The Pittsburgh Press (November 2, 1944)
Ickes: Dewey is foe of Negroes
Gains under New Deal cited in address
New York (UP) –
Vice President Henry A. Wallace and Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes told a cheering crowd of more than 2,000 in New York’s Harlem District last night that President Roosevelt is the best friend the Negroes have ever had in high public office.
The two administration officials spoke at the Golden Gate Ballroom where Mr. Ickes, speaking over a nationwide radio network, charged that Governor Thomas E. Dewey had “walked down the aisle hand in hand with the most vindictive enemies of the Negroes.”
Vice President Wallace, urging the Negroes to vote early next Tuesday, said he believed “the American people know a champion when they see one,” and promised that Mr. Roosevelt would establish economic prosperity in the United States after the war.
Defends Hillman
Mr. Wallace said the New Deal had always worked for the underprivileged and assailed those who are attacking CIO Political Action Committee Chairman Sidney Hillman.
“Sidney Hillman has been kicked, around most unjustly,” Wallace said. “Folks ought to take their hats off to him.”
In his speech, Secretary Ickes cited the “advance of the Negroes under the present administration, but said Mr. Dewey’s performance as governor of New York toward the Negroes “has been little short of iniquitous.”
‘Progress’ cited
He said:
During the 1944 session of the New York State Legislature, which Governor Dewey controls, five fundamental bills were introduced designed to aid the Negroes and other minority groups by eliminating discrimination. All of these measures were killed by the Legislature, but any or all of them could have been passed with Governor Dewey’s support.
He called the roll of Negro “progress” under the New Deal – increased employment, better housing, partial elimination of discrimination in the armed services – and said that the most “substantial developments of all have occurred in the field of Negro education.”