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.In his May 23, 1934, press con-ference, FDR claimed that he had problems with this speciWc bill, but noted “Iam absolutely for the objective.”83 Senate Majority Leader Joseph Robinsonunderstood the president’s halfhearted support to mean that antilynching leg-islation could be buried in committee: Congress adjourned its session with-out considering the measure.When Costigan and Wagner, with help from theNAACP, revived their bill in 1935, Roosevelt avoided comment.When a reporterasked if he would care to comment on the bill during an April press confer-ence, President Roosevelt replied tersely: “No.”84 Without a strong statementof presidential support, the antilynching bill died in the conXict with southernopponents.White’s estimate that the Costigan-Wagner bill would “almostsurely pass” if the president made clear in an address to Congress that themeasure was on his list of “must” legislation was, perhaps, an overstatement.85Yet the NAACP leader was right to suggest that without a strong statementfrom Roosevelt, antilynching legislation would never pass Congress.Attemptsto revive antilynching legislation in 1937, 1938, and 1940 failed.By 1940, itbecame clear to the parties involved that antilynching legislation was eVectivelydead for the remainder of the Roosevelt administration.In 1940, the Crisisevaluated the president’s record: while the NAACP periodical rated him a fail-ure on lynching, it gave him high marks for economic and social reform.86 MostAfrican Americans still supported FDR in spite of perceived failures regardinglynching: a 1940 Gallup poll indicated that 82 percent of blacks approved ofthe president, and they voted for him overwhelmingly in the 1940 election.87Lynching, however, was not the only issue of great concern to blacks onp r e s i d e n t s , r a c e , a n d r h e t o r i c■27which Roosevelt remained conspicuously silent.In June, 1943, race riotserupted in Detroit, and many Americans—especially African Americans—be-gan to urge the president to speak to the nation about the situation.The NewRepublic was especially adamant in its demand for a public speech from FDR:“Why, in these months when the peril of open race war hung upon the air,hasn’t Mr.Roosevelt come to us with one of his greatest speeches?.Whydoes not the President come to us NOW with such a speech.He must! The racesituation is not okay, Mr.Roosevelt, whatever the subtle men whisper.” Scoresof blacks wrote to the White House urging a presidential message.In a tele-gram to FDR, Mary McLeod Bethune claimed that “a straight-forward, deter-mined statement.is imperative.” Walter White urged Roosevelt to deliver a“Wreside chat” on racial violence.The Conference of National Organizations—whose membership included the NAACP, the National Negro Congress, theCongress of Industrial Organizations, and the National Lawyers Guild—alsorecommended that Roosevelt “address the American people over the radio onthe subject of the current wave of violence against racial and national minori-ties.” Despite this public pressure, Roosevelt remained silent.Even the claimthat racial violence was “rotting our moral position and undermining our pur-pose” in the war against fascism—a rhetorical topos that often induced the presi-dent—did not compel him to speak about the Detroit riots.88Roosevelt’s advisers had informed him of the demand to speak.Presiden-tial aide Jonathan Daniels even urged Roosevelt to deliver a public speech in amemorandum to the president on June 22, 1943: “The race riots in Detroit mustbe recognized, it seems to me, as a climax in what almost amounts to an epi-demic of racial tensions in the United States—an epidemic still spreading.I can think of nothing which could be more eVective in this Weld than a state-ment to the people from you.I hope you can Wnd the occasion soon forsuch a straight talk to American good sense and good will.” Daniels’s idea of a“straight talk,” though, meant emphasizing that racial violence disrupted thewar eVort—not “a statement of idealism in terms of perfect racial relationships.”FDR apparently took Daniels’s suggestion seriously, but before he made a de-cision to speak, he requested Stephen Early’s opinion: “Don’t you think it isabout time for me to issue a statement about racial riots?” Whether or notRoosevelt solicited his opinion is unclear, but on July 15, Attorney GeneralFrancis Biddle oVered his input on the issue of a possible presidential messageon the race riots: “It has been suggested that you should go on the radio todiscuss the whole problem.This, I think, would be unwise.However, youmight consider discussing it the next time you talk about the overall domestic28■The Modern Presidency and Civil Rightssituation as one of the problems to be considered.” Ultimately, Rooseveltheeded Biddle’s warning: he did not speak about the Detroit race riots duringtheir immediate wake, nor when Daniels made more detailed, substantive sug-gestions about what the president should say in a message to the nation aboutthe violence in mid-August.89Some scholars maintain that Roosevelt’s decision not to speak out for anti-lynching legislation or about race riots was not mistaken.Historian WilliamLeuchtenburg, for example, claims that Roosevelt would not have succeededin pushing the antilynching bill into law and that public statements would onlyhave jeopardized other legislation that beneWted blacks.90 Some of FDR’s si-lences, scholars suggest, were interpreted more negatively by blacks then theyshould have been.Most often, however, the reverse was true: African Ameri-cans regularly interpreted Roosevelt’s statements more positively than theyprobably should have.Many blacks felt hope listening to the president’s briefstatements and found deep meaning in his messages of little substance.As oneAfrican American man put it, “When you’re on the outside, just being spokento is substantive rather than symbolic.”91 Through his departure from his pre-decessors’ rhetorical practices, Roosevelt was able to gain widespread supportamong blacks and to make many feel that he truly cared about their situation—achievements that required little rhetorical eVort.Roosevelt’s presidency illus-trates a seemingly inadequate mixture of symbolism, infrequent discourse, andambiguous action on civil rights that still appealed to most blacks during thethirties and forties
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