Viewing page 381 of 484

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

WPA, and each hired a Negro with the title of "race relations specialist" or "advisor," or some other such title with the word "race" or "Negro" always in it. Each also became a "specialist" in his appointed field. It made no difference that they didn't have any previous experience, the word "specialist" was included in his title.

Harold L. Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, was considered to be the top liberal in the President's Cabinet he had formerly been the president of the Chicago branch of the NAACP, and therefore Walter White, the executive secretary of the NAACP, had much influence, and was responsible for most of the appointments Secretary Ickes made, again to the chagrin of the "Big Four." On the advice of White, Ickes established an office of "advisor to the Secretary of the Economic Status of the Negro." He promptly filled the position with a liberal white from Atlanta, Clark Foreman, whose family owned the Atlanta Constitution. According to Foreman, he was disinherited by his family because of his involvement with Negroes. As his deputy, Foreman named Dr. Robert C. Weaver, who had defected from the joint committee on National Recovery [later the National Negro congress], after having been a co-founder with John P. Davis, William H. Hastie, Benjamin Davis and W. Montague Cobb. the Administration, annoyed with the agitation of the improvement of the Negro status, tore the organization asunder by offering jobs to the most prolific. Only John P. Davis stuck it out until the organization went broke. When that happened it was taken over by a group of left wingers, who changed the name to National Negro Congress, at a convention held in Chicago at a Black Regiment Armory.

Many Negro organizations, including the Negro press, could not understand why Ickes would appoint a white person to advise him on the economic status of Negros. They pointed out that Bob Weaver, with a Ph.D. degree in economics from Harvard University, and Forman's associate, was more eminently qualified. Foreman, fed up with this type of propaganda, quit, and the position went to Weaver.

Weaver promptly appointed as his assistant, John P. Murchison, a professor of economics at Howard University, and Dewey R. Jones, a newspaper man with the Chicago Defender. Weaver jockeyed from pillar to post, landing practically every position earmarked for a Negro that was better than the one he was currently holding. after all, who was the best prepared when opportunity knocked? A Negro Ph.D. was a rarity in those days, and from Harvard yet! And so he became special assistant to the administrator of the United States Housing Authority, being later succeeded in that post by William J. Trent, Jr. But before he left to become an assistant to Sidney Hillman in the office of the Defense commission, he had appointed Frank Horne, another bloom from Harvard University with a Ph.D. degree, as an "assistant for Negro Labor," and Henry Lee Moon as an "assistant for Negro press relations." Weaver gained enough experience during the Roosevelt years to acquire a specialization in the field of housing. moving to New York, he became the State Commissioner of Housing under Governor Avrill Harriman, and a Commissioner of the Housing Development Administration under Mayor Robert F. Wagner. After a brief stint as Administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, by appointment of President Kennedy, he moved on to the mountain top, when President Johnson appointed him Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, making him the first Black to become a member of any President's cabinet.

In rapid order these other Negroes became members of the "petty bourgeoisie:" William H. Hastie, assistant solicitor, Department of the Interior; Theodore Poston, Office of War Information; Abrose Caliver, Office of Education; Capt. Louis Mehlinger, Department of Justice; Lt. Lawrence Oxley, Department of Labor; Sherman Briscoe, Department of Agriculture; Jessie O. Thomas, Department of Commerce; Crystal Byrd Fausett, Office of Civilian Defense; Edgar Brown, Civilian Conservation Corps; Thomasina Johnson Norford, Department of Labor; Dr. Joseph Houchins, Department of Commerce; Dean William Pickens, Treasury Department; Dr. Roscoe C. Brown, u.S. Health Service; James A. [Billboard] Jackson, Department of Commerce; Dr. Eugene Kinckle Jones, who took leave as Executive Director of the National Urban League, to become head of the new Division of Negro Affairs within the Department of Commerce; and, of course, the inimitable Mary McLead Bethune, founder and president of the Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Fla., and president of the National Council of Negro Women.

Mrs. Bethune had developed a knack of getting in to see Mrs. Roosevelt at the White House, while Walter White, then executive secretary of the NAACP, was in the cook's quarters, in the basement of the White House, chatting with Claude McDuffy, the President's Negro valet and barber, and the closest a Negro could get to the President at that time. More on that later. Through Mrs. Roosevelt, Mrs. Bethune was introduced to Aubrey Williams, the white head of the National Youth Administration [NYA]. Mrs. Roosevelt persuaded Mr. Williams to take Mrs. Bethune on as one of his assistants to advise with respect to Negro youth. Noting that division heads with the NYA were being paid higher salaries than that provided for her, Mrs. Bethune, a scrapper to the end, proceeded to create a division of her own- the Division of Negro Affairs, and insisted that she be compensated in the same amount as the other six division heads, and with the help of her friend, Mrs. Roosevelt, this was done. Taking Frank Horne with her, she proceeded to organize a staff which would make her operation a division in fact as well as in name. 

[[image]]

[[image - Joe Louis and Mrs. Roosevelt and others]]

379

Transcription Notes:
[[images: Mrs. Roosevelt with 5 others looking at a notecard]]