1884 - 1920: Becoming a Roosevelt
1921 - 1932: ER and New York Politics
1933 - 1939: ER and the New Deal
1940 - 1945: ER and the Second World War
1945 - 1952: ER, the United Nations, and Harry Truman
1953 - 1962: ER and the Cold War at Home and Abroad
Bibliographical Essay
1884-1920: Becoming a Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
was born October 11, 1884 into a family of lineage, wealth, and
uncommon sadness. The first child of Anna Hall Roosevelt and Elliott
Roosevelt, young Eleanor encountered disappointment early in life.
Her father, mourning the death of his mother and fighting constant
ill health, turned to alcohol for solace and was absent from home for
long periods of time engaged in either business, pleasure or medical
treatment. Anna Hall Roosevelt struggled to balance her
disillusionment with her husband with her responsibilities toward
Eleanor and Eleanor's younger brother, Hall. As the years passed,
the young mother became increasingly disconsolate.
An
astute and observant child, Eleanor rarely failed to notice the
tension between her parents and the strain that it placed on both of
them. By the time she was six, Eleanor assumed some responsibility
for her mother's happiness, recalling later in her autobiography This
Is My Story that "my mother suffered from very bad
headaches, and I know now that life must have been hard and bitter
and a very great strain on her. I would often sit at the head of her
bed and stroke her head . . . for hours on end."
Yet this intimacy
was shortlived. Anna Hall Roosevelt, one of New York's most stunning
beauties, increasingly made young Eleanor profoundly self-conscious
about her demeanor and appearance, even going so far as to nickname
her "Granny" for her "very plain," "old
fashioned," and serious deportment. Remembering her childhood,
Eleanor later wrote, "I was a solemn child without beauty. I
seemed like a little old woman entirely lacking in the spontaneous
joy and mirth of youth."
Her mother's death
in 1892 made Eleanor's devotion to her father all the more intense.
Images of a gregarious, larger than life Elliott dominated Eleanor's
memories of him and she longed for the days when he would return
home. She adored his playfulness with her and the way he loved her
with such uncritical abandon. Indeed, her father's passion only
underscored the isolation she felt when he was absent. Never the
dour child in his eyes, Eleanor was instead his "own darling
little Nell." Hopes for a happier family life were dashed
however when Elliott Roosevelt died of depression and alcoholism
nineteen months later. At the age of ten, Eleanor became an orphan
and her grandmother, Mary Hall, became her guardian.
Eleanor's life with
Grandmother Hall was confining and lonesome until Mrs. Hall sent
Eleanor to attend Allenswood Academy in London in 1899. There
Eleanor began to study under the tutelage of Mademoiselle Marie
Souvestre, a bold, articulate woman whose commitment to liberal
causes and detailed study of history played a key role in shaping
Eleanor's social and political development. The three years that
Eleanor spent at Allenswood were the happiest years of her
adolescence. She formed close, lifelong friendships with her
classmates; studied language, literature and history; learned to
state her opinions on controversial political events clearly and
concisely; and spent the summers traveling Europe with her
headmistress, who insisted upon seeing both the grandeur and the
squalor of the nations they visited. Gradually she gained
"confidence and independence" and later marveled that she
was "totally without fear in this new phase of my life,"
writing in her autobiography that "Mlle. Souvestre shocked one
into thinking, and that on the whole was very beneficial." Her
headmistress’s influence was so strong that as an Eleanor
later described Souvestre was one of the three most important
influences on her life.
When
Eleanor returned to her family's West 37th
Street home in 1902 to make her debut, she continued to follow the
principles that Souvestre instilled in her. While she dutifully
obeyed her family's wishes regarding her social responsibilities, she
also joined the National Consumers League and, as a member of the
Junior League for the Promotion of Settlement Movements, volunteered
as a teacher for the College Settlement on Rivington Street. Her
commitment to these activities soon began to attract attention and
Eleanor Roosevelt, much to her family's chagrin, soon became known
within New York reform circles as a staunch and dedicated worker.
That summer, as she was riding the train home to Tivoli for a visit
with her grandmother, Eleanor was startled to find her cousin
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), then a student at Harvard, also on
the train. This encounter reintroduced the cousins and piqued their
interest in one another. After a year of chance meetings,
clandestine correspondence, and secret courtship, the two Roosevelts
became engaged on November 22, 1903. Fearing that they were too
young and unprepared for marriage, and believing that her son needed
a better, more prominent wife, Franklin's mother, Sara Delano
Roosevelt, planned to separate the couple and demanded that they keep
their relationship secret for a year. Sara Roosevelt's plans did not
work, and after a sixteen-month engagement, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
married Franklin Delano Roosevelt on March 17, 1905. President
Theodore Roosevelt, who was in town for the St. Patrick's Day parade,
gave the bride, his niece, away. The wedding made the front page of
the New York Times.
Although Eleanor
clearly loved Franklin, married life was difficult from the start.
Sara Roosevelt chose their first home, a small brick dwelling three
blocks from her own residence, hired the staff, chose all the
interior decorations, and became Eleanor's most constant companion.
Within a year, a daughter (Anna) was born; followed in rapid
succession by James (1906), Franklin (1909, who died soon after
birth), Elliott (1910), Franklin (1914), and John (1916). She later
said of this period, "for ten years I was always just getting
over having a baby or about to have one, and so my occupations were
considerably restricted during this period." Moreover, as the
Roosevelt family grew, in 1908 Sara Roosevelt gave the couple a
townhouse in New York City, which was not only adjacent to her own
home but which had connecting doors on every floor. While the two
women were very close; their intimacy only reinforced ER’s
sense of dependence and inadequacy. ER, as she began to sign her
letters, was miserable, recalling that she was "simply absorbing
the personalities of those about me and letting their tastes and
interests dominate me."
All that started to
change in 1911. Dutchess County elected her husband to the New York
state senate. FDR asked her to leave Hyde Park and to set up a home
for the family in Albany. Eager to leave the vigilance of her
mother-in-law, ER tackled the move with enthusiasm and discipline.
"For the first time I was going to live on my own," she
recalled twenty years later. "I wanted to be independent. I
was beginning to realize that something within me craved to be an
individual."
By the time FDR
left Albany to join Woodrow Wilson’s administration two years
later, ER began to view independence in personal and political terms.
FDR had led the campaign against the Tammany Hall block in the
senate and an indignant ER watched in fascination as the machine
attacked its critics. Outraged that a political machine could
vindictively deprive its critics of the means to support themselves,
ER lost a great deal of the naivete that characterized her earlier
attitude toward government. "That year taught me many things
about politics and started me thinking along lines that were
completely new." FDR agreed, later telling a friend, Albany
"was the beginning of my wife's political sagacity and
co-operation."
Consequently, when
FDR was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy in autumn 1913, ER
knew most of the rules by which a political couple operated. "I
was really well schooled now. . . . I simply knew that what we had to
do we did, and that my job was to make it easy." "It"
was whatever needed to be done to complete a specific familial or
political task. As ER oversaw the Roosevelts’ transitions from
Albany to Hyde Park to Washington, coordinated the family's entrance
into the proper social circles for a junior Cabinet member, and
evaluated FDR's administrative and political experiences, her
independence increased as her managerial expertise grew. When the
threat of world war freed Cabinet wives from the obligatory social
rounds, ER, with her commitment to settlement work, administrative
skills, disdain for social small talk, and aversion to corrupt
political machines, entered war work eager for new responsibilities.
World
War I gave ER an acceptable arena in which to challenge existing
social restrictions and the connections necessary to expedite reform.
Anxious to escape the confines of Washington high society, ER threw
herself into wartime relief with a zeal that amazed her family and
her colleagues. Her fierce dedication to Navy Relief and the Red
Cross canteen not only stunned soldiers and Washington officials but
shocked ER as well. She began to realize that she could contribute
valuable service to projects that she was interested in and that her
energies did not necessarily have to focus on her husband's political
career. "The war," observed Ruby Black, a friend and
early biographer, "pushed Eleanor Roosevelt into the first real
work outside her family since she
was married twelve years before."
Emboldened by
these experiences, ER began to respond to requests for a more public
political role. When a Navy chaplain whom she had met through her
Red Cross efforts asked her to visit shell-shocked sailors confined
in St. Elizabeth's Hospital, the federal government's facility for
the insane, she immediately accepted his invitation. Appalled by the
quality of treatment the sailors received, as well as the shortage of
aides, supplies and equipment available to all the St. Elizabeth's
patients, ER urged her friend, Secretary of the Interior Franklin
Lane, to visit the facility. When Lane declined to intervene, ER
pressured him until he appointed a commission to investigate the
institution. "I became," she wrote, "more determined
to try for certain ultimate objectives. I had gained a certain
assurance as to my ability to run things, and the knowledge that
there is joy in accomplishing good."
The end of the war
did not slow ER's pace or revise her new perspective on duty and
independence. In June 1920, while she was vacationing with her
children at Campobello, FDR received the Democratic nomination for
Vice-President. Although both her grandmother and mother-in-law
strongly believed that "a woman's place was not in the public
eye" and pressured ER to respond to press inquiries through her
social secretary, she developed a close working relationship with
FDR's intimate advisor and press liaison, Louis Howe. Invigorated by
Howe's support, ER threw herself into the election and reveled in the
routine political decisions that daily confronted the ticket. By the
end of the campaign, while other journalists aboard the Roosevelt
campaign train played cards, Louis Howe and ER could frequently be
found huddled over paperwork, reviewing FDR's speeches and discussing
campaign protocol.
1921-1932: ER and New York Politics
When Republican
Warren Harding won the 1920 election, the Roosevelts returned to New
York. FDR practiced law and planned his next political move as
Eleanor Roosevelt considered her options. Dreading "a winter of
four days in New York with nothing but teas and luncheons and dinners
to take up [her] time," ER "mapped out a schedule for
[herself]" in which she spent Monday through Thursday in New
York City and the weekend in Hyde Park. She declined invitations to
sit on the boards of organizations that wanted to exploit her name
rather than use her energy, opting instead to join the Women's City
Club, the National Consumers League, the Women's Division of the
Democratic State Committee, and the New York chapters of the League
of Women Voters and the Women's Trade Union League.
Despite her labeling the 1920s as a time of "private interlude" in This I Remember, in the
seven-year span between the onset of FDR's paralysis and his campaign
for the New York governorship, Eleanor Roosevelt's political
contributions and organizational sagacity made her one of New York's
leading politicians. While still fervently committed to democratic
ideals, she recognized that ideology alone did not provide the votes
and skills necessary to win elections. Repeatedly she goaded women's
and other reform groups to set realistic goals, prioritize their
tasks, and delegate assignments. Her pragmatism attracted attention
within the party and women's political organizations. Soon the New
York Times publicized her clout, treating her as the "woman
[of influence] who speaks her political mind."
After
working with attorney Elizabeth Read and her partner, educator and
consumer activist Esther Lape, ER agreed to chair the League of Women
Voters Legislative Affairs Committee and to represent the League on
the Women's Joint Legislative Committee. Each week, Eleanor
Roosevelt studied the Congressional
Record, examined legislation and committee reports, interviewed
members of Congress and the State Assembly, and met with League
officers to discuss the information she gathered. Each month, she
assembled her analyses and presented a report for League members
outlining the status of bills in which the organization was
interested and suggesting strategies to help achieve its legislative
goals. Moreover, ER also frequently spoke out at these monthly
assemblies on such pressing non-legislative issues as primary reform,
voter registration and party identification. Recognizing the
extensive contributions she made, the League elected her its
vice-chairman eighteen months later, after ER skillfully arbitrated a
hostile internal organization dispute.
Ruby Black saw this
time as the period when "Eleanor Roosevelt was traveling, not
drifting, away from the conventional life expected of women in her
social class." ER agreed, later characterizing the last part
of 1920 as the beginning of "the intensive education of Eleanor
Roosevelt." Polio did not strike FDR until the following
summer; consequently, ER was already in a position to keep the
Roosevelt name active in Democratic circles before illness sidelined
her husband.
Throughout
September 1922, ER, Nancy Cook, Marion Dickerman and future New York
Congresswoman Caroline O'Day traveled throughout the state to
encourage the formation of Democratic women's clubs. Their
organizational efforts created such strong support among the
Democratic rank and file that at the State Convention in Syracuse the
women attendees demanded that ER, Marion Dickerman and Caroline O'Day
each be considered as the party's nominee for Secretary of State.
The following month, as Democratic Women's Committee vice-president
and finance chairman, ER edited and wrote articles for the Women's
Democratic News discussing campaign strategies and the fall
election.
By 1924, she joined
the board of the bi-partisan Women's City Club, whose major
objectives were to inform women about pressing political and social
issues, introduce them in a pragmatic way to governmental operations
and organize lobbing and publicity campaigns for club-sponsored
issues. During her four-year tenure as a Club board member ER
chaired its City Planning Department, coordinated its responses on
housing and transportation issues, chaired its Legislation committee,
pushed through a reorganization plan, arbitrated disputes over child
labor laws, promoted workmen's compensation and, in a move that made
banner headlines across New York State, strongly urged the adoption
of an amendment to the Penal Law legalizing the distribution of birth
control information among married couples.
Not all of the
Roosevelts' friends supported her activism. Indeed, ER's political
prominence created some in-house sarcasm among FDR's advisors. That
May, Josephus Daniels taunted his former assistant secretary that he
was glad that "I am not the only `squaw' man in the country."
Such
inside joking did not curtail ER's political work. She attended the
1924 Democratic National Convention as chair of the women's
delegation to the platform committee and as Al Smith's liaison to
women voters. When the committee rejected her requests and the
convention refused to choose Smith as its standard bearer, ER
returned to New York undaunted. "I took my politics so
seriously" she uncharacteristically recalled in This
is My Story, "that in the early autumn I came down to the
state headquarters and went seriously to work in the state campaign."
Assiduously, ER
courted voters throughout the state. New Yorkers living in the rural
areas often neglected by the party heard her personalized appeals for
support. She pledged to keep their interests in front of the party
leadership, if the farmers would continue to make their demands known
and to vote Democratic. But she also appealed to voters' more basic
instincts. Despite her aversion to Tammanyesque practices, ER
occasionally participated in her own version of negative campaigning,
even if the candidate was a member of her own family. The
Republicans nominated her cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., for
governor. Without a second thought, ER tailed him around the state
in a roadster topped with a giant steaming teapot in a flagrant
attempt to associate her cousin with Teapot Dome corruption.
ER
then took to print to promote her candidates with the same level of
energy she displayed in her speeches. She expanded her audience,
broadened her themes and carefully tailored her remarks. Within the
next twelve months, she continued her regular articles for the
League's Weekly News and Women's
Democratic News, and published four substantive political
articles in publications ranging from the popular women's magazine
Redbook to the more scholarly journals Current History
and North American Review.
So
strong an impression did her organizational and administrative
campaign skills make on the state's professional politicians that
Belle Moskowitz and Al Smith both recruited her energies for Smith's
1928 presidential campaign. A longtime supporter of Smith, ER agreed
to coordinate preconvention activities for the Democratic Women's
Committee. The New York Times
Magazine recognized ER's increasing political clout and featured
a lead article on her influence in its April 8 issue. Ironically, as
a result of this continuous activity, by the time her husband
received the party's nomination for governor, Eleanor Roosevelt was
better known among the faithful party activists than was FDR.
The 1928 election presented a new challenge to both Roosevelts. New
York state law prevented Al Smith, the Democratic presidential
nominee, from seeking reelection as governor and Smith wanted FDR to
succeed him. This decision placed ER squarely in opposition to FDR's
most trusted aide, Louis Howe. Howe vigorously opposed FDR's
candidacy and FDR, following his advisor's advice, refused to take
Smith's phone calls. Smith, whose chief political advisor was a
woman, appreciated the scope of ER's expertise and the influence she
held in her husband's innermost political circle. Consequently,
Smith turned to ER, who had enthusiastically endorsed his candidacy
and who was the only individual who might counteract Howe's
opposition, to intercede with FDR. ER agreed, phoned her husband,
told him that "she knew he had to do what he felt was expected
of him," handed the phone to Smith, and left to address a Smith
campaign rally.
Her action does not
mean that Eleanor Roosevelt unequivocally endorsed her husband's
electoral aspirations, however. She feared that FDR's victory would
undermine all her hard-won independence. "It became clear,"
James Roosevelt later wrote, "that she felt if father won, she
would lose" the autonomy she had worked so painstakingly to
develop.
By the early
1920s, the Franklin Roosevelt-Eleanor Roosevelt relationship had
begun to move away from an alliance defined by marital
responsibilities and more toward a professional collaboration between
peers. ER's discovery in 1918 of FDR's affair with Lucy Mercer, her
social secretary, destroyed martial intimacy and encouraged ER to
look elsewhere for closeness. While both treasured their friendship
with Louis Howe and FDR enjoyed most of ER's associates, the separate
strong attachments ER and FDR formed with different co-workers and
companions were the rule rather than the exception in the Roosevelt
households.
Indeed,
the few old friends and Democratic party commitments the Roosevelts
shared were enough to sustain a friendship, but not an intimate one.
Competing pursuits and divergent communities encouraged the
Roosevelts to follow different paths and to develop separate
lifestyles. "It is essential," ER responded when Good
Housekeeping asked her to define a modern wife's job, for the
woman "to develop her own interests, to carry on a stimulating
life of her own. . . ." As a result, by the time FDR was
elected governor, the Roosevelts had developed separate, distinct
personal and political support systems.
With her ties to
reform movements and women's political associations expanding, ER
carefully and deliberately developed her own network. Caroline O'Day
and Elinor Morgenthau became her life-long intimate friends. With
Democratic Women's Committee colleague Nancy Cook and her partner
Marion Dickerman, with whom ER taught and who would later administer
the Todhunter School for Girls in New York City, Eleanor Roosevelt
built Val-Kill, her home away from the Roosevelt house.
While ER and FDR
both expanded their levels of commitment to the state Democratic
Party and promoted the same candidates, they began to form different
views of the political process. Although both Roosevelts realized
that politics was part ego, part drive, and part conviction, they
differed as to which component they valued the most. If politics was
part game and part crusade, ER tolerated the game for the sake of the
crusade. To her dismay, FDR enjoyed all its aspects. To the extent
that FDR failed to reverse this trend, he could no longer depend upon
ER's unqualified support. Consequently, by 1932, as ER responded to
a friend who confessed to voting for Norman Thomas, that "if I
had not been married to Franklin," she too would have voted for
the Socialist candidate.
ER’s attitude
does not mean, however, that once FDR assumed the governorship that
she played the game more than she struggled for reform. The dilemma
the return to Albany presented ER was one of continuing independence:
one of time management, rather than political fidelity. ER's bid for
personal freedom was a more strenuous and longlasting campaign than
her husband's 1928 run for office.
Thus, Eleanor
Roosevelt was not thrilled with the prospect of returning to Albany,
a goldfish bowl in which all her movements would be both confined by
and interpreted through her husband's political prestige. She told
her son James that "she knew that [FDR] had wanted her to become
active in politics primarily to keep his case in the public eye"
and that he "would expect her to move into the shadows if he
moved into the limelight." This shift depressed her immensely.
As Marion Dickerman later told FDR biographer Kenneth S. Davis, ER's
"dread" was so strong that it fostered a rebellion which
"strained at the leash of her self-control."
Yet
ER also realized that her political expertise and her new support
system was an outgrowth of, and therefore a by-product of, her
relationship with FDR. Never did she fully expect FDR to withdraw
from public life or expect that she would be immune from its
scrutiny. Instead, Eleanor Roosevelt concentrated on how to find the
most appropriate manner to promote two careers at once, how best to
pursue her separate interests in ways that did not undermine her
husband's public standing. The three keys to her freedom, the
Democratic Women's Committee (DWC), the Todhunter School for Girls
and Val-Kill, lay outside Albany. Therefore, the extent to which ER
could maximize her independence was directly parallel to the extent
to which she could efficiently divide her life between the Governor's
mansion and the family's East 65th Street residence in New York City.
She knew how threatening this would be to some pundits. So,
immediately after the election, ER launched her own media campaign to
make the press treat her various activities in the most positive
light possible. When a New York Times
reporter asked her the day she became New York's First Lady what her
new schedule would be, Eleanor Roosevelt responded that although she
would resign her DWC positions, she would still support the furniture
factory at Val-Kill and commute to New York City three days a week to
continue her government and English literature classes and to fulfill
her administrative responsibilities at Todhunter.
Her duties in New
York City did not preclude political contributions to FDR's
administration. She successfully lobbied Democratic National
Chairman John Raskob for increased allocations to the Democratic
State Committee and raised seed money for the Women's Activities
Committee. Furthermore, in Albany and in other locales throughout
the state which she visited, ER began to apply the political finesse
she demonstrated earlier in arbitrating League of Women Voters
disputes to resolve disagreements within FDR's inner circle. With
her friend Henry Morgenthau, ER pressured FDR to invite both
Republican and Democratic mayors, rather than just the officials who
supported FDR's goals, to the State Mayors's Conference. She
regularly brokered conflicts between FDR intimates Louis Howe and Jim
Farley and acted as a political stand-in when FDR could not or chose
not to participate in the discussion.
ER's contributions
were not limited to crisis management. Aware of how difficult it was
for a politician and his staff to face unpopular decisions, Eleanor
Roosevelt championed the appointment of individuals who had the nerve
to disagree with FDR upfront. She lobbied successfully for Frances
Perkins' appointment as state Secretary of Labor and for Nell
Schwartz to fill the vacancy Perkins' appointment left on the State
Industrial Commission. Believing that she knew Smith better than FDR
did, ER strongly objected to FDR retaining any of Smith's cabinet.
In particular, she opposed Belle Moskowitz's appointment as FDR's
personal secretary and Robert Moses' reappointment as secretary of
state, writing her husband in Warm Springs that "by all signs
Belle and Bob Moses mean to cling to you." If he was not
careful, she continued, "you will wake up to find R.M. Secretary
of State and B.M. running Democratic publicity at the old stand
unless you take a firm stand." Furthermore, she testified
before various senate committees on behalf of protective labor
legislation and was not afraid to criticize FDR's plan for
unemployment insurance.
The 1932
presidential campaign assaulted Eleanor Roosevelt's adaptability with
increasing frequency. Although she supported FDR's political
ambitions out of loyalty both to him and the Democratic party, ER
astutely recognized the attacks she would encounter if she continued
to pursue her individual projects with the same vigor she applied in
the past. For his part, FDR continued to promote the image of "his
Missus" as part of the Roosevelt team. Nevertheless, ER knew
that this was a political screen designed to enhance her symbolic
value to the campaign. What her future role would be was uncertain.
Therefore, once the
election was decided, ER inadvertently turned to the media to test
her public standing. Whereas during the race she often told
interviewers she "would be very much at home in Washington"
if FDR was elected, after FDR won, she confided her dread to
reporters she trusted. Riding in a day coach to Albany with Lorena
Hickok on November 9, 1932, Eleanor Roosevelt unburdened her thoughts
for the record. "I never wanted it even though some people have
said that my ambition for myself drove him on. . . . I never wanted
to be a President's wife." Fearful that her support for her
husband would be misunderstood, she clarified her stance.
For him, of course, I'm glad - sincerely. I could not have wanted it
any other way. After all I'm a Democrat, too. Now I shall have to
work out my own salvation. I'm afraid it may be a little difficult.
I know what Washington is like. I've lived there.
1933-1939: ER and the New Deal
The American press, like the American public, was divided over how
professionally active a First Lady should be. Although Eleanor
Roosevelt's preinaugural commitments were in the same fields as the
positions she held while First Lady of New York, criticism of her
commercial radio and journalism contracts increased. Suddenly, ER
found herself ridiculed in such diverse publications as The
Harvard Lampoon, The Hartford Courant and the Baltimore
Sun. By February, the press increasingly interpreted ER's
professionalism as commercialism. "All through January and
February and right up until March 2, the day they left for
Washington, Eleanor Roosevelt continued to do the things she had
always done,” Lorena Hickok recalled. The papers continued to
carry stories about her. And some people continued to criticize her.
They just could not get used to the idea of her being `plain,
ordinary Eleanor Roosevelt.'"
Although Eleanor
Roosevelt admitted to her friend that she would "curtail
somewhat her activities" because she "suppose[d] [she] had
made some mistakes," ER refused to abandon the expertise she had
worked so diligently to achieve. Aware of the criticism her position
would provoke, she argued that she had no choice but to continue.
"I'll just have to go on being myself, as much as I can. I'm
just not the sort of person who would be any good at [any] job. I
dare say I shall be criticized, whatever I do."
Eleanor
Roosevelt's aversion to any other role was so strong that in the week
before the inaugural, she impetuously wrote Dickerman and Cook that
she contemplated divorcing FDR. She told Hickok, in a quote for the
record, that she "hated" having to resign her teaching
position at Todhunter, saying "I wonder if you have any idea how
I hate to do it." Increasingly sympathetic to ER's dilemma and
aware of the potential repercussions of such statements, Hickok in
her Associated Press piece portrayed ER as upbeat and confident:
"The prospective mistress of the White House thinks people are
going to get used to her ways, even though she does edit Babies-Just
Babies, wears $10 dresses, and drives her own car."
Clearly, when
Eleanor Roosevelt entered the White House in March 1933, she did so
reluctantly. Although she supported FDR's aims and believed in his
leadership abilities, ER feared that her husband's political agenda,
in addition to restricting her movements and curtailing her personal
independence, would force her to minimize the political issues
nearest and dearest to her heart. Once FDR won the election, he
asked her to resign her positions with the Democratic National
Committee, the Todhunter School, the League of Women Voters, the
Non-Partisan Legislative Committee and the Women's Trade Union
League. She then announced that she would no longer take part in
commercial radio events and that she would refrain from discussing
politics in her magazine articles. Though she tried to avoid it,
public expectation was redefining her career and it hurt. "If I
wanted to be selfish," she confessed earlier to Hickok, "I
could wish that he had not been elected."
Questions "seethed"
in ER's mind about what she should do after March 4, 1933. Afraid of
being confined to a schedule of teas and receptions, ER volunteered
to do a "real job" for FDR. She knew that Ettie Rheiner
(Mrs. John Nance) Garner served as an administrative assistant to her
husband the Vice-President, and ER tried to convince FDR to let her
provide the same service. The President rebuffed the First Lady's
offer. Trapped by convention, she begrudgingly recognized that "the
work [was FDR's] work and the pattern his pattern." Bitterly
disappointed, she acknowledged that she "was one of those who
served his purposes."
Nevertheless, ER refused to accept a superficial and sedentary role. She wanted "to
do things on my own, to use my own mind and abilities for my own
aims." She struggled to carve out an active contributory place
for herself in the New Deal–a challenge not easily met.
Dejected, she found it "hard to remember that I was not just
`Eleanor Roosevelt,' but the `wife of the President.'"
Eleanor Roosevelt
entered the First Hundred Days of her husband's administration with
no clearly defined role. Her offers to sort FDR's mail and to act as
his "listening post" had been rejected summarily.
Moreover, the press continued to pounce on each display of ER's
individualism. When she announced in an inauguration day interview
that she planned to cut White House expenses by twenty-five per cent,
"simplify" the White House social calendar, and serve as
FDR's "eyes and ears," reporters discovered ER was just as
newsworthy after the inaugural as she was before.
ER's relations with
the press during the spring and summer of 1933 did nothing to curtail
their interest. On March 6, two days after her husband became
president, Eleanor Roosevelt held her own press conference at which
she announced that she would "get together" with women
reporters once a week. She asked for their cooperation. She wanted
to make the general public more aware of White House activities and
to encourage their understanding of the political process. She hoped
that the women reporters who covered her would interpret, especially
to American women, the basic mechanics of national politics.
Despite her initial
intent to focus on her social activities as First Lady, political
issues soon became a central part of the weekly briefings. When some
women reporters assigned to ER tried to caution her to speak off the
record, she responded that she knew some of her statements would
"cause unfavorable comment in some quarters" . . . [but] I
am making these statements on purpose to arouse controversy and
thereby get the topics talked about."
ER
then made the same argument to the public when she accepted an offer
for a monthly column from Woman's Home
Companion. Announcing that she would donate her monthly thousand
dollar fee to charity, ER then proceed to ask her readers to help her
establish "a clearinghouse, a discussion room" for "the
particular problems which puzzle you or sadden you" and to share
"how you are adjusting yourself to new conditions in this
amazing changing world." Entitling the article "I Want You
to Write to Me," ER reinforced the request throughout the piece.
"Do not hesitate," she wrote, "to write to me even if
your views clash with what you believe to be my views." Only a
free exchange of ideas and discussion of problems would help her
"learn of experiences which may be helpful to others." By
January 1934, 300,000 Americans had responded to this request.
From her first days
in the White House, this desire to remain part of the public
propelled ER's New Deal agenda. She, more often than not, greeted
guests at the door of the White House herself; learned to operate the
White House elevator; and adamantly refused Secret Service
protection. Yet there also were signs that she intended to be a
serious contributor to the Roosevelt administration. She converted
the Lincoln bedroom into a study and had a telephone installed. She
urged FDR to send Hickok out on a national fact-finding tour for the
Federal Emergency Relief Association in the summer of 1933. Working
closely with Molly Dewson, who replaced ER as chair of the Women’s
Division of the Democratic National Committee, she pressured the
Administration to appoint women to positions of influence throughout
the New Deal programs. The Dewson-ER lobbying effort helped Rose
Schneiderman join the NRA Labor Advisory Board, Sue Sheldon White and
Emily Newell Blair join the NRA Consumer Advisory Board, and Jo
Coffin become assistant public printer. And when the Washington
Press Corps refused to admit its women members to its annual Gridiron
dinner, ER gleefully threw herself into planning a "Gridiron
Widows" banquet and skit for women officials and reporters.
When ER read
Hickok's accounts of the squalid conditions in the West Virginia coal
town of Scott's Run, she was appalled and moved immediately to
address the problems. She met with Louis Howe and Secretary of the
Interior Harold Ickes to argue that the Subsistence Homestead
provision of the National Industrial Recovery Act would help address
the community's problems. She succeeded and became a frequent
visitor to the new community, Arthurdale. There she was photographed
square dancing with miners in worn clothes and holding sick children
in her lap. This image, when linked with her strong commitment to
building the best living quarters the funds could provide, served as
a lightning rod for critics of the New Deal and they delighted in
exposing each cost overrun and each program defect.
While most
historians view ER's commitment to Arthurdale as the best example of
her influence within the New Deal, ER did more than champion a
single anti-poverty program. Continuously she urged that relief
should be as diverse as the constituency which needed it.
"The unemployed
are not a strange race. They are like we would be if we had not had
a fortunate chance at life," she wrote in 1933. The distress
they encountered, not their socio-economic status, should be the
focus of relief. Consequently, she introduced programs for groups
not originally included in New Deal plans; supported others which
were in danger of elimination or having their funds cut; pushed the
hiring of women, blacks, and liberals within federal agencies; and
acted as the administration's most outspoken champion of liberal
reform.
Eleanor Roosevelt
did not immediately begin to push programs. Rather, as her actions
to modify the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and the
Civil Works Administration (CWA) show, she waited to see how the
programs FDR's aides designed were put into operation and then
lobbied for improvements or suggested alternatives. When the needs
of unemployed women where overlooked by FERA and CWA planners, ER
lobbied first to have a women's divisions established within both
agencies and then to have Hilda Worthington Smith and Ellen Sullivan
Woodward appointed program directors. She then planned and chaired
the White House Conference on the Emergency Needs of Women and
monitored the Household Workers' Training Program which was born
during the conference.
ER addressed the
problems of unemployed youth with the same fervor she applied to
women's economic hardships. This also was not a politically popular
position for her to take. The unemployed youth of the 1930s
underscored several fears adults had for society. Conservatives saw
disgruntled young people as a fertile ground for revolutionary
politics while progressives mourned the disillusionment and apathy
spreading among American youth.
ER thought that
camps in the Civilian Conservation Corps, while providing temporary
relief for some youth, did not meet this need. Furthermore, because
the camps were supervised by military personnel and only provided
instruction in forestry, ER believed that an additional program
tailored to the special needs of youth was urgently needed. In
mid-1933, she pressured Harry Hopkins to develop a program for youth
which would provide a social, rather than a militaristic, focus. ER
argued that the specific problems facing youth needed to be
recognized, but only in a way which fostered a sense of self-worth.
By providing job skills and education, she hoped that the program
would foster a sense of civic awareness which in turn would promote a
commitment to social justice. Then youth would be empowered to
articulate their own needs and aspirations and to express these
insights clearly.
Although historians
disagree over how major a role ER played in establishing the National
Youth Administration (NYA), her imprint upon the agency's development
is indelible. Established by an executive order signed by FDR on
June 26, 1935, the NYA was authorized to administer programs in five
areas: work projects, vocational guidance, apprenticeship training,
educational and nutritional guidance camps for unemployed women, and
student financial aid. Clearly ER's preference for vocational
guidance and education triumphed over the CCC relief model.
Moreover,
ER was both the agency's and youth's natural choice for confessor,
planner, lobbyist, and promoter. She reviewed NYA policy with agency
directors, arranged for NYA officials and youth leaders to meet with
FDR in and out of the White House, served as NYA's intermediary with
the president, critiqued and suggested projects, and attended as many
NYA state administrators conferences as her schedule allowed. Last
but not least, she visited at least 112 NYA sites and reported her
observations in her speeches, articles and "My Day," the
daily column she began in 1936. ER took such satisfaction in the NYA
that when she briefly acknowledged her role in forming the agency,
she did so with an uncharacteristic candor. "One of the ideas I
agreed to present to Franklin," she wrote in This
I Remember, "was that of setting up a national youth
administration. . . . It was one of the occasions on which I was very
proud that the right thing was done regardless of political
consequences."
Just as she
listened to the concerns of youth, ER also met with unemployed
artists and writers to discuss their concerns. When they asked for
her support for a Public Works Arts Project, she agreed immediately
and attended the preliminary planning meeting. Seated at the head
table next to Edward Bruce, the meeting's organizer, ER knitted while
she listened to Bruce propose a program to pay artists for creating
public art. Advocating a program in which artists could control both
form and content, Bruce recruited supporters for federally financed
work appropriate for public buildings. Sitting quietly through most
of the discussion, ER interrupted only to question procedure and to
emphasize her support of the project.
ER became PWAP's
ardent public and private champion. When PWAP artists were sent to
Civil Conservation Corps camps in mid-1934 and produced over 200
watercolors, oil paintings, and chalk drawings portraying camp life,
ER enthusiastically opened their "Life in the CCC" exhibit
at the National Museum. When 500 PWAP artworks were displayed at
Washington's Corcoran Gallery, she dedicated the exhibit and declared
that in addition to its artistic merit, the works liberated society
greatly by expressing what many people could find no words to
describe.
After Bruce was
appointed PWAP director, he proposed that artists be eligible for WPA
programs. Immediately he solicited ER's support. She agreed that
artists were in need of government aid and supported the WPA venture,
in the process entering the internal dispute over whether FERA should
fund white collar programs. With the support of FERA administrator
Harry Hopkins, ER lobbied FDR to endorse Bruce's concept. The
President agreed, issuing an executive order on June 25, 1935 which
created the Federal One Programs of the Works Progress
Administration: the Federal Writers Project, the Federal Theater
Project, and the Federal Art Project (formerly PWAP).
Eleanor Roosevelt
continued to run administrative interference after the programs were
in operation. When Jean Baker, director of the WPA Professional and
Service Products Division, gave into pressure from conservatives who
wanted to place the program under local control, ER then convinced
Hopkins that Baker should be replaced. Hopkins agreed and filled
Baker's post with ER's close friend, Ellen Woodward.
ER also continued
to promote the project despite its increasingly controversial image.
When Hallie Flanagan asked for assistance in convincing Congress that
the Federal Theater Project was not an heretical attack on American
culture, ER agreed on the spot. The First Lady told Flanagan that
she would gladly go to the Hill because the time had come when
America must recognize that art is controversial and the controversy
is an important part of education.
Despite the fervor
with which ER campaigned for a more democratic administration of
relief through the establishment of women's divisions, NYA and the
three Federal One programs, these efforts paled in comparison to the
unceasing pressure she placed upon the president and the nation to
confront the economic and political discrimination facing Black
America. Although the First Lady did not become an ardent proponent
of integration until the 1950s, throughout the thirties and forties
she nevertheless persistently labeled racial prejudice as
undemocratic and immoral. Black Americans recognized the depth of
her commitment and consequently kept faith with FDR because his wife
kept faith with them.
ER's racial
policies attracted notice almost immediately. Less than a week after
becoming First Lady, she shocked conservative Washington society by
announcing she would have an entirely black White House domestic
staff. By late summer 1933, photographs appeared showing ER
discussing living conditions with black miners in West Virginia, and
the press treated her involvement in the anti-lynching campaign as
front page news. Rumors of ER's "race-baiting" actions
sped across the South with hurricane force.
ER refused to be
intimidated by rumor. She mobilized Cabinet and Congressional wives
for a walking tour the Washington's slum alleys to increase support
for housing legislation then before Congress. After being
intensively briefed by Walter White ER toured the Virgin Islands with
Lorena Hickok in 1934, investigating conditions for herself only to
return agreeing with White's initial assessments. In 1935, she
visited the Howard University's Freedman Hospital, lobbied Congress
for increased appropriations, and praised the institution in her
press conferences. FDR's disapproval kept her from attending the
1934 and 1935 National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) annual conventions; however, his cautiousness did not
affect her support of the organization. Indeed, she telegraphed her
deep disappointment to the delegates. She then joined the local
chapters of the NAACP and National Urban League, becoming the first
white D.C. resident to respond to the group’s membership
drives. And, in contrast to FDR who refrained from actively
supporting anti-lynching legislation, a very public ER refused to
leave the Senate gallery during the filibuster over the bill.
As
the 1936 election approached, Eleanor Roosevelt continued her
inspections and finally convinced FDR to let her address the NAACP
and National Urban League annual conventions. When The
New Yorker published the famous cartoon of miners awaiting her
visit, Mrs. Roosevelt aggressively defended her outreach to
minorities and the poor in a lengthy article for The Saturday
Evening Post. Directly she attacked those who mocked her
interest. "In strange and subtle ways," she began, "it
was indicated to me that I should feel ashamed of that cartoon and
that there was certainly something the matter with a woman who wanted
to see so much and know so much." She refused to be so limited,
she responded to those "blind" critics who refused to be
interested in anything outside their own four walls.
The
liberal and conservative press gave such action prominent coverage.
When ER addressed the National Urban League's annual convention, NBC
radio broadcasted the address nationally. When she visited Howard
University and was escorted around campus by its Honor Guard,
The Georgia Woman's World printed a picture of ER surrounded by
the students on its front page while castigating ER for conduct
unbecoming to a president's wife. Mainstream media such as the New
York Times and Christian Science Monitor questioned the
extent to which ER would be "a campaign issue."
ER increased her
civil rights activism in her second term as First lady. She
continued her outspoken advocacy of anti-lynching legislation, served
as an active co-chair of the National Committee to Abolish the Poll
Tax, spoke out in favor of National Sharecropper's Week, urged
Agricultural Adjustment Act administrators to recognize the
discriminatory practices of white landowners, pressured FERA
administrators to pay black and white workers equal salaries, and
invited black guests and entertainers to the White House. With NYA
administrator, Mary McLeod Bethune, she convened the National
Conference of Negro Women at the White House and publicized the
agenda the Conference promoted. She also pressured the Resettlement
Administration to recognize that black sharecroppers' problems
deserved their attention and lent her active endorsement to the
Southern Conference on Human Welfare (SCHW).
Often the public
stances ER took were more effective than the lobbying she did behind
the scenes. When ER entered the SCHW's 1938 convention in
Birmingham, Alabama, police officers told her that she would not be
allowed to sit with Bethune, because a city ordinance outlawed
integrated seating. ER then requested a chair and placed it squarely
between the aisles, highlighting her displeasure with Jim Crow
policies. In February 1939, ER resigned from the Daughters of the
American Revolution when the organization refused to rent its
auditorium to the internationally known black contralto, Marian
Anderson. ER then announced her decision in her newspaper column,
thereby transforming a local act into a national disgrace. When
Howard University students picketed lunch stands near the university
which denied them service, ER praised their courage and sent them
money to continue their public education programs. And when A.
Philip Randolph and other civil rights leaders threatened to march on
Washington unless FDR acted to outlaw discrimination in defense
industries, ER took their demands to the White House.
By
the early forties Eleanor Roosevelt firmly believed the civil rights
issue to be the real litmus test for American democracy. Thus she
declared over and over again throughout the war that there could be
no democracy in the United States that did not include democracy for
blacks. In The Moral Basis of
Democracy she asserted that people of all races have inviolate
rights to property. "We have never been willing to face this
problem, to line it up with the basic, underlying beliefs in
Democracy." Racial prejudice enslaved blacks; consequently, "no
one can claim that . . . the Negroes of this country are free."
She continued this theme in a 1942 article in the New Republic,
declaring that both the private and the public sector must
acknowledge that "one of the main destroyers of freedom is our
attitude toward the colored race." "What Kipling called
`The White Man's Burden'," she proclaimed in The American
Magazine, is "one of the things we can not have any longer."
Furthermore, she told those listening to the radio broadcast of the
1945 National Democratic Forum, "democracy may grow or fade as
we face [this] problem."
1940 - 1945: ER and the Second World War
When during World
War II Eleanor Roosevelt dared to equate American racism with fascism
and argued that to ignore the evils of segregation would be
capitulating to Aryanism, hostility toward her reached an all-time
high. Newspapers from Chicago to Louisiana covered the dispute and
numerous citizens pleaded with J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI,
to silence her. Refusing to concede to her opponents, she
continuously asserted that if the nation continued to honor Jim Crow,
America would have defeated fascism abroad only to defend racism at
home.
Eleanor Roosevelt
said the same things in private that she did in public. Whether
interceding with the president for Walter White, Mary McLeod Bethune,
A. Philip Randolph, or W.E.B. DuBois; raising money for Howard
University or Bethune-Cookman College; investigating discrimination
black women encountered while stationed at the Women's Auxiliary Army
Corps base in Des Moines, Iowa; pressing the Fair Employment
Practices Commission to investigate complaints; or supporting
anti-segregation campaigns and anti-lynching legislation, ER pressed
to keep civil rights issues on the top of the domestic political
agenda. Consequently, throughout the war years, her standing with
civil rights leaders increased while her standing with some key White
House aides decreased.
While the advent of
World War II reenforced ER’s commitment to the New Deal and
social reform, it also allowed her to expand the scope of her
activities at home and abroad. Even before the war began, concern
for the plight of European refugees fueled her work with such
groups as the Emergency Rescue Committee and the U.S. Committee for
the Care of European Children. She also helped Varian Fry in his
efforts to aid Jews escaping Nazi-occupied Europe. At the same time,
ER responded to many individual appeals for help but stringent U.S.
immigration laws restricted her efforts. In an unsuccessful effort
to change the laws, ER lobbied Congress particularly on behalf of the
Child Refugee Bill which would have allowed an additional 10,000
children a year above the German quota to enter the United States
over a two-year period.
Once the war began
in December 1941, she continued to aid individual refugees, work with
organized groups and did not hesitate to criticize the State
Department’s interpretation of the immigration laws, especially
the obstructionist position of visa operations chief Breckinridge
Long. She did have allies within the department, however, most
notably Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles with whom she
worked closely to secure additional entrance visas. Still, ER would
have been the first to admit that she never achieved all she hoped
for in the cause of refugee relief and resettlement.
On the home front,
ER wanted Americans to learn from the mistakes of World War I and win
both the war and the peace that would follow. To that end, she did
all she could do to promote democracy and maintain civilian morale in
a variety of different venues. For example, she actively urged women
to work out outside the home, particularly in defense industries, and
lobbied to have day care centers and take-out kitchens built in
factories. She also strongly supported equal pay for equal work.
She encouraged volunteerism generally and even served briefly as
deputy director of the Office of Civilian Defense until Congressional
criticism over alleged favoritism and boondoggling forced her
resignation in February 1942. Mindful of the continuing
discrimination against African Americans she played an important role
in the establishment of the Fair Employment Practices Commission
which outlawed discrimination in industries that received defense
contracts and helped ensure that African American units such as the
Tuskegee Airmen participated in combat operations.
Nor did ER neglect
the military. She was a strong supporter of the new women’s
military services and the armed forces in general. She corresponded
with several individual soldiers and worked to address their
concerns. She helped soften the tone of FDR’s standard
condolence letter to the families of military personnel killed in
action and used her column to place the GIs’ concerns before
Congress and the public. ER also toured military installations at
home and abroad. She made extensive visits to both the European and
Pacific Theatres where she visited military hospitals, ate in the
mess halls and in one case walked down a road to say good by and good
luck to truckloads of men on their way to the battlefront.
ER angered some
White House aides by her insistent demand that New Deal reforms
continue during wartime. Vowing that she would not put the New Deal
away in storage, ER pressured FDR's aides, liberal leaders, and
concerned Americans to remember that there was an economic emergency
in addition to a military one. Thus, by the 1944 presidential
election, the two camps within the Roosevelt Administration became
even more clearly defined.
This division
became apparent as the campaign got under way. ER and FDR’s
conservative campaign manager, Robert Hannegan, opposed each other.
She thought he was too focused on winning at the expense of issues
she considered important while he resented her support of Henry
Wallace and her activism on behalf of African Americans. Consequently
ER was less influential in Democratic party councils than she had
been in previous presidential elections. Publicly she campaigned in
a non-partisan fashion----what she described as “making
non-political speeches about registering and voting” and used
her column to discuss such political issues as full employment and
housing without referring to the campaign. Behind the scenes she
also encouraged FDR to take a more active role in campaigning
especially after his poll numbers dropped in September 1944. Once
FDR was elected in November, she urged him to keep domestic matters
at the top of his agenda, telling the president and his aide Harry
Hopkins, that they were “under moral obligation to see his
domestic reforms through, particularly the organizing of our domestic
life in such a way as to give everybody a job.”
When FDR died April
12 1945, ER was well prepared personally and politically for the
challenges facing her. She had close confidants, colleagues, and
friends to turn to for support. And, although she was hurt to find
that Mercer had been with FDR when he suffered a fatal stroke, she
quickly recovered and resumed her commitments.
1945 - 1952: ER, the United Nations, and Harry Truman
The question ER
faced in 1945 was what her public role would be. Invitations poured
into the White House, her apartment in New York City, and her home at
Val-Kill. Now that she was no longer First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt
was anxious to leave the White House. Within a week of FDR's death,
she had coordinated his funeral, responded to friends' condolences,
overseen the boxing of possessions acquired and documents generated
during her twelve years in Washington, said goodbye to colleagues and
staff, and pondered her future. Despite the intensity of this
schedule, ER made time April 19th to host a farewell White House tea
for the women's press corps. Although the reception was a private
affair, ER did answer some questions for the record. After scoffing
at various rumors of her own political ambitions, ER declared that
her only aspirations were journalistic ones. The next evening after
arriving in Manhattan, she faced those questions for a second time.
Confronted by a small group of photographers and reporters outside
her Washington Square apartment, ER refused to comment on their
speculations. "The story," she said, "is over."
Despite these
denials, politicians, pundits and the public openly speculated on
what actions Eleanor Roosevelt should take next. Speaker of the
House Sam Rayburn and New Jersey Congresswoman Mary Norton urged ER
to join the American delegation to the conference charged with
planning the United Nations. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes
pleaded with her to run for the United States Senate while New York
Democratic party leader Ed Flynn argued that she should be the Empire
State's next governor. Others proposed that she be the new Secretary
of Labor. Even the syndicated columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop
belatedly joined the conjecture, satirically suggesting that their
cousin become Truman's new political "medium."
Close
friends and the media reinforced this expectation. As they rode the
train from FDR's Hyde Park funeral back to Washington, Henry
Morgenthau Jr. recommended that FDR's estate be settled as soon as
possible so she could speak out to the world, arguing that it was
most important that her voice be heard. After encouraging her friend
to take a brief rest, Hickok reminded ER that she was independent
now, freer than she had ever been before, and that “a very
important place awaited” her. The Associated Press agreed,
succinctly summarizing the pressures confronting ER with this front
page headline: "Mrs. Roosevelt Will Continue Column; Seeks No
Office Now."
Eleanor Roosevelt
had her own expectations about the future; however, unlike her
friends and the media, she was undecided about what actions she
should take to achieve them. Fearing that her public life died along
with FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt struggled to set her own course.
Although she declared her determination not to continually be seen as
a former First Lady, ER feared that without the ear of the president
she would lose the influence she struggled so diligently to attain.
At times she succumbed to these anxieties only to encounter jocular
criticism from those closest to her. When a self-pitying ER informed
young friends that she merely wanted to write, visit her family, and
live a peaceful life, Trude Lash teasingly suggested that they all go
buy ER a lace cap as a retirement gift.
But as ER reflected
on her life, she drew confidence from the way that she had handled
previous political expectations. In New York, she had managed her
career as teacher, journalist, and political organizer without
discounting her responsibilities as the Empire State's first lady.
In the White House, she revolutionized the role of First Lady by
constantly acting in ways that were new to the position. She was the
first (and only) First Lady to hold regular press conferences, write
a daily newspaper column, publish books and articles, travel the
nation on speaking tours, chair national conferences in the White
House, address national conventions of social reform organizations,
give a keynote address at her party's presidential convention,
represent her nation abroad, travel battlefields, and direct a
government agency. Clearly, she had numerous skills which could be
applied to politics outside the White House.
Yet these new
boundaries did not mean that new politics would follow. Eleanor
Roosevelt had no plans to forsake the goals and ideals of the New
Deal. In fact, she planned to do the exact opposite. If FDR had
abandoned Dr. New Deal to become Dr. Win the War and resented her
insistent wartime references to domestic problems, ER anticipated
that his successor would be even less likely to pursue the
controversial reforms FDR had postponed. She recognized that if the
New Deal was to re-enter the political arena, she would have to
assist in orchestrating its return. Whether she did this by
promoting candidates or policy was up to her. The path she selected
was not the pivotal point in her strategy. What was important was
that she select a mode of operation which allowed her the greatest
leeway in pursuing her own goals while she protected her husband's
legacy.
For
the next seventeen years of her life, until her death November 7,
1962, Eleanor Roosevelt carefully walked this line. She published
This I Remember, her memoirs of
her years in the White House. She gladly lent her name to Democratic
Party fundraisers, campaigned for local, state and national
candidates, and hosted events commemorating FDR's major
accomplishments.
But it is her
efforts as a politician in her own right that make her post White
House years so unique. In December 1945, Harry Truman appointed her
to the United States delegation to the United Nation where she
stunned delegates with her political finesse she displayed in
overseeing the drafting and unanimous passage of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
Although some of
her colleagues on the U.S. delegation were initially skeptical of her
appointment, ER soon won them over with her political acumen and
diplomatic skill. Future secretary of state Dean Rusk who then
headed the State Department’s Office of Special Political
Affairs described her and another future secretary of state John
Foster Dulles as “the two best vote getters we had. Somehow
finding room in their schedules, they met and worked hard on every
delegate. In those years [they] produced overwhelming majorities on
almost anything we wanted in the General Assembly.” Even the
Soviets with whom she often clashed respected her skill and tenacity
in argument.
Ironically ER’s
initial assignment to the UN’s Social, Humanitarian and
Cultural Committee which was considered “safe” turned out
to be the most contentious because the group dealt with an early Cold
War issue: repatriation of displaced people, particularly those who
feared return to the countries of origin because of their political
views. In the committee and before the General Assembly, ER refuted
the Soviet contention that these people were traitors or
collaborators and argued that they should not be forced to return
home. Each time the Soviet recommendations were voted down by
sizeable margins and ultimately the UN and its subsidiary agency, the
International Refugee Organization, came down in favor of
resettlement rather than repatriation.
Important as her
work on refugee issues was, ER’s efforts on behalf of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) have had the greatest
long-term impact. As chair of the subcommittee that drafted the UDHR
she played a critical role in the creation of the declaration
skillfully creating an atmosphere that permitted blending the ideas
and norms of different cultures together in a document nations around
the globe could assent to while marshaling U.S. support for swift
passage of the declaration by separating it from a legally binding
(and more problematic) covenant . Later as chairman of the Human
Rights Commission, she presented the document to the General Assembly
and was instrumental in its passage. Today, more than 50 years after
its passage, the UDHR remains the touchstone of the global Human
Rights movement and a key component of an international system that
provides for international scrutiny of the way in which a nation
treats its citizens.
While conscious of her role and responsibilities as a member of the American delegation, ER rarely hesitated to disagree with the government position especially when she felt the U.S. was not showing enough moral or political leadership on international issues. As a strong supporter of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, she openly criticized President Truman when he withdrew his support for the UN partition plan in favor of a plan to place Palestine under a temporary international trusteeship. In a letter to Secretary Marshall, ER argued that the decision “more or less buried the UN. I can hardly see how it can recover and have the slightest influence, since we are the only ones who could give it any force and we now have been the ones to take it away.” Taking her argument public, she told readers of My Day, “We have taken the weak course of sacrificing the word we pledged and, in so doing, have weakened the UN and prevented it from becoming an instrument to keep peace in world.”
At the same time she balanced the requirements of her
position as an instructed delegate and the dictates of her own
conscience especially on issues of civil rights for African Americans
and other peoples of color. She ardently supported independence for
people seeking to free themselves from colonial rule as well as for
those behind the Iron Curtain, and she was tireless in her efforts to
foster good relationships with newly-independent nations who wished
to remain unaligned with either the Eastern or the Western bloc.
ER was equally
indefatigable in her support of the United Nations calling it “the
one hope” for peace. During and after her seven years as a
delegate, she traveled extensively abroad investigating social,
economic and political conditions in Europe, Asia, the Middle East
and the Pacific. Everywhere she went she urged support for the UN
and its humanitarian and diplomatic aid. At home she campaigned
vigorously for the UN via “My Day,” books and articles
and, after 1952, traveled the country as a volunteer for the American
Association of the United Nations.
Worried that FDR's
death had deprived liberals of the leadership they needed to make
America a more just democracy, ER pressured Democratic officials and
liberal leaders to practice what they preached. Comfortable with her
own power, ER remained uncomfortable with both consensus liberals and
communist-front sympathizers. She remained dissatisfied with Truman,
and he entered the election of 1948 without her endorsement. Yet as
disappointed as she was with the Democratic Party in 1948, she
refused to abandon the Democrats to promote a third party unsure of
its membership or its principles.
The early postwar
years were a difficult time for ER and for the country. Both were
grappling with the consequences of unforeseen circumstances of FDR’s
sudden death and the problems inherent in converting from a wartime
economy to a peacetime economy. Housing shortages, inflation and
labor strikes dominated the headlines. At the same time, the reform
spirit of the New Deal was dissipating as a more conservative spirit
took hold in Congress and the nation at large. No longer tied to
FDR’s needs, ER became increasingly vocal on these and other
social and economic issues such as health care and education
especially when it became apparent that the Truman Administration
lacked the will and the ability to resolve them. Her principal
vehicle for communicating her views remained My Day but she also did
not hesitate to confront Truman personally when she felt it was
necessary.
Two themes
consistently pervaded her activism during this period. One was that
America’s future security depended on a sound economy that
promised jobs to all who wanted to work and a healthy, well-educated
citizenry committed to the principles of democracy and equality. The
other was America’s emerging role as international leader. In
her mind the two were linked. In September 1945, she asked readers
of My Day, “The eyes of the world are on this nation. How can
we expect the nations of the world to sit down together and solve
their problems without war if we do not use the same mechanism to
successfully in settling our domestic problems?”
Among the issues ER
championed in the early postwar years were the continuation of wage
and price controls, full employment legislation and national health
insurance. She also backed labor’s demands for increases in
wages, supported its National Citizens Political Action Committee
(NCPAC) and served as honorary co-chair of a committee to raise funds
for striking workers. At the same time, she opposed the Taft-Hartley
anti-union bill calling it “a bad bill” and advised
Truman that the Democrats could not “out conserve the
Republicans” and expect to be re-elected.
During this period
ER also intensified her activism on behalf of civil rights speaking
out more insistently in favor of anti-lynching legislation and an end
to the poll tax. She also called for desegregation in housing,
education, and other public facilities as well equal opportunities in
employment and housing. She supported legislation to make the Fair
Employment Practices Commission permanent and argued for the
establishment of a Civil Rights Division within the Department of
Justice.
1953-1962: ER and the Cold War at Home and Abroad
ER entered the
Eisenhower presidency committed to making the Democratic Party less
glued to the consensus agenda of price controls and fair deals and
more supportive of racial justice and tolerant of political dissent.
Indeed, ER's perception of racial justice grew as she aged. She
served on the national board of directors for the NAACP, CORE, and
other major civil rights organizations. Her friendships with civil
rights leaders and her experience chairing investigations of race
riots, visiting internment facilities, and combating violent
segregationist backlashes, continually exposed her to the brutal
nature of American racism. Soon the Ku Klux Klan had placed a bounty
on her head, and the number of death threats she received for her
civil rights stance increased.
Despite the
opposition she incurred, ER refused to moderate her position. She
continued to insist that racial injustice was the biggest threat to
democracy. Americans must reject racial stereotypes and “face
the fact that equality of opportunity is basic to any kind of
democracy.” The complaints of African Americans were in her
view “legitimate. We have expected them to be good citizens
and yet in a large part of our country we haven’t given them an
opportunity to take part in our government.”
As
the civil rights movement gathered momentum in the fifties, ER
stepped up her critique and regularly criticized the Eisenhower
Administration for its poor record on the issue, particularly its
non-support of the Supreme Court’s Brown
v. Board of Education ruling and its failure to submit civil
rights legislation to Congress. One of her most pointed attacks
occurred in 1958 during the controversy over the integration of
Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas, when, in her August 23rd
column, she challenged Eisenhower in My Day to put the power of the
presidency behind the African American teenagers on the front lines
of the struggle. “Instead of sending troops, I wish President
Eisenhower would go down to Little Rock and lead the colored children
into the school.”
Her involvement
with Democratic Party leaders and liberal interest groups also showed
her daily the superficial nature of liberal commitment to racial
justice. Gradually she moved away from counseling patience and
working within the system to supporting those activists who staged
grand public events designed to force the political system to
recognize the shallowness of its promises. She helped raise funds
for those young civil rights activists coordinating the “jail,
no bail” campaign. She led workshops on human rights for
activists enrolled in the Highlander Folk School and she gave
consistent support to Allard Lowenstein’s investigative crusade
against apartheid, his call for graduate student engagement in campus
civil rights protests, and his work with disgruntled, disenfranchised
New Yorkers. And she continued to support (despite the opposition of
many of her husband’s advisors) the Southern Conference
Education Fund.
ER simultaneously
struggled to support civil liberties while criticizing American
communist activism. Once again uncomfortable with the stringent
dictates of vital center liberalism, ER frequently opposed cold war
liberals who argued that communism had no place in American politics.
Not only was she the first nationally prominent liberal to oppose
Joseph McCarthy, she was also the only liberal to oppose the House
Un-American Activities Committee and the Smith Act from their
inception. Despite the rapidity with which Adlai Stevenson and other
liberals deserted Alger Hiss after his conviction, ER refused to let
her disappointment in Hiss's judgment dictate her reaction to his
conviction. This placed her in heated conflict with Richard Nixon,
whom she viewed as one of the most dangerous men in American.
Discouraged by
Stevenson's defeats in the 1952 and 1956 elections, ER approached the
campaign of 1960 with mixed emotions. Convinced that the party
needed a new vigorous vision to win the election and implement
reform, ER nevertheless could not convince herself that John F.
Kennedy (JFK) was the answer to the liberals' dilemma. His
moderation on civil rights, his evasion on McCarthy, his reliance on
machine politics, and his father's conduct during World War Two, only
reinforced ER's opposition to his election. Yet Kennedy realized
that he needed her support and traveled to Hyde Park to meet with
her. She was still not convinced that he was a true liberal but she
was willing to give him a chance. By October, when JFK had made
concessions to civil rights, ER actively campaigned for him. (For
more on the ER-JFK relationship, see Eleanor
Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and the Election of 1960.)
After JFK’s
inauguration, ER pressured the president to appoint women to
executive positions within his administration. When he dallied and
then only appointed nine women, she requested a meeting and handed
him a detailed three-page list of women and the positions for which
they were qualified. When his administration received widespread
criticism for its lack of attention to women’s concerns and
labor and consumer activist Esther Peterson proposed that a
President’s Commission on the Status of Women be created to
examine policies and positions related to women’s employment
and civil, economic, and political rights, JFK appointed ER chair
and Peterson its vice-chair. After chairing the commission’s
first meeting February 12, 1962, she told readers of “My Day”
that “the effort, of course, is to find how we can best use the
potentialities of women without impairing their first
responsibilities, which are to their homes, their husbands and their
children.” In April, she took the commission’s work to
Congress when she testified in support of legislation guaranteeing
equal pay for equal work. In August, she met with the president to
present the commission’s interim report.
Eleanor Roosevelt
spent the last two years of her life tired and in pain, but she
rarely curtailed her schedule. Battling aplastic anemia and
tuberculosis, she nevertheless continued to speak out on issues
relating to racial justice, world peace, and women's rights.
Outraged by the violence the Freedom Riders encountered in
Mississippi and Alabama and discouraged by the tepid response of the
Kennedy Administration, ER eagerly agreed to a request from CORE in
May 1962 to chair a public hearing charged with investigating law
enforcement officials acts against the protestors. When the hearing
did not get the attention she thought it deserved, she lobbied the
publishers of the major newspapers and the editors of the major
television news shows to instruct their reporters to investigate the
violence civil rights workers often confronted.. After failed Bay of
Pigs invasion, which she labeled “this unfortunate raid,”
she joined Walter Reuther to chair the Tractors for Freedom Committee
to facilitate the release of Americans held in Cuba. She eagerly
accepted appointment to the Peace Corps advisory board and lent vocal
support to its work in her columns and speeches. Perhaps most
startling, she dropped her four-decade opposition to the Equal Rights
Amendment, arguing that “law, custom, and the forgetfulness of
men” kept women out of many jobs they sought, and telling the
Lucy Stone League that she no longer believed the ERA would undermine
the women’s safety at work since they could join unions and
“there was no reason why you shouldn’t have [the ERA] if
you want it.”
During
the early fall, she returned home to Hyde Park where she struggled to
complete her last book, Tomorrow is
Now, in which she pleads for racial, political, and social
justice. “Staying aloof is not a solution,” she wrote,
“but a cowardly evasion.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
died November 7 in a New York City hospital at the age of
seventy-eight. She is buried her next to her husband in the rose
garden on the family estate in Hyde Park, New York.
Bibliographical Essay
The papers of Anna
Eleanor Roosevelt are housed in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in
Hyde Park, New York. The papers are voluminous and are divided into
two sections: 1884-1945 and 1945-1962. Those interested in
investigating ER's life should also consult the following collections
which are also housed at the FDR Library: Franklin D. Roosevelt
papers, Lorena Hickok papers, Molly Dewson papers, Henry Morgenthau
papers, the Eleanor Roosevelt Oral History Project, Anna Roosevelt
Halstead papers, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. papers, Joseph P. Lash
papers, and the Democratic Women's Committee papers. Record Groups
59 and 84 of the State Department files housed at the National
Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC house
invaluable, albeit highly disorganized, material on ER’s work
in American diplomacy and human rights. The United Nations records
of the activities of the Human Rights Commission and Committee Three,
the commission on humanitarian, social, and cultural issues.
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project at George Washington University
houses documents collected from more than 100 archives around the
world that relate to ER's post-White House political life. It also
houses a complete collection of ER's My Day column, which ER wrote
from 1936-1962.
Anthologies of ER documents are available. Joseph Lash has edited two
collections of ER's correspondence Love,
Eleanor (new York: 1982) and World of Love, Eleanor (New
York, 1984) which reflect her political and personal opinions.
Robert Cohen’s Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: Letters from Children of
the Great Depression (Chapel Hill, 2002) offers a thorough
portrait of the appeals ER received in during the early years of the
New Deal. Other collections focus on ER’s relationship with a
one person. Steve Neal’s Eleanor and Harry: The
Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Truman (New York:
2002) offers a selection of their most important communications.
Ruth McClure’s Eleanor Roosevelt, An Eager Spirit: The
Letters of Dorothy Dow (New York, 1984) reflects ER’s
relationship with this renowned Catholic reformer. Bernard Absell’s
Mother and Daughter: The Letters of Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt
(New York, 1982) offers a keen insight into the complex, caring
relationship the two Roosevelts shared. Lastly, The Eleanor
Roosevelt Papers Project and Charles Scribner’s Sons will
publish The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers: The United Nations Years,
Vols I and II in summer 2006.
Eleanor
Roosevelt was a prolific writer. She wrote four autobiographies,
This Is My Story, This I Remember, On My Own, and
The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt as well as several
monographs, the most important of which are It's Up to the Women,
This Troubled World, The Moral Basis of Democracy, and
Tomorrow is Now. Her column "My Day" was published six
times a week from 1936 until 1962 and is a wonderful source for her
daily activities and political position. She also wrote a series of
monthly columns: "Mrs. Roosevelt's Page" for the
Democratic Digest (December 1937 until January 1941) and "If
You Ask Me," for Ladies Home Journal (May 1941 - 1949)
and McCall's (1949 through 1962). John A. Edens' Eleanor
Roosevelt: A Comprehensive Bibliography (Greenwood Press, 1994)
provides the most extensive and thoroughly annotated compilation of
ER's articles to date.
Maurine
Beasely has edited all the remaining transcripts from ER's press
conferences, The White House Press
Conferences of Eleanor Roosevelt (New York, 1983) and assesses
ER's career as a journalist in Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media
(Urbana, 1987). Susan Ware's study Beyond Suffrage: Women in the
New Deal (Cambridge, 1981) clearly illustrates ER's influence
within the Administration and reform circles.
There
have been dozens of works published about ER. Of those
contemporaries close to ER who wrote biographies of her, the best are
Lorena Hickok, Eleanor Roosevelt:
Reluctant First Lady (New York, 1962 and Ruby Black, Eleanor
Roosevelt (New York, 1940).
Although
many have tried, most biographers create a superficial one dimension
portrait of ER. Blanche Wiesen Cook's Eleanor
Roosevelt, Volume One (New York, 1992) is a thorough and
thoughtful reconstruction of her life before the White House. Joseph
P. Lash's Eleanor and Franklin (New York, 1970) is the most
comprehensive study of ER's White House years published to date,
despite its protective slant. Joan Hoff Wilson and Marjorie
Lightman's anthology Without Precedent: The Life and Career of
Eleanor Roosevelt (Indianapolis, 1984) offers a scholastic
assessment of ER's political education and political performance
before and during her tenure as First Lady. Jan Pottker’s Sara
and Eleanor: The Story of Sara Delano Roosevelt and Her
Daughter-in-Law Eleanor Roosevelt presents fresh interpretation
of this ever-evolving relationship.
Unfortunately,
ER's post White House career has not yet received equal treatment.
Lash's Eleanor: The Years Alone
(New York, 1972) presents only a cursory depiction of her activities
after FDR's death. The only serious study of ER's contribution to
diplomacy is Jason Berger's A New Deal for the World (New
York, 1981). Allida M. Black's Casting Her Own Shadow: Eleanor
Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism discusses ER's
evolving commitment to civil rights, civil liberties, and Democratic
Party reform .