Digital History>eXplorations>Lynching>Anti-Lynching Legislation of the 1930s>Walter White to L.C. Dyer

Walter White's Letter to L. C. Dyer (February 2, 1935)

Source: NAACP Papers, Library of Congress

Thank you for your letter of January 28 th . Even were I to grant all that you say, yet we are faced with the concrete and inescapable fact that the Democratic party is in control of Congress and will be for at least two more years. What then should we do? Wait until the Democrats are out of power and the Republicans in again before we agitate for an anti-lynching bill? It may be, as you say, the "there is no chance whatever for this legislation in the present Congress". But the same thing was true repeatedly of Republican Congresses for no Republican Congress ever passes an anti-lynching bill during the many years when its representatives were in as complete control of Congress as the Democrats today. It is true, as you say, that Democrats in the Senate prevented passage of the Dyer bill after it had been passed by the House; but you do not remember, don't you, that Senator Lodge and other Republicans were a party to abandonment of the bill in the face of the filibuster led by southern Democrats.

It would be foolish, in my opinion, for Negroes to be blindly partisan so far as Democrats are concerned as it was for them to be blindly Republican. The Association is still maintaining its principle of political independent and continues to advocate to colored voters that they support men and measures rather than party labels which today are almost meaningless.