FDR’s New Deal Has Mixed Civil Liberties Record, Says ACLU
In its 1934 Annual Report, released on this day, the ACLU argued that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal had a mixed record on civil liberties.
On the positive side, there had been no wholesale suppression of civil liberties during World War II as there had been during World War I. The main reason was that it was a popular war, with “no significant opposition to suppress.” The ACLU also praised the New Deal’s policies toward Native-Americans and aliens, along with President Roosevelt’s pardon on December 23, 1933 that restored the political rights of people convicted under the Espionage Act during World War I. The most positive contribution to civil liberties was Roosevelt’s appointments to the Supreme Court, which quickly created the pro-civil liberties “Roosevelt Court.” (See FDR’s first court appointment, Hugo Black, on August 12, 1937.)
On the negative side, however, FDR did not support civil rights bills in Congress because he felt he needed the votes of southern segregationist members of Congress. He also did not support organized labor, and even tried to undermine the Congressional approval of the Wagner Act, which proved to be the “magna carta” for labor, guaranteeing workers the right to unionize. And on August 24, 1936 he authorized the FBI to resume political spying, which it had been ended on May 13, 1924 on orders from Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone.
In retrospect, Roosevelt’s overall civil liberties record from 1933 to 1945 was very mixed. On the one hand, he perpetrated one of the worst civil liberties violations in American history, the evacuation and internment of the Japanese-Americans during World War II. Roosevelt authorized the tragedy by executive order on February 19, 1942. On the positive side, his appointments to the Supreme Court created the first pro-civil liberties Court (the “Roosevelt Court”) in Americans history.
On FDR’s civil liberties record, read: Samuel Walker, Presidents and Civil Liberties From Wilson to Obama (2012)
On the Japanese-American tragedy: Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (2001)
On the Roosevelt Court: C. Herman Pritchett, The Roosevelt Court: A Study in Judicial Politics and Values, 1937-1947 (2014 edition)