- Headline
-
The National Observer: The News Behind the Day’s News
- Sub-Headline
- Obdurate
- Publication Date
- Saturday, June 28, 1941
- Historical Event
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Massive March on Washington Planned
This database includes 338 articles about this event - Article Type
- Newspaper
- Page Section and Number
- 1
- Author/Byline
- --
- Article Text
- OUR best military men do not share the economists' and diplomats' theories as to the reasons for Hitler's thrust into Russia. Experts who have made a thorough study of Der Fuehrer's campaign supreme believe confidence that it a rather was born of supreme confidence rather than of desperation. They note also that victory would leave him poised for an autumn attack on either Britain's home isles or her empire in the middle east.
Our general staff's analyses show that Hitler never moves without careful calculation of the time materiel[sic] and personnel required for his particular objective. In the present operation he had the advantage of information from German technicians employed by the Soviet to manage its factories, hydro-electric plants and mines. He probably has assembled more dats on Russia's strength and weakness than on those of any other nation he has invaded. He chose exactly the right season for his blitz. The greenness of crops makes it difficult for the Russians to destroy them before the German advance. The hard, flat terrain facilitates those lightning movements so essential to his panzer divisions.
Our observers expect the outcome to be evident within a few weeks. All depends upon the Russians' strategy. If they retreat in slow, orderly style, maintining their armies while they wreck bridges, and roads, they may cripple Hitler. In this manner they could prolong the conflict for several months to a time when blizzards and fierce cold would cut Nazi supply and communication lines. But if the Communists stand and fight in orthodox fashion, they may be annihilated as were the Poles, Belgians and French.
• • •
Obdurate
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S order forbidding discrimination against negroes in defense factories was literally pried out of him by threat of a "march on Washington" by members of that race. The prospect of such a demonstration at this time threw administration into panic. They manipulated every lever in sight to prevent the affair.
The director of the threatened march, A. Philip Randolph, wrote to the President several weeks ago, asking if he would address the group when it reached the capital on July 1. There was no reply for two weeks. Then Mr. Randolph, who heads the Brotherhood of Pullman Porters, received letter from Mrs. Roosevelt. She said she had discussed the matter with her husband, and that he was sternly opposed to the idea. Last week negro leaders were invited to New York by Mayor La Guardia in his capacity civilian defense director. He begged them to call off the demonstration but they refused. President Roosevelt subsequently summoned the sponsors to the White House, and personally asked them to leave the matter to him. Again, they declined.
Mr. La Guardia and Aubrey Williams, NYA director, attended this session. Mrs. Roosevelt, who was at Campobello off New Brunswick, tried by telephone to persuade them to listen to her and her husband's arguments. Still the negro representatives, supported by the most prominent members of their race, refused to abandon the scheme.
• • •
Mandate
THE climax came dramatically at a White House conference early this week. The dramatis personae reveal the President's intense desire to avert a spectacle which inevitably would have political, social and economic repercussions. Besides Mayor La Guardia, Mr. Williams and Social Security Co-ordinator Anna Rosenberg, F. D. R. called in OPM-ers Knudsen, Knox, Stimson and Hillman.
The President opened the discussion by reiterating his firm opposition to the proposed "march". He declared that problems affecting the negro race cannot be settied in that manner. He asked: "What would happen if the Irish and Jewish people staged a march on Washington? It would be resented by the American people because such a march would be considered as an effort to coerce the government and make it do certain things." Mr. Randolph replied that the Irish and Jewish people have no grievances, while the negroes do, and added that all other forms of protest have proven ineffective. When Mr. Roosevelt refused to address the group on the ground that he does not speak to such assemblages, he was reminded that he once spoke before the American youth congress which booed him when he denounced the Communists. F. D. R. soon left the room after turning over chairmanship of the meeting to Secretary Stimson.
The practical Mayor LaGuardia then suggested issuance of presidential order against discrimination on defense jobs. Both Mr. Knudsen and Mr. Hillman opposed this because so many other factors are involved in the defense program. Both agreed, however, to use their "influence" to insure the hiring of negroes. Mr. Randolph and Walter White of the N. A. A. C. P. replied that "education" and "persuasion" have been tried and failed. Then it was that the President agreed to issue his mandate.
• • • - History Unfolded Contributor
- Margaret L.
- Location of Research
- Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com)
Learn More about this Historical Event: Massive March on Washington Planned
- 1941 - Plans for a March on Washington (FDR Library)
- American Memory: African American Odyssey (Library of Congress)
- Patriotism Crosses the Color Line: African Americans in World War II (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)
- The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (PBS)
- FDR, A. Philip Randolph and the Desegregation of the Defense Industries - Lesson Plan, grades 9-12 (The White House Historical Association)
- Global Nonviolent Action Database (Swarthmore College)
Bibliography
Bracey, J.H, and Meier, A. “Allies or Adversaries?: The NAACP, A. Philip Randolph and the 1941 March on Washington.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly. Vol. 75, No. 1 (Spring 1991), pp. 1-17.
Kersten, Andrew Edmund. A. Philip Randolph: A Life in the Vanguard. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
Pfeffer, Paula F. A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990.
Morehouse, Maggi M. Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Men and Women Remember World War II. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.
Weir, William. The Encyclopedia of African American Military History. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004.
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