These Truths: A History of the United States

by Jill Lepore

Roosevelt’s electoral coalition drew African Americans from the Republican Party; he consulted an informal group of advisers who came to be called his “black cabinet”; and he appointed the first African American federal judge. But New Deal programs were generally segregated, and Roosevelt failed to act to oppose lynching. After twenty-three lynchings in 1933, anti-lynching legislation was introduced into Congress. The next year, a man named Claude Neal, accused of rape and murder, was taken from a jail in Alabama and brought to Florida, where he was tortured, mutilated, and executed before four thousand spectators. In the Senate, southern Democrats waged a filibuster against the anti-lynching bill.102 “If I come out for the anti-lynching bill now, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing,” Roosevelt told the NAACP’s Walter White. “Southerners, by reason of the seniority rule in Congress, are chairmen or occupy strategic places on most of the Senate and House committees.” The anti-lynching bill died.103