Do we really need another book examining the New Deal—its content, controversies, and consequences for America and the wider world? After all, except for the revolutionary period and the Civil War era, no aspect of American history has produced more research and writing than the New Deal. Could there possibly be a new interpretation or novel twist on this thoroughly studied event in our nation’s history? Fortunately, this question can be answered resoundingly in the affirmative, as Ira Katznelson’s Fear Itself offers an original and notable contribution to our understanding of the New Deal era—its origins, evolution, and lasting impact on American politics and society.
Unlike most histories of the New Deal, in which Franklin D. Roosevelt is cast in the role of the savior of American capitalism, and other political institutions, including the Congress, are relegated to relatively minor parts, this book puts the national legislature at the center of the action. This perspective, in turn, accords Southern Democrats a leading, indeed a critical, role in the formulation and implementation of public policy both foreign and domestic during the New Deal era. Their seniority and united outlook, especially on issues of race, gave them an overly large role in this era. Thus, according to the author, Southern Democrats were crucial—if largely unacknowledged—actors in shaping how the national government would confront the most serious economic crisis in our nation’s history, as well as in leading the charge into World War II and laying the foundation for the development of the American national security state.
The overriding objective of Southern Democrats, of course, was to make sure that no aspect of the New Deal would challenge or in the slightest degree interfere with the racial hierarchy and domination that had defined the region since Reconstruction. Any threat to whites’ privileged status—real or imagined—would have generated great anxiety among Southern Democrats and would almost certainly have led them to oppose key elements of the New Deal. Roosevelt was well aware of the potential threat posed by uncooperative Southern Democrats to his legislative agenda, and at least initially he was extremely sensitive to and respectful of their racist attitudes and behavior. After all, FDR’s principal objective was to get the Congress to enact his domestic legislative agenda, and if ignoring calls for racial justice was the price to be paid for southern Democrats’ cooperation, then so be it. This seemed to be the prevailing attitude in Roosevelt’s White House, at least in the early years of the New Deal.
Over time, however, as Katznelson records, the unity among congressional Democrats came under increasing pressure and eventually eroded and virtually collapsed, as southern and nonsouthern Democrats found themselves increasingly at odds as the New Deal evolved. In fact, on many pieces of legislation in the latter stages of the New Deal, outhern House and Senate Democrats teamed up with Republicans, giving rise to the conservative coalition. For most of this period, none of these three partisan groups was large enough to enact legislation on its own. Thus, the fate of most legislative proposals depended upon putting together a coalition of two of these groups, a condition that changed over the course of the New Deal.
Southern Democrats were enthusiastic supporters of New Deal legislation during FDR’s first term. Given that the South was the least economically developed region of the country and the most adversely affected by the Great Depression, and initially perceiving no threat to their racial hierarchy, southern members of Congress welcomed the New Deal in part as a necessary means for overcoming the region’s backwardness, supporting a wide variety of legislation during this time, including the National Recovery Act, the Wagner Act, the Social Security Act, the Banking Act, the TVA Act, and the Security Exchange Act. Katznelson summarizes the crucial role played by Southern Democratic legislators in passing these groundbreaking pieces of legislation: “The remarkable legislative productivity of this radical moment—a moment when government embraced a strong sense of domestic purpose—was propelled as much by the South’s elected representatives as by any other group in the House and Senate. Each of the era’s milestone laws required their support; each would have been blocked without it” (p. 252). Southern and nonsouthern Democrats stood shoulder to shoulder to bring about these far-reaching legislative actions.
Over time, however, gradually and then more rapidly, Democratic Party unity gave way to increasing division between outhern and nonsouthern members, as the former viewed their racial way of life as coming under increasing threat from outside forces. Southern members of Congress began to see a growing lack of sympathy and support for their region’s racial system among their northern colleagues. No single factor or event caused this change in outlook and behavior among Southern Democrats; rather, a confluence of considerations was responsible for this transformation.
One of the first signs of worry among Southerners resulted from FDR’s reelection in 1936. The 1932 presidential election featured essentially the same racial breakdown in voting that had occurred since Reconstruction, with African Americans voting overwhelmingly for Republican presidential candidates. They were no more inclined to support Roosevelt in 1932 than they were to vote for the segregationist candidacy of Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and 1916. Two-thirds of African Americans voted for Herbert Hoover in 1932. However, this changed dramatically in the midterm congressional elections in 1934 and especially in 1936 when an overwhelming majority of black voters cast their ballots for Roosevelt, a first in American history. Although black Americans supported Roosevelt because of the economic promise that the New Deal offered, not because of racial considerations, the South’s legislators were nonetheless alarmed by this development.
Other issues and events also undermined white Southerners’ confidence that their racial system was secure. Black aspirations and activism were growing stronger in both the North and South, Northern Democrats began campaigning for African American votes, Roosevelt began to appear as a less reliable ally on racial matters, and as a sign of things to come, Northern Democrats in the House voted overwhelmingly for the Costigan-Wagner antilynching bill in 1937. White Southern legislators even began to see racial undertones in nonracial legislative initiatives like the effort to create a national minimum wage. It seemed that everywhere white Southerners looked, they saw attempts to undermine their region’s racial order and Northern Democrats no longer willing to defend it.
The issue area that proved most damaging to Democratic Party unity, while simultaneously featuring increasing cooperation between Southern Democrats and Republicans, centered on labor markets and trade unions. The labor movement in the North was proving to be a key component of FDR’s Democratic Party coalition, providing it with essential manpower and resources. But southern congressional Democrats saw only trouble in the growing power being exercised by organized labor and feared that its influence was bound to spread south, threatening the viability of Jim Crow. How long could the South be immune from the influence of a labor movement that opposed employment discrimination and was strongly supported by Northern Democrats? The answer came in the passage of the Taft-Hartley law in 1947, which was enacted with the strong support of Republicans and Southern Democrats despite the opposition by Northern Democrats and President Harry Truman’s veto. Taft-Hartely helped prevent the formation of a national labor movement. A greatly weakened labor movement thus served both to advance the ideological interests of Republicans and protect the racial order of Southern Democrats. Moreover, with the labor issue now resolved to the advantage of Southern Democrats, the most contentious issue splitting the Democratic Party was put aside, at least partially, a situation that continued for the next decade and a half.
No other book that I know of provides such a thorough, detailed, and compelling account of the way in which Congress, especially its southern members, shaped the full range of public policies enacted during the New Deal era, among its many virtues. For this reason alone, it makes a major contribution to our understanding of modern American politics.
While Fear Itself ends with the close of the New Deal era in the early 1950s, the unending struggle over America’s ability to cope with the unresolved issue of race was just beginning to force its way onto the national stage, in ways that would profoundly reshape the contours of American politics and society. In the end, of course, Democratic Party unity could not withstand the reemergence of race as a national issue in the early 1960s, which led to the passage of landmark Civil Rights legislation as well as the transformation of the American party system, especially in the South. The solid Democratic South was thus transformed into a stronghold of the Republican Party, as white conservatives have migrated to the GOP, while black voters have become the most loyal group of the new southern Democratic Party. The partisan balance in the region has been fundamentally altered, but at the same time southern and nonsouthern Democrats no longer find themselves at loggerheads, as they often were during the struggle over Civil Rights. On the contrary, their attitudinal and behavioral differences have been substantially reduced during the last four decades, and in the case of the mass electorate, south/nonsouth differences have been almost entirely eliminated. Ideological coherence has returned to the Democratic Party coalition, with partisan polarization having replaced the regional cleavage that characterized the New Deal coalition from the late 1930s until the 1960s.
In sum, just as race played a major though largely underappreciated role in structuring American politics during the New Deal era, so it has continued to be a pivot around which much of our politics has revolved since then.
