As soon as you get another regimental unit, you take—you have to have a [tape skips] so this fellow gets called up. [Unclear]—

Mr. President, it would mean a great deal to the morale of the Negro people if you could make some announcement on the role the Negroes will play in the Armed Forces of the nation—

We did the other day.

—in the whole national defense [unclear].

We did it the other day. That was when [Randolph attempts to interject] the chief of staff told me this thing.

If you did it yourself . . .

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

If you were to make such an announcement, it would have a tremendous—

I’m making a—

—effect upon the morale—

I’m making a—

—of the Negro people all over the country.

—national defense speech around the, I don’t know, [unclear] this month on what—about the draft as a whole, and the reserves, and so forth. I’ll bring that in. No trouble at all.

It would have a tremendous effect, because, I might say, that the—it is the irritating spot among the Negro people. They feel that they—they’re not wanted in the various armed forces of the country, and they feel they have earned the right to participate in every phase of the government by virtue of their record in past wars for the nation. And consequently, without regard to political complexion, without regard to any sort of ideal whatever, the Negroes were [unclear]. And they’re feeling that they’re being shunted aside, that they’re being discriminated against, and that they’re not wanted now. [President Roosevelt acknowledges.]

[Unclear], Mr. President, newspapers are saying the other day that other persons are trying to find a way to [unclear], say that the Negro’s trying to get in the Army. [An unidentified speaker acknowledges.] He’s trying to get in! He isn’t trying to get out.[note 4] This speaker may have been T. Arnold Hill.

Of course, that was the main—the main point to get across is that, in building up this draft army, selective draft, that we are not, as we did before so much in the world war, confining the Negro into the noncombat services. We’re putting them right in, proportionately, into the combat pool.

Well, we feel that’s sound. We—

Which is something. Yeah, I mean, it’s apparently [unclear]—

We feel that—

It’s a step ahead.

[Unclear.]

[Unclear] what we want, but a step ahead.[note 5] In the unclear passage, President Roosevelt may have said “It isn’t, of course, what we want, but a step ahead.”

Personally, I’d suggest another step ahead that has been commented on very widely in Negro America. And that is that we realize [unclear] that in Georgia and Mississippi [President Roosevelt acknowledges] it’d be impossible to have units of—where people’s standard of admission would be ability, but they are pointing out that in states like New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Negroes and Whites go to school together, they play on the same athletic fields. For example, Mr. Chief Justice [Charles Evans] Hughes’s grandson and my boy are classmates at the Ethical Culture School and the closest of friends.[note 6] Charles Evans Hughes was an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from October 1910 to June 1916; U.S. secretary of state from March 1921 to March 1925; and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from February 1930 to June 1941. White refers to the Ethical Culture School of New York City, a progressive secondary school that based its educational program on the teaching of ethical and moral principles (known today as the Ethical Culture Fieldston School). White had arranged for the admission of his older daughter Jane as the first Black student at the school, part of his larger campaign to integrate elite educational institutions. She later became the first Black student at Smith College. White’s younger son, Walter Carl Darrow White, likely also attended the Ethical Culture School. He went on to become one of the first Black students (possibly the first) to attend and graduate from Swarthmore College. See "Jane White,” Black Students Alliance, Smith College; Samuel Hays and Barbara Darrow Hays, "Imaginative Action, 1943,” Swarthmore College Bulletin (June 2005): 3. And yet, when it comes to the Army, fighting for democracy, they say, “Well, Negroes are not good enough. They’ve got to be shunted aside.” I would like to project this idea, which even though it may sound fantastic at this time, that in the case where there isn’t a tradition of segregation, that we might start an experiment of organizing a division or regiment, and let them be all Americans, and not Black Americans in one and Whites in the other. Now, there are a number of reasons why I think that would be sound. Among them is that I think it would be a practical working democracy, and I think it would be less expensive and less troublesome in the long run. [Unclear]—

Well, you see, Walter, my general thought on it is this: it’s a thing that we’ve got to work into. Now, for instance, you picked the divisional organization. What are your new divisions? About 12,000 men.

Fourteen, I think. They’re [unclear]—

Yes, and 12[000], 14,000 men. Now, suppose in there that you have one . . . What do they call the gun units? Artillery?

Battery?

What?

Battery?

One battery. With Negro troops and officers in there in that battery. Like, for instance, New York. And another regiment or battalion, that’s a half a regiment, are Negro troops. They go into a division, a whole division of 12,000. And you may have a Negro regiment—you would—here. And right over here on my right in line would be a White regiment, in the same division. [The tape briefly loops back onto itself.] Maintain the divisional organization. Now, what happens? After a while, in case of war, those people get shifted from one to the other. The thing we sort of back into, [an unidentified speaker acknowledges] to have one battery out of a regiment of artillery that would be a Negro battery, with the White battery here and another Negro battery, and gradually working in the field together. You may back into what you’re talking about.

Well, you’re projecting that if [President Roosevelt acknowledges throughout] [unclear], we can work, I mean, meeting the reality of the position that they’re arriving at.

And I think, Mr. President, to supplement, if I may, the position of Mr. White, it is—that idea is working in the field of organized labor. Now, for instance, there are unions where you have Negro business agents.

Sure!

Whereas 90 percent of the members are White.

Yeah.

And you also even have Negroes who are parts of unions in Birmingham, Alabama. They’re in the same unions as the Whites. [President Roosevelt attempts to interject, then acknowledges throughout.] And if it can work—if it can work out on the basis of democracy in the trade unions, it can in the Army. [An unidentified speaker murmurs in the background.] And—

You take that down the Hudson River, where Judge Patterson and I come from, we have a lot of brickworks—

Oh, yes.

—up around Fishkill, the old brickworks. Heavens, they have the same union—

Exactly.

—for the White workers and the Negro workers in those brickworks.

Quite so.

They can go along, no trouble at all.

Quite so, and when they come out of their union into the Army, well, now, there isn’t much justification for separating them, as you know. [speaking to Knox] Colonel [William Franklin “Frank”] Knox, as to the Navy—what . . . is the position of the Navy on the integration of the Negro in the various [unclear]?

Well, you have a factor in the Navy, which is not present in the Army, and that is that these men live aboard ships. And if I had said to you that I was going to take Negroes into a ship’s company [unclear]. [Unclear.] And you can’t have separate ships with nothing but Negro crews, because every Navy man has to be interchangeable.

If you could have a northern ship and a southern ship, it’d be different. But you can’t do that. [Chuckles.]

A way of looking at it, with the President’s suggestion on some way of providing a way to permit the Negro [unclear] to serve the Navy without raising the question of conflict between White men and Black men together living in the same ship.

Well, I think the proportion is going up. One very good reason is that in the old days, up to two years ago, up to the time of the Philippine Independence Act, practically—oh, what? Some, what, 75 or 80 percent of the mess people on board ship were Filipinos. And, of course, we’ve taken in no Filipinos now for the last—what was it—four years ago? Three years ago?

Yeah. About two years ago.

Taken in no Filipinos whatsoever. And what we’re doing, we’re replacing them with colored boys [unclear], and so forth, and so on. [Someone attempts to interject.] And in that field, they can get up to the highest rating of a chief petty off[icer]—

—the head mess attendant on a cruiser or a battleship is a chief petty officer, which [the tape loops back upon itself] is very [unclear]—

Is there at this time a single Negro in the Navy of officer status?

No, can’t do it.

There are 4,007 Negroes out of a total force [at the] beginning of 1940 of 139,504 overall in the messman’s rank. [Unclear.]

I think another thing—another thing, Frank, that I forgot to mention. I thought of it about, oh, a month ago, and that is this: we are training a certain number of musicians on board ship . . . the ship’s band. Now, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have [someone in the room says “no”] a colored band on some of these ships, because they’re darn good at it. And that’s something I wish you would look into. [Someone attempts to interject.] In other words, it’ll increase the opportunity. That’s what we’re after.

Mr. President—

May develop a leader of the band. Fine! Fine.

[Unclear.] Perhaps the general over there is looking at me, [President Roosevelt laughs] I [unclear]. But there are two main points of fairly great disturbing influence among Negroes. [Unclear] this, which we’ve tried to challenge as briefly as possible in a memorandum showing the things which concern the Negro the most. There is a discrimination in the Army and in the Navy and the Armed Forces, the Air Corps, in the matter of [unclear], the Army arsenal and naval—Navy yards, and particularly in industry, which have contracts for the national defense program. I’ve just completed an article, I hope it’s the last draft, for the Saturday Evening Post, in which I gather an enormous amount of information on [unclear]. [President Roosevelt acknowledges.] But in Pensacola [Florida], for example, there is an apprentice school, which gives a very fine course, a four-year course, a free and two-dollars-and-eighty-eight-cent [unclear] that no Negro is allowed to go into. He ought to get into that.

Right.

An apprenticeship is tremendously important.

But why [unclear]—

[Unclear.]

And then—

I think we can work on that, get something done on that [unclear].

In the North, of course, that would look to be a little—

We have a lot of colored help in our Navy yard.

I saw [unclear] many. I was up in Watertown [Massachusetts] [unclear], near Boston. Hundreds of them there. There were many colored people there.

But most of them are limited to the unskilled [unclear].

Well, now, [unclear] Navy yard. Right now, the cartridge case factory [unclear]. In Charleston, South Carolina, they practically ousted all skilled and semiskilled Negroes.

In Charleston?

In Charleston, yes.

Well, now, we’ve been talking about these matters [as an] acute form of [unclear].[note 7] In the unclear passage, the unidentified speaker may have said “race-based discrimination” or “race prejudice.”

Yes.

We just don’t have any [unclear] to implement these things. There’s nobody that really knows too much about it. [Unclear.] We have nobody in here [unclear].

That’s why I put on what’s-his-name, [Channing H.] Tobias?[note 8] Channing H. Tobias was senior secretary of the Colored Work Department of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) from 1924 to 1946; a member of the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1943, and chair of the board from 1953 to 1959; a member of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights from 1946 to 1947; and director of the Phelps-Stokes Fund from 1946 to 1953. President Roosevelt appointed Tobias to an advisory committee on the peacetime draft. UP, “War Division Is Reorganized in Speed Move; Six-Man Advisory Committee Named on Conscription,” Austin American-Statesman, 22 September 1940.

Tobias, yeah.

[speaking over another participant] Let me tell you, putting him on that board [unclear] good thing to do.

Imagine that.

And, of course, on the development of this work, we’ve got to have somebody. I think we, for instance, in the Navy, you ought to have somebody in the office [Knox attempts to interject] who will look at—what?

We have that [unclear]. [President Roosevelt acknowledges throughout.] [Unclear] because in the Army and Navy we need [unclear].

[speaking over other participants] And when I was at the Navy Department in the old days, I had a boy who’s out here.

That’s right.

By the name of [Fred] Pryor.[note 9] Fred Pryor was a clerk and messenger in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the 1930s. Do you know Pryor? He used to be my colored messenger in the Navy Department. He was only a kid. [Someone acknowledges.] [Unclear] Louis [M.] Howe was terribly fond of him.[note 10] Louis M. Howe was a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune; political adviser and chief of staff to Franklin D. Roosevelt; and secretary to the president from March 1933 until his death in April 1936. When we came back here in ‘33, Louis Howe said to me, “The one man I want in the office is Pryor. Well, Pryor now is one of the best fellows we’ve got in the office, and he handles all of my [unclear] cases from the Department of Justice. [Unclear.] Bright fellow. He summarizes the whole thing. What?

You’ve never let me meet him. I’ve—[unclear].

Haven’t you ever met Pryor?

No, sir.

Great boy. I’m talking about the old days. He was just a clerk in the Navy Department. And I used him—people went to him with any kind of question. “Can we do this? Can we do that? Can we get another opening there?" And did a very, very great service. I think you can do that in the Army and Navy, get somebody there that will act as the, well, as a clearinghouse.

Sort of an assistant secretary [unclear exchange] [President Roosevelt acknowledges] and responsible to the Secretary. [Unclear exchange.] Mr. President, I—

[speaking over White] [Unclear.] But I’m working on that.

I want to see [unclear] the liberty of putting this out [unclear]—

[Unclear]—he’s getting what they call the silent treatment.

Yes.

[Unclear] [President Roosevelt acknowledges] just finished that just in time to get one set.

Yeah. That’s [unclear].

Which we tried to give you the benefit of the points, [President Roosevelt acknowledges throughout] which are most important, [unclear] what they’re most worried about. And these are—I’m not going to leave them, but—you’ve got enough reading matter—are petitions from 85 American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts, California to Maine, protesting against discrimination.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[speaking aside] Mr. Randolph, I assure you, you’ll get the [unclear].

Well, Phil and I are going to be [unclear]—

Well, I don’t think so [unclear].

[Unclear] give some more opportunity. Now, that’s [unclear]. That was the example. [Unclear] I had [unclear] the Negro man [unclear] opportunity. And then the more of those we can get—

—period, they’ll have opportunity then.

Well, thank you, [unclear] because most people feel, and I feel, we’ve been loyal. You know, in the last war, when we were worried about protecting Woodrow Wilson, [President Roosevelt acknowledges] they [unclear] having all—only Negroes protecting the White House.

I know it! I know it!

I’ve been trying to get a picture of that. [President Roosevelt acknowledges.] I want to show you.

Yeah. Well, of course, my letters are increased a bit from 30 threatening letters a day to nearly 40. So I feel all right. [Laughs heartily.]

Well, I [unclear]. You’re looking fine, Mr. President, and we’re happy to see you. [President Roosevelt acknowledges.]

Well, I’m proud to say the people don’t like me, too.

[Laughs.] That’s right!

Even in Congress.

[laughing] Even in Congress.

Good-bye, Mr. President.

Bye.

Mr. President, this next group [unclear] 15 coming in.[note 11] This meeting with Randolph, White, and others was listed in the White House daily log at 11:30 a.m. The next group, the Committee to Aid England, was listed at noon. Fifteen minutes after that, a group led by the British ambassador to the United States, Lord Lothian (the Marquess of Lothian, Philip Henry Kerr), met with the President. See Presidential Daily Diary, 27 September 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt Day by Day: A Project of the Pare Lorentz Center at the FDR Presidential Library. That’s the one that you promised to see.

Yes.

Now, the only way we can ever save our graces with Mrs. [Eleanor] Roosevelt [unclear].[note 12] Eleanor Roosevelt (née Anna Eleanor Roosevelt) was first lady of New York from January 1929 to December 1932; first lady of the United States from March 1933 to April 1945; chair of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights from April 1946 to December 1952; chair of the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women from January 1961 until her death on 7 November 1962; and the wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt since 1905. I’ve got the other 50 out there. Can I bring them in behind, and hear them make a speech to you?

Who’s the other 50?

They’re other members of this committee. [President Roosevelt acknowledges.] She wanted me to receive them, but that wouldn’t be anything there. I can bring them [unclear].

And tell—who’s introducing them?

They don’t—You don’t nec—I haven’t promised that they would even meet you.

No, but I mean, the first group of 50.

Oh, I’ve got the head of it there.

I see.

And he interviews everybody [unclear].

All right. [Watson attempts to interject.] And then tell—if there must be any little speech, make the speech and then end up by saying, “And now, may I present these people?" And have them [unclear].

[speaking in the background] [Unclear.] Say, “I’m [unclear].”

Well!