
Black History Month (Part 1): President Franklin Roosevelt

We often hear that America needs a dialogue on race. Unfortunately, those who cite that need are more interested in a monologue than a dialogue. They are more interested in maintaining the widespread erroneous politically biased view than a full examination of the Black experience in America – historically and currently.
The common understanding of Black history is founded on misinformation and willful disinformation. The greatest misinformation centers on the relative roles of the Democratic and Republican parties in pursuing civil rights for Black Americans.
The history of racism in America is so skewed by politics that I was motivated to author a book to set the record straight. It is titled “Who Put Blacks in That PLACE? The long said history of the Democratic Party’s oppression of Black Americans … to this day.”
Throughout February, I will draw from the book to bring forward facts that refute the common beliefs—starting with the 1930s.
President Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt is often believed to have been a proponent of civil rights – especially by many Black Americans. In his book, “Frederick Douglass Republicans: The Movement to Re-ignite America’s Passion for Liberty,” Black author K. Carl Smith wrote that FDR’s picture hung in a place of honor in his childhood home along with President Kennedy and Jesus. In fact, Roosevelt was a racist and White supremacist.
As an aide in the Department of the Navy, FDR implemented President Wilson’s segregation of the military and the Executive Branch of government. As President, Roosevelt resisted all efforts by Black organizations, and such military leaders as General Dwight Eisenhower, to integrate the military.
Here are excerpts from my book dealing with our 32nd President.
“… attempt(s) to polish FDR’s image ignores the reality of FDR’s longstanding and manifest belief in White supremacy. In the twelve-plus years Roosevelt resided in the White House, the Democratic Party continued its tradition as the nation’s leading vehicle of institutional racism.
FDR proposed no civil rights legislation in his twelve years in office and refused to support anti-lynching legislation repeatedly introduced by congressional Republicans. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs were designed to provide financial assistance to Whites only and to bar Blacks from union jobs. Virtually every New Deal was designed to replace Black workers with White workers.” (There will be more about the racism of the New Deal programs in a future commentary).
Warm Springs, Georgia
Roosevelt died at a Warm Spring, Georgie Whites only spa her frequented often. The exclusion of Blacks was not due to the racist climate in Georgia at the time. Most folks do not know that Roosevelt owned it. It was his policy. In addition to the racism, FDR’s use of the the spa was the source of controversy and scandal. From the book:
“There was no better example of FDR’s personal racism than the spa he frequented at Warm Springs, Georgia. Many believe he was merely a patron of the spa for medical reasons. He was more than that.
In 1926, Roosevelt purchased the small local mineral water spring resort. It was alleged that the waters were beneficial for polio victims. Roosevelt was diagnosed with poliomyelitis in 1921 at age thirty-nine. (Modern medical professionals believe it was a misdiagnosed case of Guillain–Barré syndrome.)
Under his ownership, Roosevelt expanded the spa to be a nationally famous health resort for the rich and famous. He created the Warm Springs Foundation as a tax-free charity to operate the spa. He served as president of the foundation, its most prominent member and the magnet for America’s elite visiting the spa. They would welcome the opportunity to support Roosevelt’s favorite private charity with personal visits and large financial contributions—and on occasion enjoy his company. He hosted foreign dignitaries there.
In encouraging donations and the use of the facilities, Roosevelt apparently made false claims about the healing effect the waters had on his body. The National Park Service website promoting the spa claimed that Roosevelt experienced at least a partial cure from bathing in the waters of Warm Springs:
Roosevelt arrived at the resort on October 3, 1924, hoping to find a cure. The next day, he began swimming and immediately felt an improvement. For the first time in three years, he was able to move his right leg.
FDR’s medical records indicated no such improvements in his condition or that of anyone else. The American Journal of Public Health featured an article in 2007 by Naomi Rogers entitled “Race and Politics of Polio.” It stated:
The president was also said to have deceived the American people about the effects of polio on his own body. According to a whispering campaign, polio had left him addicted to drugs, so erratic that he required a strait jacket, and was incontinent, sexually impotent and helplessly crippled.
While the funds were claimed to create an endowment for the foundation, the funds were often redirected to other civic and political purposes, and allegedly to Roosevelt himself. One of the major fundraising events was the president’s annual birthday celebration. Rogers writes:
At first the funds were intended to create a permanent endowment for Warm Springs. But gradually the Birthday Ball organizers redirected the money to the local communities that had raised it. The significance of this philanthropic policy shift away from Warm Springs was not widely appreciated by the American public.
Roosevelt was the main attraction at his annual Birthday Ball. America’s elite were solicited for contributions. This including more than $100,000 donated by prominent Black Americans—an incredible amount of money during the Depression.
What has been lost in most modern histories of Roosevelt is that his wholly owned and operated spa was for Whites only. He even rejected a suggestion for a segregated facility on the grounds for Negro patients.
In southern racist tradition, however, the low-paid work staff was approximately half Negro. They served as maids, janitors, and aides to lift patients in and out of baths. The White staff was housed in the main building or in nearby private cottages. Black workers lived in more distant and less luxurious dormitories—a tradition that goes back to slavery.
FDR’s personal refusal to allow Black children to use the spa, and revelations of the use of donated funds, created a growing embarrassment on the verge of scandal. In 1941, with help of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, known popularly as the March of Dimes, Tuskegee Institute opened a heath facility for Black polio victims. The Tuskegee facility was necessitated because of Roosevelt’s personal decision to ban Black children from Warm Springs. With only thirty-six beds, the Tuskegee facility was woefully inadequate to the need. Prominent physician W. Montague Cobb would later describe the Tuskegee facility as a ‘Negro medical ghetto.’
Roosevelt praised the Institute for its establishment of the special heath center for Black victims of polio, giving him the appearance of concern for the Negro population while taking the pressure off integrating his own facility.
Most civil rights organizations, including the NAACP and the National Urban League, were offended by Roosevelt’s racist policies and made their feelings known to Mrs. Roosevelt. According to Naomi Rogers, Yale’s professor of the history of medicine:
Reverend J. S. Bookens of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Mobile, Ala, tried to have his paralyzed 9-year-old son admitted to Warm Springs and was told ‘Negroes [are] never admitted to that institution. This case was widely discussed in the Black press and spurred Walter White, secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, to remind Eleanor Roosevelt that segregation at Warm Springs was the reason his association refused to sponsor Birthday Ball fund raising.
The Urban League argued that a change in policy ‘would be heartily welcomed by ten million otherwise socially disinherited American citizens.’ Whether Eleanor Roosevelt raised the issue with her husband is unknown, but there was no change in the policy.
About the same time, the Chicago Tribune printed a letter that noted (emphasis added):
There is a place in Georgia named Warm Springs where the President has endowed, or partially maintains, a sanitarium for the treatment of infantile paralysis. I have no doubt that what the humblest, most ragged, and illiterate little white child in the land would be admitted there for treatment, but the most cultured, refined, and well clothed Negro child would be denied admittance simply because it was a Negro.
With public outrage mounting, the spa’s chief surgeon issued a public explanation for Roosevelt’s Whites-only policy. His explanation is as damning as the policy. He said:
[Warm Springs] is not a general orthopedic hospital. It treats and studies nothing but Infantile Paralysis. It maintains no wards, separate clinics, or segregated rooms. Aid and pay patients share the same facilities. We cannot take colored people for this reason.
By 1937, Roosevelt and his fellow trustees were again faced with the issue of integrating Warm Springs. While there was almost universal reluctance to admit Negroes, the trustees recognized the growing public relations problem and the political fallout for Roosevelt. They decided against serving Black children but agreed to “associate” with an all-Black medical facility as a means of stemming growing criticism.
After extensive deliberations trustee James M. Hooper summed up the sentiment of his fellow board members in saying ‘our facilities do not lend themselves to the comfortable housing and treatment of resident-colored cases. We do not feel that we could make such patients comfortable both physically and psychologically.’
A 1937 decision by Roosevelt and the trustees to drop the Tuskegee Institute and other Black medical groups as recipients for that year’s Birthday Ball funds created a firestorm in the Black community.
The Chicago Defender ran an article under the headline ‘We Donated, But They Left Us Out.’ The Warm Springs leadership had decided that ‘the Negro should solve his problem . . . through local medical practitioners, because statistics show that it (polio) is most prevalent among White people.’ Though untrue, the racist medical community proffered the false argument that Negroes were not as afflicted by polio.
Warm Springs remained segregated throughout Roosevelt’s lifetime. After his death at Warm Springs in 1945, Rogers further noted that:
Warm Springs remained segregated for many years. By the end of the 1940s it had set up a few “emergency” beds for local Black patients, but there were no Black physicians, nurses, therapists, or administrators, and the Warm Springs movie theater had an indoor picket fence indicating where Black employees could sit in the worst seats, separate from the White patients.
For the nineteen years that Roosevelt owned the facility, and despite his civil rights rhetoric, the mounting criticism from Whites and Blacks across the nation, and with disregard for the health of Black children, Roosevelt maintained his racist policies at Warm Springs to the day he died there.”
Roosevelt’s racial prejudice was seen in his treatment of the star of the 1936 Olympics.
“The 1936 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany proved to be a great embarrassment for Adolph Hitler and his belief in Aryan superiority. No one upset the Fuehrer more than Black American track star Jesse Owens, who was the all-star of the event with four gold medals. He won gold in the 100-meter, 200-meter, and 400-meter relays and the long jump. Back home, Owens was the subject of ticker tape parades in Cleveland and New York. He was a national hero.
The events in Munich also revealed Roosevelt’s deep-seeded White supremacist views. In celebration of the team’s Olympic victories, Roosevelt invited the American team to the White House for official recognition. The invitation, however, was only extended to the White athletes. The Roosevelt White House was no place for Blacks.
Refuting a claim that only Hitler had snubbed Owens, the gold medalist responded, “Hitler didn’t snub me. It was our president who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.” In 1936, Owens campaigned for Republican Alf Landon.
Roosevelt and his successor, Democrat Harry Truman, never officially recognized Owens’ achievements. Owens finally received presidential recognition when Republican President Dwight Eisenhower invited him to the White House in 1955 and named him as Ambassador of Sports.”
There will be more about FDR and his New Deal in a future Black History Month commentary.
So, there ‘tis.
When do we get white history month?
Revisionist history rears its wooly mammoth head again and again. There more to the stories of important figures in history that humanize the giants of progress without making them look like scoundrels and hypocrites.
Just because a great president was from the other party is not grounds for intimating bad character.
Lincoln had his foibles, too. But history treats his legacy fondly.
This is the month that Black History is supposedly highlighted, However, it’s no secret that Republicans have claimed that setting February as Black History Month is fundamentally a celebration of Woke ideology. There is movement a foot in the camp on the right that would do away with Black History Month altogether. Only Republicans can explain why.
Is the story of treating black people unjustly and disparagingly fundamentally the work of the Democratic Party? Then the Republican Party is off the hook when prejudice and injustices throughout America’s History from whatever date one chooses is chronicled in history books?
Plainly, US Civil Rights debacle is the property of both political parties and their predecessors extending back in time to when the first black skinned person appeared on North American soil.
Columbus arriving in N. America probably had black persons on board. And, the truth in that story says nothing about the boat being turned away by indigenous democrats for liberal political biases.
One’s opinion on a subject that comes off as one sided as this is presupposes the truth is being told in each statement appearing on the page. Accepting the author’s contention is a stretch given the supporting references defy documentation standards. Opinions do not find authentication from more of the authors opinions even those opinions of the authors stated their published work.
How credible is an author’s work when its only authenticity comes from the author’s say so? Any journalism student could not pass muster in that field without independent source validation provided for each assertion made.
Otherwise, anyone can write whatever comes to mind and claim authority over their subject content.
So, whatever the author writes for public consumption is the same as law and above questioning.
We the readers can’t take some writer’s work on face value. Particularly those writers who reject and distain fact checkers.
And, that’s just how it is! And, it’s not because it’s how I alone see it. Don’t you see? Didn’t think so.
AC. I did not intimate the “bad character” of FDR, I merely brought it out into the light. Left wing Democrats like you prefer to hide the FACTS.– tell the fable and not the truth. In terms of race, FDR was a scoundrel … period. Do your fact checking and find any evidence that the facts in the book are not accurate. Which facts do you challenge? Rather you offer your baseless opinion.. Sorry … no cigar.
Larry, bad character is in the eye of the beholder, apparently. Your eyes behold all in history who did not match up to your particular less than objective criteria for correctness. It’s with harsh scorn and negative bias that you come to judge another’s ideology. It’s as if, you can’t see that there is room for other opinions at democracy’s round table. Even Trump said there are good people om both sides of an issue. Although, at the time he said that his word were hollow and weak.
When does your book come out that states exactly what your opinion is of FDR along with other Democrat Party Presidents. You must share your considerable insights with regards to Kenedy. Johnson, and Clinton. Obama is fairly recent history and your inclinations toward denigrating his two terms are already out there.
But don’t stop with just Democratic Chief Executives while you’re on a roll these few days into Black History Month.
Take on, why don’t you, those crusaders of justice and Civil Rights on the right such as Nixon, the Bush’s, Good old Ike, and the ever self-congratulatory Mr. Trump. He who prides himself on his CIVIL Rights Record.
It is said of certain hyper political self appointed pundits, that the truth in fact is not in them. So, who is to be trusted and listened to because they give the straight and dependable information.
AC.. I will generously assume that your reading comprehension problem and rants are age related, but you do spew a lot of bs. I have chronicled what FDR did and did not do regarding civil rights. The factual history shows him to be a White supremacist and racist. If you prefer to live with the sanitized version, that is your prerogative. Also, I have praised Johnson for his fight for civil rights and have often written favorably about Clinton. In a pevious commentary, I praised Biden for his strong initial support for Israel. I have criticized Trump on personality and some policies. YOU .. and others … have completely failed to show such balance and objectivity. That is why I do not give your long inaccurate ramblings any serious consideration. They lack intellectual integrity. I understand your whispering into the wind gives you some sort of satisfaction, but it does not make you a very fair, knowledgeable or credible commentator on political issues … or on me personally. To answer you closing question … you most certainly can not be.
Larry, as the saying goes: your record speaks for itself. That said, your opinion commentary pieces taken as a whole provides a context in which your ideology finds its place. Your opinion of FDR on the whole lacks historical, national, and the person of FDR context.
Coming to a conclusion with only the information that agrees with your original and over riding predetermined consensus leaves out real evidence of what or who the subject at issue is.
You like your assumptions about what and who your mind imagines others are. Your assessment of and person pictured does not nearly come close to the actual living breathing human being who has incalculable worth in their person regardless of the beliefs and opinions they may have.
Should someone like me, Frank, Tom , or others come on PBP and give an opposing opinion why take serious exception to what our thoughts on a subject may be? Is that critical for you to be the correct voice of authority an unassailable in every detail? I think you protested to much. If the point you wish to clear up is not heavily over laid with subjectivity and lacking any measure of consideration for the humanity of those just like you, but for the difference in point of view.
Yet, the opinion you have of yourself as the more informed and higher thinker than most men walking the earth today if ever one was, seemingly this gives you a license to bully, abuse, insult, and demean with any words you come up with. This is all you because in your mind those not in agreement with you deserve your belittling treatment.
However, you can not accept any of the give and take that naturally is created when politics is the issue.
When you write with an unmoderated political point of view on subjects that are sure to draw others comments.There is an expectation from readers that comments made in reply are welcomed. Why, else, then is the purpose for the Reply field. In my experience, the Reply field happens to be a thinly veiled trap for the so called lefties who occasionally happen by and fall in. The thing is, Larry and crew believe the will always come out on top when some fall in. A third party referee would find differently, surely.
you
Ah, the annual Horistian BHM overture decrying Democrats as racist and Republicans are not. Defining city law different in Democratic strongholds, but not the States and certainly not Red areas where it is milk n honey for minorities. Well, we are a racist nation and we are all racists. Red areas no better than Blue when it comes it institutional racism. Mostly institutional but across the board.
Part 1 for BHM is the FDR story, a white guy. He says it’s blatant and prevalent. I say it’s more nuanced than that. He says simple. I say not so simple. I think the nuance is when did FDR acquiesce to Dixiecrats or the South to get something done and when did FDR overtly show prejudice by antagonistically discriminate against blacks because he thought them inferior. Was it too small steps forward or trying to put blacks down?
First question: what’s up with Eleanor and does she strike you as a woman who would sleep and stay with an overt racist?
IMO, and that of many experts, the truth is more nuanced than the simple Horstian black n white, yes or no answer. Plus, Horist seems to have a bug up his ass re Democrats and feels it’s win-lose, us or them, must destroy, destroy, destroy….. His claim to fame: Democrats control the cities, the cities are racist, it’s the Democrats fault. This go-round, I ask a second question: why did Republicans abandon their Lincolnian ideals and blacks in the city to favor rural areas with less blacks. Was it blacks or Democrats that made them run to the safety of the hillbillies, Red States with rednecks? Of course, it’s not that black and white, and of course, rednecks is a pejorative term merely used here merely for emphasis (and to tweak a nerve perhaps). Perhaps nuance and perspective, but it’s certainly not just this or that, black or white; it’s a lot of things.
As he attacks FDR, the author seems to forget that he’s voted for a paranoid, sociopathic, psychopath that he lets off the hook for the covid response that resulted in 1.2M of us becoming dead, many needlessly due to the Presidential response and messaging. The guy does not rule out military force for taking Greenland or retaking the Panama Canal. He wants to own GAZA, bring back MAACA, (Make America A Colonizer Again), be a racist and push millions of “inferior” GAZA Muslims to countries that he feels like GAZA Muslims and put up beachfront condos (I told you this before Trump told you, the man smells a grift like a shark smells blood in the water….Trump bit coin, need I say more?). I think the total deal is that we take GAZA and Greenland, Putin gets Ukraine, China gets Taiwan as we play the game of Risk, in real time. Oh yeah, cut the funding for international aid so we can withhold food and medicines from starving and sick kids. That’s inhuman. Chances are the racism is nuanced across most of this as well. At least FDR’s actions were legal; the Felon King’s are not.
Back on track: yes, Southern Democrats created, nurtured, and fought for slavery. They lost that bet on the Republican Lincoln’s watch. They are not the modern Democratic Party. Most Dixiecrats joined the Republican Party in the 60’s. The author just conveniently forgets and pretends modern Democrats are the same as the Dixiecrat party. Some remained, sort of like Manchin remained a Democrat long after his words and actions said something different. But most became Republicans. Yes, Democrats govern most urban areas where poverty, segregation, crime, and racism abound — tis the nature of poverty but it’s on the Democratic watch. But most of the current overt violent racist acts across America are perpetrated by the hard right. They pretend it’s not that bad; it’s getting better. It was just five years ago that a few Republicans tied a black guy to a bumper in Texas. Most racist groups vote Republican. And they were all there supporting you, and being supported by you as they, in Trump’s name, beat the fuck out of the Capitol Police attempting to protect the Capitol building and your Congress. There were no blacks in that crowd but there were a lot of black cops and they got a real earful of racism and hate-speak in the beatings as well. We all have the clips, the author seems to forget. Trump pardoned them for that; they were all right, all white and this behavior is now applauded.
Like FDR, when it comes to racism, the entire country is nuanced, it is not a simple black and white, yes or no answer. And that’s for all of us, not just Democrats in the cities, not just Republicans in the country.
Here’s my bottom line, and yes, I have the research to back it up, but here’s my OPINION. FDR is a racist. I have tried and tried, but no way can I give him the Mulligan even. At best, I can claim he’s a pussy for kowtowing to Dixiecrats, to local custom. That’s bullshit. Almost every single time he could have stepped up, he stood down. That’s the best I can do. FDR also created archetype Democratic social programs, they mostly all exist in some form today forming our safety net for life and retirement. They are great programs and the foundation of our community we call America. So he’s a great man and a racist. It’s more nuanced than the author’s win-lose one-sided blind-sided view. He is a great man, the father of my party, my ideals, and he’s a man with issues too. Issues in retaining power, standing up, and knowing when you must fight even if there’s a personal cost. He clearly could have done better: I am sure his wife even told him that. Regularly.
The author’s win-lose FDR expose leads to his conclusion: “… attempt(s) to polish FDR’s image ignores the reality of FDR’s longstanding and manifest belief in White supremacy. In the twelve-plus years Roosevelt resided in the White House, the Democratic Party continued its tradition as the nation’s leading vehicle of institutional racism.” Republicans good, Democrats bad, win-lose takes the day again!! Although the author tips his hand with “institutional racism” basically admitting it was not overt. Nuanced.
Perhaps he will bring it in, but he leaves out the positive steps FDR took for black in America. There are some, including parts of The New Deal. That’s seems quite the omission for an objective discourse. I do not think FDR believed in white supremacy; I think FDR believed in his programs and doing what he thought had to be done to make it so while staying in power. I think he could have done better to not be such a pussy.
My bottom line is that FDR is NOT an OVERT racist. He is not George Wallace. But he’s not LBJ either. He is racist, he passed laws with institutional racism. It’s not just a wink, a nudge, and therein lies the rub. Even LBJ can be considered racist, but look what he did for civil rights. FDR is not even close and given Eleanor, you know he knew and he did it anyway to gain and remain in power. Pussy. And the programs are historic, archetype, programs for the masses, the little guys, and they make our life and society better.