Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Lash’s broad understanding pleased her. She explained that FDR was the politician, she the agitator, and the world needed both. The challenge, the two new friends agreed, was to find the dividing line between acceptable acts of power and needed compromises. ER told Lash that she “frequently disagreed with the President,” while others—especially anti–New Dealers—believed he had gone too far too fast. Democratic decision-making depended on a free press, an opposition, and the electorate.

  Lash left on a Sunday afternoon train with ER. Their friendship had solidified with his visit, and she offered to write letters of reference for him whether he applied for a job in journalism or to a university for graduate studies. He continued to ask brash questions. He had read that publisher Roy Howard censored her My Day column. Howard had accepted her “plea for funds for Finland” but had cut an appeal to aid Spanish refugees. Howard, she explained, had said he “employed her to write a diary, not to talk about the things that really mattered to her.” Joe noted, “It was clear from the tone of her voice” that Howard’s attitude “irked her.”

  They discussed the Soviet Union: “until the Nazi-Soviet Pact,” she said, “she had looked upon Russia as a positive force in world affairs, a nation from whom we could learn much.” Now Lash thought a second revolution was needed. But the purges, ER noted, had “so effectively decapitated” all potential opposition and leadership. Still, she was certain that the future belonged to those who learned, who read deeply and studied and fought for their dreams. People like her new friend Joe Lash.

  In New York, as she dashed for her connecting train to Washington, she urged him to return to Val-Kill that summer. In the meantime she would look forward to his February visit in Washington during the AYC meeting she was already helping to organize.

  Chapter Nine

  Radical Youth and Refugees: Winter–Spring 1940

  Shortly after the Dies Committee tried to disgrace the AYC in November 1939, ER agreed to write the foreword to a book celebrating the AYC written by one of its leaders, Leslie Gould. Bennett Cerf, president of Random House, had agreed to publish the book when it was discussed at a Val-Kill picnic on 7 December 1939.

  In her foreword to American Youth Today, ER wrote:

  This is a book which I think it is high time to publish. . . . The author naturally sees it through sympathetic eyes, but he has, I think, given a picture which is historically correct. . . .

  He is a little too kind about me . . . and a little too unkind about the President. He forgets that in spite of the President’s words on one occasion, he has given the young people real support and understanding many times, and that without his willingness to stand behind me, I would frequently be unable to do many of the things which I have done for them.

  As you read these pages, you will realize that youth is youth and cannot be expected to see things in the light of experience, or to act with the calmness of age. Youth’s great contribution is its enthusiasm and its fire, and this contribution to the future should never be belittled. . . .

  I have no great illusions about the perfection of any organization or of any group. I do believe, however, that a group which is honestly trying to help young people in their own communities to get together and face such problems as unemployment, recreation and health, should receive cooperation and understanding.

  ER’s words were written after her most grueling and painful encounter with the AYC, during their much-heralded Citizenship Institute, which she did much to promote and enable.

  • • •

  More than five thousand young people from every state and many nations were expected to attend the Citizenship Institute, planned for Lincoln’s Birthday weekend 1940. The four-day marathon was billed as “a monster lobby for jobs, peace, civil liberties, education and health.” Specifically, the AYC would lobby for passage of the American Youth Act, which would earmark millions of dollars for jobs and vocational training for young people.

  ER helped prepare by cajoling friends, associates, hotel owners, and the army to provide rooms, blankets, food, and general support. She imposed on every Washington hostess, every government official for housing, meeting rooms, and entertainment. She housed twenty delegates at the White House and persuaded cabinet and congressional wives to house many more. At her urging, the officers of Fort Meyer provided “cots for 150 boys.” She was especially pleased to have gotten Colonel George S. Patton to put up many boys “in the riding hall,” where she had recently visited the horse show.

  She arranged for a fleet of buses to transport the delegates to meetings, helped get flags and costumes for their parade, and in every way looked after America’s visiting youth. On Friday there was to be a rally at the Lincoln Memorial and a meeting in the auditorium of the Department of Labor. She secured public spaces and meeting rooms in federal buildings, arranged for private meetings, luncheons, teas, and dinners all over town, including at the White House.

  The Republican National Committee chair refused to participate in the Citizenship Institute unless the AYC purged all its Communist representatives. ER chided him, considering the idea of “purging” young Communists an un-American ploy. Since democracy assured Communists the right to “believe in the communistic theory,” no group had the right to expel them. Surely, ER said, “a youth organization must stand for the same tolerance and freedom of expression and representation that we as a nation have stood for under the Bill of Rights.”

  On Friday, 9 February, the institute opened, haunted by the increasingly dismal news from around the world. Fear ruled the day; betrayal and bombs, exile and rivers of blood set the tone. The Nazi-Soviet Pact heightened the impact of war, which was felt everywhere: Ethiopia, Spain, China, Vienna, Prague, Poland, Finland.

  That Friday Jack McMichael, a southern divinity student, AYC national chair, and one of ER’s closest AYC friends, gave the keynote address. He attacked FDR for neglecting domestic issues in favor of an enhanced military policy. America’s liberal leadership had vanished. Instead of continuing the good fight, liberals now advocated “retrenchment” and had become “international messiahs” who would lead America’s youth directly onto Europe’s battlefields.

  McMichael said he regretted the ongoing disenfranchisement of and violence against black citizens. In the South, African-Americans were still denied their legal rights: race terrorism continued unabated. The Dies Committee targeted students and union leaders, but the Ku Klux Klan went on its way unmolested.

  Edward Strong of Alabama, chair of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, agreed with McMichael: the Department of Justice ignored the Klan’s activities, and did nothing to protect black Americans from bodily harm or legal abuse.

  AYC enemies had placed themselves strategically around the room: they included not only right-wingers but also New Deal supporters who were increasingly suspicious of the AYC leadership, and a group of self-styled youth patriots led by ER’s own cousin Archibald Roosevelt, boxing hero Gene Tunney, and a pamphleteer named Murray Plavner.

  After the opening remarks, these adversaries rose to introduce parliamentary ploys to derail the meeting. Someone introduced a resolution to condemn the Soviet invasion of Finland. A serious scuffle ensued. Finally, two of the leading antagonists were forcibly ejected, and Archibald Roosevelt walked out after “a brief wrestling match with Joseph Cadden.”

  The antagonists would continue to try to disrupt the meetings, interrupting with criticisms of FDR and creating disturbances. They were repeatedly ruled out of order. ER watched the tumult from the second row. Asked her opinion, she said, “My only comment is that this was a meeting with a pre-arranged program.” The Finland resolution, intended to create mayhem, was also ruled out of order. But the issue was bitterly divisive and defined the weekend.

  Despite her private feelings, she defended the AYC against its enemies—specifically the organized right led by Father Coughlinites, Silver Shirts, and anti-Semitic ruff
ians. They had, ER wrote, “served only a destructive purpose.”

  Nevertheless, the Friday meeting ended on a conciliatory and hopeful note, when recently appointed attorney general Robert Jackson responded to McMichael and Strong’s criticisms of the administration. In a vigorous speech that was broadcast nationally, he surprised the audience with welcome news. “For more than a week,” he said, “the Department of Justice has had an attorney in South Carolina gathering evidence [on Ku Klux Klan] activities. And less than a week ago the Department of Justice dismissed more than 100 indictments against WPA workers in Minnesota.* Perhaps the Department of Justice is not as heartless as you think.”

  Several New Dealers in FDR’s inner circle, including Ben Cohen and Tom Corcoran, hoped that Jackson would run for president later that year. At the Citizenship Institute he read a prepared speech that opposed any retrenchment on New Deal policies and supported the Allies. FDR had wrought great changes, culminating, said Jackson, in fundamental governmental powers that never existed before: the ability “to govern the powerful, [and] protect the weak.”

  Jackson’s speech also affirmed the rights of youth: this was the time to have “your dreams and your adventures.” The correct role of elders was to provide “patient and understanding counsel.” He dismissed those who saw youth’s “spirit of social and political unconventionality” as some “terrifying” or “nightmarish plotting against government.” Nonconformity was neither treasonous nor the work of “radicals and communists.” At this moment, with depression ongoing and war raging, youth could hardly afford to be complacent. No “honest” observer should expect a “free and hopeful youth” to support the status quo when so much “involuntary unemployment,” so much insecurity and dependency on the part of the aged, and “so many injustices” lay before us all. Youth faced “an indefensible legacy,” Jackson said. But “before you look wistfully to any other form of government, let’s see what we can do with this American Government with its powers thus restored.” This democracy, enhanced by the New Deal, was “a great system for changing the status quo by peaceful and orderly means.”*

  Pleased by Jackson’s speech, ER noted that most of the audience received it with cheering enthusiasm. She was relieved especially since earlier that day Joseph Lash, while attempting to speak in favor of the administration’s policies, had been persistently interrupted, actually “booed for fifteen minutes before he could continue his speech.” ER, aghast, understood that this was no ordinary meeting of activist youth, and their friends and mentors in government.

  • • •

  On Saturday, 10 February, the air was heavy in Washington, frosty, wet. It rained, hard and cold and bitter. Fingers were numbed; feet were sodden. Some students danced; some painted signs; some stayed in bed and clung to each other. FDR was scheduled to address the young people at the White House that day.

  In the morning a young woman on horseback, dressed as the Joan of Arc of 1940, led a parade of America’s youth along Constitution Avenue. Almost six thousand young people marched: farmers and sharecroppers, workers and musicians, from high schools and colleges, black and white, Indians and Latinos, Christians and Jews, atheists and agnostics, freethinkers and dreamers, liberals and Communists. This extraordinary patchwork of American youth had arrived an hour early to hear the president. As they waited, they alternated between silence and song, as if in homage to the tensions behind the banners.

  Banners for peace predominated: LOANS FOR FARMS, NOT ARMS. JOBS NOT GUNS. SCHOOLS NOT BATTLESHIPS. BURY THE SLUMS BEFORE THEY BURY US. HEED THE VOICE OF 20,000,000 / KEEP THE CCC CIVILIAN. ALL BOW DOWN TO MARTIN DIES, 57 KINDS OF LIES. ABOLISH THE POLL TAX. PASS THE AMERICAN YOUTH ACT. YES TO MORE SCHOOLS / NO TO WAR TOOLS. THE YANKS ARE NOT COMING.

  Songs of protest filled the air. The students sang as they marched; they sang as they waited. Initially stirred by a sense of their own unity, the vigor of their banners, the certainty of their goals, and the wit of their parodies, they felt confident. For that moment, even in the rain, the future was theirs. But the rain was relentless, and the winds grew colder.

  The White House lawn turned muddy. For over two hours, their banners still aloft but heavier and limp with rain, they waited patiently. FDR was to speak on a national radio hookup, and they were told there was an unfortunate delay. The mud grew softer and the rain came down harder. They sang more songs. ER wandered through the crowd, covered in rain cape and hood, giving warm words of greeting. She had persuaded FDR to speak, but now as the rain poured and the winds intensified, the mood changed from anticipation to anxiety. Finally Jack McMichael went to the microphone, set up on the South Portico, and led the crowd in “America the Beautiful,” chants for the Youth Act, and words of introduction:

  Deep in the dream of Americans is a picture of the land of the free and the home of the brave. A land free of the misery of war and oppression. . . .

  Now, more than four million young citizens are without work. Now, the doors to industry, yes, and even the relief rolls, are closed to them. Are we to rear a generation in hopelessness and despair? Now war, which brings nothing but death and degradation to youth and profit and power to a few, reaches out for us. Are we to solve our youth problem by dressing it in uniform and shooting it full of holes?

  America should welcome and should not fear a young generation aware of its own problems, active in advancing the interests of the entire nation. In this spirit, [thousands] . . . have streamed into Washington. . . . They are here to discuss their problems and to tell you, Mr. President, and the Congress, their needs and desires. . . . I am happy to present to you, Mr. President, these American youth.

  Finally FDR appeared on the balcony—with ER now beside him, leaning against a White House column. He looked at the crowd below and smiled, with an expression nobody had ever seen before. The audience was hushed and silent. Jonathan Mitchell, standing in the crowd beside his friend Michael Straight, whispered, “He doesn’t like the smell of the Albatross that his wife has hung around his neck.”

  And then he began. FDR stood before the Youth Congress not to praise America’s young activists but to insult them, to administer not a blessing but “a spanking.” Joseph Lash, standing with a small group of former ASU allies, recalled a “tough, uncompromising speech. Clearly we did not enchant him. . . . We were welcome, as were all citizens. It was ‘grand’ we were enough interested in government to come to Washington,” where they had a guaranteed right to come and advocate change. In another country, under other governments, “this kind of meeting . . . could not take place.”

  Then came a set of dreary statistics, followed by a rehash of old achievements and a list of warnings: Do not expect Utopia; do not seek panacea, “handouts” to guarantee jobs or training. This administration could solve the nation’s problems only “as fast as the people of the country as a whole will let us.” The “final word of warning” seemed a specific insult, lodged in contemptuous tones: Do not deal with subjects “which you have not thought through and on which you cannot possibly have complete knowledge.”

  FDR defended his call for a loan to Finland and attacked those who opposed it—as New York’s Youth Council had, on the grounds that it was an attempt to lead the United States into an “imperialistic war.” FDR called that “unadulterated twaddle,” based in small part on “sincerity” but also “on 90 percent ignorance.”

  Several people booed and hissed, while others hushed them.

  FDR went on: 98 percent of the American people wanted to support Finland. To discuss a U.S.-Soviet war over Finland “is about the silliest thought that I have ever heard advanced in the fifty-eight years of my life.” “All of you,” he assured the crowd, “can smile with me on this.” Nobody smiled. He then criticized the Soviet Union: whatever his former hopes had been for the future of “that experiment,” it was today “a dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world.”

  The boos began again
.

  Some in the AYC were called Communists, FDR noted. He acknowledged the right of Americans to advocate “ideals of theoretical communism,” but they also had the “sacred duty” to confine their visions to our constitutional framework. He was sure they all agreed with him and would be at it long after “I am gone from the scene. . . . So I say to you, keep your ideals high, keep both feet on the ground, and keep everlastingly at it.”

  The crowd stood silently, stunned and disheartened; many were near tears.

  FDR raised his hand in a flippant gesture, turned, and walked into the darkness of the White House on Pa Watson’s arm. ER followed silently behind. For the student activists who had traveled so far, memories of that bitter day would never fade.

  A great range of student and future leaders were in that crowd. My own friends, activists, and, notably, founders of Women Strike for Peace—Bella Abzug, Amy Swerdlow, Mim Kelber, and Victor Teisch—said they never forgot what seemed to them a blunt dismissal by a man they had so admired, who had turned so completely into a careless politician. According to Michael Straight, FDR had ignored the “hopeful and constructive” address that had been prepared for him. Education commissioner John Studebaker and Aubrey Williams had both drafted suggestions for the speech, but FDR had discarded them. Instead, he “scolded the delegates in a rebuke that extended beyond the Left to the liberals and to his own wife.” Joe Lash considered the president’s speech a specific rebuff to his wife: “The young people had begun to irritate him,” and ER’s efforts to defend them “irritated him even more.” But he could not reproach her directly, Lash noted, and in a speech broadcast nationwide that he had written himself, he confronted the differences between them. It was the first time he publicly displayed his antagonism.