Thursday, August 27, 2015

FDR Flashback: ' While assistant secretary of the Navy in 1913, he signed the order creating separate washrooms for blacks and whites in what is now known as the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House. '


The National Review on New Deal and progressive hero FDR:
Franklin Roosevelt was someone who really didn’t care about black people one way or another. While assistant secretary of the Navy in 1913, he signed the order creating separate washrooms for blacks and whites in what is now known as the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House. When he established the Warm Springs facility in Georgia to treat polio victims in the 1920s, it was for whites only. And when Roosevelt had his first opportunity to appoint a member of the Supreme Court in 1937, he chose Hugo Black, a life member of the Ku Klux Klan from Alabama. Later Roosevelt appointed another outspoken racist, James F. Byrnes of South Carolina, to the Supreme Court as well. After leaving the Court, Byrnes ran for governor of his home state for the express purpose of blocking school desegregation.

Isn't time to stop honoring racists like FDR? Should we take him off the dime already?