A profound thanks to those who invoke FDR and the New Dealers

[JDPriestly]

65. Actually, Teddy Roosevelt first asked an African-American to eat at his table in the White House.

Lincoln was friends with African-Americans in that he talked to them. But Teddy Roosevelt invited an African-American to dinner. That was a huge thing at that time.

The First African American Invited to Dinner at the White House

In the autumn of 1901, Booker T. Washington, the great educator, author, and orator, was on a speaking tour. In Mississippi, he received a telegram from President Theodore Roosevelt. (President William McKinley had been assassinated less than two months before, an event which led to Roosevelt being sworn in as President.)

The telegram asked Washington to come to the capitol for a conference.

When Washington arrived on the afternoon of October 16, 1901, he received an invitation to dine with the President at 8:00p that evening. According to Roosevelt biographer, Edmund Morris (author of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt), the dinner proceeded “behind closed doors, under the disapproving gaze of a negro butler”.

Besides Roosevelt and Washington, the President’s wife, daughter, and three sons were present at the historic meal. While this seems a trifling thing to us today, at the time inviting a black man to dinner at the White House was anything but. News of the unique dinner traveled along the Associated Press wires throughout the night. The morning newspapers were generally positive in the North, but many Southern papers took a different tact. They proceeded to attack both Roosevelt and Washington with fervor.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/05/the-first-african-american-invited-to-dinner-at-the-white-house/

Seems incomprehensible that so long after the Civil War that invitation was news, but it was.

Of course, Eleanor Roosevelt was Theodore's niece.

Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican. But as my grandmother told me, the Republicans left their voters behind. Republicans were not liberals by today's standards. But the Democrats at that time were a very conservative bunch.