Mary McLeod Bethune, Black Cabinet leader and the National Youth Administration’s Director of Negro Activities,
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and NYA Executive Director Aubrey Williams at the opening session of the National Conference
on Problems of the Negro and Negro Youth sponsored by the NYA in Washington, January 7, 1937.
Bettmann
organization, the Negro Industrial League,
dedicated to exposing the weaknesses
becoming alarmingly apparent in the
New Deal’s main jobs program under
the National Recovery Administration.
Testifying before congressional committees
throughout 1933, Davis and Weaver
gained increasing attention in the Black
press with Davis emerging as the charismatic
leader and Weaver appearing as the
dignified academician with the facts and
figures.
Weaver had also set his sights on a government
job. In the spring of 1933, just after
President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office,
he had begun attempts at securing a federal
post. Government work had been a tradition
in the Weaver family and among their
social set. Yet, like other African Americans
seeking federal employment as the
New Deal dawned, Weaver was repeatedly
rejected. That summer, after the Negro
Industrial League made its first splash, Davis
began lobbying for the National Recovery
Administration to give his partner a position.
The agency’s answer was a flat no.
In late August 1933, Weaver learned that
the Roosevelt administration had established
the Office of the Special Adviser on
the Economic Status of Negroes. The idea
had originated with the Rosenwald Fund’s
Edwin Embree and Will Alexander, who
had been peddling it around Washington
throughout the summer. Alexander had
become convinced that Roosevelt “was
a sort of messiah” and that “perhaps the
next stage in race relations in this country
would sort of center around what happened
in Washington, DC.” The Rosenwald
Fund proposed to underwrite the
special adviser’s salary and office expenses
for the first few years. That would allow
Roosevelt to avoid a confirmation process
that might trigger retaliation against the
New Deal by southern Democrats, who
consistently opposed any kind of support
for African Americans.
Reportedly, the Secretary of the Interior,
Harold L. Ickes, a Chicagoan with
Rosenwald ties, finally got the plan in
front of the President. Ickes could be
irascible, but as the past president of the
Windy City’s NAACP, he had established
a reputation for being liberal on the issue
of race. Roosevelt approved the proposal
and placed the office under Ickes, allowing
him to choose the man to occupy the special
adviser’s position. Rather than consult
with the many African American leaders
he knew personally, Ickes demanded
Alexander and Embree provide him with
a list of names. Ickes picked the last name
on their list—Clark Foreman, a white
southerner.
The reaction from the Black community
was shock and dismay. The NAACP
22 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Summer 2020 | www.MoAF.org