the German socialist leader: Richard W. Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 201.
“At this the president”: The dinner table discussion is recounted in Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 25–26.
“a haven for a few weeks”: Ibid., 22, 29, 33.
“anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic”: Ibid., 32.
Nacht und Nebel: Gilbert, Second World War, 32.
“a holy struggle”: Shirer, Berlin Diary, 275–77, 9 and 18 January 1940.
“without proper trials”: Gilbert, History of Twentieth Century, 2:292.
“found he had company”: Lash’s account of his stay at Val-Kill is in Friend’s Memoir, 37–38; see TIR, 202.
“plea for funds for Finland”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 47.
Chapter Nine: Radical Youth and Refugees: Winter–Spring 1940
“This is a book”: ER, foreword to Gould, American Youth.
“cots for 150 boys”: ER’s press conference, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences, 150.
She arranged for a fleet of buses: Ibid.
“believe in the communistic”: New York Times, 6 February 1940.
“a brief wrestling match”: This account is from the New York Times.
“booed for fifteen minutes”: TIR, 205.
“Deep in the dream”: Gould, American Youth, 10.
but “a spanking”: FDR’s speech is recalled and paraphrased in Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 56–58; Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 603–4; and Gould, American Youth, 10–13. I am grateful to Vivian Cadden for her many memories regarding these events.
My own friends: For Amy Swerdlow, Victor Teisch, Bella Abzug, Mim Kelber, this was a defining political moment. In conversations with the author.
“hopeful and constructive”: Straight, After Long Silence.
“The young people had begun”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 603–4.
“It was raining mighty hard”: I am grateful to Ronnie Gilbert for the lyrics and publishing context for “Standing in the Rain,” reprinted in Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone and Hard Hitting Songs. It was initially published as sheet music, “Why Do You Stand There in the Rain,” and in the Daily Worker, 18 April 1940. I am also profoundly grateful to Ronald Cohen for related information, especially Pete Seeger’s draft essay, “An Informal Account of the Almanac Singers, December 1940–July 1942”; Songs for Political Action: Folkmusic, Topical Songs and the American Left, 1926–1953 (CD); and the Woody Guthrie Archives, 250 W. Fifty-seventh Street, New York, N.Y. 10107.
“Oh, Franklin Roosevelt”: I am grateful to Victor Teisch for “I Hate War,” and the ditty heard frequently during and after the February conference, in FDR’s “distinctive voice”: “I hate war. Eleanor hates war. . . (pause). I hate Eleanor.”
“I felt as you did”: ER to Anna, 21 February 1940.
“citizenship and voting rights”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 61.
“war is an outrage”: Gould, American Youth, 18. Dorothy Height’s account of ER is in Height, Open Wide the Freedom Gates, 82–91.
“Tactics of anti-Jewish”: Gould, American Youth, 18.
Frances Williams’s concluding: Ibid., 29.
“a semifascist state”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 62–63.
“When I rose to speak”: TIR, 205.
“made it a giant boo”: Gould, American Youth, 34.
“on the sore spot”: Ibid., 25–28.
“I want you neither to clap”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 63.
“Don’t you think”: The questions and answers in this and the following paragraphs are drawn from the accounts in Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 63–68; Gould, American Youth, 27; Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 605–7; Straight, After Long Silence, 150; and New York Times, 12 February 40.
“in a way which”: ER to Hick, Lash, Love, Eleanor, 294.
“after all you have done”: Hick to ER, ibid., 295.
“The nation probably”: Dewey Fleming, Baltimore Sun, February 1940.
“I went to all the sessions”: Betty Lindley to Anna, 13 February 1940, Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, box 36.
“Our problem children”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 607.
“Here I am installed”: My Day, 20 February 1940.
“I’m getting a good tan”: ER to Anna, 21 February 1940.
“My husband likes”: My Day, 21 February 1940.
“There is nothing which gives”: My Day, 22 February 1940.
as “well done”: My Day, 23 February 1940.
“in the midst of a world”: Ibid.
“a zest for life”: My Day, 24 February 1940.
“needed special education”: My Day, 28 February 1939.
to “inspect the Atlantic”: FDR to ER, 17 February 1940; FDR to SDR, 27 February 1940, both in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:1002–3.
“arrogant and brutal”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 29 February 1940, Von Sittart on Joe Kennedy’s defeatism, 2:6–16 March 1940, on Welles in Berlin, 2:62–63.
“In this he will have”: Ibid., 29 February 1940.
“faithfully followed Moscow’s”: Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors, 34–36.
“die for Danzig”: Ehrenberg, Memoirs, 476.
“various ideals and”: My Day, 29 February 1940.
“defeating England”: For poll results, see Boothe, Europe in Spring, 4–5n1.
“It was difficult to breathe”: Ehrenberg, Memoirs, 351–52.
“conception of the good teacher”: My Day, 1 March 1940.
“Dr. Lachmann, who”: Henry MacCracken to ER, 28 August 1939.
“the academic board”: Dean W. K. Jordan to Mr. Warner, U.S. Consulate, Berlin, 16 August 1939.
“published works and”: Erika Weigand’s parents, Frances Rhoades Weigand and Dr. Hermann Weigand, to chair of Yale German department.
“Vera Lachmann is”: Frances Rhoades Weigand to Henry MacCracken, 25 August 1939.
“I believe Dr. Lachmann”: Hermann Weigand to MacCracken, 25 August 1939.
“to do all they can”: ER to MacCracken 31 August 1939.
“Dear Sumner: Thank you”: ER to Sumner Welles, 11 September 1939.
“I feel sick”: ER to Anna, 11 September 1939, 111.
a legendary American classicist: Vera Regina Lachmann’s vita, b. 23 June 1904, d. 1985. I am grateful to Renate Bridenthal, Eva Kollish, and especially Naomi Replansky for their memories and assistance researching Lachmann.
“Another heavenly day”: My Day, 1 March 1940.
Royal Palm Club: My Day, 2 March 1940.
“the day has come”: My Day, 4 March 1940.
“will be starving”: Ibid.
“so you can see for yourself”: Tommy to Lape, 2 March 1940, Arizona Collection.
“I would not have had”: Ibid.
“Our father, who hast set”: My Day, 6 March 1940.
Chapter Ten: “When You Go to War, You Cease to Solve the Problems of Peace”: March–June 1940
“small frontier rectification”: Werth, Russia at War, 75–79.
“from the dust”: My Day, 11 March 1940.
“a musical awakening”: My Day, 12 March 1940.
“but in misfortune”: Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 477.
“no other President’s wife”: New York Times, 8 March 1940.
“not only gladden”: New York Times, 2 March 1940.
Foster Parents Plan: Other supporters included Herbert Hoover, Helen Hayes, the Duchess of Atholl, Sara Delano Roosevelt, Helen Keller, and Thomas Mann.
“with Catholic, Protestant”: New York Times, 13 March, 17 March, and 18 April 1940. ER agreed to be an honorary vice-president for this refugee children’s group, with Herbert Lehman, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Albert Einstein, and the Rev. Henry St. George Tucker.
During the hectic: My Day, 14 and 15 March 1940; ER, press conference, in Beasley, ER Press Conferences, 163.
in “on business”: My Day, 16 March 1940.
“undaunted” by all: Tommy to Lape, 27 February 1940.
“These youngsters work hard”: My Day, 16 March 1940.
“which emphasize the liberty”: ER, “Civil Liberties—The Individual and the Community,” in Baird, Representative American Speeches, 173–82.
“No real teacher can ever”: My Day, 18 March 1940.
“in a damp and fairly dark”: My Day, 19 March 1940.
“small hospital on the lake”: My Day, 16 March 1940.
“For the first time in some years”: My Day, 17 March 1940.
“greeted them under”: My Day, 23 and 27 March 1940.
“a huge vase of daffodils”: My Day, 23 March 1940.
“upset us all considerably”: My Day, 21 March 1940.
“I suppose weeks in bed”: Ibid.
“the coldest” Easter: My Day, 26 March 1940.
“Why, I do nothing”: My Day, 29 March 1940.
“These homeless people”: Ibid.
senior State Department officials: FDR to Cordell Hull, 7 March 1940, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:1004–5; Morse, While Six Million Died, 261.
In Seattle, Anna: My Day, 30 March, l April 1940.
“with the press stalking”: Tommy to Lape, n.d., ca. March 1940, BWC.
“our friend, Hick”: Ibid.
“ragged starving people”: Douglas, Full Life, 148, see also 142–44. See also John Steinbeck to ER, 20 June 1939; ER to Steinbeck, 30 June 1939.
“DEAR YOU MUST”: Hick to ER, 13 May 1939, with two pages of quotes.
“Squatters pay no rent”: My Day, 4 April 1940.
“an electric light”: Ibid.
had not exaggerated: Douglas, Full Life, 154–55; “Mecca of Reports . . . Says Steinbeck Told the Truth,” New York Times, 3 April 1940; My Day, 4, 5, and 6 April 1940.
“the county authorities”: My Day, 5 April 1940.
“standards for decent”: Ibid.
“must be proud”: Ibid.
“I know the president”: ER to Douglas, in Scobie, Center Stage, 113.
“filled with apprehension”: Douglas, Full Life, 155–56.
in San Francisco: My Day, 8 and 9 April 1940.
“Miss Chaney, just who”: Mayris Chaney memoir (unpublished ms.), 1–10, 49–50. I am grateful to Anna Eleanor Martin, Mayris Chaney’s daughter, for access to Tiny’s memoir. See also Tommy to Lape on Chaney, 6 April 1940.
“good audiences and”: Tommy to Lape, 6 April 1940.
“The waterfalls are”: Sargent, Yosemite’s Famous, 34.
“after leading the boycott”: Chaney memoir (unpublished ms.), 45–50, with San Francisco Chronicle clip, and New York Times, 7 April 1940.
Grim news arrived: Davis, FDR: Into the Storm, 539–42. Norwegian minister of war Vidkun Quisling, whose surname is forever after a word for traitor, had worked with Berlin to plan the Nazi occupation of Norway.
of “emerald green”: My Day, 11 April 1940.
“It is all horrible”: ER to FDR, 11 April 1940.
“think of anything”: My Day, 12 April 1940.
“must keep out of war”: New York Times 15 April 1940.
“group from the crippled”: My Day, 15 April 1940.
“She is very much”: My Day, 13 April 1940.
Dr. Will Alexander: ER to Alexander, 10 April 1940; Alexander to ER, 16 April 1940; ER to Alexander, 12 March 1940; Egerton, Speak Now, 47–50. ER had a significant correspondence regarding the future of the SCHW. They worked closely together with the Julius Rosenwald Fund.
“an equal opportunity”: Reed, Simple Decency, 21–27; Baltimore African-American, 13 April 1940; New York Times, 16 April 1940.
“Communist aggression”: Egerton, Speak Now, 133, 297–98.
“rise in net profits”: My Day, 17 April 1940.
a message from Judge Charlton: ER to Robert Jackson, l May 1940; Jackson to ER, 24 October 1940.
She sent a sizable check: During the election campaign, in October and November, the conservative Constitutional League would use ER’s 23 April check to Highlander, for $100 (about $1,000 today), to discredit FDR throughout the South. See Joseph Kemp, The Fifth Column in the South (pamphlet), in Nashville Tennessean, leading Democratic newspaper, 1 November 1940, and widely reprinted.
exhibited “bad manners”: “Why I Still Believe in the Youth Congress,” Liberty, 20 April 1940, in Black, Courage, 125–29. “We have been the stupid ones,” to argue: “Don’t go near that group, they are controlled by Communists,” she said. “Jobs to Balk Reds, First Lady’s Plea,” New York Times, l April 1940. In an address to over one thousand social workers, broadcast nationally, she said that unless youth had the means to lead “independent, creative lives,” they would be prey to any stray idea. “The best thing we can do to help youth is to give youth the feeling they are needed in every community. . . . We say youth has failed. Perhaps they think we have failed. . . . Perhaps we all need a change.” “First Lady Pleads for Aid to Youth,” New York Times, 21 March 1940. In an address to 150 foreign correspondents and their guests, she said, “The only way to fight communism is to give youth something vital to solve their problems.” “First Lady Denies Youth Group Is Red,” New York Times, 22 March 1940.
“It is nice to be home”: My Day, 18 April 1940.
“The news from Norway”: David Gray to ER, 16 April 1940, David Gray Collection.
“In the very heart”: “Appeal to Eleanor Roosevelt,” New York Times, 10 March 1940.
“our basic liberties”: “Save Our Liberties, First Lady Urges,” New York Times, 24 April 1940.
our “regularly constituted”: My Day, 23 April 1940.
were “sadly needed”: My Day, 19 April 1940.
“with the ladies of the 75th”: My Day, 20 April 1940.
“believes she can tell”: Ibid.
“forgotten to mention”: My Day, 19 April 1940.
“if you have enjoyed”: My Day, 24 April 1940.
“Such a week”: Tommy to Lape, 21 April 1940.
“to see some of the Farm Security”: My Day, 25 and 26 April 1940.
to the Carolinas: My Day, 28 and 29 April 1940. In Asheville ER visited “Rabbit”—Louis Howe’s assistant, Margaret Durand—who was recovering from TB. See My Day, 27–30 April 1940.
“What is going to happen”: My Day, 1 May 1940.
“democracy a reality”: New York Times, 2 May 1940.
“has stood for freedom”: Ibid.; My Day, 3 May 1940.
Her old allies: Scobie, Center Stage, 114; Ware, Partner and I, 139–40; Helen Gahagan, “FSA Aids Migratory Worker,” Democratic Digest, February 1940, 11.
of “solid, tweedy”: “Women: Voters and Party Workers,” Time, 13 May 1940.
“a committee of Negro”: All April 1940 memos in Democratic National Committee Institute file, FDRL.
“What will keep peace”: “Women Democrats Hear Peace Pleas,” New York Times, 5 May 1940; see also My Day, 6 and 7 May 1940.
“a beautiful idea”: “Mrs Roosevelt’s Three Ideas,” New York Times, 7 May 1940.
“Do you think the poll”: Democratic Digest, June 1940, 24.
“I would like to tell you”: My Day, 7 May 1940.
“One cannot help”: My Day, 9 May 1940.
a “terrific attack”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 7 May 1940, 2:77. For Churchill’s message, see Gilbert, Finest Hour: 1939–1941, 638. See Nicolson, 14 April–10 May 1940, 71–85.
refuge for the royal: FDR to John Cudahy, 8 May 1940, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:1024–25. Also see FDR to ER, 1022–23.
“All
these young things”: My Day, 10 and 12 May 1940.
“Altogether,” ER wrote: My Day, 14 May 1940.
“so vile that it would”: FDR to ER, 4 May 1940, in FDR: Personal Letters, 4:1022–23. FDR’s memo to Sumner Welles, 4 May 1940; Welles to FDR, 6 May 1940.
do “something worthwhile”: ER to Hick, 11 May 1940.
200,000 Belgian and Dutch refugee: New York Times, 16 May 1940.
International Child Service Committee: “New Group to Aid Child Refugees Here,” New York Times, 18 April 1940. See Catt to ER, 3 May 1940, and ER to Catt, 6 May 1940, regarding homes for refugees established by Louise Wise.
Children’s Crusade drives: “75 Educators Back Children’s Crusade,” New York Times, 24 March 1940; New York Times, 1 April 1940.
“Every child in America ought”: Time, 13 May 1940, and New York Times, 18 April 1940.
“Darkness is only”: My Day, 14 May 1940.
Chapter Eleven: “If Democracy Is to Survive, It Must Be Because It Meets the Needs of the People”
“I have nothing”: Gilbert, Second World War, 64. See also Manchester, Last Lion, 2:682–83.
“It must be a most”: My Day, 15 May 1940.
“But what if the Nazis”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 89–90.
“My heart sank”: My Day, 15 May 1940.
“The small countries”: Gilbert, Finest Hour: 1939–1941, 345-46.
“the latest type”: Ibid., 355. See also Manchester, Last Lion, 64–67.
“far more personal”: My Day, 17 May 1940.
“If democracy is to survive”: Ibid.
“a nation of healthy”: My Day, 18 May 1940.
“facing a sinister power”: “Sinister Power Hit by Mrs. Roosevelt,” New York Times, 18 May 1940.
“one cannot live in a Utopia”: My Day, 17 May 1940,
“for the succor”: Bullitt to FDR, 20 May 1940, telegrams, Orville H. Bullitt, ed., For the President: Personal & Secret, 428–29.
“the Jew Prime Minister”: Murphy, Diplomat, 34; Bullitt to FDR, 27 May 1940, For the President, 432.
“My friends . . . Tonight”: FDR, “Deepening Crisis in Europe and American Military Readiness,” 26 May 1940, in Buhite and Levy, Fireside Chats, 152–62.
“You don’t want to go”: Lash, Friend’s Memoir, 92.
Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3 Page 77
