Federal Council of Negro Affairs

The Black Cabinet, or Federal Council of Negro Affairs or Black Brain Trust, was the informal term for a group of African-Americans who served as public policy advisors to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor Roosevelt in his 1933-45 terms in office. There was no official organization. The term was coined in 1936 by Mary McLeod Bethune and was occasionally used in the press. By mid-1935, there were 45 African Americans working in federal executive departments and New Deal agencies.

Although the Council was concerned with civil rights, Franklin D. Roosevelt believed there were larger problems to be addressed than racial inequality during the wartime years; he was also struggling to maintain support of the Southern white Congressional Democrats. Roosevelt declined to support legislation making lynching a federal offense, and banning the use of the poll tax in the South.

The Black Cabinet, with Eleanor Roosevelt's support, worked to ensure that blacks received 10 percent of welfare funds. The Council argued that blacks were underrepresented among recipients of aid under the New Deal, in large part because Southern Democrats had influenced the structure and implementation of programs to aid their white constituents. For instance, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration helped farmers but did not help farm workers; farm owners were given incentive to cut farm production, reducing the need for labor. Programs such as the Works Projects Administration (WPA), and the National Youth Administration (NYA) attempted to direct 10 percent of funds to blacks (as their proportion of the US population). These agencies set up separate all-black units with the same pay and conditions as those in white units, to which black voters responded favorably.

Mary McLeod Bethune served as an informal organizer of the Council, as well as the Director of Negro Affairs in the National Youth Administration.Rayford Wittingham Logan drafted Roosevelt's executive order prohibiting the exclusion of blacks from the military in World War II. Other leaders included William H. Hastie, and Robert C. Weaver. The leaders associated with the Black Cabinet are often credited with laying part of the foundation of the Civil Rights Movement that developed in strength in the postwar years.

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