Bailey wanted black Southerners to ‘feel secure’

“A bespectacled, priggish-looking former editor of the Biblical Recorder, [Sen. Josiah Bailey of North Carolina] had supported FDR in 1932 and 1936 but had recently soured on the New Deal, mainly because of its trespasses against states’ rights. He had been preparing this speech [against FDR’s plan to “pack” the Supreme Court] for weeks, and as he rose to begin, senators summoned their colleagues from the cloakroom.

“Bailey held forth with his customary melodramatics, shouting his points, banging his desk, shaking a preacher’s finger. The Southerner was offering an argument calculated to appeal to his colleagues from the North  — that ‘the Negroes in the South feel secure tonight because they know there is a Constitution and an independent Court.'”

— From “FDR v. the Constitution” (2009) by Burt Solomon

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *