Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3
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aid to refugees blocked by, 62, 81, 199–200, 222, 287, 290, 311, 312–13, 369, 373, 389, 427, 455, 488–89, 498–99
Stettinius, Edward, 280n, 484, 499–500, 526–27, 536, 537, 548
Stevenson, Adlai, 552, 566, 568, 570
Stimson, Henry L., 172, 274, 280, 310, 440, 446, 451, 473, 499
Stokowski, Leopold, 146, 228, 313
Straight, Michael, 206n, 208, 209
Suckley, Margaret “Daisy,” 401, 465–66, 477, 495, 502, 504, 505, 506–7, 525, 526, 528, 532, 534, 539, 541–42
Supreme Court, U.S., 12, 21, 24–26, 432, 566
Tehran Conference, 483, 491, 492, 494
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 21, 244, 291, 301
This Is America (E. Roosevelt and Macgregor), 424–25
This Troubled World (E. Roosevelt), 86, 91, 116
Thomas, Norman, 175, 176, 198, 324
Thompson, Dorothy, 3, 30, 135, 171
Thompson, Malvina “Tommy,” 5, 21, 67, 98, 104, 108, 120, 129, 133, 138, 179, 215, 216, 229–30, 239, 242, 247, 248–49, 265, 293, 295, 297, 318, 326, 351, 363, 378, 387, 389, 397, 398, 399, 402, 456, 466, 480, 481, 483, 485–86, 495, 511, 525, 536
Anna Boettiger and, 167–68, 277–78, 310, 362, 422, 430
death of, 564
on ER, 6–7, 68, 277–78, 290, 310, 360, 407, 422, 428, 479, 504
in ER’s British trip, 440, 442, 445, 447, 449, 450
on ER’s friends, 7, 85, 110, 168, 225, 236, 360, 423
Hick and, 236–37, 423
Lape and, 6, 7, 60, 76, 110, 225, 236, 237, 240, 271, 405, 428, 442, 462, 478, 479, 504, 528
Time, 44–46, 107, 242, 250, 254, 284, 345, 387, 515
Toller, Ernst, 316, 316n–17n, 383
Tomorrow Is Now (E. Roosevelt), 569–70
Toscanini, Arturo, 33, 417–18
Treasury Department, U.S., 405, 421
Truman, Harry S., 511, 521, 560, 561
Churchill and, 546–47
ER and, 546–49
in 1944 election, 510–11, 512
in 1948 election, 561–62
Soviets and, 546, 547, 556–57, 561
swearing in of, 539
Tully, Grace, 167, 394, 422, 485, 507, 539
Tuskegee Airmen, 11, 437, 472, 473
Tuskegee Institute, 133, 169, 310, 437
U-boats, 128, 316, 332, 375, 391
unemployment, 49, 59, 60, 182, 210, 245, 251, 345
UNESCO, 507, 560
United Nations, 13, 15, 456, 461, 490, 512, 514, 526, 527, 543, 555
Charter of, 548
Displaced Persons and, 556
Dumbarton Oaks Conference and, 513–14
ER and, 538, 548, 549–55, 557–58, 559–60, 568
FDR and, 410–11
founding conference of, 530, 533, 534–35, 536, 543, 544, 548
London session of, 548, 551–55
Security Council of, 548
U.S. delegation to, 548–55, 568
“We Charge Genocide” petition to, 562
United Nations, General Assembly of, 556, 558, 560
ER’s speeches to, 554, 563
Soviet delegation to, 554–55
U.S. delegation to, 554–55
United Nations Human Rights Commission, 553n, 557–58, 562
United States:
British relations with, 471–72
China aided by, 331
German POWs in, 472
immigration to, 311, 312–13, 320
isolationism in, see isolationism
military buildup of, 256–57, 259–60, 272, 280
United States of Africa, 63–64
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), 13, 15, 558–61, 563, 568n
U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children, 288, 290, 311, 312, 316, 325, 426–27, 430–31
Vandenberg, Arthur, 161, 291, 522, 534, 548, 550, 551–52, 554–55
Vatican, 190, 192, 199
Versailles Treaty (1919), 51, 114, 119, 131, 136
Villard, Oswald Garrison, 91, 161, 192–93
Virgin Islands, 379, 380, 381
Voorhis, Jerry, 63, 173, 176
voting rights, 336–37, 357, 524
Wagner, Robert F., Jr., 26, 30, 31, 59–60, 90, 105, 117, 265, 338, 509
Wagner-Rogers bill, 26–30, 214
Wald, Lillian, 59n, 90, 321, 322, 535
Wallace, Henry, 28, 297–99, 300, 301, 308–9, 326, 349, 425–26, 432, 437, 465, 466, 467, 485, 487, 488, 510, 512, 513, 521
Wallenberg, Raoul, 500, 538
Waller, Odell, 431–33
War Department, U.S., 339, 340, 341, 403, 519
War Refugee Board (WRB), 499, 521, 537–38
War Relocation Authority, 418, 420, 421
Warsaw, 150, 139, 163–64, 515,
bombing of, 131, 132
1944 uprising of, 515
siege of, 135–36, 139
Soviets in, 521, 538
Warsaw Ghetto, 453, 472, 509
Watson, Edwin, 122, 149, 532
Wechsler, James, 175, 182, 395
Welles, Sumner, 115, 120, 218–19, 223, 369, 379, 381, 427, 484
Werth, Alexander, 135, 515–16
West, J. B., 358, 387, 409, 539–40
White, Walter, 32, 93, 156, 166, 333, 335–36, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341–42, 350–51, 395, 401, 407, 440, 463, 517, 549
White, William Allen, 193, 195–96, 249
White, W. L., 193–96
White House Conference on Political Refugees, 151–52
White Rose, 468, 470
white supremacism, 58–59, 321, 328, 333, 343, 357, 358, 566
Whitney, Betsey Cushing Roosevelt, 145, 429–30
Williams, Aubrey, 117, 174, 175, 209, 229, 325, 333, 343, 565–66
Williams, Frances, 95n, 212, 230
Willkie, Wendell, 293, 301, 321, 337–38, 342, 345–46, 347, 349, 350–51, 352, 355, 360, 449, 463, 475, 488
death of, 522
in 1940 election, 291–92, 311, 332, 343
1942 world tour of, 439
race issues and, 311, 333, 433–34
Wilson, Woodrow, 342, 548
Winant, John, 376–77, 390, 439, 440, 442–43, 451, 453, 557
Wise, Stephen, 287, 378, 427, 488
women:
in armed forces, 426, 427–28, 437–38, 444
Nazi assaults on, 47
in public life, 362
rights of, 21, 84–85, 426, 427–28, 437, 447, 450, 462, 535, 545, 558, 563
Women’s Army Corps (WAC), 427–28, 444
Blacks in, 518–19
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), 58, 90, 95, 170, 199, 321, 322–23
Women’s Land Army, British, 443, 447
Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS), British, 390, 440, 443–44, 445, 476
Woodring, Harry, 120, 279, 280
Woodward, Ellen, 56, 321, 490
Woollcott, Alexander, 102, 396, 453
Workers’ Alliance, 70–71, 360
Works Progress Administration (WPA), 21, 54, 60, 70, 71, 86, 87, 89, 106, 160, 174, 182, 205, 213, 230, 231, 249, 267, 364
World Court, 30–31, 90, 128, 300, 544, 555
World War I, 131, 146, 243, 310, 338
World War II, 5, 11, 131, 314–19, 320, 322–23, 327–28, 330–32, 358–59, 390, 404
Allied defeats in, 405, 409, 418, 428
opposition to U.S. involvement in, see isolationism
Yalta Conference, 528, 529, 530, 533
Yard, Molly, 95n, 175, 182, 183, 197
Yosemite National Park, 70, 240–41
You Learn By Living (E. Rooseve
lt), 543
Youth Act, 198–99, 207
youth movement, 54–55, 156–57
Yugoslavia, 114, 391, 518, 533n
YWCA, 211, 342, 497
*Historian and Women Strike for Peace activist Amy Swerdlow and I represented the National Council for Research on Women, funded by the Russell Sage Foundation—thanks to Alida Brill.
*While we await a full biography of Oveta Culp Hobby, see Melanie Gustafson’s essay in Susan Ware’s Notable American Women (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2005).
*Margaret Chase Smith gave me the tape of their CBS Face the Nation debate, which will go to the FDRL. She also wrote about their friendship, up until that debate; see Declaration of Conscience (New York: Doubleday, 1972), 203–11. For Eisenhower’s successful negotiations and UN support for withdrawal—and amity—during one of the most dangerous episodes of the ongoing Middle East crisis, see David A. Nichols, Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis, Suez and the Brink of War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).
*A private person, Gertrud von Adam Wenzel Pratt Lash denied her courageous activities, including her efforts on behalf of refugees from Germany and her influence on ER, which enabled the Varian Fry rescue operation, until shortly before her death in 2004. Subsequently her son Dr. Peter Pratt encouraged me to go through ten boxes of papers Trude had carefully annotated. While some of the material appears in this book, one awaits a full biography.
*According to the historian Gail Buckley, the first Tuskegee combat pilots, who comprised the heroic 99th Pursuit Squadron, named her mother Lena Horne “Queen of the 99th.” In her splendid history, American Patriots, and in her family memoir, The Hornes, Buckley provides succinct details of their many exploits and awards, as well as vital statistics: “Black engineers built Burma’s Ledo Road, China’s Stilwell Road, and the Alcan Highway. . . . There were 165,000 black sailors (all messmen or stewards); 17,000 black marines, 5000 black Coast Guard, 4000 black WACs and WAVEs.” Only the Merchant Marines were integrated.
*I am grateful to our Sag Harbor Initiative friend Bill Pickens, who shared his grandmother’s letters with me, including those from ER. See Thorpe, Navy Blue.
*Rowan was moved and inspired by ER’s memories. When he departed on 3 July 1957, she compared his visits to the “Man Who Came to Dinner”—Alexander Woollcott’s prolonged residence at the White House—and said: “‘I’m pleased that you stayed longer than Woollcott did.’” Carl Rowan left “Lady Great Heart” grateful and convinced that for “Thurgood Marshall and his cause, ER helped mightily to keep the dream alive.” Rowan, Dream Makers, pp. 131–42.
*In 1961 I was Hunter College student council president and followed ER’s advice. After she spoke at Roosevelt House, we organized two buses of student activists to participate in the extraordinary events under way in North Carolina. In 1962, when I was student affairs vice president of the National Student Association, I and my colleagues were again moved by her words—and vigorously supported the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
*Even within the rigid quotas established in 1924, fully 1,250,000 slots remained unfilled between 1933 and 1943. On the Wagner-Rogers bill and the protracted committee hearings, see Wyman, Paper Walls, pp. 75–98.
*ER had joined the DAR in April 1933, after the organization requested that she do so when she became first lady. She became life member “National Number 281,200” on the basis of a long list of revolutionary ancestors, only six of whom would have been considered sufficient: Jacob Roosevelt, captain; Jacobus J. Roosevelt, soldier in Commissary Department; Cornelius Van Schaack, major, Albany County Militia; Daniel Stewart, soldier, Georgia troops; Thomas Potts, deputy to Provincial Congress; Archibald Bullock, president and commander in chief of Georgia, 1776–77. New York Times, 21 April 1933. Since 1933 ER had invited the DAR leadership to tea at the White House annually.
*More than three hundred prominent Americans served as sponsors of the Freedom Concert, including Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and Justice Hugo Black, Tallulah Bankhead and Clare Boothe Luce, Henry Morgenthau and other cabinet members, many members of Congress, and Attorney General Frank Murphy. Katharine Hepburn telegraphed Caroline O’Day that she could not attend, but said to “use my name freely in regard to this matter.” See Allida Black, “Eleanor Roosevelt and the Marian Anderson ‘Freedom Concert,’” Presidential Studies Quarterly (Fall 1990), p. 727.
*According to newspaper accounts, Daniel Roosevelt and Bronson Rumsey were killed when their plane crashed during a storm twelve thousand feet above a mountain near Guadalupe Victoria, Puebla, en route to New York. The two Harvard students, both twenty-one, were trapped in the front seat and burned to death. The sole survivor, Carlota Constantine, a Sarah Lawrence graduate and daughter of INS reporter Arthur Constantine, was thrown clear with serious fractures and was rescued by Indians, who transported her on a litter of poles and skins to their village, while others ran miles to phone for help. Carlota later recounted that before leaving the airport, they had been told the weather was so bad that even freight planes were grounded. She had urged her friends to delay their flight. But “one of the youths said impossible” since he was to be a wedding usher that weekend and they had taken off anyway.
*The set of Goya’s famous series Los Proverbios, eighteen etchings drawn from the original plates in Madrid, was completed on 9 November 1937. According to Times columnist Herbert Matthews, “The idea of this edition was primarily to raise foreign currency for the hard-pressed Loyalists, but also to prove that reverence for Spanish art was as great among the so-called ‘Reds’ as among their critics abroad. So, the famous engraver Adolfo Rupérez had been commissioned to make 150 sets of the four great Goya series.” The first five of these, on Antique Japan paper, were accompanied by a map of Madrid to indicate “where bombs had dropped while the work was being done.” After the war Matthews visited Rupérez, who told him what he knew of the etchings’ whereabouts, long shrouded in mystery. One of the five sets went to Spanish Republican president Manuel Azaña, who died in Switzerland during the war. Set number two went to Eleanor Roosevelt, who kept it—despite the most amazing public protests when she accepted the gift. Herbert Matthews, New York Times, 8 September 1954.
*The thirty-one nations were Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Russia, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Iraq, the Arabias, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Iran.
*Harold Nicolson, member of Parliament, a journalist and historian, is remembered today mainly as Vita Sackville-West’s husband and Virginia Woolf’s confidant.
*In May 1942, it changed its name to the Planned Parenthood Federation. ER’s endorsement led to state medical associations’ support of public health service “child-spacing” programs.
*Pioneered by ER’s great mentors Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Lillian Wald, and Julia Lathrop of the U.S. Children’s Bureau, the Sheppard-Towner Infant and Maternity Act had been signed by Warren Harding in 1921. Vigorously opposed by right-wing groups and the American Medical Association, it was repealed in 1929. The Social Security Act of 1935 had restored the guarantee of prenatal education and infant care, but national infant health services remained underfunded.
*In 1927 ER wrote a front-page article in the Women’s Democratic News called “Banks and Bayonets in Nicaragua,” with the question “Do We Deserve the Hatred of the World?” It was a blistering protest against Calvin Coolidge’s military invasion of Nicaragua to destroy the popular independence movement led by Augusto Sandino, the charismatic hero who struggled to create a Nicaragua “unpolluted” by U.S. military control and ownership. For decades, from her uncle TR’s “big stick” policy to Taft’s “dollar diplomacy” through Coolidge’s escalated marine presence, Nicaragua had been a strategic military base and occu
pied colony. Finally on 3 January 1933 the twenty-year occupation ended when President Hoover pulled U.S. troops out of Nicaragua. Sandino called for peace and national unity. But on 21 February 1934 Sandino and his brother Socrates were brutally murdered, and hundreds of unarmed families in the Sandinista community were massacred. When civil war broke out in May 1936, the State Department refused to “interfere.” With military efficiency and stunning corruption, Somoza and his family would control Nicaragua “as a private fiefdom” until the Sandinista uprising of 1979.
*Although it did not pass the Senate in 1939, the Hobbs bill was repeatedly reintroduced and finally passed both houses in August 1950. After 2002, during the “war on terror,” Congress passed “enemy alien laws” that enabled the Guantánamo Bay military prison and extraordinary rendition.
*Endlessly contested, the November 1917 letter from the British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord James de Rothschild was clear and simple: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” See Grose, Israel, p. 65.
*ER’s reference is to Bertha Brodsky and the Brody family. See Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, pp. 1:329–30, 619.
*Ish-Ti-Opi’s “song of the last weaving,” ER noted, “when the old woman is putting into her blanket the end of her life, has much of the sadness which one feels in the songs and stories of both Negroes and Indians. A proud people, our American Indians, and I liked the grace with which both these representatives of the first inhabitants of our land carried themselves when they were presented to Their Britannic Majesties.” My Day, 13 June 1939.