Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  The White House was filled with notables: Crown Prince Olav of Norway and Princess Martha, who had become one of FDR’s devoted companions; Peru’s president Manuel Prado, “who is very charming”; and Philippine president Manuel Quezon. Quezon’s family and war cabinet had been spirited away from Corregidor in a submarine by General Douglas MacArthur when Manila fell, and he was not only thankful but loyal. With most of the southwestern Pacific in Japanese hands, MacArthur had promised, “I shall return.”

  All the harrowing war news exacerbated ER’s worries about her sons. Elliott and Franklin Jr. were recovering but would return to duty shortly. “Pa says Johnnie will get sea duty on a destroyer probably soon,” she wrote Anna. And James faced unknown service in the Pacific with his Marine battalion, the Carlson Raiders.

  That spring ER wrote many articles demanding an end to bigotry and discrimination. In “Race, Religion and Prejudice” for the New Republic, she sought to convey the urgency of Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s message that “this war [demands] we all face the question of race discrimination.” The 1924 immigration law had blocked those “Chinese and Japanese who wished to enter our country,” but after the war Americans would no longer be able to “differentiate between the peoples of Europe, the Near East, and the Far East.” Since we were “fighting for freedom,” we had to recognize that included “freedom from discrimination among the peoples of the world.” This was, ER acknowledged, not the inclination of many Americans. But the “people of the world have suddenly begun to stir and they seem to feel that in the future we should look upon each other as fellow human beings, judged by our acts, by our abilities, by our development, and not by any less fundamental differences.” So we must confront our “attitudes . . . our habits . . . our approach to the Jewish people, the Japanese and Chinese people, the Italian people, and above all, the Negro people in our midst.” Since Negroes represented “our largest minority, our attitude towards them will have to be faced first of all.”

  For This Is America, a book of photographs by Frances Cooke Macgregor, ER wrote essays that boldly and forthrightly celebrated race and diversity during a time of conflict and danger.

  The pictures in this book show you the length and breadth of the land . . . and the changes in climate, from such cold as has aided Russia today to stall the German war machine, to the balmy breezes of Southern California and Florida on the verge of the tropics. [Beyond the variety of landscapes] we are a land of people—people of various races, black, yellow, red, and white people. It is their combination which makes the United States. They represent innumerable differences of creed, occupation, education, taste, recreation, habits and custom. . . . When the present days are behind us, this may well be a universal condition, and if we play our part with courage and clear-sightedness, we may become the hope of the world. We may have here the example of what a family of nations can mean, since we in our nation are a family of varying races and religions.

  ER’s concluding essay, “The White Race in America,” noted that many people from across Europe had emigrated to North America “fleeing from oppression and cruelties and abject poverty.” Gradually they had awakened “to our responsibilities to and dependency on” African, Asian, and Native American peoples. “Now, Americans all,” we must see that “after all, there is but one race—humanity.”

  In a radical and prescient essay in American Magazine, she heralded her vision for the future. Americans were fighting for a peace guaranteed by economic security: “Freedom to live under the government of our choice. Freedom from economic want. Freedom from racial and religious discrimination. A world economy guaranteeing all people free trade and access to raw materials.” Since the last war, we had been “in a kind of revolution. It is a world-wide uprising of the people . . . [for] a better way of life.” With the New Deal, democracy

  in its truest sense began to be fulfilled. We are fighting today to continue this democratic process. . . . Only if we recognize this general rising of the peoples of the world can we understand the real reason why we are in the war. . . . No future economic system will be satisfactory [unless] every man and woman [has opportunity, work, and adequate pay] not only for the decencies of life [but for a full life]. We will no longer cling to any type of economic system which leaves any human beings who are willing to work, without food and shelter and an opportunity for development.

  ER wrote with excitement about the ongoing “revolution of people all over the world. We cannot stand still for the pleasure of a few. . . . We accept the will of the majority . . . the dream of a new world.”

  Written to inspire, ER’s words galvanized the burgeoning civil rights movement and forged a new alliance with Vice President Henry Wallace. In May 1942 he gave a speech that introduced the concept of “the common man.”

  Some have spoken of the “American Century.” I say that the century on which we are entering . . . can be and must be the century of the common man. Everywhere the common man must learn to build his own industries. . . . No nations will have the God-given right to exploit other nations. Older nations will have the privilege to help younger nations . . . but there must be neither military nor economic imperialism. The methods of the nineteenth century will not work in the people’s century which is now about to begin. India, China, and Latin America have a tremendous stake in the people’s century. As their masses learn to read and write, and as they become productive mechanics, the standard of living will double and treble. Modern science, when devoted wholeheartedly to the general welfare, has in it potentialities of which we do not yet dream.

  Wallace’s speech complemented ER’s vision, and she never tired of quoting his words. She vigorously opposed Henry Luce’s notion of an American Century and rejected completely his call for “the Americanization of the World.”

  Despite her many articles, her new alliances, and her daily column, ER had reasons for anguish during the spring of 1942. Her husband’s refusal to create “a voluntary registration of women” for work and for the military left her outraged. His decision was, if nothing else, wasteful, since women’s work would benefit the wartime economy. More than that, a voluntary registration would enable so many women currently unemployed and eager to work to have their wants and needs considered. FDR had also recommended budget cuts for NYA and government aid for college students, which she opposed.

  She was continually disheartened by ongoing obstructions to limit, or even defeat, her work with the U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children. “We have a great many children under our care. We are bringing over 50 children on the [next] boat. They were to have come last month,” but passport difficulties and full boats prevented that. A number would “come from concentration camps in France and others from Spain.” The committee worked through social agencies, many families adopted the children, and “we watch over them.” ER emphasized the difficulties of transporting them and mentioned the need “for State Department approval.” Explaining the “dire” situation, she paraphrased Breckinridge Long’s order to U.S. consuls in Spain and Portugal: “They have been delayed and delayed so often that they may be delayed again.” It was time, she told her press conference, to consider new programs: “We should be at least studying ways in the future . . . to help the children in Europe.”

  ER did not specifically mention Jewish children, perhaps to avoid the well-established bigotry that surrounded every effort her committee made throughout the winter and spring of 1942. As Jews sought to flee from every port, the tragedies were numerous. On 12 December 1941, almost eight hundred Romanian Jews embarked on the Struma, an antique Danube steamer built in 1867 that they had chartered, and set out for Palestine. Off the coast of Istanbul, the vessel’s engines failed, but Turkish authorities refused to allow the refugees to come ashore until Britain granted them permission to enter Palestine. Britain refused. The refugees remained aboard for weeks in wretched conditions, until Turkey towed the steamer to the Black Sea. On 24 Februar
y 1942 an explosion occurred, and the Struma sank with all 767 people aboard. After this tragedy, the British colonial office issued a new law against “illegal immigration to Palestine.”

  In March, Rabbi Stephen Wise wrote ER that the British colonial office was delaying ships full of Jewish children bound for Palestine. “This memo is perfectly shocking to me,” ER wrote to Sumner Welles. “We have taken British children (as war refugees) and I think the British government ought to pay more attention to us in return. They have set a very low quota in Palestine and the Arabs have agreed. After all, these are anti-Axis refugees and they certainly will help us rather than the Axis and, from what I read in the papers, we may be needing some help in that part of the world before long.”

  Welles replied that he would do everything he could, but the British were adamant “for fear of Arab unrest.”

  ER suggested, “Why not try to give asylum and guarantee that such refugees will continue to Africa and South America? This British policy is so cruel that, if it were generally known in this country, it would increase the dislike of Great Britain which is already too prevalent.”

  Welles promised to refer the problem to the Intergovernmental Committee on Political Refugees, but there “were insurmountable” obstacles, such as a lack of ships available for refugee transport, and nations in Africa and South America were averse to further immigration. Moreover, there was nothing he could do since State Department policy was “bound to British policy in Palestine.”

  New legislation had established the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), but at her 14 May press conference, ER deplored the fact that it did not contain an antidiscrimination clause. She was also surprised to learn that army nurses were “not allowed to marry while in the service,” and that married nurses were barred from the military. Given the bloodshed and the need for nurses, ER thought a more sensible policy was required and that women must be given “the same privileges as men.” Under the circumstances, ER was vastly relieved when Oveta Culp Hobby accepted her appointment as director of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) and Mary McLeod Bethune agreed to serve as her assistant. Not only was Colonel Hobby married (to former Texas governor William Pettus Hobby), she left her husband and two children (William, nine, and Jessica, five) at home to assume her new position. A journalist, literary editor, and publisher of the Houston Post, Hobby shared many of ER’s views. Formerly president of Texas’s League of Women Voters, she was a longtime member of the NAACP. She opposed discrimination against women and people of color, and as WAC director, she spoke and wrote on such topics as “The High Cost of Prejudice.”

  As war news worsened, with significant Allied defeats and Nazi horrors, ER asked FDR for a specific assignment. “I’m rather tired because I have nothing to do these days,” she confided to Anna. But he had nothing to offer her, so she resolved to spend the summer in Hyde Park and “enjoy my leisure!”

  She worried about her sons. James and the Carlson Raiders had been on Midway Island during the Japanese attack. Franklin Jr. had returned to his ship somewhere in England. ER wrote Esther Lape, “If only the war could end soon; people in Germany must be suffering terribly and the Chinese and the Japanese boys are dying too. It all seems so senseless and wicked.” Sidelined and discontented, ER seemed oddly different to Tommy. “There is a great change in ER and I do not know whether it is anxiety . . . for the boys or what it is,” Tommy wrote Lape. “We practically never have any conversation.”

  In July, Trude Pratt and her three children joined ER, Diana Hopkins, and assorted Roosevelt grandchildren at Hyde Park. ER filled her days entertaining guests, and together with Trude planned an exciting international conference for the ISS, to take place in September. But her grim mood continued.

  Suddenly Harry Hopkins announced that he was engaged to marry the former journalist and glamorous society hostess Louise Macy—and that FDR had invited them to live in the White House. ER was flabbergasted. Had he “thought through what it would mean to have a married couple, plus Diana,” in the White House? she asked him. And did he realize “what it would mean to them”? After all, “it seemed to me very hard . . . to be obliged to start their married life in someone else’s house.” In response, FDR insisted that “the most important thing in the world . . . was the conduct of the war and that it was absolutely necessary that Harry be in the house. That settled that.”

  Although profoundly angry, ER was publicly gracious. She told her press conference, “I am very glad [they] will be married in the White House” on 30 July and that to “carry on the work of the war better [they] will stay with us for a while.”

  After the wedding, Louise continued her war work as a hospital nurse’s aide, “which meant she was out of the White House very early every morning, and returned late,” ER noted. Despite Louise’s schedule, “she managed to establish a close relationship” with her new stepdaughter, Diana, who benefited greatly from her presence. As it turned out, “Louise managed what must have been a difficult situation extraordinarily well.”

  But ER made no effort to become friendly with or even get to know Louise Macy. She interpreted FDR’s decision to expand his court as a further effort to restrict and limit her own presence and influence. She was already cut out from wartime conferences; now her household had been invaded by one of the most dashing and esteemed hostesses of the international “smart set.”

  Louise Macy had been a fashion editor for Harper’s Bazaar, based in Paris until the office closed on 10 May 1940. In the final weeks of peace, while everybody refused to believe disaster imminent, she had been at the center of farewell parties and merriment. According to Janet Flanner, the New Yorker’s Parisian columnist better known as Genet, Macy hosted the “best big party” of all. She “hired a long-disused historical mansion . . . , put in temporary furnishings and plumbing, a mobile kitchen, and several thousand candles, and requested her guests to wear diadems and decorations.” Many considered it “the party of the year.”

  Upon her return to New York, Louise Macy incongruously continued to host stunning parties and was close to an eclectic circle of notables including Bette Davis, Bernard Baruch, and Jock Whitney, who married Betsey Cushing Roosevelt. The Whitneys remained close to FDR but visited only when ER was away—since Betsey never got over how meanly ER had treated her—and always thought of her (and SDR) as rigid “old dragons.” ER had resented Betsey’s role as FDR’s hostess. Now she was faced with Betsey’s replacement and felt her home again under siege.

  Anna understood her mother’s feelings. “Harry Hopkins and his bride give me a pain in the neck!” she wrote. “From what Tommy writes me he has the nerve of Balboa!” Anna’s husband John had decided to join the military, as all the young men in the family had done. Given their three children—Sistie, Buzzy, and Johnny—it was “an awful dilemma for both of us.” Anna wanted her mother’s thoughts, while she sought to become “a stoic!”

  ER also sought to become a stoic as new war agonies were revealed. That summer Varian Fry sent her urgent messages and a report dated 25 August 1942 by the Joint Distribution Committee and the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC): “Vichy has agreed to deport 16,000 foreigners and French Jews from the occupied zone and 10,000 foreigners believed to be both Jewish and Gentile, but so far no French, from the unoccupied zone.” On 16–17 July 1942, 13,152 Jewish men, women, and children were arrested from their Paris homes and taken to the Vélodrome d’Hiver, where parents and children were divided—to be sent in separate transports “to an unknown destination in east Europe.” Subsequently, men, women, and children were arrested in the streets of Marseilles, Toulouse, Lyons, and other population centers. “All French exit permits have been stopped without distinction of race or nationality.”

  In response to Fry’s information and breaking news, on 4 September ER wrote Norman Davis, chair of the U.S. Red Cross: “The U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children is confronted with a problem. A thousand children may be evacua
ted from France, and we have to raise about one million dollars.” ER’s committee believed they could do it, but she and Marshall Field wondered “if the Red Cross would be willing to underwrite” their efforts. “It does seem that we should take these children who are in such dire straits and I hope the Red Cross will feel that they can do this.”

  In her column she appealed for funds:

  I was very sorry not to be able to get to NYC today to attend a meeting of the U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children. There is going to be an opportunity for us in this country to show our concern for the suffering of children in Europe. It should be possible to bring some children over here, whose parents are in concentration camps, or who themselves have been interned. I think our committee should make every effort to raise the necessary money.

  After ER’s efforts, the State Department agreed to issue visas for five thousand children who had been separated from their parents in France. But despite vigorous work by the AFSC, the YMCA, and various aid agencies to get the children to safety, Vichy France denied them all exit visas. Pierre Laval’s cruel obstructionist policies included a requirement that they provide “proof” of orphanhood, which was impossible. On 9 November the Allies invaded French North Africa, and all rescue efforts collapsed. Some 42,500 Jews were transported from France to Auschwitz-Birkenau during 1942.

  ER was furious about several other issues as well. On 22 June, Frank Kingdon wrote her that over 100,000 people had signed a Union for Democratic Action petition requesting that the president end discrimination against Negroes in the armed forces. A March on Washington and an NAACP conference were scheduled for 4 July, and Kingdon wanted to present the petition to FDR that day. He asked ER to help make it happen: “Naturally we should get together a delegation of both white and Negro citizens of distinction.” ER wrote her husband, “I hope you can receive Frank Kingdon’s petition.” He replied: “I am sorry but I cannot do this on July 4th!”