Lecture 12 Notes

March on Washington (1941)

"The economic situation of Negroes is pathological." - Gunnar Myrdal

The New Deal and Blacks

• The New Deal's goal was to look beyond the economic desolation and hope to find more than temporary measures to relieve mass suffering.
• FDR created Social Security and assured workers they could band together in industrial unions.  He wanted to display that the leading democracy could fashion an alternative to the appeal of Soviets and dictatorship.
• On the face, and as is widely remembered, Roosevelt’s policies of the Great Depression were a-racial.  They were intended to alleviate the suffering of the impoverished and those that were old or infirmed.  In reality, however, the policies had racial implications, if not in the spirit of the policies, then in the implementation.
• One explanation for the lapses may be found in the way Congress is constructed.  Southern legislators, almost all of them Democrats, held sway in Congress because of the long tenure of many of their members.  The South was essentially a one party area.  They did not face significant challenge from Republicans, and so Southern Democrats had tremendous power.
• Ira Katznelson argues that southern representatives in Congress increased inequality during the period.  The modern middle class was formed during the period, and blacks were left out of the formation.
• Social Security left out maids and farm workers.  (2/5 of all black women worked outside of the home.  85% of them worked in agricultural or domestic work.)  Hiring black maids was nearly universal among middle-class and upper-class whites in the South.  In no southern state were more than 15% of servants white.  Even some 20% of white families with income under $1000 per year employed maids during the Depression.  Working up to 70 hours a week and rarely earning more than $5 per week, this was the most exploited group of workers in the country, and was disprportionately black.
• The federal government provided funds, even disaster relief, to county extension agents, who in turn doled out the relief.  Obviously, you can see the hole in the plan, as county agents did not provide adequate funding to African American farmers.
• In the 1930s farm labor still dominated the economy of the south.  50% of all agricultural workers in the country were from the South in 1940.
• The system that I have described allowed for the retention of the debt, coercion, and exploitation that tied African Americans to the land of others.
• People were not fully prepared for the federal government’s role as the defender of constitutional rights.  Such an idea allowed federal entry into areas which had heretofore been off limits.  The South in particular didn’t go along with an increased federal role.  In particular, southerners and northerners alike did not appreciate the federal government’s role in private affairs like housing and jobs.

Asa Phillip Randolph and the Mythic March on Washington

• As the country was mobilizing for war, Asa thought it the opportune time to push for increased African American rights.
• His goals were to end segregation in the Armed Forces, and to end segregation in government agencies and all defense plants which received contracts from the federal government.
• He held massive meetings in union halls and major athletic facilities like the Polo Grounds and Soldiers’ Field.
• Note that Randolph, like many other African American protesters, was mostly concerned about jobs and access to jobs.  They were not asking for government subsidies or any other form of largess.  But the reliance on the federal government to provide access to jobs has some unforeseen negative consequences.
• Randolph proposed a March on Washington for the summer of 1941.  It was to be an all black march with 100,000 people, and was to consist primarily of workers.
• Roosevelt called him to D.C. to urge him to stop agitating.  FDR said that America's foreign image was hurt by domestic protests.
• The deal they reached was Executive Order 8802, which ended discrimination in government agencies and defense industry plants.
• In 1941, FDR established the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) within the Office of Production Management.  It was created to promote the fullest employment of all available persons and to eliminate discriminatory employment practices.  President Truman advocated a permanent peacetime FEPC, but the Senate terminated the program in 1946.
• Some blacks, like Bayard Rustin, thought that Randolph had given up too much.  The agreement only covered the duration of the war.   What about peacetime?  What about having an agreement with the power to punish?  Walter White called the whole thing a bluff.  He didn’t think Asa could get 2000 let along 25,000 to go to Washington.  But it was Rustin’s critique of Randolph that was most prophetic.

The Limitiations of Fair Employment

• Take for example the Kaiser Shipbuilding company located in Richmond, California (just across the Bay from San Francisco).  In 1940, there were 270 blacks living in Richmond out of a population of 23,642.  Most people, black and white, reported a reasonably comfortable coexistence between the races -- integrated schools, relatively integrated housing, etc.  In 1943, there were 5,673 blacks out of a population of 90,000.  In just three years, the population had grown from a few hundred blacks to a few thousand.  Most blacks worked for Kaiser, but because of racist labor union practices most blacks were relegated to the lowest paying jobs in the country.
• Companies like Kaiser were desparate for employees, sending labor agents sent around the country, etc.  Despite the need for workers, blacks could not find jobs commensurate with their skill and training.  William McKinney was told by union officials, “we don’t have no openings no where in the United States for Negro carpenters.”  He was told to look in “Honolulu or South America.”
• The steamfitters, machinists, boilermakers, and painters unions all followed exclusionary and discriminatory practices.
• Kaiser signed a closed shop agreement with the Boilermakers giving them the power to hire, promote, and set work rules.  Kaiser management was able to recruit and hire only when the union was “unable to furnish needed workers.”  When blacks fought for entry to the union, and the demand for production exceeded union capabilities to meet, only then did the unions relax their exclusionary policy.  Yet instead of allowing blacks into their unions, they created auxiliary unions, which gave blacks the right to work without the power and protection that came from regular union membership.
• Companies were in an uncomfortable position.  On the one hand, they were supposed to follow Executive Order 8802, which held that they should hire without regard to race.  On the other hand, they were held hostage by white controlled unions who did not want to cheapen their status by working with blacks.  In the end, too many companies ceded control of hiring and personnel to the unions.
• It was not until July 1945 when the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision (James v. Marinship) that called for the dismantling of auxiliaries, that racial equality on the job gained a real foothold.
• The example of Kaiser is most telling.  Here was a community that literally developed during the war.  The overall population quadrupled.  Many whites used the opportunity to get a foothold in the middle class through labor union membership and hard work.  But at the same time, blacks who moved along similar migratory streams were denied the opportunity for economic advance.
• Some have argued that Randolph’s stance that the March on Washington be comprised of blacks only led to his lessened importance.  Rubbish.  He was a Fellowship of Reconciliation member and believed in interracialism, particularly within the unions.  Yet he did not appreciate the level to which whites, esp. working class whites, were complicit with the system of discrimination.  Randolph saw unions as a vehicle for change, and on the national level he was right.  Most national unions had planks against segregation.  However, they could or would not enforce their own regulations among their rank and file.
• Randolph’s public image suffered primarily because he never stopped recognizing class differences, even among the black community.  Where other organizations were routinely painting all problems as black vs. white, Randolph argued there were two problems:  racism and a class-based society.  That rights were circumscribed for blacks and poor folk just made most blacks doubly victimized.
• Randolph continued to be a strong voice in labor circles until the early 1960s; he sat on the Board of Directors of the CIO.