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"Dear Mr. President", Granbury, Austin, Hood County, and Fletcher County, Texas, January or February 1942
AFS 6434A
Unidentified Woman: Mr. Roosevelt, you can't realize how I'm enjoying having this opportunity to talk to you. The man who's recording this record here says that you're going to hear this and he said I could talk about anything else I wanted to talk about.I know and you know and I guess everybody else knows the thing that you're thinking about most now is this war. Believe me I suppose I'm thinking about it so much is because I got a brother who's in the army. I'm living with my mother, she's a widow. That's the only brother I have and when he left here he was mighty glad to get in the army. I don't know if he's so glad to be there now though from all the letters I've been getting from him. And my brother, I don't mean that he's against our country or anything like that, but he's not so satisfied with the treatment that he's getting up there. He thinks it could be just a little better. I know that he thinks that you and Mrs. Roosevelt have the interest of all the people in this country at heart. That you think everybody should be treated fairly and equally, but I just don't see and he doesn't see either why some of those ideas that you stand so staunchly for might be carried out down here. He says that they've got a lot of dirty work to do in camp, not that they mind working, but nobody else has to do it but just the Negro soldiers. They don't give them guns because they're afraid that they might start a race riot. And I know my brother wouldn't threaten that kind of thing because he's always been law-abiding and a good citizen. He really is. I live right here in the east part of town and we never have had any trouble out there and I know that my brother could respect the carrying of arms just like any other man whether he be white, black, or blue.
I'm just wondering Mr. Roosevelt if you couldn't see to it that something could be done about helping my boys. I see my boys because I think of all my colored brothers as a brother here. It's up to us and this might give me an opportunity to talk to you to see if you won't help us out a little bit. I know you must get ??? up here every day at this kind, but I want you to know that this is coming from the heart and I really mean it. And that something ought to be done about it, because I'd hate to have our people keep on thinking that they don't have an active part in this war because [sound fades] their soldiers are getting treated so badly in some of the camps.
They don't have any entertainment for soldiers ???, whereas the white soldiers have lounges, and guest houses, and everything that they could wish for as far as facilities with ???. Why our boys don't have anything, but a post exchange and that's not very good for entertaining when that's all you have to do. I think they could stand that, if they were just treated a little better when it comes to other things that are most important like duties, and promotions, and ??? the [election (?)] and the army when it gets you put you off, somewhere off by yourself, the Army Air Corps says "No." I had a friend the other day went down here to the recruiting station. You know when they read you the regulations for Army Air Corps pilots saying that they needed so many of the boys to come over and register. And he's twenty-three and he went down there and he said the man told him they just don't have any need for them. Didn't give him any reason what so ever, they just didn't want him. And that's the way it's been over in San Antonio and here too. It's just the same way, they just don't want him in the Army Air Corps.
We had two other fellows, one's eighteen, one's nineteen, Bob Long and his brother, they went down there and they didn't even get in let alone get in the air corps. They didn't even get an ??? [laughs]. Well I think that's pretty bad when a situation gets like that and I feel like if they want to help this country. So they really want to belong as a real citizen, not as a part citizen.
Those fellas are good boys, just as good as they'll do fine anywhere. They don't want to see a Japanese side German victory. We want to make things good over here just as it is. We want to see if we can't have equal rights. I think we want a good ??? to begin with before the war comes home, but now that the war is on I hope that something will turn better for us, and I hope you'll do all you can. I know you're going to do all you can to help us make them better. Because we need it. You need it. I need it.
I think I can say that we need it just a little better ??? than you can because I'm on the other side of the fence. I see, and I read about my fellow Negroes being lynched and abused. And I just don't see, it seems like all the hope is something else to be fighting for. Democracy, and equal rights, justice, and freedom for all. And down here it's not that at all. And I think that America is the best place in the world to live, and can be made a better place. We don't want to go to Germany, and we have no idea of going back to Africa, we want to be good American citizens. We want to stay over here and work, live, live peacefully and lawfully. And I think we just ought to have that chance and I know you think so too because I've seen write ups in the papers about what you and Mrs. Roosevelt thought about everything. I read about the incident about Marion Anderson about two or three years ago. I understand Mrs. Roosevelt ???. You don't understand how much those kinds of things make us feel that we still have a chance. Especially people in your position when they do the right thing.
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