The Black Cabinet
The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt
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Narrated by:
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Bahni Turpin
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By:
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Jill Watts
About this listen
In the early 20th century, most African Americans still lived in the South, disenfranchised, impoverished, terrorized by white violence, and denied the basic rights of citizenship. As the Democrats swept into the White House on a wave of Black defectors from the Party of Lincoln, a group of African-American intellectuals - legal minds, social scientists, media folk - sought to get the community's needs on the table. This would become the Black Cabinet, a group of African-American racial affairs experts working throughout the New Deal, forming an unofficial advisory council to lobby the President. But with the white Southern vote so important to the fortunes of the Party, the path would be far from smooth.
Most prominent in the Black Cabinet were Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator close to Eleanor Roosevelt, and her "boys": Robert Weaver, a Harvard-educated economist who pioneered enforcement standards for federal anti-discrimination guidelines (and, years later, the first African-American Cabinet secretary); Bill Hastie, a lawyer who would become a federal appellate judge; Al Smith, head of the largest Black jobs program in the New Deal at the WPA; and Robert Vann, a newspaper publisher whose unstinting reporting on the administration's shortcomings would keep his erstwhile colleagues honest. Ralph Bunche, Walter White of the NAACP, A. Philip Randolph, and others are part of the story as well. But the Black Cabinet was never officially recognized by FDR, and with the demise of the New Deal, it disappeared from history.
Jill Watts' The Black Cabinet is a dramatic full-scale examination of a forgotten moment that speaks directly to our own.
©2020 Jill Watts (P)2020 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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In the tradition of Shattered and Game Change, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin provides an insider’s look at how women across the political spectrum carried a revolution to the ballot box and defeated Donald Trump, based on interviews with key figures such as Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Stacey Abrams, Nancy Pelosi, and many more.
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An excellent book
- By Gary on 02-02-22
By: Jennifer Rubin
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The Man Who Sold America
- Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story
- By: Joy-Ann Reid
- Narrated by: Joy-Ann Reid
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Candidate Trump sold Americans a vision that was seemingly at odds with their country’s founding principles. Now in office, he’s put up a "for sale" sign - on the prestige of the presidency, on America’s global stature, and on our national identity. At what cost have these deals come? Joy-Ann Reid's essential new audiobook, The Man Who Sold America, delivers an urgent accounting of our national crisis from one of our foremost political commentators.
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Good explanation of how we got to where we are
- By Caduceus26 on 07-13-19
By: Joy-Ann Reid
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Great Society
- A New History
- By: Amity Shlaes
- Narrated by: Terence Aselford
- Length: 17 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In Great Society, Shlaes offers a powerful companion to her legendary history of the 1930s, The Forgotten Man, and shows that in fact there was scant difference between two presidents we consider opposites: Johnson and Nixon. Just as technocratic military planning by "the Best and the Brightest" made failure in Vietnam inevitable, so planning by a team of the domestic best and brightest guaranteed fiasco at home. At once history and biography, Great Society sketches moving portraits of the characters in this transformative period.
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How have we forgotten how bad these ideas were?
- By Robert S. Allen on 02-09-20
By: Amity Shlaes
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Rule and Ruin
- The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party
- By: Geoffrey Kabaservice
- Narrated by: Michael Bulter Murray
- Length: 21 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The chaotic events leading up to Mitt Romney's defeat in the 2012 election indicated how far the Republican Party had rocketed rightward away from the center of public opinion. Republicans in Congress threatened to shut down the government and force a U.S. debt default. Tea Party activists mounted primary challenges against Republican officeholders who appeared to exhibit too much pragmatism or independence. Moderation and compromise were dirty words in the Republican presidential debates. The GOP, it seemed, had suddenly become a party of ideological purity. Except this development is not new at all.
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Kabaservice doesn't make the case
- By MJE on 01-22-16
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The Failed Promise
- Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
- By: Robert S. Levine
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Robert S. Levine foregrounds the viewpoints of Black Americans on Reconstruction in his absorbing account of the struggle between the great orator Frederick Douglass and President Andrew Johnson.
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A timely review of the threat to the nation of a President who is unlistening to the “better angels of our nature.”
- By Karl R. Walko on 02-28-24
By: Robert S. Levine
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What It Took to Win
- A History of the Democratic Party
- By: Michael Kazin
- Narrated by: Lee Goettl
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In What It Took to Win, the eminent historian Michael Kazin identifies and assesses the Democratic Party's long-running commitment to creating "moral capitalism" - a system that mixed entrepreneurial freedom with the welfare of workers and consumers. And yet the same party that championed the rights of the white working man also vigorously protected or advanced the causes of slavery, segregation, and Indian removal.
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Timely and informative History Book
- By Asha Sceanca on 03-24-22
By: Michael Kazin
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Jane Crow
- The Life of Pauli Murray
- By: Rosalind Rosenberg
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 18 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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A mixed-race orphan, Murray grew up in segregated North Carolina before escaping to New York, where she attended Hunter College and became a labor activist in the 1930s. When she applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee, she was rejected because of her race. She went on to graduate first in her class at Howard Law School, only to be rejected for graduate study again at Harvard University this time on account of her sex. Undaunted, Murray forged a singular career in the law.
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What a legacy!!!
- By Paul on 03-08-21
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American Carnage
- On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump
- By: Tim Alberta
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 26 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The 2016 election was a watershed for the United States. But, as Tim Alberta explains in American Carnage, to understand Trump’s victory is to view him not as the creator of this era of polarization and bruising partisanship, but rather as its most manifest consequence. American Carnage is the story of a president’s rise based on a country’s evolution and a party’s collapse. As George W. Bush left office with record-low approval ratings and Barack Obama led a Democratic takeover of Washington, Republicans faced a moment of reckoning.
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masterpiece
- By ZZ on 07-26-19
By: Tim Alberta
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The American Experiment
- By: James MacGregor Burns
- Narrated by: Mark Ashby
- Length: 88 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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James MacGregor Burns’s stunning trilogy of American history, spanning the birth of the Constitution to the final days of the Cold War. In these three volumes, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner James MacGregor Burns chronicles with depth and narrative panache the most significant cultural, economic, and political events of American history.
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American History ABCs
- By Michael on 06-16-15
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Machine Made
- Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics
- By: Terry Golway
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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For decades, history has considered Tammany Hall, New York's famous political machine, shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft, crime, and patronage personified by notoriously corrupt characters. Infamous crooks like William "Boss" Tweed dominate traditional histories of Tammany, distorting our understanding of a critical chapter of American political history. In Machine Made, historian and New York City journalist Terry Golway convincingly dismantles these stereotypes.
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A missed opportunity
- By Kathy on 05-27-15
By: Terry Golway
What listeners say about The Black Cabinet
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- MCH
- 10-07-20
Great Story
It was a very informative way of learning black history. There was so much to unpack. Loved it!
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- inspiredbooksguide
- 09-14-20
Intriguing book!
Learned so much about the struggle for equality from a group I never knew existed. Narrator was also good.
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- Barry
- 06-21-20
Brilliant, important, and little known history
This is a fabulous work of history. Dr. Watts tells the story of how African-American men and women infiltrated FDR‘s administration. It retails for accomplishments and feet as they attempted to maneuver FDR into I’m more forward thinking position on Civil Rights.
Excellent narration, fantastic history and clear, lucid writing make this a must read if you’re interested in any FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt, Civil Rights, African-American History.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Craig
- 09-13-20
Overcoming of (Black) Political Struggles
The Black Cabinet details the trials, failures, and success of black political leaders during the early 20 century. Those working in any form of government owe thanks to these pioneers for they paved roads for future success.
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- Kamau McKoy
- 01-07-21
Pursuing reform from inside government
Watts' text helps to fill a gap in the historical narrative of anti racism resistance in the United States. Books like Rosenstein's Color of Law and Katznelson's When Affirmative Action Was White are essential in understanding the building blocks of structural racism lain during the first half of the 20th century, thanks in particular to black exclusion from (or anti black discrimination within) New Deal era jobs and housing programs. Watt's text shows that black Americans fight against the erection of these building blocks is as old as the building blocks themselves.
The historical narrative tends to privilege outside agitation of groups like the NAACP and Thurgood Marshall, King and the SCLC, CORE, SNCC, and the Black Panther Party - groups using both institutional and extra- institutional means. Watts complements this narrative - and the social movement analytical lens that perpetuates it - by unveiling the black Americans who struggled thanklessly from inside federal government institutions during the crucial era of the 1930s and 1940s.
Even for those aware of the extent to which New Deal programs increased rather than decreased racial inequality in the United States, Watts' texts unearths the potential that if not for black cabinet members such as Bethune, Weaver, Al Smith, and Hastie, black Americans would have been completely shut out from the New Deal and would be even further behind white American counterparts than they currently are.
Moreover, Watts' thorough research helps to complete or even to correct the images of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, their complicated relationships to black American leadership, and their influence over the quality of black lives. Watts shows that FDR (and even Eleanor Roosevelt to a lesser extent) needed to be pushed, pulled, and prodded to make even the moderate concessions he made toward black America during his years in office. That is, credit for the moderate positive effects of New Deal programming on black lives largely goes to the Black Cabinet rather than to Roosevelt. And Watts' text details this overlooked and perhaps entirely forgotten truth.
In addition to reading this text alongside the Rosenstein and Katznelson texts mentioned above, I recommend this text as a prelude to Katznelson's Fear Itself, Carol Anderson's Eyes Off the Prize, Michael Krenn's Black Diplomacy, Brenda Gayle Plummer's Rising Wind, Penny Von Eschen's Race Against Empire, and Anderson's Bourgeois Radicals - all of which explore black Americans as creators and not merely as subjects or objects of government policy - including American foreign policy - in the years before (and, for some of these texts, during) the Civil Rights and black power movements of the late 1950s through early 1970s.
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- Leonard D. Floyd
- 08-12-21
Wow! So insightful.
This book is beyond eye-opening. Loved it, loved learning about my ancestors and the nation I live in.
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- Anonymous User
- 08-21-22
eye opening
It is difficult to understand the peculiar dichotomy that the United States represents. Professing freedom for all while refusing to grant it. This book outlines a disgraceful stain that still haunts this country. Thank you, Ms. Watts.
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- valerie
- 09-08-21
Interesting
I elected this book because it was to be the August discussion book for the Mocha Girls book club and I wanted to be able to participate in the discussion. I did not like this book. I learned a lot, but in the current political environment it is just a repeat of what is going on now 90-years later. It does provide historical perspective for a lot of the blacks we’ve heard about – not necessarily why we should know who they are. In it’s purest form, this is a history book.
RECOMMENDATION: MAYBE – Depending on the kind of book/stories you like.
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1 person found this helpful