Black Culture and the New Deal: The Quest for Civil Rights in the Roosevelt Era

Introduction

1 INTRODUCTION Four years after Franklin Roosevelt’s death, Eleanor Roosevelt remembered her frustrations when racial issues, such as the antilynching bill and the abolition of the poll tax, reached her husband’s desk. “Although Franklin was in favor of both measures, they never became ‘must’ legislation . When I would protest, he would simply say: ‘First things come first, and I can’t alienate certain votes I need for measures that are more important at the moment by pushing any measure that would entail a fight.’”¹ A powerful southern congressional bloc influenced the executive treatment of race relations during the Depression and World War II.To the chagrin of many civil rights leaders, the support of this southern contingency always outweighed the administration’s commitment to endorsing measures that would explicitly improve political, economic, and social conditions for black Americans.² Still, the federal government did not completely ignore civil rights in this politically explosive atmosphere. One important method that the Roosevelt administration employed to acknowledge African Americans and to involve them in the president’s “New Deal” was through federally sponsored cultural programs. Initiallyconceived under theWorks Progress Administration’s (WPA) Federal Arts Project (FAP) and then continued under wartime agencies such as the Office of War Information (OWI) and the War Department, fine art and media-based programs represented an important strand of civil rights policy during the Roosevelt era. Through the publications of the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), the plays of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), the endorsement of black celebrities such as Joe Louis, and the production of wartime films and radio shows, liberal administrators demonstrated a sustained commitment to addressing the 2 INTRODUCTION concerns of black Americans when political pragmatism prevented official support for structural legislation. Beginning in the 1930s, government program administrators imagined that these cultural projects would provide a safe treatment of pressing political concerns and a foundation for the government’s policies toward African Americans in the postwar period. This history is undoubtedly complex. Not only did government program administrators further marginalize concrete civil rights legislation in adopting certain cultural policies, but each program encountered obstacles that would limit African Americans’ power and representation. Black participants worked within the tightest of cultural spaces, facing the scrutiny of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the racism and aesthetic inflexibility of many state directors, the political exigencies of war, and compromised federal budgets. Nevertheless, under the Roosevelt administration, the Federal Arts Project and wartime media programs served as central methods of imbuing African Americans with a sense of political authority. As the first administration to recognize publicly that African Americans mattered as citizens, New Dealers forwarded a cultural agenda that, despite all of its limitations, marked a significant turning point in the production of black culture. Within the context of a largercultural apparatus that largelyomitted or stereotyped African Americans , the government programs offered creative outlets that were unavailable elsewhere. New Deal cultural development represented a continuous process of negotiation, as both black and white officials championed some symbols, ideas, and media, while discarding others. Therefore, this book recounts a history of creativity, ambition, and unprecedented possibilities; but also a history of limitations, bigotry, and political machinations. Four major themes illuminate the significance of governmentsponsored cultural development in the history of the Roosevelt era and the struggle for African American civil rights. First, programs under the WPA and other wartime agencies served as important locations for black cultural advancement at a time when black minstrel images still predominated commercial culture and popular music, radio, and film industries segregated, demeaned, or excluded African Americans. Second, debates within these cultural projects illustrate the importance of what the FTP Negro Unit director Carlton Moss termed “cultural emancipation” to the civil rights struggle during this period: groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) deemed cultural autonomy and representational agency vital in the quest for racial equality.³ Third, government-sponsored cultural development reflected a 3 INTRODUCTION pattern that would repeat itself during the Depression and World War II and that would provide continuity between the 1930s and 1940s, solidifying the Roosevelt administration’s reliance on art and media projects as viable forms of racial policy into the postwar era. Lastly, my focus on the politics of cultural development serves as an alternative model for examining civil rights. Building on the work of historians such as Glenda Gilmore and Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, who recognize...