Eleanor Roosevelt

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

562 for Canada, see esp. Abella and Troper, None Is Too Many (Random House, 1982).

  562 ER defended the AYC at AAUW luncheon at Hotel Astor: NYT, 20 Nov. 1938; Marion Dickerman spoke as president of N.Y.’s AAUW, on her ILO mission; Virginia Gildersleeve spoke about the need to find havens for Europe’s university women, now deprived of all research opportunities.

  563 ER’s shopping spree at Arnold Constable: On 21 Oct., NYT printed a photo of ER’s new hairstyle; NYT, 20 Nov. 1938.; Henry Grady quoted in Linda Reed, Simple Decency and Common Sense, p. 2.

  564 SCHW meeting; See Reed, pp. 15–16, and passim; Virginia Durr, Outside the Magic Circle, and Durr to BWC.

  565 “Sometimes actions speak louder than words”: Afro-American, quoted in Pauli Murray, Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage (Harper & Row, 1987), p. 113.

  565 ER’s 22 November 1938 speech at the SCHW: Allida Black, ed., Courage in a Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt (Columbia University Press, 1999).

  566 Aubrey Williams, in Virginia Durr; also, John Williams, A Southern Rebel: The Life and Times of Aubrey Williams (University of North Carolina, 1983), pp. 101–3.

  566 resolutions, “one of the gravest sins”: Linda Reed, pp. 46–48.

  566 Louise Charlton called on Mrs. Bethune:Virginia Durr, p. 121.

  567 propaganda and a controlled press: Virginia Durr in NYT, 23 Nov. 1938.

  567 “by dipping or sprinkling or total immersion….”: Durr, Outside, pp. 124–25.

  568 “the New Deal come South,” and at the end: Durr, pp. 127–28.

  568 “Have they torn you limb from limb yet?”: Hick to ER, 28 Nov. 1938.

  568 “Tommy doesn’t feel well”: NYT, 23 Nov. 1938. ER also wrote that Birmingham “invoked an old ordinance and required segregation at all meetings even in churches and it caused most vigorous protest. I felt very uncomfortable and some of the questions I longed to answer as I really felt….” ER to Hick, 23 Nov. 1938.

  568–69 Women’s Democratic Committee, to reunite Hick to politics: ER to Hick, 18 Nov. 1938; FDR “much interested,” doubts Farley: ER to Hick, 21 Nov.; “more liberal than the Republican party”: 22 Nov. 1938.

  569 24 Nov. 1938, “the final and unalterably uncompromising solution”: Morse, p. 196; Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know (Holocaust Museum, Little, Brown, 1993), p. 35.

  570 Citizens of conscience petitioned FDR: in Morse, p. 190.

  570 rearmament, especially mass production of airplanes: FDR to “Dear Chief,” 14 Nov. 1938, Letters, IV, p. 827; FDR to Swanson, Edison, Leahy, 28 Dec. 1938, IV, p. 843; to General John J. Pershing, 3 Dec. 1938, IV, p. 838, re a study of military stores and requirements.

  571 article on tolerance, “I gather that the President okayed it”: Hick to ER, 22 Nov. 1938; FDR read both, “just said …OK … to send”: ER to Hick, 25 Nov. 1938.

  571 untitled manuscript on Jews: sent to Fulton Oursler, 25 Nov. 1938, in Hick, box 6; “Mrs. Roosevelt Answers Mr. Wells on ‘The Future of the Jews,’” Liberty, 31 Dec. 1938; reprinted in Allida Black.

  571 important for Jews to remain unaggressive: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 750.

  573 “I like it very much”: Hick to ER, 30 Nov. 1938.

  573 Keepers of Democracy, written in Nov. 1938, published in The Virginia Quarterly Review (Winter 1939); also in Allida Black.

  574 freedom can never be “freedom for me and not for you”: ER at Brooklyn Academy, in NYT, 13 Dec. 1938; “democracy is going forward”: NYT, 22 Jan. 1939.

  574–75 “grand time”: Hick to ER, 21 Dec. 1938; “dust and ashes,” serenity safer: ER to Hick, 23 Dec. 1938.

  575 For press coverage of ER H’s debutante party, I am grateful to ER II and Diana Roosevelt Jaicks.

  575 equal rights for minorities as well as majorities: ER in NYT, 23 Oct. 1937.

  575 “There are still slaves of many kinds”: ER to National Negro Congress, NYT, 11 Feb. 1938.

  576 “As I listened,” ER’s response to speeches for Léon Blum colony: My Day, 8 Dec. 1938. While ER spoke on behalf of the settlement for 1,000 Jewish refugee families in Palestine named to honor France’s first Jewish and socialist prime minister, France was on the verge of civil war. Even as Blum’s government fell in April 1938, left pacifist Simone Weil wrote deputy Gaston Bergery that she preferred German hegemony to war, although it would mean “laws of exclusion against Communists and Jew”; quoted in Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (Basic Books, 1981), p. 39.

  NOTE ON SOURCES AND SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library (FDRL) at Hyde Park are in several collections, as cited in the notes. Series 70 largely includes correspondence with public officials and citizens; series 100 includes more personal correspondence and papers of the Roosevelt family, donated by the children. Of additional significance for this volume are individual collections, including the Molly Dewson, Marion Dickerman, Lorena Hickok, Esther Lape, Elinor Morgenthau, Aubrey Williams, and FDR papers.

  ER’s correspondence with Jane Addams is at the FDRL and at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection (SCPC). I am grateful to Mary Lynn McCree Bryan for documents from the Jane Addams Papers Project. See Mary Lynn McCree Bryan, The Jane Addams Papers Guide (Ann Arbor, University Microfilms, 1985).

  Carrie Chapman Catt’s papers are at the New York Public Library, including the file on the Christian Women’s Protest Against Germany’s Treatment of the Jews. Her letters to ER are at the FDRL.

  Gertrude Ely’s papers have not yet been located. Although there is correspondence with ER at the FDRL, her life story has yet to be told. I am grateful to Lorett Treese for biographical memorabilia on Ely in the Bryn Mawr College Archives, to Anonymous of Fowler’s Beach for letters and memories of Ely, and to Rodney H. Clurman.

  Isabella Greenway’s Papers are in the Arizona Historical Society, Tucson.

  Alice Hamilton’s correspondence with ER is at the FDRL and in the Jane Addams Papers Project. I am grateful to Barbara Sicherman for excerpts from Hamilton’s daybook and Hamilton’s articles on Germany: “An Inquiry into the Nazi Mind,” NY Times Sunday Magazine, 6 August 1933; “The Youth Who Are Hider’s Strength,” NY Times Sunday Magazine, 8 October 1933; “Hitler Speaks,” Atlantic, October 1933; “Below the Surface,” Survey Graphic, September 1933; “Sound and Fury in Germany,” Survey Graphic, November 1933; “The Plight of the German Intellectuals,” Harper’s, January 1934; “German Intellectuals,” NY Times, 7 January 1934.

  ER’s correspondence with Fannie Hurst is mostly in the Fannie Hurst Papers, in the Harry Ransom Collection, Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. Hurst’s correspondence with Ruth Bryan Owen in this collection is significant.

  The Helen Rogers Reid, Harold Ickes, and NAACP Papers are at the Library of Congress. ER’s correspondence with Molly Dewson, Hilda Worthington Smith, and Charlotte Everett Hopkins is at FDRL and the Schlesinger Library. Other collections used for this book at the Schlesinger Library include Pauli Murray, Pauline Newman, and Charl Ormond Williams. Flora Rose and Martha van Rensselaer Papers and Frances Perkins’s lecture notes are at Cornell. Frances Perkins’s papers and oral history are at Columbia University. The Lillian Wald Papers are at the New York Public Library and at Columbia University.

  ER’s monthly columns in New York State’s Women’s Democratic News were folded into the national Democratic Digest in 1936. In 1938, ER selected her favorite daily columns and published them in My Days. These are undated except by month and year; I refer to them by page. Rochelle Chadakoff edited ER’s My Day: Her Acclaimed Columns, 1936–1945 (Pharos Books, 1989); these are cited by date. In addition to the daily New York Times, the NAACP’s Crisis Magazine, which ER routinely sent to New Deal officials, were basic to this study. Columns and articles are in the notes.

  BY ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

  It’s Up to the Women (Frederick A. Stokes, 1933).

  Hunting Big Game in the ’Eighties: The Lett
ers of Elliott Roosevelt, Sportsman, Edited by His Daughter (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933).

  This Is My Story (Harper & Brothers, 1937).

  This Troubled World (H. C. Kinsey & Co., 1938).

  My Days (Dodge Publishing, 1938).

  This I Remember (Harper & Brothers, 1949).

  You Learn by Living (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960)

  The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (Harper & Brothers, 1960).

  ABOUT ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

  Asbell, Bernard, ed. Mother and Daughter: The Letters of Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt (Coward, McCann, Geoghegan, 1981).

  Beasley, Maurine. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media: A Public Quest for Self-Fulfillment (University of Illinois Press, 1987).

  —–, ed. The White House Press Conferences of Eleanor Roosevelt (Garland, 1983).

  —–, and Richard Lowitt, eds. One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression (University of Illinois Press, 1983).

  Bethune, Mary McLeod. “My Secret Talks with FDR,” Ebony (April 1949); reprinted in Bernard Sternsher, The Negro in Depression and War, 1930–1945 (Quadrangle, 1969).

  Black, Allida M. Casting Her Own Shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism (Columbia University Press, 1996).

  —–, ed. What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt (Ralph Carlson, 1995).

  —–, ed. Courage in a Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt (Columbia University Press, 1999).

  Black, Ruby. Eleanor Roosevelt: A Biography (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940).

  Chadakoff, Rochelle, ed. ER’s My Day: Her Acclaimed Columns, 1936–1945 (Pharos Books, 1989). Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. I: 1884–1933 (Viking, 1992).

  —–. “Eleanor Roosevelt and Human Rights.” In Edward Crapol, ed., Women and American Foreign Policy (Greenwood, 1987).

  —–. “Eleanor Roosevelt and the South,” Atlanta History: A Journal of Georgia and the South (Winter 1995).

  —–. “Turn Toward Peace: ER and Foreign Affairs.” In Joan Hoff-Wilson and Marjorie Lightman, eds., Without Precedent (University of Indiana Press, 1984). Davis, Kenneth S. Invincible Summer: An Intimate Portrait of the Roosevelts Based on the Recollections of Marion Dickerman (Atheneum, 1974).

  Faber, Doris. The Life of Lorena Hickok: ER’s Friend (Morrow, 1980).

  Flemion, Jess, and Colleen M. O’Connor, eds. Eleanor Roosevelt: An American Journey (San Diego State University Press, 1987).

  Furman, Bess. Washington By-Line: The Personal History of a Newspaperwoman (Knopf, 1949).

  Haraven, Tamara. Eleanor Roosevelt: An American Conscience (Quadrangle Books, 1968).

  Hickok, Lorena A. Eleanor Roosevelt: Reluctant First Lady (Dodd, Mead, 1980 [1962]); Introduction by Allen Klots.

  Hoff-Wilson, Joan, and Marjorie Lightman, eds. Without Precedent: The Life and Career of Eleanor Roosevelt (University of Indiana Press, 1984).

  Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri. Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1917–1994 (Rutgers University Press, 1995).

  Kearney, James. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt: The Evolution of a Reformer (Houghton Mifflin, 1968).

  Lash, Joseph P. Eleanor Roosevelt: A Friends Memoir (Doubleday, 1964).

  —–. Eleanor and Franklin (W.W. Norton, 1971).

  —–. Dealers & Dreamers: A New Look at the New Deal (Doubleday, 1988).

  —–. Love, Eleanor: Eleanor Roosevelt and Her Friends (Doubleday, 1982).

  Nesbitt, Henrietta. White House Diary by Henrietta Nesbitt: FDR’s Housekeeper (Doubleday, 1948).

  Parks, Lillian Rogers, and Frances S. Leighton. The Roosevelts: A Family in Turmoil (Prentice Hall, 1981).

  Roosevelt, Elliott. Mother R: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Untold Story (Putnam’s, 1977). Roosevelt, James, and Sidney Shalett. Affectionately FDR: A Son’s Story of a Lonely Man (Harcourt Brace, 1959).

  —–, with Bill Libby. My Parents: A Differing View (Playboy Press, 1976).

  Scharf, Lois. Eleanor Roosevelt: First Lady of American Liberalism (Twayne, 1987).

  Streitmatter, Rodger. Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok (Free Press, 1998). West, J. B., with Mary Ann Klotz. Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies (Warner Paperback, 1974).

  Young, Rose, ed. Why Wars Must Cease (Macmillan, 1935), with ER’s “Because the War Idea Is Obsolete.”

  Youngs, William J. Eleanor Roosevelt: A Personal and Public Life (Little, Brown, 1985).

  ABOUT FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

  FDR: His Personal Letters, 1928–1945, Vols. III and IV (Kraus Reprint, 1970 [1950]), edited by Elliott Roosevelt and Joseph P. Lash; foreword by Eleanor Roosevelt.

  Rosenman, Samuel I., ed. The Public Papers and Addresses of FDR, 13 vols. (Macmillan, 1938–1950).

  Asbell, Bernard. The FDR Memoirs (Doubleday, 1973).

  Beschloss, Michael R. Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance (Norton, 1980).

  Blum, John Morton. Roosevelt & Morgenthau: From the Morgenthau Diaries (Houghton Mifflin, 1970).

  Bullitt, Orville, ed. For the President, Personal and Secret: Correspondence Between FDR and William C. Bullitt (Houghton Mifflin, 1972).

  Burns, James MacGregor. Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (Harcourt, Brace, 1956). Davis, Kenneth S. FDR: The New Deal Years, 1933–1937 (Random House, 1986).

  —–. FDR: Into the Storm, 1937–1940 (Random House, 1993).

  Farley, James. Jim Farley’s Story (McGraw-Hill, 1948).

  Freedman, Max, ed. Roosevelt & Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1928–1945 (Little, Brown, 1967). Freidel, Frank. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Launching the New Deal (Little, Brown, 1973).

  —–. Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny (Little, Brown, 1990).

  —–. FDR and the South (Louisiana University Press, 1965).

  Gallagher, Hugh. FDR’s Splendid Deception (Dodd, Mead, 1985).

  Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Home Front in World War II (Simon & Schuster, 1994).

  Hurd, Charles. When the New Deal Was Young and Gay (Harper, 1965).

  Leuchtenburg, William. FDR and the New Deal: 1932–1940 (Harper Torchbooks, 1963).

  —–. The FDR Years: On Roosevelt & His Legacy (Columbia University Press, 1995).

  —–. The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt (Oxford University Press, 1995).

  Lindley, Ernest K. Half Way with Roosevelt (Viking, 1937).

  Moley, Raymond. After Seven Years (Harper & Brothers, 1939).

  Morgan, Ted. FDR: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 1985).

  Perkins, Frances. The Roosevelt I Knew (Viking, 1946).

  Rollins, Alfred B. Roosevelt and Howe (Knopf, 1962).

  Rosenman, Samuel I. Working with Roosevelt (Harper & Brothers, 1952).

  Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. II: The Coming of the New Deal (Houghton Mifflin, 1959).

  —–. The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. III: The Politics of Upheaval (Houghton Mifflin, 1960).

  Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (Harper, 1948).

  Steward, William J., ed. The Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Selected Bibliography, 1945–1971 (FDR Library, GSA, 1974).

  Stiles, Lela. Louis Howe: The Man Behind Roosevelt (World Publishing, 1954).

  Tugwell, Rexford Guy. The Democratic Roosevelt: A Biography of FDR (Doubleday, 1957). Ward, Geoffrey C. A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (Harper & Row, 1989).

  Winfield, Betty Houchin. FDR and the News Media (University of Illinois Press, 1990).

  FRIENDS, NEW DEALERS, RACE RADICALS: DOMESTIC ISSUES

  Abramovitz, Mimi. Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present (South End Press, 1996).

  Abramson, Rudy. Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman, 1891–1986 (William Morrow, 1992).

&
nbsp; Addams, Jane. “The World Court.” In Allen F. Davis, ed., Jane Addams on Peace, War and International Understanding (Garland, 1976).

  Alinsky, Saul. John L. Lewis: An Unauthorized Biography (Vintage, 1970 [1949]).

  Anthony, Carl Sferrazza. First Ladies (William Morrow, 1990).

  Auerbach, Jerold. Labor and Liberty: The LaFollette Committee and the New Deal (Bobbs-Merrill, 1966).

  Badger, Anthony. The New Deal (Hill & Wang, 1988).

  Bain, George. “How Negro Editors Viewed the New Deal,” Journalism Quarterly (Autumn 1967).

  Baker, Leonard. Back to Back: The Duel Between FDR and the Supreme Court (Macmillan, 1967).

  —–. Brandeis and Frankfurter: A Dual Biography (Harper & Row, 1984).

  Baltzell, E. Digby. The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America (Vintage, 1966).

  Beifrage, Cedric, and James Aronson. Something to Guard (Columbia University Press, 1978).

  Bellush, Bernard. The Failure of the NRA (Norton, 1975).

  —–. He Walked Alone: A Biography of John Gilbert Winant (Mouton, 1968).

  Bentley, Eric, ed. Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from the Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1933–1968 (Viking, 1971).

  Bernstein, Alison. “A Mixed Record: The Political Enfranchisement of American Indian Women During the Indian New Deal,” Journal of the West (July 1984).

  Berry, Mary Frances. Black Resistance/White Law: A History of Constitutional Racism in America (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971).

  Biles, Roger. A New Deal for the American People (Northern Illinois University Press, 1991).

  Block, Adrienne Fried. Amy Beach: Passionate Victorian (Oxford University Press, 1998).

  Bosch, Mineke, with Annemarie Kloosterman, eds. Politics and Friendship: Letters from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902–1942 (Ohio State University Press, 1990); includes Catt’s correspondence with Rosa Manus.

  Bremer, William. “Along the ‘American Way’: The New Deal’s Work Relief Programs for the Unemployed,” Journal of American History (December 1975).

  Brinkley, Alan. Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin & the Great Depression (Vintage, 1982).