Armies of Negroes

Abstract

have seen [slavery] hanging over [this country] like a black cloud for half a Century, John Adams wrote another former chief executive, Thomas Jefferson, on February 3, 1821, when commenting on the Missouri crisis. I were as drunk with enthusiasm as Swedenborg or Westley, I might probably say I had seen Armies of Negroes marching and countermarching in the air, shining in Armour. I have been so terrified with this Phenomenon that I constantly said in former times to the Southern Gentlemen, I cannot comprehend this object; I must leave it to you. I will vote for forceing no measure against your judgements. What we are to see, God knows, and I leave it to him, and his agents in Some twenty-six presidents and 120 years later, Franklin D. Roosevelt expressed pretty much the same sentiments. Jim Crow formed Roosevelt's dark cloud; and though certainly less drunk with enthusiasm than his wife, this uncomprehending president's nightmares may well have featured visions of A. Philip Randolph and armies of African Americans marching through the streets of Washington to demand a fair chance at defense jobs in the nation's suddenly booming factories. Troubled if not terrified by the prospect of the white South bolting the New Deal coalition if he pushed even gently in the direction of racial justice, Roosevelt generally left civil rights in the hands of that region's gentlemen and God's agents in posterity. Only FDR's God turned out to be J. Edgar Hoover, ably assisted by special agents assigned to gather Negro Question data for the posterity of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's domestic intelligence files. If Eleanor Roosevelt served as her husband's conscience on matters of race, in practice the president relied on the FBI director and the pop eugenics that made up the bulk of the material collected and submitted to the White House.