The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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NEW YORK, Monday—One busy day last week, I got up early to appear for a very few minutes on the Dave Garroway show. I found that Thurgood Marshall, counsel for the NAACP, was on just ahead of me and he seemed so happy over the Supreme Court segregation decision, which of course seems to have lifted a weight from so many of our colored citizens.

Later, Miss Lorena Hickok and I were interviewed by Martha Dean on her program, so we talked about our book, "Ladies of Courage," considerably during the morning and again at the Woman Pays luncheon club, where there were a great many women of importance in the literary and artistic field. I left the luncheon on time to make a plane at 3:30 P.M. for Pittsburgh, where I spoke at a dinner meeting. I took an 11 o'clock plane home, so after I had finished my mail on my return and finally got to bed, I felt I had had a long and full day!

Wednesday morning I had a business interview and then spent some time in the office of the American Association for the U.N. Then I had a pleasant lunch with Mr. John Golden. He gave me an account of a luncheon my son Franklin had attended at the Dutch Treat Club. I am sure I enjoyed the account much more than I would have enjoyed being present at the lunch! One can so easily sense an atmosphere and I fear that, in that particular gathering, there were not many people inclined to be kindly disposed towards any young Democrat, particularly a Roosevelt of the Democratic brand. However, Franklin D., Jr., seems to have lived through it successfully, and every such experience adds to one's self-confidence. All young men in politics must learn to meet with every kind of audience. But to be a bystander is not always pleasant!

I have almost finished Lillian Smith's book, "The Journey." To me it has been one of the most fascinating journeys that one could take with a very interesting human being. In addition, the idea is a fascinating one, for any human being trying to find self-understanding and contentment must go deep down to the roots of their being. The reward is fuller understanding of much that is outside of oneself, because of the slow insight that one gains into what actually goes into the making of a personality. How many of us could take the same journey and be as fine about the things we found? Here is a quote I liked very much:

"The summer I was twelve I read all his (Shakespeare's) plays in one big gulp, for a child greedy for experience reads as she devours candy. Were my questions answered? I don't know. I forgot them. I was translated into a new world; a place where no man is The Stranger, however different his experience of life may be. Those amazing, ambient words pouring out of the deeply accepting mind and heart of The Poet had metamorphosed everyone on earth overnight, into a human being: fascinating, real, mysterious, tender, and terrifying, and awesome, and ordinary—and so like oneself."

E.R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1954, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 25, 1954

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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