Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life in American History PDF
Preview Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life in American History
Eleanor Roosevelt Recent Titles in Women Making History Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life in American History Nancy Hendricks Gloria Steinem: A Life in American History William H. Pruden III Hillary Clinton: A Life in American History Kathleen Gronnerud Helen Keller: A Life in American History Meredith Eliassen Eleanor Roosevelt A LIFE IN AMERICAN HISTORY Keri F. Dearborn Women Making History Rosanne Welch and Peg A. Lamphier, Series Editors Copyright © 2022 by ABC-CLIO, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright materials in this book, but in some instances this has proven impossible. The editors and publishers will be glad to receive information leading to more complete acknowledgments in subsequent printings of the book and in the meantime extend their apologies for any omissions. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Dearborn, Keri F., author. Title: Eleanor Roosevelt : a life in American history / Keri F. Dearborn. Description: Santa Barbara, California : ABC-CLIO, [2022] | Series: Women making history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021059590 (print) | LCCN 2021059591 (ebook) | ISBN 9781440873928 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781440873935 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884–1962. | Presidents' spouses—United States—Biography. | Women social reformers—United States—Biography. | United States—Politics and government—1933–1945. Classification: LCC E807.1.R48 D44 2022 (print) | LCC E807.1.R48 (ebook) | DDC 973.917092 [B]—dc22 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059590 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059591 ISBN: 978-1-4408-7392-8 (print) 978-1-4408-7393-5 (ebook) 26 25 24 23 22 1 2 3 4 5 This book is also available as an eBook. ABC-CLIO An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 147 Castilian Drive Santa Barbara, California 93117 www.abc-clio.com This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America Contents Series Foreword vii Preface ix Introduction: Why Eleanor Roosevelt Matters xiii Chapter 1 Surviving a Tragic Childhood (1884–1894) 1 Chapter 2 A Teenager Finds Her Voice (1895–1903) 23 Chapter 3 Marriage, Motherhood, and Politics (1904–1911) 47 Chapter 4 Becoming a Political Partner (1912–1918) 65 Chapter 5 New Friends, New Activism, and New Purpose (1919–1921) 87 Chapter 6 Developing a Political Voice (1922–1928) 107 Chapter 7 Transforming the Role of First Lady (1929–1933) 131 v vi Contents Chapter 8 People’s Advocate in the White House (1933–1936) 155 Chapter 9 Battles Large and Small: World War II (1937–1943) 181 Chapter 10 The United Nations and a Foundation for the Future (1943–1962) 209 Timeline: Events in the Life of Eleanor Roosevelt 237 Primary Source Documents 243 Bibliography 259 Index 263 Series Foreword We created this series because women today stand on the shoulders of those who came before them. They need to know the true power their fore- mothers had in shaping the world today and the obstacles those women overcame to achieve all that they have achieved and continue to achieve. It is true that Gerda Lerner offered the first regular college course in women’s history in 1963 and that, since then, women’s history has become an academic discipline taught in nearly every American college and uni- versity. It is also true that women’s history books number in the millions and cover a wealth of topics, time periods, and issues. Nonetheless, open any standard high school or college history textbook and you will find very few mentions of women’s achievements or importance, and the few that do exist will be of the “exceptional woman” model, ghettoized to sidebars and footnotes. With women missing from textbooks, students and citizens are allowed to believe that no woman ever meaningfully contributed to American his- tory and that nothing women have ever done has had more than private, familial importance. In such books we do not learn that it was womens’ petitioning efforts that brought the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery to Abraham Lincoln’s attention or that Social Security and child labor laws were the brainchild of Frances Perkins, the progressive female secretary of labor who was also the first woman appointed to a presidential cabinet. Without this knowledge both female and male students are encouraged to think only men—primarily rich, white men—have ever done anything meaningful. This vision impedes our democracy in a nation that has finally become more aware of our beautiful diversity. The National Bureau of Economic Research said women comprise the majority of college graduates in undergraduate institutions, law schools, vii viii Series Foreword and medical schools (56 percent in 2017). Still, women’s high college atten- dance and graduation rates do not translate to equal pay or equal eco- nomic, political, or cultural power. There can be little argument that American women have made significant inroads toward equality in the last few decades, in spite of the ongoing dearth of women in normative approaches to American history teaching and writing. Hence, this series. We want readers to know that we took the task of choosing the women to present seriously, adding new names to the list while looking to high- light new information about women we think we know. Many of these women have been written about in the past, but their lives were filtered through male or societal expectations. Here we hope the inclusion of the women’s own words in the collection of primary documents we curated will finally allow them to speak for themselves about the issues that most mattered. The timeline will visually place them in history against events that hampered their efforts and alongside the events they created. Sidebars will give more detail on such events as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Finally, the chapter on Why She Matters will cement the reason such a woman deserves a new volume dedicated to her life. Have we yet achieved parity? We’ll let one of our subjects—the Honor- able Ruth Bader Ginsburg—remind us that “when I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the supreme court]? And I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But there’d been nine men [for over 200 years], and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.” Preface On December 7, 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt typed changes to her radio script. The Imperial Japanese Navy had bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Har- bor, Hawaii. By 2:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, newscasts were breaking into scheduled radio programming to report an act of war. Americans gathered around their radios hungry for information. There was no televi- sion, no immediate visual images. Radio was the latest technology trans- mitting up-to-the-minute details to a country in shock. That evening a voice came over the radio speaking to the nation. It wasn’t the president. It wasn’t a military leader. It was First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. With her calm, familiar voice, she was the first national figure to reas- sure the country. “The cabinet is convening and the leaders in Congress are meeting with the president,” Eleanor Roosevelt said in her radio address of December 7, 1941. “The State Department and the Army and Navy officials have been with the president all afternoon . . . By tomorrow morning, the members of Congress will have a full report and be ready for action.” Then she spoke directly to the nation’s women, reminding them she was also a mother with a son currently on a Naval destroyer. Two of her other children were in cities along the Pacific coast, which now were considered to be in the “danger zone.” She empathized with the “clutch of fear at your heart,” but encouraged an anxious public to “rise above these fears.” It was supposed to be her Sunday evening interview program, Over Our Coffee Cups, but this was not a normal Sunday—a foreign government had attacked Americans on home soil. A formal declaration of war and crafted statements from the president would come in the following days. Eleanor Roosevelt was making history as a First Lady, as a woman, and as a public figure. She was rallying the nation over the radio airwaves to meet a war greater than the world had ever seen. She had written the words herself and she delivered them with cool courage. “We know what we have to face and we know that we are ready to face it,” she said. “Whatever is ix
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