No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Read online

  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, 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.

  The same week as the porters’ banquet, fifteen navy mess men aboard the U.S.S. Philadelphia had come to a determination to speak up against the intolerable conditions. Led by twenty-five-year-old Byron Johnson, who had joined the navy in 1937 on the promise he would be taught a trade, the fifteen sailors wrote an open letter to the Pittsburgh Courier. “Our main reason for writing,” the letter began, “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 . . . . We sincerely hope to discourage any other colored boys who might have planned to join the Navy and make the same mistake we did. All they would become is seagoing bell hops, chambermaids and dishwashers. We take it upon ourselves to write this letter regardless of any action the Navy authorities may take. We know it could not possibly surpass the mental cruelty inflicted upon us on this ship.” Signed Byron Johnson, Floyd Owens, Otto Robinson, Shannon Goodwin, et al.

  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.” “I am still 100 percent a loyal American,” Byron Johnson stated. “If necessary I’d gladly fight for my country. However, I don’t feel we 15 fellows have received a fair deal. Not given an opportunity to defend ourselves at any sort of a trial, we are kicked out of the Navy because we dared express our convictions to the Pittsburgh Courier—in a country where free speech is supposed to be every man’s privilege.”

  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 U.S.S. 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.” Signed Jim Pelk, L. Latimore, Raymond Brown. “I understand the plight of these colored sailors,” another mess man wrote, “for I am one myself, having quit college to join the Navy. You may publish my name if you feel it necessary to do so. That, of course, would probably mean that I would meet the same fate Byron Johnson and his friends met. But I am fanatical enough about it all to allow that to happen to me, if necessary.”

  Conditions in the Navy remained unrelievedly bleak, but the new conscription law provided a small ray of hope for the army. During the congressional debate, in response to public pressure about the use of Negro troops, language had been added to the bill, pledging to increase Negro participation in the army to a figure equivalent to the percentage of Negroes in the population, about 10 percent. “In the selection and training of men under this act,” the amendment further provided, “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.” Would the army ever deem large numbers of Negroes acceptable? Could lack of separate shelter and facilities for Negroes preclude their induction?

  To obtain answers to these questions, Randolph and White had requested a meeting with the president in early September. Just before she was to speak to the porters, Eleanor learned that the president’s secretaries Early and Watson had failed to respond to the request. Making a note to herself to see what she could do, Eleanor walked to the podium. She delivered a passionate pledge to the Negro audience to give her “faith, cooperation and energy” in order to make America a better place, a place where everyone, Negro and white, could live in equality and opportunity. When she finished, her face expressing genuine affection and concern, she received a standing ovation.

  Later that evening, from her apartment in Greenwich Village, Eleanor dictated a note to her husband, telling him she had just heard that no conference was ever held on the subject of “how the colored people can participate” in the armed forces. “There is a growing feeling amongst the colored people . . . [that] they should be allowed to participate in any training that is going on, in the aviation, army, navy . . . . I would suggest that a conference be held with the attitude of the gentlemen: these are our difficulties, how do you suggest that we make a beginning to change the situation? There is no use of going into a conference unless they have the intention of doing something. This is going to be very bad politically besides being intrinsically wrong and I think you should ask that a meeting be held.”

  When Eleanor returned to Washington two days later, she bypassed Early and Watson and confronted the president directly. “She has already spoken to the President,” Early informed Watson; “a meeting is to be arranged for next week,” with the secretaries of war and navy; Arnold Hill, former secretary of the Urban League; and Walter White and Philip Randolph, Negro leaders. Unable to contain his scorn, Early went on to tell Watson that Mrs. Roosevelt would telegraph the addresses of Hill and Randolph, though the address of Walter White, because he came so frequently to visit Mrs. Roosevelt, was “altogether too well known to [White House usher] Rudolph Forster and others here about.”

  The president’s meeting with the three civil-rights leaders took place at twelve-thirty on Friday, September 27. Navy Secretary Frank Knox and Assistant Secretary of War Robert Patterson were also present. Randolph opened the discussion. “The Negro people . . . feel they are not wanted in the armed forces of the country. They feel they have earned their right to participate in every phase of the government by virtue of their record in past wars since the Revolution, [but] they are feeling . . . they are not wanted now.”

  The president responded by referring to the War Department’s recent pledge to recruit and place Negroes in all branches of the armed forces. “Of course,” he emphasized, “the main point to get across is . . . that we are not [as we did] in the World War, confining the Negro to the non combat services. We’re putting them right in, proportionately, into the combat services . . . . Which is something.”
r />   “We feel that is fine,” Randolph countered, but only a beginning. Earlier that morning, the three Negro leaders had met in the NAACP office to draw up a memo outlining the steps that would have to be taken to integrate Negroes into the defense program. These actions included selecting officers for army units regardless of race, integrating specialized personnel such as Negro doctors and dentists into the services, broadening opportunities for Negroes in the navy beyond menial services, appointing Negroes to local selective-service boards, designating centers where Negroes could be trained for work in aviation, and appointing Negro civilians as assistants to the secretaries of the navy and war.

  Although there might be problems in putting white and Negro soldiers together in Southern regiments, the Negro leaders admitted, there was no reason to anticipate insurmountable difficulties in the North. Roosevelt nodded his head in agreement and suggested backing into the formation of mixed units by mixing up replacements. “The thing is we’ve got to work into this,” the president said. “Now, suppose you have a Negro regiment . . . here, and right over here on my right in line, would be a white regiment . . . . Now what happens after a while, in case of war? Those people get shifted from one to the other. The thing gets sort of backed into.”

  Encouraged by the president’s open-mindedness about the army, Randolph turned to Knox and asked about the prospects for integrating the navy. The secretary spoke bluntly, suggesting that the problem in the navy was almost insoluble. “We have a factor in the Navy that is not so in the Army, and that is that these men live aboard ship. And in our history we don’t take Negroes into a ship’s company.”

  “If you could have a Northern ship and a Southern ship it would be different,” Roosevelt laughingly observed, “but you can’t do that.” He then went on to suggest putting Negro bands on white ships to accustom white sailors to the presence of Negroes on ships.

  At the conclusion of the meeting, the president promised to confer with Cabinet officers and other government officials about the problem and then to talk with the civil-rights leaders again. Vastly encouraged, the Negro leaders awaited further word from the president. Beneath the cordiality of the meeting, however, the armed forces remained unyielding in their opposition to the idea of integration. At this crucial moment in America’s history, General Marshall argued, there is no time “for critical experiments which would have a highly destructive effect on morale.” Secretary Knox agreed, telling Roosevelt that, if he were asked to desegregate the navy at the same time that he was supposed to create a two-ocean navy, he would have to resign. In his diary that evening, Stimson deplored the strain a “rambunctious” president was putting on the War Department by attempting “to satisfy the Negro politicians who are trying to get the Army committed to colored officers and various other things which they ought not to do.”

  “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 a 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 commissioned 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.”

  Stimson’s disparaging opinion of the performance of colored troops in previous wars mirrored the official conclusions of the Army War College Report on “Negro Manpower” issued in 1925. “In the process of evolution,” the report observed, “the American negro has not progressed as far as other sub species of the human family . . . . The cranial cavity of the negro is smaller than whites . . . . The psychology of the negro, based on heredity derived from mediocre African ancestors, cultivated by generations of slavery, is one from which we cannot expect to draw leadership material . . . . In general the negro is jolly, docile, tractable, and lively but with harsh or unkind treatment can become stubborn, sullen and unruly. In physical courage [he] falls well back of whites . . . . He is most susceptible to ‘Crowd Psychology.’ He cannot control himself in fear of danger . . . . He is a rank coward in the dark.”

  In World War I, the report went on, the Negro officer was a failure in combat. “Negro troops are efficient and dependable only so long as led by capable white officers. Under Negro officers they have displayed entire inaptitude for modern battle. Their natural racial characteristics, lack of initiative and tendency to become panic stricken, can only be overcome when they have confidence in their leaders.”

  Negroes saw a different reality. Proud of the many awards garnered by the few colored regiments that actually did see combat in World War I, Negroes laid the blame on the army for improperly training and equipping the colored troops. “Soldiers who were asked to submit like lambs to segregated training facilities,” black opinion held, “could not be expected to perform like lions on the battlefield.” If Negroes were given half a chance, civil-rights leaders maintained, their performance would bring glory to both their race and their country.

  For seven days, Randolph and White anxiously awaited an affirmative response from the White House, but nothing came. When follow-up telegrams and telephone calls were not returned, White turned in despair to Eleanor, explaining that not getting a reply from the White House put him in a most difficult position with his people. “We did not want to violate the unwritten rule about revealing what had taken place in the conference with the President until the White House had given us authority to do so.” With his note to Eleanor, White enclosed the draft of a statement to be issued jointly by the White House and the civil-rights leaders, describing the positive nature of the discussions on September 27. Eleanor promised to get the draft statement into the hands of the proper people, eliciting appreciation from White for her “usual prompt and vigorous action.”

  Eleanor’s intervention prodded the War Department into action, but the resulting statement was not what Eleanor and the civil-rights leaders wanted to hear. Measured against the heightened expectations of the civil-rights leaders, the actual concessions that were granted—the promise that Negro units would be formed in each major branch of the service and the announcement of plans for training Negroes in aviation—seemed minor indeed. Beyond this the War Department would not go, flatly refusing to consider the possibility that Negro officers could lead white troops or that selected Northern regiments could be integrated. “The policy of the War Department,” the statement concluded, “is not to intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel in the same regimental organizations. This policy has been 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.”

  The policy statement was disappointing enough in itself, but disappointment turned to fury when, in presenting it to the press, Steve Early gave the false impression that the three Negro leaders had agreed with the wording and countenanced the policy of segregation. This put the three men in an impossible situation; their seeming acquiescence was condemned as betrayal by their own groups. Under the circumstances, they had no choice but to strike back. In a joint public statement of their own, they vigorously repudiated the White House press release as trickery and characterized Roosevelt’s official approval of the policy as “a stab in the back of democracy . . . a blow at the patriotism of twelve million Negro citizens.” Of all the shabby dealings, The Crisis commented, “none is more shameful or indefensible than the refusal to give Negroes a fair chance in the armed forces.”

  “I am sorry we were forced to take this step,” Walter White explained
to Eleanor in a personal note. “But the White House announcement left no other alternative.” Saddened by the turn of events, Eleanor appealed to her husband to rectify the situation. Roosevelt, appreciating the predicament of the Negro leaders, agreed to issue a statement of his own, deeply regretting the misinterpretation of the earlier statement which had led to the faulty assumption that the Negro leaders had approved a policy of segregation. The president reassured the Negro community that, despite the War Department’s affirmation of the status quo regarding the use of Negro officers in current units, there was “no fixed policy” regarding future units. In approving the statement as written, the president explained, he was simply saying that, “at this time and this time only,” in the present emergency, “we dare not confuse the issue of prompt preparedness with a new social experiment, however important and desirable it may be.”

  “Rest assured,” Roosevelt told White in a separate letter, “further developments of policy will be forthcoming to ensure fair treatment on a nondiscriminatory basis.” Though White and Randolph found Roosevelt’s response most reassuring and encouraging, the Negro press continued to pound away at the White House. “We are inexpressibly shocked,” the Crisis editorialized, “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.” In Harlem, thousands of Negroes attended a mass meeting to protest the War Department policy. The White House was besieged with angry letters. “The Negro situation has become more difficult,” White House aide Jim Rowe warned the president in the weeks before the election. “Never before has the power of the Negro vote loomed so portentous,” the Pittsburgh Courier observed, reporting a tremendous growth of pro-Willkie sentiment among Negroes. “It looks as though they are all going against him,” Harry Hopkins confided to Farm Security Administrator Will Alexander; “tell me what to do.”