On May 7, 1934, Eleanor hosts a tea on the White House South Portico with Sara Delano Roosevelt and NAACP director Walter White, timed to coincide with President Roosevelt’s return. The meeting is a carefully staged “chance” encounter to secure an audience Franklin has avoided. Sara even serves White tea, underscoring her support against lynching.

Franklin arrives visibly furious, likely at being maneuvered and at being seen in his wheelchair. Sara deploys maternal guilt to keep him at the table, and Eleanor opens with safer ground: letters from struggling Black families and coordination with Harry Hopkins. Franklin relaxes and engages on relief.

Eleanor then pivots to the anti-lynching bill. With Sara’s firm backing, Walter White stands and presents clear statistics—5,000 lynchings in fifty years, roughly one every four days—and argues that absent a federal statute, authorities cannot stop vigilante mobs, producing anarchy. Franklin listens, but his expression hardens as he weighs political costs.

After White urges support for the Costigan–Wagner Bill, Franklin accuses someone of priming White and looks to Eleanor. Sara claims responsibility for arranging the meeting and urging him to end lynching. Eleanor privately mourns the distance between Franklin’s early idealism and his current caution.

Franklin declares sympathy but refuses to endorse the bill, arguing Southern Democrats would abandon him and block New Deal legislation, harming millions who need aid. He insists there must be another way to address lynching, but confirms he will not support Costigan–Wagner.