John Hervey Wheeler, Black Banking, and the Economic Struggle for Civil Rights by Brandon K. Winford;

Author:Brandon K. Winford;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2019-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

The inaugural meeting of the PCEEO, April 11, 1961, in the Cabinet Room of the White House. John H. Wheeler is standing in second row, far left, directly behind those seated. Seated, left to right: former North Carolina governor and then Commerce Secretary Luther H. Hodges, Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg, President John F. Kennedy, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. Courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, Massachusetts.

Wheeler witnessed Kennedy sign the executive order establishing the PCEEO in Washington, D.C. The same day he, alongside Leslie Dunbar, the SRC’s new executive director, met with top administration officials and civil rights advisers in an off-the-record luncheon. The meeting placed Wheeler at the bargaining table with the country’s top power brokers, a position with which he was quite comfortable. Several representatives of philanthropic foundations also participated in the meeting. As the only black leader in attendance, Wheeler joined Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall, and Atlanta Constitution newspaper editor Ralph McGill (an early SRC incorporator who had orchestrated the meeting). Another attendee was Harold Fleming, Dunbar’s predecessor at the SRC and now executive vice president at the Potomac Institute, which philanthropist Stephen Currier had established earlier in the year as a private organization closely associated with the Kennedy administration. This meeting, and others held with different cabinet members that day, pushed Wheeler fully into the position of national public policy advocate.20

During the luncheon, those present expressed their ideas about civil rights to the attorney general. Although it is impossible to determine what each person said, Wheeler likely directed Bobby Kennedy’s attention to the need to appoint blacks in the US Department of Justice. In the weeks leading to and following his visit to Washington, he contacted government officials about hiring blacks in that department. Wheeler also wanted an African American appointed as an assistant US attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina, and he might have said as much to Kennedy during the meeting. Once his term on the PCEEO began, he suggested the names of several potential black appointees. Wheeler possibly discussed other economic disparities facing blacks in the South. Afterward, he wrote to the PCEEO’s chairman, Vice President Johnson, and expressed his gratitude to him for also meeting with the SRC group to discuss the executive order. Wheeler promised Johnson that the SRC’s executive committee would work with the US Department of Labor to ensure the executive order was properly followed. “This action,” conveyed Wheeler, “indicates clearly that we have an opportunity to move forward rapidly toward the goal of making maximum use of all of the manpower resources of our nation.”21

Such off-the-record meetings typified the Kennedy administration’s approach to civil rights. It relied on backdoor channels and executive orders to address specific problems while being careful not to openly confront the southern social order. The South’s politicians had a tight rule over Congress and were part of Kennedy’s Democratic Party coalition, which the president relied on to support his foreign policy agenda.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.