Eleanor Roosevelt

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  ER’s friends were in agony over FDR’s Court scheme and also devastated that FDR had rejected the American Foundation’s new health care plan, due out in April. Lape’s committee of distinguished physicians, led by Dr. Hugh Cabot of the Mayo Clinic, concluded that America’s health was unsatisfactory and in some regions entirely neglected. Their report provided brilliant testimony with incontrovertible evidence and made a splendid case. But FDR decided to postpone all consideration of the health security issue.

  FDR wanted to fight only one big battle at a time, and he was absorbed by the Court fight. On 4 March he addressed a Democratic victory celebration dinner at the Mayflower. Ickes considered it “by all odds, the greatest [speech] he has ever made…. It was a fighting speech,” with one clear point: There could not be “social justice and economic freedom” so long as the Supreme Court, “one of the three horses pulling the national plow,” went off on its own and opposite direction.

  We have only just begun to fight….

  Here are thousands upon thousands of men and women working for long hours in factories for inadequate pay—NOW!

  Here are strikes more far-reaching than we have ever known, costing millions of dollars—NOW!

  Here are spring floods threatening to roll again down our river valleys—NOW!

  Here is the Dust Bowl beginning to blow again—NOW!

  If we would keep faith with those who had faith in us, if we would make democracy succeed, I say we must act—NOW!”

  Hick rhapsodized over FDR’s speech: “God, it and he were magnificent! There MAY have been more powerful speeches than that, but I’ve never heard them or read them. And I had a year of Cicero when I was a kid.”

  In March, ER went south for her lecture tour. She sent Hick birthday greetings from New Orleans, “something small,” and ordered “beautiful nightgowns,” which she hoped had arrived. “You have my love every day dear … and may every year be happier than the last.”

  Tommy wrote Anna that New Orleans was fabulous, and ER liked it about as much as Santa Fe. All of ER’s lectures went well, “your mother is quite professional.” Tommy echoed ER’s observations about Huey Long: Although Long “was a pain in the neck,” he was not basically “very different in his interest in ‘the people’ than is your father.” He introduced a gasoline tax “which pays for nearly everything which benefits the ordinary people—roads, schools, school books…. When you think of states like West Virginia which have been wrung dry … you realize how foresighted he was.” But ER remained aloof from Huey Long’s legacy, and whenever his name was mentioned “with much compliment, neither your mother nor I moved a muscle!”

  23: A First Lady’s Survival:

  Work and Run

  O March, FDR broadcast a Fireside Chat to defend his Court scheme: Economic recovery and all future legislative progress depended on Congress’s ability to protect America from catastrophe, but the Supreme Court denied Congress’s right to legislate and thwarted “the will of the people.” We “must take action to save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself…. [We] want a government of laws and not of men.”

  FDR did not seek a bench of “spineless puppets.” He wanted justices who would not override legislation demanded by the needs of the people. We “cannot yield our constitutional destiny to the personal judgment of a few men who, being fearful of the future, would deny us the necessary means of dealing with the present….”

  ER heard his address in Fort Worth, with Elliott, Ruth, and Tommy. She cabled their congratulations: It was a “grand talk.” ER now fully supported FDR’s plan. She could understand people’s fears, but they minimized “the difficulties and obstacles” he faced.

  While ER was in Oklahoma the first installment of her memoir appeared in the Ladies’ Home Journal. It was a heady, exciting time. She was mobbed everywhere, and in some towns she was scheduled to do several lectures in a day, in addition to meetings, luncheons, teas, and dinners. Tommy blamed Colston Leigh’s agency for being inconsiderate, and creating an itinerary without even a glance at a map. She wrote Anna from Oklahoma City: “We started off on this trek in a fairly peaceful frame of mind,” but it had been altogether too hectic.

  In Huntsville, Texas, Anna Pennybacker introduced ER for “exactly 29 minutes.” Exhausted by her rhetorical bouquet, Tommy thought ER “should have lain down and let it serve as an obituary.”

  In Perry, Texas, ER “was actually mobbed by an enthusiastic crowd.” Then they were driven a hundred miles to Alva, Oklahoma, where they were put up in a “dinky little place,” with wretched food, and given a bill for $30—about $300 in today’s dollars. ER felt “in her ‘position’ she could not squawk, but I wanted to.” Their last trek was by car through “miles of mud from Alva to Oklahoma City.” Tommy vowed to go after Leigh’s scalp. In the future, they would study a map, and insist on one lecture per day, without trappings, lunches, dinners, tours, meetings. “We could have done the whole thing in two weeks instead of three.”

  ER made no such complaints. But she was insulted by one encounter, and wrote Hick:

  Yesterday was the worst day I’ve had! The lady president of the college [Kate Zaners, State Teachers College, Durant, Oklahoma] told me that the people cared much more about seeing me and touching me than hearing me speak and if anything were canceled the speech would matter least! A point of view not calculated to make one do one’s best but after both speeches I received between 2 and 3,000 people….

  In the Deep South, where ER was both hated and loved, the KKK had made death threats and she was surrounded by security:

  We’ve had some funny times as in Shreveport [Louisiana] where the police had me so on their minds that the five hours we were in the hotel they sat in our sitting room with us and so became our bosom friends!

  In Birmingham, Alabama, ER was overwhelmed to be officially and enthusiastically welcomed: “My reception was horrible … and we went through the streets like FDR crawling behind a band and high school cadet corps and the flags.” There was a heat wave, and ER was mobbed by thousands of people everywhere she went, including Negro and white PWA housing projects, and everywhere she spoke, including colleges, universities, and large public forums. There were casual events, formal events, and gatherings: “They love FDR but I’m a little weary playing prexy!” At no time did ER imagine the outpouring of affection and regard was for her. Tommy, on the other hand, wrote Anna: “There may be something in this rumour of running your mother in 1940!”

  While ER toured, FDR was at Warm Springs with a party that included James’s wife, Betsey, and William Bullitt. ER wrote her husband:

  I am glad to see that you got off and are now enjoying Warm Springs…. Newspapers in Oklahoma seem to be for you dear and in spite of [critical editorials] and Senators’ speeches I think the people of such parts of Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma as I have seen are with you on the Supreme Court.

  There was mostly amusing publicity about ER’s toting a loaded pistol. She assured FDR that she carried it only when alone in her car. “I never carry it around at other times.” Her schedule was “strenuous but one week is over and we are still intact and going strong. My love to Bets and Missy and I hope you all have a grand rest and much fun.”

  On 17 March, their wedding anniversary, ER reported that “a cunning little boy and girl appeared on the stage after my lecture,” dressed as bride and groom. “They marched over and presented me with a bouquet of flowers, followed by someone bearing a wedding cake. It was a most amusing little ceremony and the children were very solemn about it.”

  ER returned to Washington on Good Friday, 26 March, “twenty-four hours ahead of the President.” She needed the day to “pick up the threads and start the house at high speed again.” On Easter Monday a record fifty-three thousand children enjoyed the White House annual egg-rolling festivities.

  Home for less than two weeks, with spring in the air, ER’s “Wanderlust” sent her with Hick on a ten-day trip to the Smoky Mountains.
Enspirited by nature’s bounty and gratified by the New Deal’s efforts to preserve it, ER wrote about her holiday for the Democratic Digest: “I drove my own car with a friend,” and saw “cedar trees about a thousand years old!” The ride was glorious, and in Gatlinberg, Tennessee, in the Great Smoky Mountain Park, the “Federal Government is preserving some virgin timber which is well worth seeing,” as were the wonderful works achieved at various CCC camps.

  ER wrote her daughter from Charleston, South Carolina:

  Darling, This trip has been really beautiful and I think Hick has enjoyed it except for a few rangers in the park! I hadn’t planned on any hikes because I knew she was working in an office all winter but we did walk 4 miles to see some wonderful trees and she bore up nobly. The Great Smokies are lovely and would be wonderful for a week of climbing afoot or on horseback if ever I can find anyone who likes it!

  ER wanted to return in June “when all the rhododendrons and azaleas and mountain laurel are out….”

  ER’s need to find somebody she could hike and ride with, someone actually to enjoy the kind of vacations she craved, became a significant factor in the distance that grew between her and Hick. While they each wrote their time together was pleasant, Tommy wrote Anna:

  Your mother started off last Saturday with Hick on a week’s motor drive. Each one separately told me she had no desire to go so I am wondering what kind of a time they are having. Naturally, I kept my own counsel and did not relay the messages….

  It seemed to ER rather a lonely spring. Her children were scattered, and Anna was unavailable for months. Isabella Greenway was in New York, and her Val-Kill companions were upset and upsetting.

  Earlier in the year, Marion Dickerman had attempted to buy a school building without clear title. Tommy wrote Anna that “Dickie is having fits about the school,” which was a business, and the building she wanted was in a residential zone.

  Her lawyer knew it but thought they could get away with it. When your mother turned her interests over to Harry Hooker, he discovered it at once and wouldn’t let them ignore it because… if any suit was brought your mother’s name would be the only one mentioned.

  Dickie was furious, and the core of trust along the Val-Kill continued to erode.

  ER was also in a cold rage about daughter-in-law Betsey. According to Tommy, “Betsey and Missy are still very thick and Missy spends most of her time with Betsey and Jimmy as far as I can see. Betsey’s devotion to your father is something!”

  With her household imbalanced by a daughter-in-law who usurped her place and increasingly took charge of details ER actually enjoyed presiding over, including seating arrangements and floral decorations, even when she was in residence, ER more frequently absented herself. She agreed to a series of radio programs, which Tommy thought would be easier than “lecturing and one night stands.” But ER only added the radio programs to her lecture schedule.

  ER herself added to household tensions when she wrote a column poking fun at FDR’s mounting annoyance over bland White House food. FDR was unusually ruffled by his wife’s words. ER wrote Anna:

  Pa is both nervous and tired. The court hue and cry has got under his skin. I thought stupidly his little outburst of boredom on meals was amusing and human and used it in my column and it was taken up by papers and radio and over the ticker and Steve [Early] and Jimmy got hate letters and were much upset and Pa was furious with me.

  James came and reproved me and said I must distinguish between things which were personal and should not be said or none of them would dare to talk to me and he thought I should apologize to Father. I did before McDuffie Monday night before leaving as I couldn’t see him alone and Pa answered irritably that it had been very hard on him and he would certainly say nothing more to me on any subject! So it has become a very serious subject and I am grieved at my poor judgment and only hope it won’t be remembered long. Will I be glad when we leave the WH and I can be on my own!

  ER rarely allowed her anger to seep out so publicly. But her “misjudgment” reflected her rising bitterness over Betsey’s interference, and White House arrangements out of her control. FDR’s ability to hurt ER with his attentions to women, even his flirtatious daughter-in-law, was surely in proportion to her ongoing love for him. Unable to forgive him, unable to have fun with him, she resented those who did. She felt aggrieved, but was unable to change her emotional patterns—except by more work, and longer trips away.

  Before she left again for a Western tour, ER was steeped in controversy. After the second installment of her memoirs was published, she received a letter from a troubled reader, Esther S. Carey of Chicago: “My dear Mrs. Roosevelt: When it was announced… that you were going to write the story of your life, I was elated…. I couldn’t wait to read the life story of the woman who seemed to be the paragon of American womanhood.”

  When it arrived, “I stopped work and literally devoured the First Installment.” But then came the second installment:

  Alas as I was reading I came across two mentions of “darky.” I couldn’t believe my eyes. Surely no one of the Roosevelt blood could be guilty of using this hated term, and we do hate it, as much as the Jew hates “sheeny” and the Italian “dago” or “wop.”

  I am a graduate of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and we looked upon your Uncle Theodore with reverence and thought that the blood of a Roosevelt could not hurt and humiliate Negroes who live and struggle under such dreadful handicaps.

  I am not given to writing letters of protest [and] this is the first I have ever written; but when the First Lady of the Land dubs us “darkies” it hurts—and I feel as Caesar felt when he had been stabbed by Brutus—I also ask “et tu Brute?”

  ER replied: “My dear Mrs. Carey: ‘Darky’ was used by my great aunt as a term of affection and I have always considered it in that light. I am sorry if it hurt you. What do you prefer?”

  The next week ER received a similar letter from a New York attorney, R. B. DeFrantz. Now DeFrantz noted that as one of her “millions of admirers” he was certain “it has never occurred to you that the word ‘darky’… is offensive to many of your readers, and by many it is thought to do harm to the Negro as a race.”

  His letter pierced her defenses:

  I am terribly sorry if the use of the word “darky” offends and I will change it when my autobiography is published in book form….

  ER never used the term again, and forevermore excised words and stereotypes that lingered from her family traditions. She confronted the remnants of “race pride” in her own politics and within her own circle. She struggled against them privately and publicly. During a lecture at Barnard College, ER urged her audience of fifteen hundred women to consider their role in the future of democracy:

  Unless we can divest ourselves of that self-righteous feeling of superiority we are going to find it hard to understand how other people feel about their people, their history, their heroes and achievements.

  ER considered it essential to know the truth “about our people and other peoples the world over.” She received many letters from people affirming that their ancestors came over on the Mayflower. “How all the people who came to this country in the Mayflower were contained in the Mayflower I don’t know.” But she did know that it was that “sense of superiority because you think you are a little more native than somebody else [that] we have got to get over.” After all, “every race and every nation has that feeling.”

  By 1938, ER had moved beyond insult and condescension and directly opposed white supremacy. She received a letter of regret from a white woman who was irate that Negro children were invited to Hyde Park events and had eaten with the family:

  The influence you are having on the Negroes may do great harm to this nation. You are making them feel they are equal to the white race…. You may not believe in amalgamation of the races, but they do not know that….

  ER replied:

  Eating with someone does not mean you believe in intermarriage. My grandmothe
r was from Georgia and I was brought up in Southern traditions, but I have known colored people who are not only the equal of whites, but mentally superior….

  In April 1937, while ER was in Charleston, the Wagner antilynch bill was debated in Congress. In 1936, ER had urged her husband to take “even one step” toward recognition of this bill. When it failed, Walter White called the president’s silence the bill’s “greatest single handicap.” Now, with FDR’s monumental victory, White dared again to be optimistic.

  After Costigan retired from Congress, Frederick Van Nuys of Indiana joined Wagner as cosponsor in the Senate, and Joseph Gavagan of New York City introduced a companion bill in the House. In April 1937, Walter White lobbied ER to support the Gavagan-Wagner-Van Nuys bill. He asked to meet with her during the House debate.

  ER intended to support the bill, but was away for the entire week of the critical House debate, which featured important speeches by Caroline O’Day and Hamilton Fish—FDR’s longtime enemy, the leading anti-New Dealer of Dutchess County.

  More than a Republican effort to win back the black vote lost in 1936, Hamilton Fish’s speech reflected a breach in conservative ranks in support of racial justice and labor’s right to strike. He had commanded black troops during the war in Europe, and he declared:

  I would be derelict to those colored soldiers… who paid the supreme sacrifice on the battlefields… fighting to make the world safe for democracy…. The time has come to put an end to mob violence and the hideous plague of lynching….

  Five thousand Americans have been lynched in the last 50 years in this great free country of ours, that is supposed to be the most civilized in the world. The rest of the world laughs at us every time we say we stand for justice and law and order. They bring up that stigma of lynching law and throw it back in our face….