Franklin D. Roosevelt's Political Career

Franklin D. Roosevelt political career is a paradox. Although he was conservative in outlook and character, he never feared change or trial and error. He was genuinely committed to certain moral principles and yet was the most pragmatic of leaders. He was born on a country estate and raised in affluent surroundings; he was loved by the common people like no other president in modern times. He was a democracy aristocrat, he was self-confident, but at the same time, he sought to avoid unpleasant personal confrontations. Many people could not understand his character because he projected exceptional warmth and on the other hand he possessed a remote quality. In my opinion, he was a very complicated human being. He did not achieve all of his goals,

D. R. and the New deal, even though this “New Deal” was not meant for African Americans, they benefitted in some ways. After he was elected, a series of economic programs were instituted that was intended to offer aid to the people without jobs and strengthen the economy nationally. This was a statement about federal government power helping individuals by providing them with protection from fear and from war. So, the early New Deal programs were blueprinted not so much to elevate reform as to put together a recovery, so they often benefit big business and big agriculture-well organized and influential groups on whose fate an upturn, it believed, deepened. Weaker, more marginal groups such as small businesses, blue-collar workers, and the landless farmer found themselves on the outside looking in. Although the term “depression” had been used to describe previous economic slumps in America, it came to be mainly associated with the years following the collapse of 1929. At the time of the Great Depression, Black Americans were to an extent not too large or too small affected by unemployment, and they were the first to get hired or fired. African Americans benefitted from these newly initiated programs even though they were the intended audience, and these made him popular in that African American community although he did nothing of major significance towards promoting civil rights or anti-lynching

However, the rapid retreat of the federal government in race matter after age war left Blacks only poignant memories of what it was like to get a fair shake from their government. The Great War opened up jobs to female employment otherwise off limits to them. The war stimulated the economy and the virtual ending of European immigration created labor shortages that women including African Americans, exploited. In 1917, crash programs of munitions and other war-related production, combined with the departure of the men into services, forced employers and government officials to turn to women. Women workers intensified when the government had stepped up conscription. Wartime employment boosted the economic status of many women; black women were usually relegated to the dirtier and more physically demanding work that white women avoided but nonetheless they prevailed. Few black women received training in technologically advanced communications, commercial or manufacturing operations. Even so, black women left agricultural and domestic work for whatever limited opportunities the industrial and commercial world offered, thousands of them joining the Great Migration of the African Americans from the south into