More than a year before Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt heard arguments from the civil rights leaders of the era for the desegregation of the military in preparation for the wars in Europe and Asia that would soon engulf the U.S., but a generally sympathetic FDR said the nation was just not ready to see "Negro" troops fighting alongside whites.
The remarkable exchanges were caught on recording devices Roosevelt had secretly installed in the basement under the Oval Office. FDR had a microphone hidden in a desk lamp and an on-off switch in a lower desk drawer to feed the device in the basement called a "Continuous-film Recording Machine."
The intent was to record press conferences, but the machine was often left running and would catch exchanges such as the meeting with the civil rights leaders, according to the Miller Center of Public Affairs nonpartisan affiliate of the University of Virginia. The center highlighted the Roosevelt tapes in its archives to mark the 80th anniversary of FDR's death at age 63 of a cerebral hemorrhage at his retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945.
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In the Oval Office on Sept. 27, 1940, A. Philip Randolph, a Black labor leader and president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, made the case for what would now be called the "inclusion" part of diversity, equity and inclusion, in the military: "Mr. President, it would mean a great deal to the morale of the Negro people if you could make some announcement on the roles the Negroes will play in the armed forces of the nation."
Roosevelt tried to interject, apparently to note that only 11 days earlier he had signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 that established a draft for all Americans, but Randolph continued: A speech or an announcement by Roosevelt on desegregation of the military "would have tremendous effect" because discrimination in the ranks "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 they're feeling that they're being shunted aside, that they're being discriminated against, and that they're not wanted now," said Randolph, who would become a main figure in the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. would make his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech.
Also present at the Oval Office meeting was Walter Francis White, then head of the NAACP. White backed up Randolph on desegregation and told Roosevelt that, at least in the Northern states, "Negroes and whites go to school together, they play on the same athletic fields. 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.'"
Roosevelt told White that his arguments had merit and added that he would be approving Black troops for non-combat service but desegregation would take more time: "Well, you see, Walter, my general thought on it is this -- it's a thing that we've got to work into," FDR said.
At the Oval Office meeting with the civil rights leaders, Navy Secretary Frank Knox told Roosevelt that desegregating the Navy would risk violence between whites and Blacks.
"You have a factor in the Navy, which is not present in the Army, and that is that these men live aboard ships," Knox said. The problem was to find "a way to permit the Negro to serve the Navy without raising the question of conflict between white men and Black men together living in the same ship."
At that point, White appeared to rile the president by reminding him that there were "petitions from 85 American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts, California to Maine, protesting against discrimination" in the military. Roosevelt shot back: "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah."
Roosevelt also appeared to be thinking out loud about ways to increase the opportunities for Blacks to serve in the military, and made what would be seen today as a cringeworthy suggestion to Knox.
"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 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," Roosevelt said.
The tapes provide a "fabulous window into the texture of another time," said Marc Selverstone, the Gerald L. Baliles professor and director of presidential studies at UVA's Miller Center.
"We get to hear a largely unscripted FDR. Here, he's more or less winging it with the civil rights leaders and, as a result, you can hear him in perhaps a more authentic way," said Selverstone, who also is co-chair of the Presidential Recordings Program at the Miller Center.
Roosevelt decided to make the recordings after he felt he had been misquoted by reporters at a Senate event in January 1939. He wanted the recordings to serve as possibly a more accurate record than his stenographer could provide but employed the device for less than three months. The recordings began in August 1940, and the last one was made on Nov. 8, 1940.
The placement of the recording device under the Oval Office was a closely guarded secret, and none of the visitors to the Oval Office knew they were being recorded, Selverstone said. The existence of the tapes did not become known until the 1980s.
"As a historian, I think it's essential that we all have a better understanding of what has come before to understand why we are in the situation we are today," Selverstone said in commenting on the value of the tapes. "It helps to humanize history. You get a sense of the emotion involved" and a sense of "how the country has been able to move ahead and overcome certain dimensions of its history that are not terribly attractive."
Selverstone also noted that it was first lady Eleanor Roosevelt who arranged the Oval Office meeting between the civil rights leaders and FDR as part of her advocacy for desegregation in the military and society as a whole.
At a time when many white people thought that Black Americans were incapable of flying an airplane, Eleanor Roosevelt went on her own to the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama to show support for the Tuskegee Airmen
To the consternation of the Secret Service, and her husband, the first lady climbed into the back seat of a two-seater piloted by the legendary instructor Charles Alfred "Chief" Anderson, believed to be the first Black American to obtain a commercial pilot's license, and they took off for an hourlong flight over Alabama. The flight generated huge publicity and support for the Tuskegee Airmen.
"She had a ton of moxie and was quite bold and forthright, particularly with her husband, to get on the right side of history," Selverstone said.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct several dates and to correct details about who was addressed in one of the contained quotes.
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