Roosevelt’s Southern Connection
Was the US president ‘dealing with the devil’ in his relationships with segregationist politicians or was his ‘the art of the possible’?
After a 1937 trip to Mississippi, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the state’s senator Pat Harrison a letter of praise along with the debts he had incurred after losing to him in a game of poker: ‘I bow to your prowess and apologize for the delay, and trust that you have not been pecuniarly inconvenienced.’ Traditional histories portray Roosevelt’s personal relationships with southern segregationists as a utilitarian necessity that Roosevelt made with some regret. Sources like the 1937 letter, however, suggest that Roosevelt’s concessions were also part of a shared leisure culture which many politicians took part in across sectional lines.
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