George,

Make me do these things.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
- Frederick Douglass

On September 27, 1940, A. Philip Randolph, leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP and T. Arnold Hill, an administrator for the Urban League, met at the White House with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The purpose of the meeting was to discusss eliminating racial discrimination in War industries and segregation of the Armed Forces. Roosevelt listened intently for twenty-three minutes to what Randolph had to say, then he said, I want to do all of it, but I want you and your movement to make me do these things.

During the next eight months the White House did not take any positive action on these issues that had been discussed during that meeting. In the meantime, Randolph was organizing the March on Washington to protest discrimination in War industries, segregation of the Armed Forces and the lack of social justice for African Americans.

After Roosevelt became aware of the March on Washington that was scheduled to take place on July 1, 1941 he was concerned that it would be an embarassment for America during wartime. On June 18, 1941 Roosevelt had a meeting at the White House with Randolph alone. Again, Randolph laid out his plan which called for ending discrimination in War industries and segregation in the Armed Forces. He also elaborated on his plan for a March on Washington after Roosevelt asked him how many people would be in the March? Randolph replied, 100,000. Roosevelt agreed to issue Executive Order 8802 or the Fair Employment Act. Randolph decided to call off the March on Washington, at least temporarily. The action taken by Randolph and his movement was sufficient to make Roosevelt issue Executive Order 8802.

Some people have interpreted Roosevelt's "Make me do it" assertion as beng defensive or a "dare you to try to make me do it!" As if to say, you can't make me do it. Harry Belafonte has referred to it as the "Make me do it" myth. Some people have called it a fable. I disagree. It is an actuality. Rososevelt was saying to Randolph "I want to do all of it, but you and your movement will have to make me do these things." That's the way it is in America. That is the nature of democracy. Power is with the people if they choose to use it. Roosevelt's "Make me do it" assertion is no more a myth or fable than Frederick Douglass's admonishment that "Power concedes nothing without demand." Both assertions are enviable truths. It is also true that politicians are no worst than you let them be and no better than you make them be.

Following are three United States Supreme Court's decisions that addressed the rights of African Americans. They indicate how people employed the "make me do it" stratagem to influence the highest court in the land to make two decisions that were unconstitutional and immoral and one decision that was constitutional and moral.

Case number one. In the Dred Scott Case, Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney's "Opinion of the Court" in 1857 said that "Africans in America were being an inferior order, so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." Slave owners who were the controllers in the South made Taney and his associate justices make that decision. At that time slave owners made the white masses and the Supreme Court believe that the South would win against any attempt, including war, made by the North to abolish slavery.

Case number two. In Plessy v. Ferguson, Supreme Court Justice Melville W. Fuller III, and his associate justices in 1896 decided that the Louisiana law mandating separate but equal accomodations for blacks and whites on intrastate railroads was constitutional. This decision provided the legal foundation to justify other state and local laws that would deny African Americans equality, not least among them was the enactment of "black codes" throughout the South. The Civil War had been fought, slaves had been emancipated, President Lincoln had been assassinated and a Southerner had succeeded him as president, the Black Reconstruction had ended and the Ku Klux Klan, known for lynching black people and threatening white people they called "nigger-lovers," had become the most powerful force in the South. This group made the Supreme Court disregard the constitution, thirteenth, fourteeth and fifteenth amendments in making this decision.

Case number three. In 1954, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren and his associate justices ruled in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that "separate but equal is inherently unequal and unconstitutional." Among the positive benefits of World War II, in addition to defeating Nazis Germany and Japan, were advancement in medicine, science, including producing atomic energy, high technology and the empowerment of African Americans who later engaged physically in disobeying discrimination laws and effective litigation that made the Supreme Court make a decision that voided the decision made by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson fifty-eight years earlier.

During the last year of the first decade of the twenty-first century, and hopefully the next five years, the American people will "make President Obama do the right thing." Just as it were true with the Supreme Court cases cited above the American people have the power to make the leader of the Executive Branch of Govenment, President Obama do the right thing. However, in order to make Obama do the right thing, considering the nature of the Government which consists of three branches: judicial (Supreme Court), executive (President) and legislative (Congress), the American peope have to make Congress which consists of two opposition political parties that are composed of 435 voting members in the House of Representatives, and 100 members in the Senate, do the right thing.

Despie the strong resistance Obama has faced and continues to face from Republicans who for the last year have been controlled by members of the Tea party, he has, for the most part, done the right thing. He did the right thing in making available stimulus funds that bailed out the banks and other financial institutions and prevented an imminent financial crisis, rescued two automobile companies that were doomed to go under without government assistance, extended unemployment benefits and provided funds that enabled states to keep policepersons, teachers, firefighters and some other public workers employed. Over strong opposition from Republicans he suceeded in the enactment of a Health Care law that six presidents had not been able to achieve. Obama did the wrong thing in sending more troops to fight in Afghanistan even though he received stronger support for that action from Republicans than from Democrats. Obama would do well to take a page from President Harry S. Truman. You can't always listen to the Generals.

There is much more Obama needs to do, especially with 14 million Americans being unemployed and several million underemployed. Without the support of Republicans whose leaders in the Congress have publicly stated that their number one job is to defeat Obama in 2012, not to create jobs for the American people, he cannot signed legislation into law that will provide jobs for people who are unemployed. The American people can make Obama do what is necessary to create jobs, but they will have to first make members of Congress support the President's job progam. Americans are aware that during the eight years prior to Obama's presidency the economy plunged into a sordid state as a result of America initiating and fighting two wars that were and are financed with borrowed money from China. During those years a surplus in the U.S. treasury was turned into a colossal deficit. Also contributing to the financial deficit was the previous administation's decreasing the tax rate for wealthy Americans. This led billioniare Warren Buffet to observe that he pays less tax than his secretary.

The President is charged with and is expected to have a vision to lead the nation. This requires the support of Congress. It is obvious to viewers of the news on TV and the internet that the Republicans have been less supportive of Obama than any president in the last seventy years. In addition to everything else one has to ask, "Is this happening because Obama is an African American?" Today, the media makes it impossible for anyone to hide. Americans are beginning to say enough is enough. Ultimately, it is the American people who must take responsibility for the dysfunctional Congress and they will have to be wise enough to not elect or re-elect Tea Party mentality representatives in 2012 as they did in 2010, a bunch that, to a large degree, account for the present Congress being a do-nothing Congress.

The Tea Party - which Jesse Jackson and some other people refer to as the Fort Sumter Tea Party, giving that it possesses a Fort Sumter (1861) Civil War image, not the Boston Tea Party (1771) "no taxation without representation" image - that started in 2009 has had a tremendous impact on the Republican Party and the Congress. The Republican Party no longer resembles the Republican Party led by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the1950s and President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Apparently, the Tea Party has no commitment to diversity. It certainly does not appeal to African Americans if the complexion of their gatherings is any indication.

On September 17, 2011 the Occupy Wall Street was started. Some people believe, although it remains to be seen, that it will become a movement which will play a major role in "making Obama do the right thing" by first "making the recalcitrant members of Congress do the right thing." Employing the technology of behavior making Congress do the right thing does not have to be a slow process. What couldn't or woudn't or didn't happen in a century can happen in a year, this year. Already, during its first month of existence, Occupy Wall Street protests are taking place, not just in New York, but in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and many other cities. The Occupy Wall Street's website reads: "We are unions, students, teachers, veterans, first respondents, families, the unemployed and underemployed. We are the majority, the 99 percent. And we will no longer be silent. All races, sexes and creeds." The complexions and other characteristics of protesters indicate the validity of this statement.

In 1955 I was a resident in Montgomery when Rosa Parks was arrested. I was in the court room on the day of her trial when she was found guilty of violating Alabama's segregation laws when she refused to give her bus seat to a white man. The black people of Montgomery boycotted the busses. Under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., the bus boyoctt was successful. Subsequently direct action taken by members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, Congress of Racial Equality, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commitee, NAACP, Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, made Congress which for many years had been prevented from passing civil rights legislation by filibustering Senators that included Thedore Bilbo, Herman Talmadge, Huey Long and Strom Thurmond, the latter having filibustered more than 24 hours, longer than any other Senator had done, in an attempt to disallow passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, aggressively responded to the demands of African Americans for justice. It was the organized efforts and direct action of people who confronted segregationists, even when it meant death, as it did for some black and white Civil Rights activists, that made the Congress enact Civil Rights legislation that was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. I consider Johnson to be the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln. Civil Rights legislation enacted in the 1960s gave African Americans access to public accomodations, the right to vote in the South, access to open housing in the South, North, East and West. Indeed, this was a BIG DEAL for all Americans who believed in justice for all, but especially for African Americans. For the first time African Americans had the law on their side and no longer could damnable states rights laws trump federal laws.

Hopefully, the many Americans who have been quick to applaud the people protesting in Egypt, Libya and some other countries in Africa to secue justice will be no less approving and supportive of Americans protesting such as those protesting in the Occupy Wall Street who seek justice. Occupy Wall Street may be the beginning of the twenty-first century protest that will make Congress and Obama do the the right thing that will produce more justice, economic, political and social.

With the huge deficit and needless deaths of people in the military it is important to emhasize that during the right thing involves making Americans mind their own business, cease and desist fighting the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War. As of October 13, 2011, 4,477 Americans had died in the Iraq War and 1,802 had died in the Afghanistan War. While the United States and coalition authorities rarely provide any public estimates of Afghan or Iraqi troops or civilians casualities or injuries, a compilation of official data from the United Nations and eslsewhre indicates that the latest and lowest estimates are: Iraq troops killed 30,000, Iraq civilians killed 864,531, Iraq people injured 1,556,156. Afghanistan troops killed 8,587, Afghanistan civilians killed 8,813, Afghanistan injured 15,863. The cost of the War on Terror - Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan - according to Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies is $3.7 trillion. The cost of caring for injured veterans and in some instances their families will significantly increase the cost of the War on Terror.

"Make me do it ... these things." Power concedes nothing without a demand. Make Obama and Congresspersons do the right thing. Wake-up Americans, the power is in your hands.

Uriah J. Fields (Electronic mail, October 13, 2011)

Copyright © 2011 by Uriah J. Fields