New Deal Was “Compromised by Racism,” Professor Smith Tells Politico

POLITICO -- But that executive order, said San Francisco State University historian Robert C. Smith, came at the last minute under immense pressure from civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, a labor unionist who had threatened a march on Washington over jobs for Black people in the defense industry.

Much of the New Deal was “compromised by racism,” Smith said, co-author of “Polarization and the Presidency: From FDR to Barack Obama.” Truman‘s record on racial equity, on the other hand, “both rhetorically and substantively was the most advanced since” President Benjamin Harrison, who left office in 1893.