Episode 16: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Part II - a podcast by SMU Center for Presidential History

Today’s episode is all about Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Actually, we have two episodes for you on FDR.  He’s that important, and being the only person ever elected to the White House four times, he was also in office long enough to have created several legacies when issues of race arise.  Just how important was he?  Well, here’s one way to look at it: there have been three true existential crises in American history, moments not just of stress or strife, but perilous times when the very existence of the republic seemed threatened.

This week, we talked with Dr. Jill Watts, a professor of history at California State University San Marcos, and an expert on African-American history in the 20th century. She is the author of The Black Cabinet and talked to us about that work and how FDR’s black cabinet pushed him to include Black Americans in New Deal programs. Second, we talked to Dr. Natalie Mendoza, a professor of Mexican American history at the University of Colorado Boulder. We learned about the Good Neighbor program, labor demands and conflict in the southwest, and racial tensions along the US-Mexico border. Finally, we spoke to Jamie Ford, a novelist and author of Hotel at the Corner on Bitter and Sweet, a story about Japanese internment and the complicated history of Chinese and Japanese communities in the Pacific Northwest.

To learn more, visit www.pastpromisepresidency.com.

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