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

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LOS ANGELES—I listened on Tuesday for a considerable time to the convention debate on the platform. But the most exciting incident of the afternoon was Adlai Stevenson's arrival in the hall. He was practically pushed in, surrounded by guards and police, with the Illinois delegation banners going ahead of him.

The excitement and the greeting from the floor as well as from the galleries was perfectly tremendous, and he finally was obliged to go up to the rostrum and say a few words to the delegates and the visitors, simply to quiet the hall sufficiently so the business of the convention could proceed.

After Gov. LeRoy Collins' excellent address, which I am quite sure was heard much more satisfactorily by people watching their television sets around the country than by any delegate at the convention, the effort was made to start the presentation of the platform by Rep. Chester Bowles.

Anyone who had not been at a national convention before and, coming in at that moment and being told that the platform of the party was going to be presented, would, I am sure, think he was being deceived. Crowds of people walked around, talked, laughed, and the general noise of hundreds of people paying absolutely no attention to the speakers made the scene indiscribably confusing..

The poor chairman banged his gavel but you could not even hear it. He tried to be heard over the confusion and his voice was drowned completely.

The manners of our inventiondelegates and the people on the floor are worse, if anything, than those of the people in the galleries. There, they talk and move around, too, adding to the general noise. But as they have come to listen only, I think more people in the galleries try to hear what is being said from the rostrum.

A gentleman who had asked me to see some women delegates at the convention came to my seat to ask me to talk to the ladies, and for the moment I had forgotten that I had promised to do so. My first inclination was to shake my head and say that I wanted to hear what was being said. Then, of course, I remembered and got up and went to the top of the stairs and tried not to create any greater disturbance than was necessary.

When I came into the Sports Arena for the first time, a few people caught sight of me in my seat. Governor Collins was already speaking, but this did not perturb them since their backs were to the speakers' stand so they started a round of applause. As I was unable to hear, because of the general noise, that Governor Collins was even speaking, I did not realize what a tremendous interruption this applause for me had created until I received a telegram later in the evening reproving me for my bad manners.

I entirely agree that it is bad manners to interrupt a very good speaker. Anyone, however, who has been at a national convention will, I think, understand that the speakers are fortunate that most of their audience is at home watching and listening on television or radio. If they counted on being heard by the delegates and the galleries at the convention, their audience would be small indeed.

The platform was presented in a very novel manner. A screen was above the rostrum from which Representative Bowles spoke. As he spoke, a movie tried to make you see the things about which the plank in the platform was written. During the presentation of the plank on foreign affairs, pictures of different areas of the world and their people passed on the screen.

The civil rights plank, of course, brought forth a minority report representing 10 states, and I listened to the speeches with interest. A motion to strike out the civil rights portion of the platform was rejected by a voice vote. As usual, the Southern people threatened that the Democratic party would lose their states in the November election. One wonders where these states will go if they leave the Democratic party.

I question whether the Republican plank on civil rights will be any more acceptable than the Democratic plank. The Southern Democrats tried running a ticket of their own once and the Democratic party still won the election, and any threat by these dissenters to leave the party would not terrify any one of the candidates, especially this year.

The speeches presenting the Southern minority point of view saddened me very much, however, for they showed a total lack of understanding of the world situation and the real danger of Communist control of the noncommitted areas of the world. This minority still persists in thinking that this question is a domestic question, when it is a question that actually affects our world leadership in our struggle against communism.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1960, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, July 14, 1960

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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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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