Letter, Eleanor Roosevelt to Walter White detailing the First Lady's lobbying efforts for federal action against lynchings, 19 March 1936

Reproduction number: A69 (color slide); LC-MSS-34140-41 (B&W negative)
Lynching was undoubtedly the most terrible crime perpetrated by white supremacists against African Americans. From the late nineteenth century through the World War I years, hundreds of blacks were lynched in the South for a variety of alleged crimes, the most heinous of which was the rape of white women. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other civil rights organizations tried unsuccessfully for many years to get a federal antilynching law passed. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) and Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes (1874-1952), a one-time president of the NAACP's Chicago chapter, were supportive of the organization's efforts, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) did not share their enthusiasm and believed that pressing for the NAACP's demands would endanger congressional support for his New Deal programs. In her March 1936 letter to Walter Francis White (1893-1955), who served as NAACP executive secretary (later director) from 1931 to 1955, Mrs. Roosevelt stated some of the arguments that were used by the president and others against passage of an antilynching bill. It is clear from this "personal and confidential" letter that Mrs. Roosevelt was searching for a tactful means for aiding the anti-lynching cause herself, and she suggested to White various methods for winning the goodwill of members of Congress.