Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  ER defended her friends in public and in print. Already outraged by the extremism of Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) and the “Gestapo tactics” used by his Senate committee and HUAC’s (House Un-American Activities Committee) crusade against subversives, she was further appalled when her dear friend, educator Mary McLeod Bethune, was accused of “association” with allegedly Communist organizations. ER told her My Day readers that a New Jersey school had disinvited Bethune—a most heroic “leader among the American colored citizens and loved and admired by all . . . who know her.” Mary Mcleod Bethune was “the kindest, gentlest person I have ever met. . . . If it were not so sad to have respected and beloved American citizens insulted and slighted, it would be funny.” The Red Scare threatened American traditions of freedom and civil liberties. She hoped a bold movement for justice and fairness would arise to “save us” from McCarthyite demands for “complete conformity which kills originality and truth.”

  When Paul Robeson was attacked by rioters during a concert in Peekskill, she defended him. She deplored his Communist sympathies, but she deplored violent repression that threatened democracy even more. In an extraordinary column she asserted that Robeson had the right to perform unmolested—even though he turned his concerts into forums for Communist propaganda. Moreover, ER thought it important to understand why such a talented star would praise the USSR and choose to reside there for several years. “He wanted to find something he did not find here. He was a brilliant law student,” who graduated from Columbia Law School, “but there was no equality of opportunity for educated men of his race.” He became a singer, “a gain for art—but perhaps there was some bitterness in his heart.” He took his family to the USSR so that his son would not suffer as he did. “Others might feel the same way. In the USSR he was recognized as an educated man, as an artist and as an equal. We disapprove of his speeches, but we must also understand him and above all . . . we must [work] to preserve the liberties that are inherent in true democracy.” Since the USSR “does not permit real democratic freedom,” she subsequently chided Robeson for his failure to see that everyone had a better chance of achieving equality “in the US than anywhere else in the world.”

  By 1954 all white integrationists were accused of being Communists. ER remained allied with such southern race radicals as Jim Dombrowski and Myles Horton of Tennessee’s Highlander Folk School, Aubrey Williams, Virginia Durr, Anne Braden, and other activists of the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF), the successor to the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, founded in 1947. ER agreed to serve on SCEF’s board, spoke often on its behalf, raised funds, and worked closely with Aubrey Williams, president of SCEF, and Dombrowski, its director, on projects “dedicated to the fight against racial segregation and discrimination in all fields of social endeavor.”

  In 1952 SCEF issued a stunning pamphlet, The Untouchables, that protested the death-dealing situation that people of color faced all across the country when they were in need of emergency medical attention. Illustrated by Ben Shahn, with text by New Orleans journalist Alfred Maund—who edited The Southern Patriot, SCEF’s monthly magazine—The Untouchables was part of SCEF’s campaign to end hospital segregation and medical neglect, which ER supported financially and through several public events. In her 17 October column, she asked her white readers to imagine what might happen to them in Asia or the Middle East if such “segregation were practiced against us . . . because we would be in the minority, since two-thirds of the world’s people are colored.” ER concluded on a note of hope, since SCEF had inspired a citizens’ movement to replace “Jim Crow medical care” with comprehensive health services for all, under way in many states including New York and Kentucky.

  Our leadership of “the free world,” she wrote in 1956, depended on our realization that “the white race is a minority race.” Around the world “colored people have been exploited by white people and they are suspicious of us.” Every time we “deny to any of our citizens equal rights it is proof . . . that freedom is no more real in the United States than it is in the Soviet Union. . . . We must face the facts,” and make significant changes. As white supremacists organized to resist the Supreme Court’s 1954 school desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, and as Dixiecrats returned to positions of congressional dominance, ER had no illusions, but she did have specific suggestions: “In the North . . . before integrating our schools we must get rid of segregated housing, and that is not easy. We can do it but it will take determined” and persistent citizen action. “In the South the first problem is the right to vote. Until we have that we cannot do anything. This is a Federal right and the Federal government can do something.” Republican rule and partisan compromise had suspended all promises, and ER hoped that a victory for Adlai Stevenson would change that. But above all she called for an activist movement—to give people hope, to work to end disease and poverty, and thereby to maintain “our prestige in the world.”

  In 1958 ER attended Harry Belafonte’s concert in Brussels that, as he said, “inaugurated the American pavilion of the World’s Fair.” She wrote a stunning review and visited Harry, his wife, Julie, and their baby David at their hotel. She held little David “as she discussed world affairs,” whereupon he wet her lap. ER just laughed and said, “Well, little man! Thank you for your opinion!” Their friendship flourished, and the Belafontes made many visits to Val-Kill and dined with ER in New York City. In addition to Harry Belafonte’s civil rights work, he increased his support for the Wiltwyck School for troubled black and white youth—which ER and their mutual friend Dr. Viola Bernard, a New York social worker and integration leader, supported. Belafonte was outraged by his inability to rent an apartment in New York City. He filed a complaint against the city and called a press conference. ER wrote on 20 October 1958,

  I am sure that every New Yorker was shocked . . . to read that Harry Belafonte and his charming wife and baby were finding it practically impossible to get an apartment. . . . I have long been saying that in the North we have only one step to take to meet the Supreme Court order of nonsegregation in schools, and that is nonsegregation in housing. . . . We are a mixture of races in New York City, and every neighborhood should in normal course become a mixed neighborhood.

  Personally, ER said, she would enjoy nothing more than having the Belafontes as her neighbors, and she hoped they found “a home shortly where they and their enchanting little boy can grow up without feeling the evils of the segregation pattern. Discrimination does something intangible and harmful to the souls of both white and colored people.”

  The next day ER invited the Belafontes to move in with her. Although delighted, they refused, since they and several friends had decided to purchase a building at 300 West End Avenue, one that had refused to rent to him, and create an integrated cooperative. As their friendship grew, ER introduced Harry to many of the new African leaders she worked with through the UN Association, including Achar Maroff, the UN ambassador from Guinea; the son of Habib Bourgiba, Tunisia’s first president; and Tom Mboya of Kenya. She also offered him profound advice: occasional demonstrations were not enough to achieve civil rights for blacks in the United States—it would require a nationally organized, vigorous, and persistent movement. As FDR had told A. Philip Randolph, “Go out and make me do it.” Harry Belafonte believed that ER had become a “socialist” and that government needed to do more to confront “race . . . the greatest barrier to that more equitable vision” that promised “social benefits and job opportunities” for all.

  Belafonte was correct about ER. She was a revolutionary who believed everybody should have equal opportunity, excellent education, and the comforts of life in a community that cared. She had devoted her life’s work to the achievement of security for all. During the 1930s she had insisted that everyone must have enough means to enjoy the benefits of “graciousness and freedom.” The New Deal promised an end to poverty and the pattern of “building a civilization on hu
man suffering.” Achieving this goal required imposing higher taxes and limitations upon the irresponsible, greedy actual “restrictions on their freedom to make fortunes.” When in 1960 the sit-ins for integration began, ER urged college students everywhere to “go South for freedom.” She lived to see a new day dawn, and see her work for universal human rights become a worldwide movement.

  In January 1961, John F. Kennedy named her chair of the President’s Committee on the Status of Women and reappointed her to the U.S. delegation to the UN. There she worked closely with her friend Adlai Stevenson—now UN ambassador—to renegotiate human rights covenants. She was gratified by the changed UN environment. Among the representatives of the many new nations, freed from colonial domination, the idea of human rights had spirited support. She was proud to be part of the global “social revolution” for civil rights and human rights that was under way.*

  On 5 November 1961 ER endorsed the American Friends Service Committee’s declaration of conscience to protest “the present drift toward war.” She affirmed her conviction that “freedom and democracy could not survive nuclear war” and called for a popular movement to demand disarmament.

  Long before most of America’s leadership appreciated the changing needs of this planet, ER did. In September 1962, she wrote a column that anticipated the primary challenge of our time:

  It has always seemed to me that we never present our case to the smaller nations in either a persuasive or interesting way. I think most people will acknowledge . . . that we have given far more military aid to these nations than economic aid. It is not very pleasant to palm off this military equipment on people who really are not looking for it. The fiction is that they are being given military aid so that they will be better able to cope with any Communist attack. But all the nations where we do this know quite well that it is pure fiction. . . .

  In view of this, why don’t we offer them something they really want? For one thing, most of them would like food. Many of them, as they watch the development of the bigger nations, want to establish the beginnings of industry. But they know that wider training of their people is essential . . . and hence a primary need is aid to their education system..

  Until her death on 7 November 1962, ER was committed to a liberal vision and to hope. In Tomorrow Is Now, her last book, published three months after her death, she looked to the future with genuine optimism. With “proper education . . . a strong sense of responsibility for our own actions, with a clear awareness that our future is linked with the welfare of the world as a whole, we may justly anticipate that the life of the next generation will be richer, more peaceful, more rewarding than any we have ever known.” For the future the United States needed to resurrect with conviction and daring the good American word liberal, “which derives from the word free. . . . We must cherish and honor the word free or it will cease to apply to us.”

  Eleanor Roosevelt’s international journey reflects the full range of the complex tides of the twentieth century. Committed to improving the quality of life, she made the noblest values seem globally achievable. She believed in the power of ideas to transform society. In Tomorrow Is Now, she wrote that social change required that ideas be faced with imagination, integrity, and courage. That was how she lived her life and pursued the most controversial and complex issues of state, none of which have become any less controversial. Ultimately, she embodied her own creed: “The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.”

  Adlai Stevenson, in his eulogies for ER both at the UN General Assembly on 9 November, and at New York’s Cathedral of Saint John the Divine on 17 November, most eloquently defined that legacy:

  Her life was crowded, restless, and fearless. Perhaps she pitied most not those whom she aided in the struggle, but the more fortunate who were preoccupied with themselves and cursed with the self-deceptions of private success. She walked in the slums and the ghettos of the world, not on a tour of inspection . . . but as one who could not feel complacent while others were hungry, and who could not find contentment while others were in distress. This was not sacrifice; this, for Eleanor Roosevelt, was the only meaningful way of life. . . .

  Like so many others, I have lost more than a beloved friend. I have lost an inspiration. She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.

  More than half a century later, ER’s glow continues to warm the world with the hope that human rights will be observed in every home and village—and increasingly be accepted as women’s rights and children’s rights. The world movement to achieve the conception of human rights that ER advanced is under way. Someday poverty will be replaced by dignity and respect, and we will unite to save our small blue endangered water planet—which we all do happen to share.

  “The First Lady of Radio”: Listeners all over America and the world heard Eleanor Roosevelt’s voice regularly throughout the war.

  ER’s constituency took in all ages.

  A harmonious four-generation family moment at Hyde Park, with SDR in the center.

  ER and Queen Elizabeth in an automobile as they leave the station for the White House in 1939.

  The motorcade during King George VI and Queen Elizabeth’s visit in 1939.

  Journalist Lorena Hickok was among ER’s closest friends and confidantes.

  ER presenting Marian Anderson with the Springarn medal from the NAACP in 1939. The medal is awarded for outstanding achievement.

  ER with Director of the Office of Civil Defense Fiorello LaGuardia (center) and Assistant Director James M. Landis (right) in 1942.

  The folk singer Pete Seeger entertaining ER, honored guest at a Valentine’s Day party to mark the opening of the racially integrated United Federal Labor Canteen in Washington in 1944.

  ER with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.

  ER with students of a motor pool school during her trip to England in 1942.

  ER talking with a woman machinist during her goodwill tour of Great Britain in 1942.

  ER with Tuskegee Airmen pilots.

  FDR and ER greet war wounded at the White House.

  ER smilingly chats with an injured naval man.

  ER on a trip to Central and South America.

  ER visits an injured soldier in a South Pacific hospital.

  Bernard Baruch and ER, 1949.

  ER with Esther Lape.

  ER arrives at the opening of the Washington Labor Canteen, sponsored by the United Federal Workers of America, Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1944.

  ER continued to appear at community events long after leaving the White House.

  ER as a UN delegate.

  Madame Vijayalakshmi Pandit (right) with Vera Brittain.

  ER holds up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December, 1948.

  ER at the Metropolitan Duane United Methodist Church, New York City, 3 November, 1949.

  ER with JFK and other politicians in the 1960s.

  ER with her friend Mayris “Tiny” Chaney, the dancer.

  Future congresswoman Bella Savitsky Abzug on the dais with ER and Hunter president George Shuster, at ER’s first speaking engagement at Hunter, February 1941.

  ER at the Metropolitan Duane United Methodist Church, New York City, 3 November, 1949.

  Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884–1962.

  List of Archives

  Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, FDRL

  Arizona Collection

  David Gray Collection

  Edith Nourse Rogers Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA

  Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, www.gwu.edu (My Day columns)

  Franklin D. Roosevelt Library (FDRL), Hyde Park, NY

  Glenn Horowitz Collection, New York

  Grace Tully Collection, FDRL

  Henry
Morgenthau Papers

  Joseph P. Lash Papers, FDRL

  Lorena Hickok Papers, FDRL

  Martha Gellhorn Collection, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

  NAACP Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC

  Pauli Murray Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA

  Peter Pratt Papers

  President’s Personal File, FDRL

  President’s Secretary’s File, FDRL

  Sumner Welles Papers, FDRL

  WILPF Archive, Geneva

  Woody Guthrie Archives, New York