When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America

by Ira Katznelson

Rising to oppose a 1940 anti-lynching bill, Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi cautioned northern Democrats to Remember that southern Democrats now have the balance of power in both Houses of Congress. By your conduct you may make it impossible for us to support many of you for important committee assignments, and other positions to which you aspire. . . . You Democrats who are pushing this vicious measure are destroying your usefulness here. . . . The Republicans would be delighted to see you cut President Roosevelt’s throat politically, and are therefore voting with you on this vicious measure. . . . They know that if he signs it, it will ruin him in the Southern states; and that if he vetoes it, they can get the benefit of the Negro votes this vicious measure would inflict in the North.