Black Cabinet

The Black Cabinet was an unofficial group of African-American advisors to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. African-American federal employees in the executive branch formed an unofficial Federal Council of Negro Affairs to try to influence federal policy on race issues. In his twelve years as president, Roosevelt did not appoint or nominate a single African American to be either a secretary or undersecretary in his presidential cabinet, but by mid-1935, there were 45 African Americans working in federal executive departments and New Deal agencies, and as presidential advisers. Roosevelt gave no formal recognition to the group, although he used group members as advisers and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt encouraged it. Although many have ascribed the term to Mary McLeod Bethune, who, during the Roosevelt administration, was the first Black person to lead a federal agency, African American newspapers had earlier used it to describe key black advisors of Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover.