.

 

[Sam R.]

Wars make states vulnerable to social revolution. War is the illness of the state. Concessions are granted or required to maintain the existence of the state or of capitalist relations inside or outside the market (consider western communist parties’ anti strike position from mid 1941).

 

[Ricardolindo]

To clarify some of my earlier comments, and for people not to think, that, I am underestimating or apologizing anti-semitism in the USA, truth is anti-semitism was a big problem in the USA but to use it as a whataboutism for Nazi Germany is nonsense, as it never reached such levels.

 

[sloreck]

Antisemitism in the USA was not anywhere near Germany, or many other places. The point in this context is that the level of racism in the USA in the 30s and 40s was pretty high and widespread. Even outside the south the support for FDR ending segregation would have been inadequate - basically the Congress would have needed to pass such laws, as it eventually did in conjunction with Supreme Court decisions. FDR simply did not have the political support/capital to do so. The most he could have done would have to end aspects of Jim Crow/segregation in the federal services (like the military and civil service). As an example, inside a federal building even in the deep south segregated toilets, drinking fountains, etc could have been ended as well as segregated anything else, but outside that building...

In spite of current thinking on some parts, the President is not the Emperor. Even if FDR wanted to do away with Jum Crow 100%, and it is not certain he did, absent support from Congress and the courts there was only so much he could do and it would have affected other political plans.