Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race: How the Presidency Paved the Road to Brown
Description
Many have questioned FDR's record on race, suggesting that he had the opportunity but not the will to advance the civil rights of African Americans. Kevin J. McMahon challenges this view, arguing instead that Roosevelt's administration played a crucial role in the Supreme Court's increasing commitment to racial equality—which culminated in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
McMahon shows how FDR's attempt to strengthen the presidency and undermine the power of conservative Southern Democrats dovetailed with his efforts to seek racial equality through the federal courts. By appointing a majority of rights-based liberals deferential to presidential power, Roosevelt ensured that the Supreme Court would be receptive to civil rights claims, especially when those claims had the support of the executive branch.
Praise for Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race: How the Presidency Paved the Road to Brown
"An important contribution to legal history."
— Choice
"Thoughtful and meticulously researched . . . This work makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the political climate and reality of the New Deal era as well as informing our explanations of judicial policy and the rise of the modern civil rights movement."
— Law and Politics Book Review
Winner of the 2005 Richard E. Neustadt Book Award for the best book on the Presidency
— Richard E. Neustadt Award
"[McMahon] argues that Roosevelt worked to advance the civil rights cause through the two institutional means he had at his disposal in the face of entrenched segregationist power in Congress. These were the presidency itself, which FDR consistently sought to strengthen at Congress's expense, and his executive ability to nominate judges to the federal bench. McMahon's treatment of both is skillful, as he adds innovative use of evidence to theoretical tools developed in political science."
— Gerard Alexander
"[McMahon] presents a wealth of information demonstrating that Roosevelt's record of judicial and executive appointments as well as his policy initiatives were instrumental in creating the political climate from which the Brown decision emerged."
— Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
"McMahon's compelling and provocative book aggressively interrogates the conventional wisdom on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's civil rights legacy. . . . The book dissects Rooseveltian hagiography, revealing a profoundly nuanced causal chain connecting the failure of the first New Deal to the Warren Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education."
— Benjamin Ponder
“McMahon successfully employs a presidency-centered focus to link elected officials and judicial activism on behalf of the powerless. McMahon maintains that Brown v. Board of Education was as rooted in decisions made by the Roosevelt Administration as in the litigation campaign against segregated schools.”
— Mark A, Graber
"An outstanding work of scholarship. It is imaginative in its ideas, rigorous in its argumentation, thorough in its research, and articulate in its prose. It is a book that will be valuable to anyone interested in the history of civil rights or the evolution of the presidency."
— Timothy Walch
"The book is excellent, meticulously researched, lucid, intellectually combative yet engaging and broadly persuasive. It is approachable enough to be perfectly readable for undergraduates but difficult enough that it should have substantial impact on how scholars think of the Presidency's relation to the Court."
— Paul Martin
