Do You Think You Can Get Me on the Supreme Court?

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John Avlon: Who emerges as an opponent of things like child labor? It's the supreme court. And they kind of roll out like a state's rights argument, and so roosevelt and black are pushing to get this thing through - but can't even do it ultimately until black actually gets on the supreme court in 19 37.Avlon: Now we can see if i have as much clout up as the federalist society. Oh, yes, that's in putting people on the supreme Court. Yes.

The Great Depression presented a crisis not only for the U.S. economy, but for American democracy. President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to save the nation’s system of government, and its economic system, while reforming both. What did the New Deal achieve, and not achieve?

Reported and produced by John Biewen, with series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Eric Rauchway and Cybelle Fox. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

Music by Algiers, John Erik Kaada, Eric Neveux, and Lucas Biewen. Music consulting and production help from Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.

Photo: Men fighting during a strike at the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, 1937. Image courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

As mentioned in the episode, an article by public historian Larry DeWitt examining the widespread assertion that the exclusion of some occupations from the original Social Security old-age pension program was insisted on by southern segregationists: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html