What was America like in 1939? In a way caught between the bark and the tree with the Depression still a traumatic memory and a World War on the horizon. The United States was on the threshold of a new era, but few of the experts could really see it, let alone understand it…
…It would be two more years before the ostensibly humanitarian New Deal movement of Roosevelt would take its first step since Reconstruction to correct inequities based on race or religion. From Amos ‘n’ Andy on radio to the grinning waiters and fat maids in the movies, the old stereotype of the African-American, or negro as was the lexicon of the day, was unabashadly shown in all the mirrors of national opinion and taste: he was amiable, obliging, musical, subservient, sometimes perhaps to outwit his employer with his earthy “native” shrewdness- but importantly, always in his place.
—Marian Anderson Performing at Lincoln Memorial: After being barred from singing in the concert hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution, singer Marian Anderson, gave a free, open-air recital on the steps of Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939 before a crowd estimated at 75,000. (Photo Credit: Bettman/Corbis)—click image for source…
A Mrs. Roosevelt might be widely applauded for quitting the D.A.R. because it refused to let Marion Anderson give a concert in Constitution Hall in Washington, but that case involved the first lady of the country and a leading artist. Meanwhile, hard to fathom, but the President was having no success in getting an anti-lynching bill through Congress.
Ordinary people, even intelligent and high-principled ones, seldom felt more than an occasional twinge of guilt about America’s treatment of its African-American minority. For one thing, they had economic troubles of their own arising out of the Depression, and for another, all but a few sincerely believed in the African-American’s inferiority. ( to be continued)…
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