Eleanor Roosevelt

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  151 See also Frazier Hunt, “Listening to America,” NY World Telegram, 23 July 1935.

  On 27 June Baruch telegrammed ER: “Hope you understand that despite Franklin’s expressed opinions will stand with you.” BB to ER, telegram, 27 June 1936; telegram, 3 July 1936: “Delighted to contribute ten as requested.” ER’s five-page letter to BB, 12 July 1936, 100. See also, ER to Tugwell, 3 Dec. 1936, 70/700. Significantly, Tugwell had resigned by Dec., and Will Alexander replied.

  151 ER moved by a visit at Christmas: NYT, 29 Jan. 1935; TIR, pp. 132–33. Also, Ickes, pp. 207, 218; Hickok, pp. 135–42; Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, pp. 393 ff. We are grateful to Bryan Ward for the sweatshirts.

  152 “Nothing we learn in this world is ever wasted”: TIR, pp. 131–32.

  152 plea to end discrimination: Haid, pp. 81–82.

  9: The Quest for Racial Justice

  153 Clarence Pickett recalled: Pickett, For More Than Bread (Little, Brown, 1953), p. 49.

  154 ER asked Hopkins: ER to Harry Hopkins, Nov. 1934, quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 514; for Aubrey Williams, Columbia Oral History Project, John Salmond, A Southern Rebel: The Life and Times of Aubrey Williams, 1890–1959 (University of North Carolina Press, 1983); Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue (Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 65, 59.

  154 The week before: ER to Hick, 16 Jan. 1934; a lovely weekend, Hick to ER, 22 Jan. 1934.

  155 Even sixty years later: Residents and descendants to author. For FDR’s Warm Springs, see esp. Geoffrey Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (Harper & Row, 1989), p. 766; Hugh Galagher, FDR’s Splendid Deception (Dodd, Mead, 1985).

  155 Before white conquest: “The Spirit of Warm Springs,” FDR’s Thanksgiving weekend address, 29 Nov. 1934; I am grateful to Beverly Bulloch (Director of Development) for this and other Warm Springs brochures and materials; and for the detailed tour she and Diane Blanks conducted for us in Feb. 1994.

  156 Roswell: Clarece Martin, The History of Bulloch Hall and Roswell Georgia (Lake Publications, 1987).

  156 27 Jan. 1934, National Public Housing Conference, NYT, 28 Jan. 1934; Mary Simkhovitch, president of the conference, Harold Ickes, and Herbert Bayard Swope also spoke.

  156 Washington alley slums: John Ihlder, “What Can You Do to Help Rid Washington of Its Inhabited Alleys,” to ER with attachments, 1 May 1934, 70.

  156 For Ellen Axson Wilson’s alliance with Charlotte Everett Hopkins, see Edith Elmer Wood, “Four Washington Alleys,” The Survey, 6 Dec. 1913, pp. 250–52; Anthony, pp. 344–50; details of her last day, see “Mrs. Wilson’s Death and Washington’s Alleys,” The Survey, 6 Dec. 1914; Mrs. Ernest Bicknell, “The Home-Maker of the White House,” The Survey, 3 Oct. 1914.

  157 “We drove”: New York Tribune, 21 Mar. 1933; see also Charlotte Hopkins’s NYT obituary, 8 Sept. 1935; Robert Cruise McManus, “District’s Grand Old Lady Wins Struggle to End Squalor.”

  157 Martha Strayer, “Mrs. Archibald Hopkins … Lives to Witness Alley Clearance Victory,” Washington Daily News, June 1934; other clippings in Charlotte E. Hopkins Papers, Schlesinger.

  158 Melvin Chisum to ER, 16 Jan. 1934; ER to Chisum, 24 Feb. 1934; Chisum to ER, 20 Mar.; ER to Frances Perkins, 4 Apr., 100, Box 1314.

  158 During the first years: Hazel W. Harrison, “The Status of the American Negro in the New Deal,” The Crisis (Nov. 1933).

  159 In 1933 Will Alexander, a former Methodist minister, and leader of the 1920s Atlanta-based Commission for Interracial Cooperation (CIC), and Edwin Embree, director of the Rosenwald Fund, lobbied the White House and several government agencies to accept a “Special Adviser on the Economic Status of Negroes,” subsidized by the Rosenwald Fund. Ickes accepted the challenge, and in July appointed Clark Foreman. Foreman, who had spent years studying southern schools with Black educator Horace Mann Bond, fully understood the “cult of the south,” which Dr. Bond had analyzed as a “psychological entity” where southerner meant white man, and the “Negro—well, a Negro.” He agreed with the protestors, and advised Ickes to appoint Robert Weaver his assistant. Weaver, a recent Harvard Ph.D., was appointed in Nov. 1933, and quickly took charge of housing for PWA.

  By 1936 Weaver, with William Hastie, as assistant solicitor, created a housing program which became the “the most racially inclusive New Deal initiative, securing black participation in all phases of the slum-clearance and low-rent housing programs,” in twenty-nine cities, north and south, including Birmingham, Atlanta, and Memphis. See esp. Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (University of North Carolina, 1996) pp. 46–49, 52–56; see also Kirby; T. H. Watkins, pp. 646–47. See Sullivan, Days of Hope, for Embree’s telegram to Foreman (p. 40); Alexander’s caution on Foreman to Ickes, (pp. 24–25); Horace Mann Bond, (p. 12).

  159 Mary McLeod Bethune: See “My Secret Talks with FDR,” Ebony (Apr. 1949), in Bernard Steusher, ed., The Negro in Depression and War, 1930–1945 (Quadrangle, 1969).

  159 “That grand old lady took my arm”: Bethune, Ebony (Apr. 1949); Nancy Weiss, pp. 143, 167–68.

  162–64 Hick’s reports from Savannah and Atlanta: Beasley and Lowitt; Harry Hopkins and CWA in Sherwood, pp. 52–62.

  163 “It spoils them”: Hick to Harry Hopkins, 16 Jan. 1934.

  164 Simon Legree: Hick to Hopkins, 23 Jan. 1934.

  165 ER’s response: ER to Hick, 7–10 Jan. 1934; 24–29 Jan. 1934; see also Lash, Love Eleanor, p. 181.

  165 Hick reached Florida: Beasley, pp. 164–65.

  165 “I might like it with you”: ER to Hick, 27 Jan. 1934; Hick to ER, 26 Jan. 1934. See also ER to Hick, 28 Jan. 34: “I love you dear so much. Three weeks and two days more and you will be home….”; 29 Jan. 1934: “I would like to be with you all the time. I love you deeply, tenderly.”

  166 ER’s days were full: ER to Hick, 5–10, 13 Feb. 1934; FDR’s birthday party, ER to Hick, 30 Jan. 1934.

  166 “I have wanted you all day”: ER to Hick, 2, 3 Feb. 1934; “I often feel rebellious, it will all work out,” 4, 5 Feb.

  167 By 14 February: Hick to Hopkins, Beasley, pp. 186–87. Hick now defended CWA: many local administrators did important work. One, Verde Peterson, assigned over four hundred CWA teachers to educate adults in the rural areas of South Carolina. They worked directly with the people and taught them to repair their homes, “delouse their chickens, build toilets, raise gardens.”

  Hick to Hopkins, 5 Feb. 1934, Beasley, pp. 170–74; Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (Harper, 1948), p. 57; Hick to Hopkins, 14 Feb. 1934, pp. 186–87.

  168 Hick to Kathryn Godwin, 18 Feb. 1934, in Beasley, pp. 191–92.

  168 ER tried to console: 8 Feb. 1934; ER’s “heart was light,” 9 Feb.

  168 ER was alarmed by Hick’s accidents: “I should have known Monday night when you sounded so queer but I hoped you were just sleepy.” ER encouraged her to cancel her planned trip to Arthurdale, she had seen enough to “write the stories” Hopkins wanted: “a rest just with me in Washington is absolutely essential.” 17 Feb. 1934.

  169 On the train to Florida: NY Herald, 6 Mar. 1934; landed in Haiti, protected from unrest in Cuba, Furman, p. 197.

  170 ER to FDR, 10 Mar. 1934, Family, Children, Box 16. On her return, ER reported to Secretary of the Interior Ickes that she “felt encouraged” by what Governor Pearson was trying to do. Ickes, pp. 156–57, 298.

  170 In ER’s honor, Pearson had “cut across the color line” and poll tax. Furman, p. 199.

  170 See esp. ER’s reports in the Women’s Democratic News (Apr. 1934), where she protested a policy “of exploitation with very little understanding,” a policy of “cruelty and greed.”

  170 In Puerto Rico: NY Tribune, 9–12 Mar.; Furman, p. 200.

  171 ER saw no reason, last day: NY Tribune, 14–15 Mar.

  172 “Dearest Babs”: FDR to ER, 5–12 July 1935.

  173 For new housing: Ruby Black, Eleanor Roosevelt: A Biography (Duell, Sloan and Pe
arce, 1940), pp. 296–98; Hick’s report to Hopkins in Beasley, pp. 196–203.

  173 ER met with Oscar Chapman, to discuss the political situation in the Virgin Islands, to defend Governor Pearson, and to promote suffrage. She also endorsed tourism and reduced taxation

  While “Governor Pearson was not a genius,” ER wrote Chapman, he “had the interest of the people at heart.” See, Black, pp. 296–97; ER to Oscar Chapman, 30 Mar. 1934; communication from Ella Gifft, Suffragist League of St. Thomas, to Chapman, Chapman to ER, 26 Apr. 1934,70, Box 605.

  He initiated a summer institute for teacher training, scholarships for study abroad, the first senior high school, and adult education. See esp.: William Boyer, America’s Virgin Islands: A History of Human Rights and Wrongs (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1983), pp. 147–61.

  Walter White “followed with very great interest” ER’s trip, and Governor Pearson wrote him of “the magnificent effect of your contacts with the people of the Virgin Islands.” White to ER, 2 Apr. 1934; Chapman to ER, 4 Apr. 1934, and 26 Apr. 1934; cf. Ickes, pp. 156–157, 298; ER’s report in WDN, Apr. 19, 1934, where she protested a policy of “exploitation … cruelty, and greed.”

  174 It was all sparsely funded, neocolonial: Years later ER observed: The islands remained “a difficult problem and one which the US is far from having solved satisfactorily.” TIR, pp. 138–140.

  174 Cuba’s new dictatorship disturbed ER’s friends. Within a year, Lillian Wald sent ER Helen Hall’s correspondence on Cuba, where she served on an investigative commission in June 1934. Hall, who had succeeded Wald as director of Henry Street was convinced the United States was “partly responsible for the present military control. While the President has been so farsighted in his treatment of Cuba … the American Ambassador played an interfering role….” Hall’s friends worried about Caffrey’s “growing intimacy with Batista.” The Cubans felt that again their government was being manipulated by outsiders.

  By Mar. 1935 civil liberties disappeared. There were “mass arrests and repressions,” all identified with “the army and with Batista, leaning on support from the American Embassy.” There was an effort to get this information to FDR, but “these efforts failed.” If ER passed this correspondence on to Sumner Welles or FDR, she never referred to the Cuban troubles in her writings. See anon, correspondent to Hall, 15 Mar. 1935; Helen Hall to Wald, 26 Mar. 1935. 100, Box 1361; Helen Hall, + Paul Kellogg’s commentary in Survey, Christian Science Monitor, Mar. 1935.

  Sandino’s assassination in the NYT, 12 Mar. 1934.

  174 “I believe it gets harder”: ER to Hick, 26 Mar. 1934.

  174 “These Roosevelts are born”: William Allen White in Emporia Gazette, 27 Mar. 1934; ER to Hick, 27, 28 Mar. 1934.

  175 ER counseled Hick to discount: 4, 5 Apr. 1934. Hick from the Monteleone, 9 Apr. 1934.

  175 “Someday we’ll lead”: ER to Hick, 9 Apr. 1934.

  175 ER and Earl were together at Val-Kill after Nancy Cook’s father’s funeral. The next day, 10 Apr., ER’s cousin Teddy Robinson, the son of Aunt Corinne, died from pneumonia and alcoholism.

  10: The Crusade to End Lynching

  178 The Wagner-Costigan bill: Robert Zangrando, The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909–1950 (Temple University Press, 1980), pp. 111, 114–15.

  178 During the 1920s: See esp. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women’s Campaign Against Lynching (Columbia University Press, 1974), pp. 159–67. For Will Alexander, see his Columbia Oral History interview; and Wilma Dykeman and James Stokely, Seeds of Southern Change: The Life of Will Alexander (University of Chicago Press, 1962).

  178 Jessie Daniel Ames: Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry, esp. pp. 159–67.; Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue (Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 270–75; cf. Jessie Daniel Ames, “Whither Leads the Mob?” (Commission on Interracial Cooperation, Atlanta, Jan. 1932), in Ames to ER, Apr. 1934, 100, Box 1284.

  179 White puzzled by Ames: White to ER, 14 Apr. 1934, 70; the real urgency, White to ER, 20 Apr. 1934, 100, Box 1325.

  179 ER to Jessie Daniel Ames, 20 Apr. 1934, 100/1284; also Ames to ER, 16 Apr. with pamphlets, esp. “Wither Leads the Mob?”; cf. Hall, pp. 24–241; Ames to ER, 29 Jan. 1935.

  180 “wildest lynching orgy”: NYT, 19 Oct. 1934; cf. Ralph Ginzburg, 100 Years of Lynching (N.Y.: Lancer Books, 1969), pp. 200–201.

  180 FDR’s first reference to “lynch law,” 6 December 1933, see Zangrando, p. 104; Nancy Weiss, p. 101.

  181 White’s meeting at the White House: Walter White, A Man Called White, (Viking, 1948), pp. 168–69 (misdated as 1935).

  181 White to ER, 14 May 1934, 100/1325.

  181 “I did not choose”: FDR quoted in Nancy Weiss, pp. 105–106, and White, p. 169.

  181 CWA discarded: FDR had created CWA by executive order on-9 Nov. 1933. Suddenly he ordered it liquidated; it simply ceased to exist on 1 Apr. 1934. Although many of its job programs were “folded back into the FERA,” in the four months of its existence CWA had been the largest employer of non-relief white-collar, single, and professional women engaged as teachers, recreation leaders, nutritionists, stenographers, writers, public health nurses, and librarians. Ellen Woodward sent ER a state-by-state report of thousands of women’s projects discontinued.

  182 Hick wrote from North Carolina: 18 Feb. 1934; Beasley, p. 195.

  182–83 For NRA abuses and rampant job discrimination, cf. Nancy Weiss, pp. 56–57; John Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era (University of Tennessee Press, 1980), pp. 134, 160n; and Raymond Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression (Greenwood, 1970), pp. 140–42.

  183 “If we have to have a dictator”: Beasley, pp. 216–19; Hick had two suggestions: Hick to ER, 13 Apr. 1934; Beasley, pp. 219–22, 204–8; Hick from New Mexico: 25 Apr. 1934, Beasley, pp. 231–34.

  183 ER to Hick, 15 Apr. 1934; “depressed”: 19 Apr. 1934.

  184 “No, I am always glad”: ER to Hick, 16 Apr. 1934.

  184 “deeply moved”: Crystal Bird Fauset to ER, 24 Apr. 1934, 100, Box 1314; cf. Fauset to ER 27 May 1934. Peabody sent ER’s letter to L. Hollingsworth Wood, a “great hearted” Quaker and wrote ER: “I have a great desire to talk with you respecting the relation of our Southland with its 25 of our population.”

  185 ER to Peabody, 4 May 34; Peabody to ER, 26 May 1934; ER to Peabody, 2 June, “interested to hear what you have to tell me about the South”; thank you re Fauset, 100, Box 1314.

  184 ER to Vincent Astor, 22 May 1934, 100, Box 1284; ER to Henry Morgenthau, Sr., 21 June 1934, 100, Box 1311.

  185 L. Hollingsworth Wood, “greatly complimented” to be approached, was particularly grateful to ER for her “very generous support of our Quaker relief work in the coal-mining districts,” which earned her both “a great deal of criticism and a great deal of affection and appreciation.” L. Hollingsworth Wood, to Peabody, 5 June; Peabody to ER, 8 June; ER to Peabody, 18 June 1934/100, Box 1314; The Institute conference, with seminars led by Charles Johnson, Fisk; Robert Park, Chicago; Otto Klineberg, Columbia; Helen Bryan and Crystal Bird Fauset, AFSC, was held in Phila. 1–28 July 1934; Howard Odum considered it “one of the most perfect units of work I have ever seen.”

  185 ER’s 11 May 1934 speech: Journal of Negro Education, Oct. 1934; reprinted in Allida Black, ed., pp. 141 ff. Harvard Sitkoff, p. 201. Sitkoff on ER, pp. 65, 69.

  186 See ER’s correspondence with John Studebaker, 1935–1936, 70/ esp. boxes 666, 699; on the much-embattled efforts toward federal aid to education, see Studebaker’s 12-page report to the NEA, “New Federal Expenditures for Certain Phases of Education,” 1933–1935, (1 Jan. 1936), Studebaker to ER, 10 Jan. 1936; cf. ER to Studebaker, 3 Dec. 1936; Studebaker to ER via Scheider, 10 Dec; and Studebaker to Charles A. Lee, Washington University, 4 Dec. 1936, Box 699.

  186 Initially education grants were made through FERA and CWA, and after 1935 through WPA and NYA, when the situation improved and college aid expanded to $
14 million by 1936, and served 104,658 students. Studebaker’s report, pp. 4–5.

  186 Williams assured ER: Aubrey Williams to State Relief Administrators and State Chief School Officers, 2 Nov. 34; Klinefelter to Scheider, 6 Nov. 1934; 70/616.

  187 “my foolish temperament”: ER to Hick, 24 May 1934.

  187 ER relieved: ER to Hick, 25–27 May 1934; “mind of a man”, ER to Hick, 30 May 1934.

  187 Alderson Prison, FDR, what for: TIR, pp. 170–72.

  188 White was desperate: Walter White to FDR, copy to ER, 13, 14, June 1934/100, 1325; Helen Boardman, Crisis, “Grand Jury Adjourns, Lauren County Fails to Indict Dendy Lynchers,” re 4 July 1933 lynching of Norris Dendy: despite witnesses, and five named suspects, the case ended typically: “Another insufferable crime has been committed and the perpetrators are being shielded by the silence and passivity of the ‘better element.’ “

  188 ER told her press conference: NYT, 7 June, 23 June 1934; Strayer, newspaper clips, C. Hopkins Papers.

  ER lobbied to secure Ihlder’s appointment; and FDR urged Charlotte Hopkins to arrange a meeting between Ickes, Harry Hopkins, and Ihlder to “work out a comprehensive program.” Hopkins to ER, 15 June; ER to Hopkins, 28 June 1934; FDR to Hopkins 15 Jan. 1935; Hopkins Papers, Schlesinger Library.

  188 Ickes asked ER: Ickes to ER, 8 Mar. 1935; ER to Ickes, 12 Mar. 1935; committee membership as of 25 Feb. 1935, 70, Box 654.

  Charlotte Everett Hopkins died on 6 Sept. 1935, just as the real work to dismantle the alleys began.

  11: Private Friendship, Public Time

  190 As her train ran alongside the Hudson: ER to Hick, 23 Apr. 1934; conference on aging: 20 Apr. 1934.

  190 “I’ve been wondering”: ER to Hick, 30 May 1934.

  191 ER felt protective of FDR, and SDR: ER to Hick, 1 June 1934.

  191 ER II on SDR: to author in San Francisco, 1997.

  192 Emma Bugbee asked: ER to Hick 14 Nov. 1933.

  192 Russia was recognized: ER to Hick, 18 Nov. 1933. During the autumn of 1933, ER’s letters of longing were interspersed with letters of stern advice: Buy a coat; see a dentist; watch your diet. See esp. ER to Hick, 25–26 Sept. 1933. ER to Hick, 6 Nov. 1933.