re: Petition seeks to rename Roosevelt Island, calls FDR ‘racist’

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In addition to making Jesse Owens lose face in front of all other Olympic athletes, ol' Franky also signed Executive Order 9066, the act that determined a group of Americans should be imprisoned because of their race

When it came to appointing a new supreme court justice, PotUS Roosevelt appointed former KKK member Hugo Black. When Hugo was a senator in Alabama he infamously filibustered an anti-lynching bill. Hugo also wrote positively of Roosevelt in his memoirs, specifically pointing out that while the KKK was increasingly being frowned upon by the American public, Roosevelt considered that a positive on his part:

"[Roosevelt's] best friends and supporters he had in the state of Georgia were strong members of that organization."
Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Kindle locations 2636 -- 2657.

Hugo Black would go on to repay FDR with the Korematsu v. United States case that defended the constitutionality of imprisoning people of Japanese descent in America. Though Black also approved of desegregating American schools he warned that the peaceful Civil Rights movement would give way to violence if Black Americans were not kept under control:

“Unfortunately there are some who think that Negroes should have special privileges under the law.”
-Newman,Hugo Black p. 550

Ironically Hugo Black saw himself as a defender of the 1st amendment (free speech) in America, he just thought that non-European Americans were 'abusing' it in their Civil Rights movement.

When a guy uses RACE as a component in imprisoning people, then talks about how his good buddies are KKK members to a former KKK member he's appointing as a supreme court justice, yeah you can call him a racist.

The Sphinx - sculpture at the FDR presidential library

That said, on to the anecdote: in "Devil in the Grove", there's an anecdote recounted by a young Thurgood Marshall:

Attorney General Francis Biddle phoned FDR to discuss the NAACP's involvement in a race case in Virginia. At Biddle's instruction, Marshall picked up an extension to listen in, only to hear FDR exclaim, "I warned you not to call me again about any of Eleanor's ****s. Call me one more time and you are fired."

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