Eleanor Roosevelt

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  ER’s silence, despite all the information sent to her, remains in retrospect thunderous. She was frequently advised by her husband or State Department officials to remain discreet and uninvolved, and diplomatic silence was occasionally ordered for no apparent reason in relation to the most banal and seemingly uncontroversial issues, such as the April 1935 international broadcast to celebrate Jane Addams’s birthday and the WILPF’s twentieth year.

  In May 1935, an extraordinary exchange of memos concerned the decision of an international flower show in the Netherlands to name “a new tulip” for the First Lady. Press reports were blocked after discussions between Steve Early, ER’s staff, and William Phillips, then undersecretary of state. Early wrote Tommy: “I think it would be a mistake if we gave publicity to this very complimentary message from Amsterdam.” He suggested a note to express “Mrs. Roosevelt’s appreciation” of “this very complimentary message” be sent by the State Department to the U.S. embassy. To censor news about a flower show surely indicates the depth of America’s isolationism.

  The State Department opposed all public expressions of protest against Hitler’s activities. On 8 January 1934, Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland submitted a resolution (SR 154) requesting the president “to communicate … an unequivocal statement of the profound feeling of surprise and pain experienced by the people of the United States upon learning of the discriminations and oppressions imposed by the Reich upon its Jewish citizens …” Further, the resolution called upon FDR “to express the earnest hope of the people of the U.S. that the German Reich will speedily alter its policy, restore to its Jewish nationals the civil and political rights of which they have been deprived, and undo so far as may be the wrongs that have been done them.”

  The State Department strangled the resolution. Hull argued it would impinge on FDR’s “constitutional initiative.” Although State Department counsel R. Walton Moore acknowledged historic precedent, such as Congress’s 1867 resolution to protest Turkish dominion over the people of Crete, he advised against it nevertheless because it “might lead to embarrassing recriminations about the Negro problem in America.”

  Sam Rosenman urged FDR to support it, after it was modified to express Senate opinion solely. A significant rally for the Tydings resolution ensued. Isabella Greenway was urged to support it by her Phoenix constituents, one of whom wrote: “I assure you that such action on your part will be deeply appreciated by every citizen of Arizona of the Jewish faith, and those who … believe in equal rights and religious freedom.”

  She replied: “I recognize the importance of this Resolution and can assure you that it will receive my careful attention when it comes before the House of Representatives.” But it remained buried in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, because of State Department opposition.

  Greenway’s correspondence is significant, since she and ER met regularly for an “air our minds” lunch. The lunches were important to ER, and she referred to them in a “My Day” column:

  Four of us, all intimately connected with public life for many years—two through our husbands, and two through their own efforts—get together every few weeks at luncheon to unburden our souls. Each time we do it, I think what a safeguard it is to have anyone anywhere in the world whom you feel you can talk to with absolute sincerity and with no danger of having the rest of the world knowing anything about it, or of any misunderstanding arising between you individually….

  We laugh together a great deal, but I often come away with the feeling that back of the laughter something serious was really on our minds and all the better for being off our minds.

  The State Department considered the suppression of another protest during the spring of 1934: On 7 March a broad spectrum of public citizens organized a “mock trial” at Madison Square Garden. Sponsored by the American Federation of Labor and the American Jewish Congress, “The Case of Civilization Against Hitlerism” attracted twenty thousand people. Several of FDR’s former colleagues participated, including Al Smith and Raymond Moley. Academics and politicians abounded, including New York’s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Senator Robert Wagner, and Woodrow Wilson’s last secretary of state, Bainbridge Colby, who presided. According to Arnold Offner, German officials protested immediately upon seeing advertisements for the event.

  Although his wife was Jewish, Secretary of State Cordell Hull wanted no protests against Germany. He was “disappointed” that he could not stop the Garden event. Hull assured Germany’s ambassador it was no reflection of U.S. policy, and he “frowned on the American Jewish Congress’ invitation to the German embassy to provide counsel for the defendant.” Germany’s ambassador Hans Luther was persuaded that American diplomats had tried to prevent the rally and it was all the work of “liberal, pacifistic, Jewish, Socialist, and Communist circles.” Hitler was furious, and he threatened William Dodd in a meeting on 7 March: The cursed Jews would be “eliminated” in Germany “if outside agitation did not stop.”

  Silenced on the situation in Europe, ER sought to limit the rise of anti-Semitism and race bigotry within the United States. Her work with the NAACP intensified during this period, and she responded with clarity and outrage whenever Jewish groups or individuals were attacked in the United States.

  Given the deeply pervasive bigotry in the country, her every gesture toward Jews was guaranteed to achieve publicity. Aware that even her presence at a Jewish gathering was controversial, ER appeared regularly before Jewish groups. In April 1933, she attended a Jewish Federation luncheon at the Hotel Commodore, which elicited profound gratitude:

  In view of the many unkind discriminations and in some instances ruthless persecutions to which my co-religionists, at present, are subjected in other lands, your gracious [presence] … was a very heartening evidence of the liberal feelings entertained by the First Family of our Land.

  May our glorious land ever be blessed with leaders of enlightenment….

  ER replied: “I was very glad indeed to attend the Jewish Federation Luncheon and I am very gratified to know that you feel it was helpful. Both my husband and I deeply appreciate your good wishes.” Before she actually spoke before a Jewish group, however, she carefully considered which organization to address. As usual, in such matters she relied upon Elinor Morgenthau’s advice.

  Elinor Morgenthau was ER’s closest Jewish woman friend. Although she and her husband were secular “assimilationist” Jews who tended to turn away from Jewish issues during the 1930s, she was extremely sensitive to the Jew-hating world surrounding her. A most extraordinary and revealing description of Elinor Morgenthau, only slightly disguised, was captured by South African writer Sarah Gertrude Millin, who spent several days with ER in New York City and at the Executive Mansion in Albany in 1929.

  Being Jewish in a hostile world, Millin observed, was akin to suffering a chronic disease. Some suffered in secret, while others “cannot stop discussing it, so there are Jews who keep their Jewish pain to themselves and others who speak of it….”

  After a long talk with Elinor Morgenthau over lunch, Millin wrote:

  This woman was of the kind who had, all the time, to be speaking of Jews. She did so in a frightened, determined manner, out of a courage invoked to overcome fear.

  She passed from the position of Jews in America to the position of Jews in Palestine. She told me how odd she thought it that when the Arabs murdered the Jews the British Mandatory should sympathize, not with the Jews, but the Arabs.

  Having said this, however, it struck her that, as a South African and therefore British, I might be offended….

  But Millin reassured her:

  “Oh, no” … “you’re quite right … and it makes my Jewish blood boil too.”

  There was a momentary standstill at the table, and then the talk went on.

  After the luncheon, while strolling with ER, Millin probed her about the Jewish situation in America, and ER was frank to impart her own understanding. Concerning her friend specifically, ER explained:

/>   “Mrs. X belongs to a distinguished family and she has married into another distinguished family. They’re among our best citizens—wealthy and cultured. I like them tremendously. Nevertheless, they’re not socially accepted.”

  “Simply because they’re Jews?”

  “Yes….”

  “It’s never over in America.”

  “Like the last drop of Negro blood….”

  ER acknowledged that there “are schools which won’t admit the children of the greatest Jewish families in the land, and clubs and hotels which won’t admit [even men and women] … in the highest official positions….”

  On one occasion ER intervened to advocate for the admission of a Jewish friend’s child to a school that claimed “there was no vacancy”:

  [But] immediately afterwards, another child was accepted.

  “It was a really serious affront…. The mother cried when she told me about it. It was unbearable, she said, for her to meet people officially who, in effect, would not let her child associate with their children.”…

  “And what can one do?” went on Mrs. Roosevelt. “The will of the people is a difficult thing….”

  Millin asked about ER’s own school, Todhunter:

  “Jews are not excluded…. In fact, at this moment, the heads of both the upper and lower schools are Jewish girls.”

  “Because they’re the top of their forms?”

  “No. It goes by election. They’ve been chosen by the girls themselves. That shows a good spirit, don’t you think?”

  “Are there many Jewish children in the school?”

  “Quite a number.”

  “As many as you would like to come?”

  Mrs. Roosevelt’s honest grey eyes looked down into mine.

  “No.”

  “You mean, there’s a limit?”

  “Not technically.”

  “But it works out that way?”

  “I’m sorry—I’m very sorry—but I’m afraid there’s a feeling—even, I think, among the Jews themselves—that the spirit of the school, and the school itself, would be different if we had too large a proportion of Jewish children.”

  I knew it was so: that the Gentiles resented the idea of too many Jews; and that the Jews, dreading this resentment, equally resented it.

  I asked her if she thought it would ever be possible for Americans to consider all their fellow citizens—Jews too—as simply Americans.

  [ER replied:]

  “That is the American tradition…. the difficulty is that the country is still full of immigrant Jews, very unlike ourselves. I don’t blame them for being as they are. I know what they’ve been through in other lands, and I’m glad they have freedom at last, and I hope they’ll have the chance, among us, to develop all there is in them. But it takes a little time for Americans to be made. And, meanwhile, the old stock can’t feel they’re Americans, and unfortunately they also class real Americans who are Jews together with them. Well, one day, I hope, we’ll all be Americans together.”

  In ER’s culture and family of origin, Jews were regarded as different, though not necessarily inferior. Even Jews of “old stock” were tinged with a vague sense of otherness.

  Henry Morgenthau III recalled that despite all the apparent closeness between the Roosevelts and the Morgenthaus, “there was a certain distance…. For example, in those days I could not have gone nor would they even have thought of my going to the same schools that the Roosevelt children went to.”

  In turn, old-stock German Jewish families regarded Central and Eastern European Jews as “the other kind”—folks who refused or failed to assimilate, and were to be shunned. While individual Jews occasionally entered America’s mainstream, they were discouraged from leadership circles. Those invited in were exceptions, made to feel exceptional.

  Bernard Baruch was a rare exception, ultimately a remarkable bridge between FDR and Winston Churchill. Baruch’s friendship with ER grew slowly, awkwardly, surprisingly. He was not of her class, and not of her kind, but they actually enjoyed each other’s company. That seemed to many of ER’s other friends incomprehensible. Some thought he merely used her—to get closer to FDR. Others thought she merely used him—for his material generosity to causes she cared about.

  Actually the closer Baruch grew to ER, the more FDR withdrew. FDR’s inner circle and “Brains Trust” dismissed Baruch as “obnoxious,” the “wolf of Wall Street.” Evidently Sam Rosenman particularly advised the president to avoid him.

  But ER increasingly relied upon him. When they first met in January 1918, ER was candidly, though privately, anti-Semitic—especially in correspondence with her mother-in-law. When, as wife of the assistant secretary of the navy, she was obliged to attend a party given by the Admiralty to honor Bernard Baruch, then chair of the War Industries Board, ER wrote her mother-in-law that it was a party “I’d rather be hung than seen at.” It promised to be “mostly Jews.” After the party, ER reported: “The Jew party was appalling. I never wish to hear money, jewels, and sables mentioned again.”

  Within months of that party, FDR invited Felix Frankfurter home for dinner. ER found her husband’s friend unpleasant. The Harvard professor and public servant was, she wrote SDR: “an interesting little man, but very Jew.”

  ER’s caustic comments concerning Jews remained a routine part of her social observation for many years, diminishing as her friendship with Baruch and other Jews flourished. In November 1918, ER and Baruch sailed for Europe aboard the same ship and evidently waltzed together and spent long hours in comfortable conversation. ER loved to dance, and Baruch at six feet four—as tall as her brother—was strikingly handsome in formal attire. She, at six feet, was as tall as his wife, Annie Griffen—with whom he never traveled. In Paris, Baruch presented ER with “a lot of roses.” He thought her gracious, interesting, and charming. She thought him gallant, interesting, and unusual.

  Throughout the 1920s he supported her new concerns, especially the Todhunter School, and their friendship solidified during Al Smith’s 1928 presidential campaign. Together they witnessed “the horror prejudice could make” in a nation’s political life as they encountered in city after city burning crosses, and various demonstrations of violent religious bigotry against Smith, against Catholics, against immigrants and “others.”

  During the 1930s, ER called Baruch “one of the wisest and most generous people I have ever known.” Like Earl Miller, Baruch always “defended” ER. He stood at her side whenever she needed him or seemed to be in trouble, and he usually arrived before the trouble began. On one occasion ER wrote Baruch an intimate letter of gratitude: “There are few people one trusts without reservation in life and I am deeply grateful to call you that kind of a friend.” For publication, she noted that she appreciated his respect for her views and values: Bernard Baruch “looks on me as a mind, not as a woman.”

  Among the reasons ER considered Baruch a wise and splendid friend was his 1929 dealings with Churchill, which engendered Baruch’s status as Churchill’s “favorite American.”

  Shortly after the stock market crash, Churchill, an enthusiastic gambler, visited New York and decided to play the exchange as if he were in Monte Carlo. He appeared at Baruch’s office to do so. William Manchester described the scene: “At the end of the day he confronted Baruch in tears. He was, he said, a ruined man. Chartwell and everything else he possessed must be sold; he would have to leave the House of Commons….”

  Baruch calmed him. He had lost nothing: “Baruch had left instructions to buy every time Churchill sold and sell whenever Churchill bought. Winston had come out exactly even because, he later learned, Baruch even paid the commissions.”

  An ardent sportsman, trained as a boxer, courtly and vital, Bernard Baruch was defined by social contradictions. Committed to his marriage, he was a renowned though somewhat esoteric womanizer. According to Helen Lawrenson, although “a philanderer, Baruch was not a passionate man.” There was a pattern to his interests: He preferred political women, “w
ith spunk and talent,” women “who could make a keynote speech at a political convention,” and then fancied himself a “mentor to their careers.” He encouraged them to work, to succeed, to triumph.

  Although there were others, Helen Lawrenson, Clare Boothe Luce, and ER were his most frequent and notable women companions. According to Lawrenson, Baruch always treated his wife with courtesy and respect, but she was not interested in politics and travel and “seemed content to let him go his own way.” Throughout the 1930s, whenever Baruch returned from Europe, he “brought back gifts for various women friends, including Mrs. Roosevelt and me, but Clare had first pick.”

  Associated with New York and financial success, he considered himself above all a Southern gentleman. In 1905 he purchased a twenty-four-thousand-acre estate, Hobcaw Barony, in South Carolina, a string of former plantations and “nine Negro villages.”

  Bound to South Carolina, the state of his birth, “by ties of blood and love,” Baruch transcended customary and partisan boundaries in his friendships but never challenged the South’s traditional “race etiquette.” Baruch always saw himself as a Southerner first, then as an American. According to Margaret Coit, Baruch never identified himself as a Jew, and when he said “my people,” he referred primarily to Americans, Southerners, or even more specifically to South Carolinians.

  He felt Jewish entirely by accident and irrelevantly. His father was an immigrant from Poland who was educated and became a physician in South Carolina. A Confederate officer and pioneering healer who introduced public baths and the appendectomy to America, Dr. Baruch, ironically, also became a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Baruch’s mother’s family arrived in the colonies in 1695. His mother’s forebear Captain Isaac Rodriguez Marques, an affluent Sephardic Jew, sailed out of Amsterdam with three ships. Baruch liked to think he was a pirate.