Proposed Article for Negro Digest

[July?] 1948

The title of your article presupposes that the majority of our Negro citizens have become Democrats. I question very much whether that is so. I think the great majority of our Negro citizens have supported the Democratic Party in the course of the last several years because they felt that Party was offering them, on the whole, a square deal and because it was in power, could actually translate into action the things which it advocated.

In New York State it is true that Governor Dewey, a Republican, put on the statute books an F.E.P.C. law but little was done to make this law show results.³

I feel, however, that the natural attitude of our colored citizens who feel that in many ways their rights have been ignored, is not one of hard and fast party affiliation, but that they belong to the big group of independent voters who throw their weight wherever they feel lies the greatest opportunity for achieving the results they desire.

Judged by that standard, it seems to me that the average Negro citizen would probably do as well to remain in the Democratic fold. As I look back over the legislation passed during the last few years, I find that practically all the progressive legislation has been passed during Democratic administrations. The underprivileged groups benefit more from progressive legislation than do the privileged groups. That is one of the first and most obvious reasons for their remaining faithful to the Democratic Party.

No group in this country, of course, votes in a block and there will be, as there always have been, a great many Republicans among this group, a great many Wallace followers, but by and large, the gains of the Negro people in the last sixteen years, have been very great and they have been accomplished under Democratic leadership which believes in progressive measures. The people themselves must decide to keep a liberal party in power and prod them into remaining liberal. It would be wise for our Negro citizens to weigh where their influence can count the most.

                                       Eleanor Roosevelt.

TStmt AERP, FDRL

1. In 1943, ER submitted an essay to Negro Digest that ran under the title, "If I Were a Negro," a recurring guest column in which non-African American writers offered their meditations on this topic. In her submission, ER wrote:

If I were a Negro today, I think I would have moments of great bitterness. It would be hard for me to sustain my faith in democracy and to build up a sense of goodwill toward men of other races …

… I would still feel that I ought to participate to the full in this war. When the United Nations win, certain things will be accepted as a result of principles which have been enunciated by the leaders of the United Nations, which never before have been part of the beliefs and practices of the greater part of the world ("If I Were a Negro: Freedom: Promise or Fact," Negro Digest, October 1943, 8-9).

2. The only election-related article the Negro Digest published that year was John Temple Graves's October piece entitled "Will the South Ever Go Republican?" Graves's article focused more on the question of whether white Southern voters would switch parties rather than on the party loyalty of African Americans; nothing on that topic appeared in the magazine in the fall of 1948 in lieu of ER's submission (Ben Burns to ER, 8 July 1948, AERP; ER to Ben Burns, 17 July 1948, AERP; Curtis Lawrence, "Ben Burns, First Ebony Editor," Chicago Sun-Times, 2 February 2000, 71; John Temple Graves, "Will the South Ever Go Republican?" Negro Digest, October 1948, 46-48).

3. In his solicitation to ER, Burns suggested she consider the matter of candidate Thomas Dewey's potential "attractive allure" for black voters because of "his record on the state FEPC in New York." On Dewey's record on the Fair Employment Practices Commission, see n7 Document 16 and n17 Document 143 (Ben Burns to ER, 8 July 1948, AERP).

Du Bois Meets with ER

With the heightening of international tensions in 1947, Walter White and W. E. B. Du Bois disagreed over how to proceed with publicizing discriminatory practices in the United States. White sympathized with ER and saw in her a valuable ally. When ER told him that she would have publicly endorsed the NAACP's petition had it not been for the propaganda value her support would have provided the Soviets, White accepted her argument. Du Bois, on the other hand, refused to accept that tensions between the United States and USSR should prevent the NAACP from addressing the problem of racial discrimination in the United States.¹ In several letters to Warren Austin in 1947 and 1948, Du Bois urged the delegate to do all within his power to place the NAACP's petition on the General Assembly's agenda. Aware of the reasons for the State Department's reluctance to discuss US race problems in the General Assembly, February 4, 1948, Du Bois wrote in his final letter to Austin:

It would be a matter of fine and forward-looking statesmanship if the United States would itself voluntarily bring this matter forward to be discussed before the nations, and attest that while our democracy is not perfect, we are perfectly willing to acknowledge our faults and to bring the matter before the world, with the promise and hope that this unfortunate condition will be corrected within the near future.²

After the department sat on the Du Bois letter for months, Richard S. Winslow, the Secretary-General of the US Mission to the UN, suggested on May 25 that, rather than write another reply to Du Bois, ER arrange a personal meeting with him. "In view of Ambassador Austin's very great preoccupation with crucial Security Council affairs at this time and because of Mrs. Roosevelt's unexcelled qualifications for handling this particular problem," reasoned Winslow, "it would be deeply appreciated by Ambassador Austin if Mrs. Roosevelt would undertake to handle this matter personally with Dr. DuBois."³

Although she expressed concern that the department had taken so long to reply to Du Bois's February 4 letter, ER agreed to meet with the NAACP representative to discuss the State Department's position on the NAACP's petition. Du Bois's recollection of that discussion, which he prepared for White and copied to ER, appears below.