|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
Presidential Action for Civil Rights |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
Because the southern Democrats were a key part of the large Democratic majorities that controlled both the Senate and the House of Representatives during the New Deal period, Franklin D. Roosevelt had neither the inclination nor any reason to believe he would be successful at getting a civil rights bill through Congress during the 1930s. Roosevelt therefore adopted a policy that served as a working model for subsequent presidents of both political parties. He would use the executive powers of the presidency to further the interests of black Americans, doing those things which a president could do unilaterally without having to get legislative authorization from Congress.
Roosevelt used his executive powers of appointment to name large numbers of blacks to United States Government jobs. Not only did the number of black appointments increase, but so did the quality of the jobs which blacks were given.
Most important, Roosevelt bypassed Congress and, by executive order, established the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department. Although it started slowly at first, the Civil Rights Section began building a skilled bureaucracy of lawyers and other trained professionals to further the cause of black civil rights in the United States. For the first time since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, there was a definite place in the United States Government where blacks could go for legal and governmental help in the fight to win their civil rights.
In its early days the Civil Rights Section devoted itself to fighting for the right of blacks to vote in national elections and to opposing police brutality to blacks. Later on the Civil Rights Section became an ally of the NAACP in filing suits to bring about school integration and in lobbying Congress to pass civil rights laws.
In 1941 Franklin D. Roosevelt's efforts on behalf of African Americans encouraged black leaders to press for even more integration of the races. Six months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, as defense plants were gearing up for anticipated U.S. involvement in World War II, black leaders saw an opportunity to make substantial progress. A group of nationally prominent blacks, headed by A. Philip Randolphof the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, began to organize a mass march on Washington, D.C., to demand more and better jobs for blacks. As the number of anticipated marchers rose to over 100,000, President Roosevelt agreed to create a Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) and ban discrimination in defense plants if the so-called "March on Washington" was called off.
Roosevelt issued an executive order creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee, and the planned "March on Washington" never took place. Roosevelt's good judgement in using an executive order, rather than a law of Congress, to establish the FEPC was supported by subsequent events. In 1946 Congress abolished the Fair Employment Practices Committee, thereby wiping out some of the employment gains that had been made by blacks during the wartime period. The House of Representatives voted to create a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission in 1946, but the bill was rejected in the Senate. The House passed the Fair Employment Practices Commission bill a second time in 1950, but once again the proposal died in the Senate.
Following Franklin D. Roosevelt's death in the spring of 1945, Democratic president Harry S. Truman continued the use of executive action as the principal means of furthering black civil rights. When Congress refused to pass a Selective Service Act which would eliminate all racial discrimination in the United States armed forces, Truman in 1948 issued an executive order that integrated the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps and specifically banned "separate but equal" recruiting, training, and service.
Truman also appointed a presidential Committee on Civil Rights. The committee issued a lengthy report, To Secure These Rights, which presented factual data and gripping personal testimony on the denial of black civil rights in the South. The reaction of Congress to To Secure These Rights was not a civil rights bill but a number of speeches by southern Democrats condemning the report as factually untrue and an attempt by the U.S. Government to interfere in matters that should be left exclusively to the states.
By furthering black civil rights through executive orders, Roosevelt and Truman created a situation in which black Americans came to regard the presidency as responsive to their needs. Simultaneously the Congress, and particularly the Senate, came to be seen by blacks as the enemy of civil rights. Among segregationist southern whites, on the other hand, the Senate came to be regarded as the great protector of states' rights, and the presidency was seen from Dixie as an interfering force trying to overthrow southern institutions from afar.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Home
