Especially laughable is is this: "He did what he did as a reaction to his times. He was a one percenter and would have no reason to take similar actions today," which even the fools over at the DLC-created Progressive Policy Institute would be too embarrassed to claim. Proves yet again how the Internet's primary weakness is that it gives nimrods the world over a platform.
A more intelligent take on FDR and civil rights:
http://millercenter.org/president/fdroosevelt/essays/biography/8
There can be little doubt, however, that the New Deal in many instances was a boon to African Americans. In one sense, this was a question of degree. Aid to African-Americans prior to 1933, especially in the South, had been nearly non-existent; the federal help that did come with the New Deal, therefore, was significant. In addition, New Deal agencies like the WPA, the Public Works Administration (PWA), and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) grew more sensitive throughout the 1930s to the needs of African-Americans, largely because of the leadership of Roosevelt appointees at those agencies. Indeed, African Americans found significant allies in the administration, from Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to the First Lady herself, Eleanor Roosevelt. Enough blacks, like Mary McLeod Bethune, found themselves in leadership positions that there was even talk of a "black Cabinet" of FDR advisers.
Roosevelt's approach towards civil rights legislation was janus-faced. FDR spoke out against lynching, found the poll tax reprehensible, and, at the prodding of his wife, met in the White House with African American civil rights leaders. FDR, though, refused to make an anti-lynching bill a priority, though, in truth, opposition ot the legislation was so strong that it never had a chance. In his defense, FDR claimed—and he was probably correct—that endorsing legislation which threatened the South's racial order would cost him the votes of Southerners in Congress—support he desperately needed.
snip
Spurred by the U.S. crusade against Nazism, black advocates of civil rights called for a "double V" campaign that would bring victories against fascism abroad and racism at home. The war years saw the growth of black organizations, like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Committee (later Congress) for Racial Equality, dedicated to winning civil rights at home. Blacks even met with some success; during the summer of 1941, A. Philip Randolph threatened the Roosevelt administration with a 100,000 person "March on Washington" if discrimination was not ended in the military and the defense industries. Roosevelt capitulated and issued an Executive Order creating a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC).
Roosevelt's performance, then was deeply flawed, but blacks rendered their own verdict when in 1936 they abandoned their historic allegiance to the Republicans, the party of Abe Lincoln, and moved in large numbers over to the Democrats, the party of FDR, where they have been ever since. One of Roosevelt's severest critics, Ralph Bunch, said the FDR era "represented a radical break with the past," and W.E.B. Du Bois concluded that Roosevelt "gave the American Negro a kind of recognition in political life which the Negro had never before received."
Contrast that with Bill and Hillary's Wall St.- friendly policies (including NAFTA, China MFN, and financial sector deregulation), which have merely resulted in the job losses, lost homes, and bankruptcies of millions of African-Americans (along with the rest of the American working/middle class).
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