The Great Depression; Interview with John Hope Franklin. Part 2

INTERVIEWER:

You told me before, but the strategy for, you know, his desegregation strategy, at least at that point in the, in the mid-30s, what his strategy was to kind of break down desegregation [sic] in education.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

When I first met Charles Houston, he was travelling through the South to do several things. One was to find clients, that is, to find black parents who are willing to join in legal action against segregated education. That was one thing he was doing. Another thing he was doing was trying to get the general public, the general African-American public, to understand the importance of legal action, resorting to the courts to redress their grievances. And I think another he was doing was to try to increase the awareness of blacks of the importance of voting, and getting, getting out the vote in places where they could vote, and contesting the discrimination in places where they could not vote. So when he came to Fisk University in my junior year, that would be '33/'34, he was, he had been, he and Andrew Ransom had been travelling on these various missions, and he spoke at Fisk, and that's the first time I heard him talk about the importance of, of legal action to challenge the segregated laws themselves, to get litigants who were willing to stand up and say that they were discriminated against, and to insist upon equality, and, and gradually to develop the notion that equality meant desegregation. I think, though, that this, the, the, the refinement of that position came with Thurgood Marshall, and not with Houston. But the whole approach to legal action for civil rights was the Houston approach, and a man who was deeply dedicated to it, deeply committed, who really literally gave his life for this cause.

INTERVIEWER:

Yeah, we're going to cut.

INTERVIEWER:

So, if you will first tell us your reaction to the, the Murray v. Maryland, and that victory, but then what its ramifications—

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

Well, the victory of Murray against the University of Maryland was of course a very immediate concern to me, because I was a graduate student myself and was interested in, not in going to professional school, I had given up the law, the study of the law, but history was my thing then. But it didn't, although, although we appreciated it very much, the fact that this was a breakthrough, we also understood that it was not to be generalized, that is, beyond Maryland. For after all, I was a citizen, I guess you can call it that, of a segregated state. And there was no impact of that decision on the state of Oklahoma, which would still reject from the University of Oklahoma graduate school, and would instead pay my tuition at Harvard University if I got up there and was admitted and made the grades and sent them to the state of Oklahoma. Then they would pay a fraction of my tuition. And it remained like that until, really until the late '40s or very early '50s.

INTERVIEWER:

Great.

INTERVIEWER:

So, let's try again, with Donald Gaines Murray v. Maryland, and what kind of ramifications it did or didn't have.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

Of course, when the decision was handed down in Gaines Murray against University of Maryland, I personally was very interested in it, because, after all, that was the year that I was going to graduate school. Not to professional school, for sure, but I was interested in going to graduate school. I'm not at all certain, though, that the impact of that decision was, was widespread or was widely appreciated. For after all, how many blacks would be interested in going to law school? And how could you generalize that decision so that it would apply to graduate students and undergraduate students? It did not play in that way. As for me, a student at the, at, at Harvard University from Oklahoma, I got no benefit from the Gaines decision. As a matter of fact, if anything, Oklahoma decided to move in the other direction. So what, what I got was, I was permitted by Harvard University to come there, to study, and to perform. If I was successful in that, then I would notify the state of Oklahoma, which in turn would give me a fraction of the tuition that I had paid months before, you see. So there really wasn't very much general benefit that came out of that decision, and would not be until the late '40s and early '50s that, that students generally would benefit from Supreme Court decisions in higher education.

INTERVIEWER:

Great. Cut.

INTERVIEWER:

OK.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

There have been people who have said blacks were not interested in international affairs. I won't argue the point generally, but I will say that they were interested in the conflict between Ethiopia and Italy. They were very much distressed that, that Mussolini would invade Ethiopia and would undertake to subjugate it, as he undertook to do in the 1930s. And I would argue that blacks followed that. I know I did. But I'm not, I'm not referring merely to me. I know blacks of various levels of education and sensitivity with respect to international affairs generally, were quite anxious to keep with the score, if nothing else. \"What's the score between Mussolini and, and Ethiopia?\" And of course the, the Emperor Haile Selassie became a great hero in black community in the United States at that time, because of his stand against Mussolini. I don't believe that there were large numbers of blacks who understood the history of the whole conflict that when all the way back to Menelik, the Emperor Menelik in the late 19th century, and his conflicts with Europe. But, but putting that aside, they certainly were aware of it. Now, you read the newspapers in this period, the black press, the black press keeps up with this great care. We've had students to write dissertations on the subject, and there's no question but that the black press was interested. And through the black press, the black public was generally interested in the subject.

INTERVIEWER:

Not to belabor the obvious, but for the students, you know, the young people who were going to do it, why did they take, why did, why did black Americans take this so personally?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

Well, here was a great European power undertaking to oppress one of the few black nations in the world. After all, this was, most of, most of Africa was gone, that is, was gone into the colonial orbit, you see. And only, only a few places, and Ethiopia was one of them, where there was an independent country with a, with a, with a ruler that was black. And

it was a source of considerable pride that, that, that there was at least one, one black nation with a leader, a black leader. And I think that there was no question but that they wanted Ethiopia to win.

INTERVIEWER:

Great. Now, do you think—sorry, are you running out?

CAMERA CREW MEMBER

Yes.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

—out of my element.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. You ready? OK. So—

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

I think there was a certain respect in this country for fascism. I'm not referring to the kind of admiration that various groups like Father Coughlin would inspire, but I'm talking about the general impression that Americans seem to have had in the 1930s that fascism was, was effective, efficient, was, was orderly, and that had objectives that could be admired, such as building efficient, well-run factories, making the railroads run on time, as so many people would say at that time. And at a time when our own economy was floundering and uncertain, and at a time when we did not seem to know how we were going to get out of our own very difficult dilemmas, that we could see that there was someone who was working through this problem. And so I think that in that way Mussolini and fascism generally inspired some admiration and attention in this country.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. Now, Joe Louis, why do you think, why do you think Joe Louis was so important to these people. He was a boxer. I mean, he wasn't, he wasn't a scientist, he wasn't an artist. He was a boxer. What was it about Joe Louis that had such great appeal to people?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

Well, of course, he was the greatest boxer of his time, and I think people always admire greatness, regardless of what it's in. Don't forget that blacks had had a champion once in Jack Johnson, and he was greatly admired. And blacks always seemed to feel that Johnson was brought down by white people, deliberately brought down by white people. So that here is a, here is the Brown Bomber, as they called him. He inspired pride. He was honest, unassuming. He was highly skilled in his area, and that was to be admired. And he was a kind of vindication of Johnson and of black people, and therefore they, they, they greatly admired him. Now, he came to be admired even more when, when he became something of a symbol of, of, not only of the greatness of black people, but of this country in his, in the two bouts with, with Max Schmeling, and he seemed to have personified the struggle of this country against Nazism. And when he was, when he lost the first fight, that was, that sent this country and certainly black people into the doldrums from which they never seemed to recover. Until he won the second fight! And with that,

the nation was vindicated, blacks were vindicated, Nazism was put down

, and, and it seemed that they would live happily ever after.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. Cut for a second, please. Good.

INTERVIEWER:

One second. When Michael's ready, we'll talk about Jesse.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

It's very interesting that

after Max Schmeling won the first fight with Joe Louis, and blacks following them were very much distressed and humiliated, they didn't have to wait long for a real triumph. And that was when Jesse Owens went to Berlin for the Olympics

, where he won several gold medals, and to the, to the consternation of Hitler, and to the delight of Americans, and particularly African-Americans. And, if anything, the fact that Hitler could not bear the notion of a black man winning these medals, and who before the entire world gave him something of a cold shoulder, that certainly made black Americans realize that this, this Aryanism was the very worst kind of racism. And they, and that they had, Hitler has sort of been rubbed in the face by Owens and by the victory of Owens.

INTERVIEWER:

Great, great. That's wonderful. Thank you. Since we're talking about Nazism and the Aryanism, was there concern with the black community for what was going on with the Jews in Europe? Did that evolve? Was there some point in which, I mean, were, were African-Americans aware in their own right, or did they have too many troubles of their own?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

I actually am not at all certain about that. It's very difficult, you see—

INTERVIEWER:

—and yet still, somehow FDR came on the—

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

—but you see, they didn't say all that, then. They didn't say it then.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. Well, let's talk about FDR and his relationship to the, you know, black, you know, population, community, or all those people. OK?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

Franklin D. Roosevelt inspired large numbers of blacks, I think in part because he was handicapped himself. And although was not publicized as much as it might have been, blacks knew that he was a victim of polio, that he couldn't walk, and that he had overcome these handicaps. That was one thing. Another thing is that, in contrast to the inactivity of, say, a Herbert Hoover, or an indifference of a Calvin Coolidge. This man was up at at 'em. He hit the ground rolling, so to speak, and that was inpsiring, that he had, he had something to say. He had a purpose, had a message, had a program. And it seemed that was better than the inertia that preceded things. Now, he did a few things that one might call cosmetic. In impressing that he was on their side, he had what we later called the \"black cabinet,\" that is, a number of blacks who were advisors to him. And these people, while really not in, in policy positions, nevertheless were names, and were referred to as people, as some considerable weight in the government. And that, I think, was magnified considerably in the black community. And even though it might not have been very much, it was, it was more than blacks had ever had in the executive part of the government. So the people like, like Weaver, Robert Weaver, Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune, William J. Thompkins, others, they were greatly admired in the black community, because it seemed as if they were just going in and out of the White House and having all this influence. Well, to be sure, they did not have very much influence. I think that's quite clear now. And the influence they had they might have had through Mrs. Roosevelt more than through the president himself. Meanwhile, the, the, the policies of the New Deal were not terribly liberal when it came to race. Surely, the housing program maintained the standards of segregation, principles of segregation, that prevailed before Roosevelt. The Tennessee Valley Authority, this remarkably revolutionary program that brought the South up in many ways, gave it industry and recreation and electrification and so forth, the policies with respect for blacks were very, very poor. And, and it, nothing was significantly changed in the relationships with people and the employment opportunities and that sort of thing than what they had been before the New Deal. But there was a kind of, I hate to say it, a kind of trickle down effect after all, that if the economy were being raised generally, then blacks were benefitting somewhat. I think that they benefitted, for example, in the Farm Security Program. But that was a program that was under fire, probably more than any other program, by whites, because the administrators in this area were apparently much more liberal than the administrators in some other areas, and perhaps more liberal than the president himself was or wanted them to be, if they got away with it, but were under fire from whites for being too liberal.

INTERVIEWER:

You mentioned Mrs. Roosevelt. What about her relationship to the black community? How did people feel about her? We just rolled out?