243 Marianna lynching horrible: ER to White, 20 Nov. 1934; White to ER, 8 Nov. 1934; White to ER, enclosure to FDR, 27 Dec. 1934; ER to White, n.d., Dec. 1934/100, Box 1362; “I wonder if you could advise me”: White to ER, 10 Jan. 1935; “I talked to the Pres”: n.d., Jan. 1935; cf. White to FDR, 12 Jan. 35/ re the brazen shooting of Jerome Wilson, 28, by a mob yesterday in Louisiana. His father, John Wilson, was a prosperous farmer, and the cause was envy: In 1934, he purchased 80 acres to add to his already large farm: “Mr. Wilson’s prosperity … aroused the enmity and jealousy of some of the whites….”
244 looked forward to visiting a controversial art exhibit: White to ER, 17 Jan. 1935; ER to White, 21 Jan. 1935; NYT called it “macabre”: Sitkoff, p. 288.
244 safer if ER did not attend: ER to White on the exhibit, 13 Feb, n.d., Mar. 1935, 100/Box 1362. White to ER, 12 Feb. 1935; 18 Feb. 1935.
245 Triplet controversy: Wiley Hall, chair of the Theban Beneficial Club, Richmond, 14 Jan. 1935; ER to Hall 22 Jan. 1935/100; ER to Woodward, 20 Dec. 1934; Woodward to Scheider, 18 Dec. 1934; Ella Agnew to Woodward, 14 Dec. 1935; Woodward to Scheider, 23 Jan. 35 (“we all regret”); Agnew to Woodward, 22 Jan. 1935; Agnew to every member of the staff, “these files are confidential; any violater will be summarily dismissed,” 22 Jan. 1935/70/672.
245 Leonidas Dyer to White, 28 Jan. 35; White to ER 1 Feb. 35, “I, however, still cling to my belief that you and the president….” Also, WW to Dyer, 2 Feb. 1935, sent to ER.
245 ER had penciled on White’s letter: 14 Mar. 1935, Box 1362.
246 White resigned in protest: White to ER, with enclosures, 3 May 1935, including “last week’s Afro-American which pays you so well-merited a tribute”; White to FDR, 6 May 1935; 1362; cf. Nancy Weiss, pp. 113–14; “I am so sorry”: ER to White, 8 May 1935; White to ER, 9 May 1935 with copy of his resignation letter; and 23 May, with letter NAACP sent to senators, including the Des Moines (Iowa) Register editorial of 4 May/100, Box 1362.
246 Wilkins invitation: Roy Wilkins to ER, 20 May 1935; FDR memo to Scheider, 28 May 1935; ER acquiesced, letter of regret, ER to White, 15 June 1935. Ultimately Josephine Roche attended, and made a “great speech.” White to ER 3 July.
248 Morgenthau’s testimony: “Statement of the Secretary of the Treasury on the Economic Security Bill,” 5 Feb. 1935, in ER, Box 665; with “Summary of Social Security Bill as it is at present before the House (HR 7260), n.d., May 1935, Box 665; Europe’s social security precedents: in Mimi Abramovitz, p. 230. Frances Perkins, p. 293; 297–98.
249 ER contradicted Morgenthau’s proposak: ER, “Mobilization for Human Needs, Democratic Digest (Nov. 1933), pi; see esp. ER’s response to Dr. Townsend’s movement for old-age security in citizen letters, for example, ER to Janie Ballard, 5 Dec. 1934; ER to C. H. Bartels, 1 Nov. 1934; 70. On 5 Jan. 1934, to D.C. branch of American Association for Social Security.
249 “First Lady Pleads for Old Age Pensions,” herein she called for “universal old age insurance,” Social Security (Feb. 1934), pp. 3–4.
250 ER’s 27 Feb. 1935 press conference: Beasley, pp. 28–29; NYT, “Wife Acclaims Roosevelt’s Deeds…,” 3 Mar. 1935, p. 1.
250 “Here I hardly count anything”: ER to Hick, 22, 23 Jan. 1935; glad for their talk: ER to Hick, 25 Jan. 1935.
251 “Would you like to write it”: ER to Hick; “I know how you feel”: 26 Jan. 1935.
251 WPA a compromise for work security: June Hopkins to BWC, July 1997.
252 “a gray and gloomy day”: ER to Hick, 29 Jan. 1935. The height of the social season was under way, there were congressional receptions, endless events, FDR’s birthday balls: “Hick darling, I want you but you would be more unhappy, as you were, hanging around here while I went through this deadly round. At least in New York you’ve got people you like and a city you enjoy.” 31 Jan. 1935.
253 “Of course you should have had a husband”: ER to Hick, 1 Feb. 1935.
253 “I’d have to be chloroformed first!”: ER to Hick, 7 Feb. 1935.
253 February songs of duality: 14 Feb. from Elmira; 15 Feb. in Ithaca; with Earl 16 Feb. 1935.
254 snowbound Hyde Park weekend: ER to Hick, 24 Feb. 1935.
254 “Dearest Babs”: FDR to ER, 31 Mar. 1935; Letters, pp. 469–70.
254 “You have been constantly in my thoughts through Howe’s illness—the strain must be unbearable….” Greenway to ER, 4 Apr. 1935, 100/Box 1340; Hope Chamberlin on Greenway, p. 111.
254 particularly mindful of NAACP opposition: Haynes, “Lily-White Social Security,” The Crisis, Mar. 1935, pp. 85–86.
255 ER distributed articles from The Crisis: Roy Wilkins to ER, 27 Oct. 1934; Oct. 1934 issue of Crisis; ER to Richberg, 10 Oct., 1 Nov. Richberg to ER 9 Nov. 1934, with Gustav Peck’s answer in The Crisis, and Suzanne La Follette’s 5 Sept. 1934 Nation article, “A Message to Uncle Tom;” and Peck to Richberg, 6 Nov. 1934.
255 ER to Richberg, 20 Nov.; 22 Nov. 1934: “I sincerely hope …” 100, Box 1316; ER hated ceremony: ER to Hick, 25 Apr. 1935; “Every president and his family go through it”: ER to Hick, 26 Apr. 1935; exchange with SDR: 26 Apr. 1935.
256 Harlem exploded: Thomas Kessner, Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York (Penguin, 1989), pp. 368–77.
257 Dewson to Agnes Brown Leach, 26 Feb. 1935; Dewson to Greenway, 20 Dec. 1934; Dewson to Leach, 11 Mar. 1935, Women’s Division Papers, Box 118; cf. BWC on Leach in Crystal Eastman; cf. vol. I. Leach on Perkins, quoted in Ware, p. 100; Dewson to ER, and Lucy R. Mason, quoted in Ware, p. 100; on social security, Dewson to ER, 10 Apr. 1935.
In 1964, Frances Perkins taught at Cornell and was surprised to be confronted by student questions about race. Bewildered by her disinterest, one student asked if the “Negro question were not the litmus test of liberalism?” Perkins answered: “Many people never gave it a thought,” and in FDR’s administration the Negro question “came very late.” It was “really not” an issue “until the war.” Perkins lectures, Cornell University Archives, 22 Sept. 1964, pp. 49–52. On lily white Social Security, Perkins said nothing.
257 ER in a rare state: ER to Hick, 27, 28 Apr. 1935.
258 28 Apr. 1935, FDR’s Fireside Chats, pp. 63–72.
258 ER supported Wagner: Richard Lieberman to BWC.
259 “My calm”: ER to Hick, 29 Apr.; 1 May 1935. Lash, Love Eleanor, p. 222; never blow off to F: ER to Hick, 2 May 1935.
259 Jane Addams considered it a “wild” idea: Hannah Clothier Hull to Jane Addams, 31 Jan. 1935, SCPC/JA Project; Jane Addams to Hull, declining a congressional resolution, though pleased ER and Edna St. Vincent Millay planned to speak, “it is lovely and thrilling,” 13 Mar. 1935; Mary Moss Wellborn to JA, 13 Mar. 1935; Hull to JA, 14 Mar. 1935.
259 Silenced by the State Department: Mary Moss Welborn to Edith Helm, 27 Apr. 1935, with State Department Memo; international broadcast and dinner lists of speakers, 2 May 1935.
260 “Touch the floor!”: ER to Hick, 8–9 May 1935; new pool lovely: 10 May 1935.
260 ER wished Hick “could be happy” at Val-Kill, “but you and I will have to build a cabin together somewhere else sometime!” 11 May 1935.
266 poem: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “A Woman’s Shortcomings;” see vol. I.; ER on love: 13 May 1935.
261 ER to Hick, 15 May 1935. But above all, 15, 16, 17, 19 May.
262 See ER’s FBI files on “Eleanor Clubs”; Sandy Vanocour to BWC on pushing” days in his childhood.
262 tours coal mines: NYT, 22 May 1935; ER’s press conference: Beasley, p. 32.
263 ER telegram to Jane Addams, 20 Jan. 1935, Jane Addams Project; Louise deKoven Bowen, Open Windows (Chicago: Fletcher Seymour, 1946), p. 271.
Elizabeth Dillings, The Red Network (1934), quoted in Allen F. Davis, American Heroine: The Life and-Legend of Jane Addams (Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 268–69; cf. Elizabeth Dilling, The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background (published by the author in Chicago, 1936).
263 Jane Addams’s obituary and Hitler’s Reichstag speech: NYT, 2
2 May 1935.
14: The Victories of Summer, 1935
264 In 1936, when the Veterans’ Bonus came up again, it finally passed over FDR’s veto; and in that election year veterans received their bonus.
264 Ken Davis, pp. 513–14; cf. Hope Chamberlin on Greenway, p. 111; Caroline O’Day voted to uphold his veto. FDR was pleased to have her “slant on things,” and “I am grateful to you for voting ‘No.’” O’Day to FDR, 23 May 1935; FDR to O’Day, 29 May 1935, PPF.
265 ER regretted: TIR, 136; Ken Davis, 516.
266 ER and WTUL: See esp. Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working Class Politics in the U.S., 1900–1965 (University of North Carolina, 1995, pp. 159, 166.
266–67 women’s labor movement refortified: See especially Anne Firor Scott, “After Suffrage: Southern Women in the Twenties,” in Gott, ed., History of Women in the U.S., vol. 17, part 2, pp. 586–606; Lucy Randolph Mason, To Win These Rights: A Personal Story of the CIO in the South (1952); John Salmond, Miss Lucy of the CIO: The Life and Times of Lucy Randolph Mason (University of Georgia, 1988); “the men instinctively got to their feet”: Virginia Durr on Miss Lucy, quoted in Pat Sullivan, p. 96.
267 Harry Hopkins escorted Flanagan: Hallie Flanagan, Arena: The Story of the Federal Theatre (Limelight Editions, 1985 [1940]), pp. 3–4.
268 Soon the Federal Theatre: Flanagan to ER, Report, 23 Dec. 1935; Hallie Flanagan, Arena, pp. 9–12; 24–28; Flanagan to ER, 8 Jan. 1936/70 Box 681; cf. Jacob Baker to Vassar president H. H. MacCracken, 28 May 1935, cc Scheider, 70/ Hopkins, Box 653; Jane DeHart Matthews, The Federal Theatre, 1935–1939: Plays, Relief, Politics (Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 20–21, 28–29.
268 ER relished: Flanagan to ER, 8 Jan. 1936, with enclosure “Men at Work,” L.A.’s Federal Theatre Bulletin, with Flanagan quote.
269 “stranded generation,” and “wandering women”: Ruby Black, pp. 210–11; She agitated for a youth conference: ER to Studebaker, 8 Mar. 1935; with Studebaker’s speech, Box 666.
269–70 “I waited”: TIR, p. 163.
270 NYA was inclusive: In May, FDR also issued EO 7046, which prohibited discrimination on WPA projects. On 22 July, Hopkins assured ER: “The work program does not permit any discrimination against Negro workers.” White to ER, 13 June 1935, with attachments; ER to White, with Hopkins 22 July statement, 1 Aug. 1935/100. NYA “politically popular”: TIR, p. 163; see also Sitkoff, p. 73; Anthony Badger, pp. 207–9; Ruby Black, p. 215.
271 The 28–30 Mar. 1935 conference on “Women’s Work and Women’s Stake in Public Affairs” honored ER; Robert Wagner keynoted; sponsored by Connecticut College’s Institute of Women’s Professional Relations; copy of program attached, ER to Studebaker, 8 Mar. 1935, Box 666.
271–72 ER and NYA details, correspondence: Margaret Ordway to ER, 12 Apr. 1937; Aubrey Williams, Box 4; ER to Williams, 30 Nov. 1935; Williams to ER, 22 Nov. 1935; Williams to ER, 20 Aug. 1935, Box 671; 16 Jan. 1936, with summary of NYA program and results to date; Williams to ER, NYA Activities with Special Reference to Negro Youth, 12 Feb. 1936; re Flora Rose’s idea of a survey. ER to Williams, 3 June 1936; Williams to ER, 10 June 1936; Pickett to ER, 14 Nov. 1935.
272 Robert Sherwood quoted in Sitkoff, p. 61.
272 FDR’s “soak the rich” Revenue Act: See Anthony Badger, The New Deal (Hill & Wang, 1988), pp. 102–4; Mark Leff, “Taxing the ‘Forgotten Man’: The Politics of Social Security Finance in the New Deal,” Journal of American History (Sept. 1983), pp. 359–81; Eliot Janeway, The Economics of Crisis: War, Politics, & the Dollar (Weybright and Talley, 1968).
273 ER at Campobello: ER to Hick, 9, 10 July, 15 July 1935.
273–74 “quite a household”: ER to Hick, 26 July 1935; Characteristically: 28 July; “I realize”: 29 July; time to read: 31 July 1935; Rebel Saints: 6 Aug.; and tennis: 9 Aug. 1935. Hick replied, 31 July; “ER had to laugh”: 2 Aug. 1935.
274–75 Hick to ER on Herzog: 31 July 1935; Woodward to ER: 16 July 1935; telegram to Welchpool: n.d., July 1935.
275 Leslie County, Kentucky: Woodward to ER, 2 Feb. 1935, FERA Library Service Work Projects for Women, report; Goodwin to ER, 24 Jan. 1935; Scheider to Kathryn Goodwin, 5 Feb. 1935, with photographs of the riders, which ER appreciated, led by Elizabeth Fullerton, Dir. Women’s Work, Ky.; Woodward to ER, 26 Oct. 1935, “This shows that as fast as General McCarl releases funds, women are being put to work along with the men.”
275–76 practice houses; sewing rooms: Woodward to ER, 7 Mar. 1936; 31 Oct. 1935; Woodward to ER, 6 Feb. 1935; 7 Feb. 1935; Woodward to ER, 3 Sept. 1935, with enclosures, on sewing rooms, which employed over 200,000 women, and purchased 150 million yards of cotton textiles—a boon to the cotton industry; Box 672; “For the first time in history,” WPA: ER to Woodward, 16 Nov. 1935, recommending June Hamilton Rhodes and Mary Dillon for her national advisory committee; Woodward to ER, 21 Dec. 1935; 7 Mar. 1936.
275–76 Woodward to ER: 25 May 1936; ER to Woodward, re glowing defense of NY’s sewing project, “I think it is grand!” 3 June 1936.
276–77 ER’s article, “Can a Woman”: ER to Hick, 30 July 1935; negative publicity: cf. Times Dispatch, 17 June 1935, in Hick, Box 2.
278 displeased by the first meeting of the AYC: ER wrongly understood it to be influenced by AYC organizer Viola Ilma’s visits with German, and Italian youth groups.
278 For the AYC’s origins, and Detroit meeting, see Leslie Gould, American Youth Today (Random House, 1940), with foreword by Eleanor Roosevelt. I am grateful to Vivian Cadden for this book. 1935 meeting, pp. 63–66; for Viola Ilma’s 1934 beginnings at NYU, pp. 54–62.
278–79 NYA’s first conference on black youth: Aubrey Williams to ER, 13 July 1935; George Peabody to ER, “I am glad to think of the conference of Negro Leaders he is to call,” 23 July; 70. Williams to ER, 16 Aug., with report, 70, Box 671. ER to Williams, 28 Aug. 1935; Williams to ER, 22 Aug., with Pittsburgh Crusader article of the meeting, 16 Aug. 1935; 100.
279 Throughout the summer: Walter White to ER, 13 June 1935; White to Hopkins, 12 June; ER to White, 1 Aug. 35, with Hopkins’s 22 July wage schedules; 100.
279–80 Early was irate: Steve Early to Malvina Scheider, 5 Aug. 1935; 100; “I realize perfectly”: ER to Early, 8 Aug. 1935, PPF, 1336.
280 As ER prepared to leave: ER to Hick, 3 Aug. 1935; “After all dear”: 12 Aug. 1935; cf. 6, 8 Aug. 1935.
280–81 “Not one damned thing”: Hick to ER, 7 Aug. 1935; In Buffalo: 9 Aug. 1935. Ishbell Ross, another pioneering woman reporter, was working on the first major history of women in journalism, Ladies of the Press, and had written Hick. Relieved to know that she was not alone in her feelings, she sent Ross’s letter to ER:
“Yesterday I heard from Winifred Black who, at 72, says she still cannot bear to stay away from a newspaper office and has no patience with her only daughter because she chose marriage instead of a newspaper career. Beyond a doubt, it’s got something, Lorena. We cant all be crazy….”
281 14 August 1935: a generation of feminist scholars led by Alice Kessler-Harris, Linda Gordon, and Mimi Abramowitz have fully explained the connections between the 1935 Social Security law and America’s acceptance of permanent poverty.
282 Social Security Act a first step: See esp. ER, “Are We Overlooking the Pursuit of happiness?” Parent’s Magazine (Sept. 1936), 21ff.
282 Hilda Worthington Smith to ER, with book Frontiers, n.d., 1935, Box 655.
15: Mobilizing for New Action
283 ER to Elinor Morgenthau, 26 Aug. 1935; “In Defense of Curiousity,” The Saturday Evening Post, 24 Aug., 1935, reprinted in Allida Black, 17–25. Upon her return from Campobello, ER and Hick settled Louis Howe into the naval hospital and then drove north to Chautauqua. ER presented a rousing speech on community responsibility for America’s neediest and still neglected people.”
284–85 Initial U.S. response to Mussolini: in Breckenridge Long, The War Diary of Breckenridge Long, ed. by Fred L. Israel (University of Nebraska Press, 1966), pp. xviii, xix;
Long to FDR 1, 27 June 1933; “at war within two years”: Long to FDR, 21 Feb. 1935; By September: Long to FDR, 6 Sept. 1935; Long to Joseph Davies, 16 Sept. 1933; FDR at cabinet, 27 August 1935: Ickes, pp. 422–23.
286 George Padmore, “Abyssinia Betrayed by the League of Nations,” The Crisis, June 1937, 166ff.
286 Winston Churchill: quoted in Manchester, 160–61.
287 Haile Selassie: quoted in Padmore, p. 188.
287 “May I draw your attention”: E. Benson to ER, 23 Nov. 1936, from 1 Swiss Cottage Rd., London SE/100.
288 “When the League failed Ethiopia”: David Bradford, “The Failure of Geneva,” The Crisis, Sept. 1936, p. 270; Dorothy Detzer, “Ethiopia at Geneva,” The Crisis, Dec. 1935, 361 ff.
288 Walter White to ER, 12 Sept. 1935; ER to White, 16 Sept. 1935.
288–89 On Anna and Harold’s courtship and marriage, see Jeanne Nienaber Clarke, Roosevelt’s Warrior: Harold Ickes and the New Deal (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 13–14, 30–32, 50–52; T. H. Watkins, p. 307. On the demise of their marriage, T. H. Watkins, pp. 148–51; Clarke, pp. 90–91.
289 Anna Ickes’s death: NYT, 1 Sept. 1935; on funeral, 4 September 1935: T. H. Watkins, pp. 408–10.
289 “It’s funny what sex can do to a man”: Jeanne Clarke, pp. 52–54.
289 When Genno Herrick returned to Washington, ER, Tommy, and their friends (Martha Strayer, Emma Bugbee, Ruby Black, and Bess Furman) surprised her with a “swell party right around her bed,” where she remained for several months. Beasley, ER and the Media, pp. 61, 105.
290 “I’m glad you like Jane Ickes”: ER to Anna, 12 Aug. 1938; 30 Aug.; Anna Halsted, Box 57.
290 “Will I ever have any leisure”: ER to Hick, 5 Sept. 1935; “Mama is furious”: 6 Sept. 1935.
290 ER’s daily column; Hick edited: ER to Hick, 8 Sept; “structure”: 10 Sept. 1935; “tough as you like,… don’t mind at all”: 14 Sept. 1935.
290–91 Huey Long was shot: William Ivy Hair, The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times of Huey Long (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press), pp. 320–26; see also Jeansonne and T. Harry Williams.
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