The Black Cabinet by Jill Watts

Author:Jill Watts [Watts, Jill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802146922
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2020-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

Fighting on Two Fronts, 1940–1944

Chapter Ten

Keep ’Em Squirming

AT THE end of his life, Kelly Miller had become convinced that the African American vote would go Democratic in 1940, but Mary McLeod Bethune was not so sure. Early in the year, with the presidential race on the horizon, she had a long conversation with Democratic National Committee chair Jim Farley. She stressed the party’s need to aggressively counter Republican propaganda and urged the speedy recruitment of an African American adviser to the DNC. Furthermore, she demanded that the Democrats make a high-profile appointment of a black public relations expert: “There is too much good which has been done by the New Deal for the Negro for us to sleep at the switch.” She also met with white female Democratic party leaders and encouraged them to reach out to black women voters. The year would pass quickly. She urged the party to act expeditiously. The presidency and the Democratic majority in the House and Senate had to be protected.

During the winter of 1940, Bethune was back on the speaking circuit extolling the virtues of her National Youth Administration division, the New Deal, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But the four years of perpetual work and travel had taken its toll. She had visibly aged, and suffering from a persistent cough, she had grown weaker and weaker. In March, she headed back to Daytona Beach to celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of Bethune-Cookman College and to rest a bit. By early April, she was on the road again. A few weeks later, she returned to Washington, D.C., exhausted. Her cough had become even worse, and her asthma attacks more severe. On the advice of her doctor, she checked into Johns Hopkins University Hospital in April. It was nothing serious, the Associated Negro Press assured the black public.

The doctors had a different opinion. Chronic bronchitis and a serious, long-term sinus infection had worsened her asthma. She desperately needed sinus surgery, but she was too overweight and run-down to survive it. She would have to remain hospitalized and on a strict diet until it was safe to operate. She should expect to stay at least two months, the doctors informed her. Eleanor Roosevelt had flowers clipped from the White House gardens and sent to Bethune once a week. “I realize how much the inactivity will irk you,” the First Lady wrote to her friend. The Pittsburgh Courier hoped she would “heed her physician’s advice.”

“Rest is the thing,” doctors emphasized.

Bethune tried. Bouquets flowed in each day; she received “letters, cards, and telegrams from all over the country.” From her window, she watched people moving about on the Hopkins campus. She listened to the radio and, she claimed, appreciated having “time for reading, meditation, and reflection.”

But she was miserable. She longed to be in the thick of all the political intrigue. Times were uncertain. No one knew whether Roosevelt would run again. War was spreading throughout Asia and Europe. The U.S. government drove harder to expand its defense resources, cutting New Deal funding to increase the country’s war chest.

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