The Great Depression; Interview with John Hope Franklin. Part 3

INTERVIEWER:

I want to talk about that day, that moment.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

I can remember it well. I was in Raleigh, North Carolina doing work on my doctoral dissertation. But I took Sunday off, and with a dear friend of mine, the late Emory Johnson, we drove to Goldsboro, North Carolina, the home of my fiancee. And we spent the afternoon with my future mother-in-law. And of course the one thing we wanted to do was to hear the Marian Anderson concert. Emory Johnson was anxious to hear it. I was anxious to hear it. And my mother, my future mother-in-law was even more anxious to hear it, I think. And so we sat and listened with great intensity to this, this great voice. But it was not just a great voice. It was a great experience. We were moved by the, by the fact that this modest young woman had become a kind of instrument to show the world what bigotry could attempt and could not succeed in doing, namely, to silence a golden voice. So that we were thrilled, there's no other word for it. We were thrilled when Ms. Anderson was introduced, and when she came out to sing and to entertain that vast audience before the Lincoln Memorial. A lot, a great deal was left to our imagination. There was no television, you see. And therefore we could just sit there with our eyes closed and visualize the great scene that we saw in pictures. And it's, it's, it's an experience that I shall never forget.

INTERVIEWER:

Thank you. Did you, to switch entirely, but, the '30s, we talked about this, the '30s being a time of activism and, you know, particularly regarding the anti-lynching law, there was a lot of push for that. What was it about the times that made this such a vibrant period, even with all the misery? There was, there was a lot of urgency in political action, labor action, the, the anti-lynching campaign. What was it about this time?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

I think that we were waking up from a long period of lethargy that was a part of the early years of, of the Depression. And how do you, how do you, how do you get beyond this? How do you pull out of this? You pull out of it by having programs of one kind or another that will focus on the problems of the day, problems being the economy, being voting, civil rights, and political rights. And, and so, in all these areas, you had action, activity. The labor unions were active, and of course they found in the federal government that is under the leadersip of Roosevelt, they found a very good friend who, and through him and people like Senator Wagner you get very effective legislation. They found that the, that the political process was being opened up. Not only was the white primary under fire, but blacks were pressing for voting opportunities. Then you had efforts being made to, to protect blacks in their rights, their, their civil rights. And you had drives against lynching and drives in favor of anti-lynching legislation. And while these drives did not materialize anything effectively, they show a certain vitality, a certain liveliness in the area, in the period, that you simply, that, that was itself very impressive. Then, of course, there is, there is the swing of the pendulum from the conservatism of the '20s to the radicalism of the '30s. And the example of something, something that's going on, say, in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that might be, that might have some impact on the United States and its problems. And so you got a swing of the pendulum toward radicalism. And you had the, the upsurge of the Communist Party in the United States, and the effort to, to join hands with the liberal labor movement, the liberal civil rights/racial movement, so forth, and that added to the ferment and to the activity that one witnesses especially in the '30s, and to a lesser extent in the '40s.

INTERVIEWER:

Was there something about the economy that brought up ferment? Do you think the economy had something to do with it, or was it more the government, the New Deal, and the, the, the programs?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

Well, it was that the, that people felt that, that the way in which you pulled yourself out of the economic doldrums was through government action. And that's, that's, that was the nexus, the was the connection between the economy on the one hand, and all this activity on the other. That the, the, the, the industrialists, financiers, were lying down and playing dead, so to speak. And the government was the thing, was the instrument of change, and that's where you got that connection between the economy and government.

INTERVIEWER:

Good. Thanks. Cut.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. So why was Mrs. Roosevelt such a friend to the—why was this a great affinity?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:

Mrs. Roosvelt was a, a person of, of considerable sensitivity to social problems, racial problems, and the like. I think it was much more so than her husband. And I think that African-Americans very early realized that. And she became a favorite person. She was one that blacks felt they could reach. And people like Walter White on the one hand and Mary McLeod Bethune on the other could get her ear. It was widely believed, and I'm sure Mrs. Bethune encouraged this, that Mrs. Roosevelt and Mrs. Bethune were very close friends. Mrs. Roosevelt moved with ease in the black community. She would go to Howard University to speak. She would go to speak before the Women's Federation clubs, visit black college in various parts of the country. She would attend civic meetings and interracial meetings, therefore giving her blessing to the joint effort of blacks and whites to solve their problems together. Thus, Mrs. Roosevelt became a kind of intermediary between the administration on one hand and the black community on the other. And there was the belief that you could reach the president through her. And I have no doubt that on occasion that did occur. So that she was widely and greatly admired. I remember so well in 1945, it turned out to be just a matter of days before the president's death, that she came to Bennett college, where I was teaching a course—

INTERVIEWER:

Excuse me, I'm sorry. Can you cut for a second? I'm sorry. I wanted—