Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  ER had been surprised by FDR’s 9 October statement. She too considered it duplicitous and unnecessary. The thought that her husband was captive to bigots in the military, as he was to those ruling his State Department, was intolerable. She had not expected him to endorse Knox’s miserable attitude that “one could not have [blacks] on the same boat with white men.” The close election polls worried her as well. She feared Willkie’s victory in the short run, and democracy’s demise over time. She understood that her friend Walter White intended to support the candidate who opposed segregation, but she hoped the conservatives who surrounded Willkie, so many of whom were eager to destroy the New Deal, would give him pause.

  Joe Lash asked Harriet Pickens to sponsor a youth meeting in Harlem, but she replied that she would not endorse FDR because of his “statement on Negroes in the Army.” Point seven was particularly repugnant and “for the first time enunciated” military segregation as policy. Ever since Woodrow Wilson resegregated Washington in 1913, “It has always been practiced but never before proclaimed as policy.”

  Pickens’s views mattered to many people. As a leader of the YWCA’s National Business and Professional Council, as public health and tuberculosis administrator in Harlem, and as youth leader chair of the AYC’s civil liberties program, she was a notable force. When Joe told ER about their conversation, ER went to her husband.

  Although there is no record of their exchange, on 25 October, one week before the election, FDR acted significantly. He appointed Judge William H. Hastie civilian aide to the secretary of war; Major Campbell C. Johnson became assistant to Dr. Clarence Dykstra, administrator of the Selective Service Administration; and he promoted Colonel Benjamin O. Davis to the rank of brigadier general, the first African-American general in U.S. history. He detailed these appointments in an extraordinary letter to Walter White, A. Philip Randolph, and T. Arnold Hill:

  I regret that there has been so much misinterpretation . . . of the War Department policy issued from the White House. . . .

  The plan, as I understand it, on which we are all agreed is that Negroes will be put into all branches of the service, combatant as well as supply. Arrangements are now being made to give, without delay, training in aviation to Negroes. Negro reserve officers will be called to active service and given appropriate commands. Negroes will be given the same opportunity to qualify for officers’ commissions as will be given to others.

  These measures represent a very substantial advance over what has been practiced in past years. You may rest assured that further developments of policy will be forthcoming to insure that Negroes are given fair treatment on a non-discriminatory basis.

  However annoyed or disappointed ER was by her husband’s political maneuvers, or bewildered by his slow, sidestepping approach, she always believed he would eventually do the right thing—since basically they shared the same goals for justice and democracy.

  Willkie was a robust phenomenon as a presidential candidate. His vigorous campaign and huggy-bear style endeared him to millions of Americans. Although his supporters included appeasers, isolationists, and fascists, he rejected their support. Close to FDR in vision and New Deal rhetoric, his appeal crossed all boundaries.

  ER was deeply involved with FDR’s reelection campaign. One week before the election, she tried to stop the drift of progressive race leaders toward Willkie by inviting Mary McLeod Bethune to host a White House reception for the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), who were “mainly Republicans.” Like Harry Hopkins, Will Alexander, Aubrey Williams, and others, ER was unconcerned about offending white supremacist newspapers and conservative party leaders. Defiantly, the lead sentence of her My Day column announced her 26 October reception for almost one thousand women: “Friday afternoon, at the White House, I received the National Council of Negro Women, who are holding their convention in the District of Columbia.”

  During the campaign’s last weeks, she was “constantly around headquarters making peace among the various factions and personalities,” Lash observed. “Everybody trusts and yields to her—hard-boiled politicians, idealistic women, careerists, publicity hounds and publicity people. . . . She holds things together. Her presence alone is an important contribution to the campaign, but she is also full of ideas.”

  She worked closely with Lash and with her son Franklin to build Youth for Roosevelt, which Franklin Jr. directed. She was in charge at the Democratic Party’s Women’s Division and often arrived with Elinor Morgenthau and Agnes Brown Leach. She persuaded party chair Ed Flynn that Lorena Hickok would make a splendid publicity director—and she turned out to be perfect for it. Hick wrote the impressive copy for fliers, bulletins, and newsletters. Although she could be snippy and impatient, she was also generous and concerned. Ever acerbic but witty, she loved her eleventh-floor office in the Beekman Tower and worked with dedicated verve.

  The campaign team was also bolstered by the participation of Trude Pratt, who volunteered many hours, paid for several assistants, and directed the research division for women speakers. Moreover Pratt was among the “indefatigable women” who “took to the streets” during the last week of the campaign. Day and night they converged on the busiest New York street corners, from Wall Street to Times Square, atop cleverly adorned Roosevelt-Wallace cars and “bedecked” kitchen ladders with loudspeakers. They attracted fascinated though frequently hostile crowds and were variously booed and cheered.

  ER traveled many miles as part of her campaign efforts, and visited friends and family. On 11 October she took a night flight to Los Angeles, where she watched James drill with his Marine Reserve battalion, hoping that “someday we will reach a state of civilization where we can find, as William James suggested so long ago, the ‘moral equivalent for war.’” Until then, “all of us must prefer to see the young people we care about receive the training which cannot fail to be of use to them in everyday life because of the value of discipline . . . [which] helps us in every occupation.” ER was proud of James and Franklin Jr., who enrolled in the ROTC.

  The Selective Service Act had set 16 October as the day of compulsory draft registration, universal and democratic:

  “Once accepted to military service, each inductee will be intelligently led, comfortably clothed, well fed, and adequately armed and equipped for basic training. . . . In the military service, Americans from all walks of life, rich and poor, country-bred and city raised, farmer, student, manual laborer and white collar worker, will learn to live side by side to depend upon each other in military drills and maneuvers, and to appreciate each other’s dignity as American citizens. Universal service will bring not only greater preparedness to meet the threat of war, but a wider distribution of tolerance and understanding to enjoy the blessings of peace.

  That day more than sixteen million young men registered. The draft would “swell the ranks of the US Army to the unprecedented peacetime figure of one million men by January 1941,” observed Time magazine. Except for a small minority of “religiously-minded conscientious objectors,” the country greeted the peacetime draft with “good-natured” support.

  ER had advocated a year of national service for all Americans, but she recognized the necessity of the draft, even in this limited form. Since September she had urged a racially nondiscriminatory registration policy, but on registration day thousands of black youth “flocked to recruitment centers” and were “turned away because the Army had too few segregated facilities.”

  Time magazine mocked her for turning “on her old friends, the American Youth Congress and the American Newspaper Guild, for their ‘claptrap’ talk decrying the draft. . . . As the nation went, so went Eleanor Roosevelt.” Then Time turned to her children, noting that “son Elliott, who has a wife and three small children, had obtained a captain’s commission in the Army Air Corps Specialists reserve.” That accusation of special treatment deeply disturbed ER. She hated the attacks on Elliott, and defended his commission.
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br />   Upon her return from the West Coast, she was astonished by the many hate letters she had received and the many “We Don’t Want Eleanor Either” buttons. Personally she was “unruffled” by it all: “If I . . . worried about mud-slinging, I would have been dead long ago.” But she was upset by the debris thrown at the Willkies—tomatoes, eggs, creamy pastries, telephone books, bottles—and disapproved of the violent rhetoric against all the campaigners.

  ER tried to persuade her husband to enter the campaign directly, but he refused. Then on 16 October, Willkie launched a blistering attack on FDR’s campaign silence. The New Deal president, he said, had refused to speak about ongoing unemployment and the continuous misery at home. Internationally, “he will not discuss the issues that trouble people: He says: Trust me. I can’t explain it all to you. You wouldn’t understand. . . . You must believe I am indispensable.” Willkie boasted that he would expand the stalled New Deal, providing Social Security for all, rural electrification in neglected areas, and a program to guarantee full employment.

  Infuriated, ER wrote her husband that night. He owed it to America to end his silence: “The people have a right to hear your say in opposition to Willkie between now and election day.” She knew he enjoyed a fight, and there was no time to lose. FDR agreed to make five campaign speeches—but not until the week before the election.

  On 23 October in Philadelphia, he finally launched his formal campaign. Yes, he declared in fine form, he “loved a good fight.” He derided Willkie’s “tears, crocodile tears” for labor, youth, the elderly, and the unemployed—on behalf of Republicans who had fought every one of his New Deal efforts to improve life for labor, youth, the elderly, and the unemployed. FDR went further and now promised full employment. It was the government’s responsibility to add “the right to work” to the rights already established—“the right to vote, the right to learn, the right to speak, the right to worship.” Without mentioning Willkie by name, he called his opponent a liar for saying FDR would lead the country into the war: “We will not participate in any foreign wars, and we will not send our army, naval, or air forces to fight in foreign lands outside of the Americas except in the case of attack.”

  ER listened to FDR’s speech on the radio with Tommy and Alice Huntington: “I hope that everyone throughout the nation spent their evening in exactly the same way. I felt it was profitable.”

  On 28 October—the day Mussolini invaded Greece—she joined FDR for a rally at Madison Square Garden, with a standing-room-only crowd of twenty thousand. At this stunning event, the president tore into Republicans who had obstructed efforts to build up the national defense and provide urgently needed aid to the Allies. In Congress, the main obstructors had been Representatives Joseph Martin (R-MA, House minority leader and now Willkie’s campaign manager), Bruce Barton (R-NY, an advertising executive who represented New York’s Upper East Side), and Hamilton Fish (R-NY). Who, FDR asked the crowd at intervals, were the main naysayers? “Martin, Barton, and Fish!” they roared back with enthusiasm. ER was delighted: “It seemed to us a very good meeting.”

  But the rally had a bitter aftermath. White House press secretary Steve Early was on the way to the president’s train when black New York City policeman James Sloan, on duty to protect FDR, stopped him. Unwilling to be stopped by a race man, Early kicked him in the groin with such force that Officer Sloan was hospitalized. Republican newspapers and commentators went berserk. Race leaders demanded an apology and Early’s resignation. He did apologize; it had been an accident, he said. No recriminations followed, but Early feared he had cost his boss the election. Sloan saved the day, issuing a press statement from his hospital bed: “If anybody thinks they can turn me against our great President who has done so much for our race because of this thing they are mistaken.” ER did not absolve Early, who had been FDR’s friend since 1912, but she implied that his hot temper was color-blind—and sought to protect her husband and his loyal, if bigoted, press secretary.

  On 30 October in Boston, FDR pledged to keep America out of war: “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars. They are going into training to form a force so strong that, by its very existence, it will keep the threat of war away from our shores.”

  The president also welcomed home “my Ambassador” Joseph P. Kennedy, in words so warm that Kathleen Kennedy wrote her father: “The President really went to town for you tonight . . . amidst terrific cheers from the crowd [for] ‘that Boston boy.’” FDR’s generous words to him reflected a personal campaign victory.

  Ambassador Kennedy was a fervent isolationist, close to Neville Chamberlain. In London he had been sidelined by FDR’s personal emissaries. His role usurped by others, Kennedy felt useless and insisted on his right to return to the United States. He had reportedly said that once home he intended to “put 25 million Catholic votes behind Wendell Willkie.”

  When he landed in New York, he was handed an urgent message from FDR to proceed directly to Washington and the White House for dinner. At cocktails, he had a few minutes alone with FDR and Missy LeHand, and the president was “very gracious,” he said. Then they were joined for dinner by James Byrnes, FDR’s closest ally among Senate Democrats, and Kennedy’s wife, Rose. During the meal Byrnes sought to persuade Kennedy to broadcast a pro-FDR campaign speech, while FDR “worked very hard on Rose.”

  Kennedy, who had wanted to speak with the president privately, finally exploded. He complained bitterly about the way he had been treated. He had been loyal and supportive but was never consulted or even informed. All agreements had been negotiated by others. The State Department had marginalized him while emissaries dealt with the British. All this “harmed my influence.”

  FDR denied everything, saying he knew nothing about it. It was all State Department mismanagement. As the discussion went on and on, Rose suggested that long distances limited communication.

  “Finally,” Kennedy recalled, “I said I had a great sense of responsibility and obligation and would make a speech.” On 29 October, he broadcast over 114 CBS network stations—sponsored by Rose Kennedy and their children. “It is true that there have been disagreements between the President and me. . . . However, these are times . . . which clamor for national unity.” In that regard, the third term was not an issue, as there was no time to waste on a “newcomer.” The world “is on the move at a speed never before witnessed. . . . It is later than you think. Denmark was conquered in a matter of hours; Norway in days; Belgium and Holland in weeks. . . . Proud and honorable France fell in a month. We do not have the time to train a green hand even though he comes to his task full of goodwill and general capacity.”

  He concluded, “My wife and I have given nine hostages to fortune. The kind of America that they and their children will inherit is of grave concern to us all. In the light of these considerations, I believe that Franklin D. Roosevelt should be re-elected President of the United States.”

  This powerful affirmation of a third term for the president shocked Republicans. FDR sent a telegram to his ambassador: “We have all just listened to a grand speech! Many thanks.”

  ER, who had just spoken at Colby College, listened to the speech in Limerick, Maine, with the John Cutters. Like many others, she wondered what magic FDR had wrought to elicit Joe Kennedy’s tide-changing words.

  Upon her return to Hyde Park, she wrote her first column about the campaign, designed in part to modify her husband’s promise in Boston not to send U.S. soldiers into war: “Today no one can honestly promise you peace at home or abroad. All any human being can do is to promise that he will do his utmost to prevent this country from being involved in war. . . . The fact is before you that in a world of war we are still at peace.”

  For all the abuse, vitriol, and violence, the two campaigns followed a gentlemen’s agreement to keep two explosive items out of the press. Wendell Willkie had an ongoing rel
ationship with journalist and power broker Irita Van Doren, book editor of the New York Herald Tribune. They had fallen in love shortly after the brilliant, beautiful, southern-born scholar divorced Carl Van Doren in 1935, after twenty-three years of marriage. The entire political world knew about their relationship, but Irita wanted Wendell Willkie to win, as did his wife, Billie (Edith Willkie). The women in his life remained silent and discreet (which Willkie rarely did), and no Democrat leaked the well-known details.

  FDR was willing to remain silent about Willkie’s domestic relations because his running mate Henry Wallace, a student of world philosophies, had written letters to Russian artist, pacifist, and visionary Nicholas Roerich in the highlands of Tibet and Mongolia. These “guru letters” were seen as ammunition for those ready to dismiss Wallace as a spiritualist, or a mystical nut.

  The Republican National Committee had “obtained” Wallace’s embarrassing correspondence to his “guru,” while unnamed Democrats had “intercepted” Willkie’s correspondence with Van Doren, which they branded “dolly letters.” Both sides agreed to protect their private correspondence. Curiously, FDR’s choice of Wallace had partly been a mystical decision. According to ER, her husband had been persuaded by astrologers and “soothsayers” that no president elected in 1940 would complete his term—“so he talks all the time of Wallace as successor.”

  ER returned to Hyde Park to prepare for the arrival of many guests, but her campaign chores were not over. On Saturday morning she drove to New York for three crowded events in the Bronx and Queens, then continued on to Manhattan, where six thousand women gathered at the Roosevelt Hotel. Everywhere ER called for national unity: “Let us show the free world that after Election Day we can come together as a free people able to govern ourselves and make life better and happier for all the people.”