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ROOSEVELT, ELEANOR.
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Public & private life & career to 1945, focusing on her shaping of concept of First Lady & fight for women's rights.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Public & private life & career to 1945, focusing on her shaping of concept of First Lady & fight for women's rights.
Paper Introduction:
The position of first lady in American society is not codified anywhere. There is no mention of it in the Constitution and no body of law related to it. The recent active participation of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the role has engendered considerable discussion and even opposition, yet she is hardly the first first lady to take an active role in either politics or government. Eleanor Roosevelt was also a very active first lady, and she was also subject to considerable criticism for her political role. She also had no more guidance than any other first lady as to what her role should be, and she shaped that role to her own liking to as great a degree as possible. An analysis of her background, her political life, and her relationship to the policies of the Roosevelt Administration will show how she managed to shape that role and what she contributed
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Chicago: University of Illinois, 1987.Chafe, William H. Eleanor Roosevelt was also a very active firstlady, and she was also subject to considerable criticism for her politicalrole. Shemade numerous calls on women whom she did not know and so forced herself toovercome the shyness that had often limited her communication with othersin the past. Duringthe New York period, she also encouraged the interests of women in statepolitics as she would later do on the national scene, and the played a rolein various women being appointed to government posts. She was then head of the national women's campaign forthe Democratic party and made certain that the party appealed toindependent voters, to minorities, and to women. He waselected as the Democratic assemblyman from Dutchess County in 191 andbecame a leader of insurgent anti-Tammany Hall forces in Albany. Shealso joined the Junior League and worked at the Rivington Street SettlementHouse, where she taught calisthenics and dancing. WhenFranklin was assistant secretary of the navy, for instance, Eleanor wasexposed to a much wider world in Washington than she had known before. They had children to raise, and Franklin's political career wouldbe ended if there were a separation or divorce.[vi] The increase in Eleanor's public life came about as she madeaccommodation to the changes in her personal life. Beasley, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media (Chicago:University of Illinois, 1987), 47-5 .Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume I: 1884-1933 (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1992), 5 .Youngs, 172-174.Scharf, 1 9.Ibid., 11 .Ibid., 112-113.Ibid., 139-152.Ibid., 184.----------------------- 1 Eleanor felt betrayed and saw herself as victim to Franklin asscoundrel. She honed many of herpowers and techniques during Franklin's tenure as Governor of New York.She understood the importance of having accurate factual information andserved as her husband's reporter and observer. Eleanor Roosevelt: First Lady of American Liberalism. In turn, those women who soclearly benefited from Eleanor's actions also became her devoted admirersand protective guardians.[xi] Many male reporters, on the other hand,showed resentment and contempt for the "newspaper girls," as they werecalled, and for the press conferences that they attended and the admirationthey showed for Mrs. Roosevelt. The twowere married in 19 5. She came to berecognized as a key member of the network of social reformers in New YorkCity. She rememberedsuffering from emotional rejection throughout her childhood and was closeonly to her father. After the war, she wouldcontinue her support of a wide variety of causes and would come to hold aparticularly important place in the American consciousness. Columnists called for herresignation. The CivilianConservation Corps was one answer to problems perceived among the young,and Eleanor made a personal appeal on behalf of the agency in 1935.[xvii] While Eleanor managed to charm the press and to gain support amongthe press during the New Deal period, oppositon would again surface duringthe early years of the war. During the 192 s, she continued to pursue an activist course.She was active in the League of Women Voters. Thisinvolved a change in direction for the role of first lady and a change inresponsiveness on the part of the public: The White House had never been used as a platform from which the First Wife expressed bold, dissenting political ideas. By 1942 she was under fire from journalistsfor suppsed administrative inefficiency in her post as director of theOffice of Civilian Defense and for putting her personal friends on thecivil defense payroll. She actually served both roles and did not neglect herrole as official hostess in the White House. As first lady, she instituted aseries of regular press conferences to which only women reporters wereadmitted. She also maintainedcontact with politically active women in the state and opened thegovernor's mansion to women friends from the Joint Legislative Conferencewhenever they came to lobby in Albany. In the early years, she took asecondary position to Franklin's mother.[v] In the period before World WarI, Franklin had an affair with Lucy Mercer, Eleanor's friend and personalsecretary. Throughout the White House years, ER juggled her public responsibilities, her ever- increasing political activities, and her complicated private life.[xiii] During the New Deal, Eleanor would serve both as representative forthe administration in the press and before various groups and would alsoencourage Franklin to prpomote certain causes and ideas or to pass certainlegislation. The recent active participation of Hillary Rodham Clintonin the role has engendered considerable discussion and even opposition, yetshe is hardly the first first lady to take an active role in eitherpolitics or government. She had been imbued at school with a sense of theimportance of ideas and social service, and she continued to hold these inesteem. She sought to improve conditions at St. in which she called on the women ofAmerica to join her in a crusade for change and decency. Finally, Mrs.Roosevelt left the civil defense post and retreated for a time into therole of self-sacrificing wife. . The two worked out an agreement to save their marriage:Franklin would never see Lucy Mercer again, and Eleanor would stay with herhusband. The first was a tributeto her father, and the second was a rallying cry to political activism forwomen called It's Up to the Women! When the Daughters of the American Revolution barred black singerMarian Anderson from performing at Constitution Hall in 1939, Eleanorresigned from the organization.[xv] She also encouraged Americans to takea more active role on the international scene. However, when she married her cousin Franklin roosevelt, she thenentered a period of 15 years of hiatus from public activities. Much of her subsequent political life can be traced to her earlyinvolvement with social reform. The symptoms of depression were palpable even if she had no clinical label for her anguish.[vii]Lois Scharf further finds that Eleanor's struggle within herself mirroredthe struggle in the country to rediscover and redefine social and politicalvalues, and Eleanor's political activism hereafter would be involved intrying to make those determinations for the future.[viii] Eleanorunderwent some redefinition of her own political views during the 192 s.At the time of her marriage, she had opposed suffrage for women,considering it inconsistent with women's proper role. The wireservices and Washington bureaus of leading newspapers had no choice but tohire, retain, and even promote more women because otherwise they weredenied access. This was at a time when many women professionals innontraditional occupations were losing ground. She became embroiled in policy arguments. . Social welfareissues continued to be of great importance to her, and she used her officeas first lady as well as her access to the president to promote thosecauses of interest to her. Without Precedent. all my self-confidence is gone and I am on edge though Inever was better physically." She was then playing a role deliberately: The outward mien of a dutiful wife and concerned parent masked the tortured uncertainties of a betrayed woman whose hard-won, seemingly secure world had collapsed around her. Her dedication to the plight of women has already been noted. Boston: Twayne, 1987.Ware, Susan. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media. He wasappointed assistant secretary of the Navy in 1913. New York: Penguin Books, 1992.Scharf, Lois. She first mobilized Dutchess Countywomen and then moved to the state Democratic party to organize all but fivecounties by 1924. But Eleanor Roosevelt was to transform the position of First Lady as her sense of responsibility and political urgency continually grew. A photograph taken in 1933 showing thewomen reporters in a circle looking up at Mrs. Roosevelt brought the matterout in the open, and the males scoffed at the gatherings. cit..Youngs, J. On both sides she was descended fromdistinguished colonial families active in commerce, banking, and politics.She was orphaned by the time she was 1 years old. Eleanor Roosevelt has indeed been given credit for altering theposition of first lady from the traditional post of social overseer anddutiful wife to that of outspoken public activist and publicist forimportant causes. Many of these detractors experienced a complete change of heartas they watched her in action over the next few months and years. The tour would be oneof her most effective means of keeping in touch with the public. Eleanor's friendship for blacks,however, helped bring black voters overwhelmingly to the Democratic partyafter a long traditon of Republicanism extending back to Lincoln and theCivil War.[xiv] Eleanor made her views known and took strong positons in support ofthem. Eleanor visitedthese sweatshops and learned firsthand the misery of the working poor. However, their"imparitality" often led to another kind of blindness as they allowedracial injustice to continue unchallenged. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.Cook, Blanche Wiesen. The women'spress corps wanted the gatherings to continue, however, and the pressoffice in the White House cooperated and made sure that Mrs. Roosevelt fromtime to time would give the newswomen a sensational announcement to keepthe institution alive.[xii] Eleanor clearly took her public responsibilities seriously, and sheaddressed them wholeheartedly from the moment she entered the White Housein spite of her trepidations about the scrutiny she would encounter there.She approached her new position by starting the writing of two books thathelped her face her new role with a new freedom. She tried to pesuade Franklin to support ananti-lynching bill, but Franklin believed it would be political suicide tosupport it because most of the southern Democrats would see it as unduefederal influence in their affairs. "Biographical Sketch." In Joan Hoff-Wilson and Marjorie Lightman. By 1928 she was considered a political leader in her ownright, gradually extending her role and using it as a vehicle to assert herown personality. During the 1932 campaign in whichFranklin was elected to the presidency, she coordinated the activities ofthe Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee and mobilizedthousands of women precinct workers to carry the program of the party tolocal voters. After his death, an emotional void marked her lifeuntil she enrolled at Allenswood, a girls' school outside London, when shewas 14 years old. When she was 18 she joined the NationalConsumers' League, committed to securing health and safety for workers--especially women--in clothing factories and sweatshops. Indeed, wartime restrictions would curtail,many of her activities, halting her lecture tours and precluding any newcontracts for radio commentaries.[xviii] She would change this and travel widely to promote the war effortduring those most difficult days through 1945. An analysis of her background, her political life,and her relationship to the policies of the Roosevelt Administration willshow how she managed to shape that role and what she contributed to theconcept of a first lady. "ER and Democratic Politics: Women in the Postsuffrage Era." In Hoff-Wilson and Lightman, op. Through her efforts, women achieved a strong voice in the NewDeal.[iii] Eleanor's public role was developed over years of activism andthrough circumstances that placed her in different situations. Agencies such as the CivilianConservation Corps failed to hire blacks in proportion to thier numbers inthe population at large, and the Agricultural Adjustment Administrationadopted policies that caused the loss of work for black sharecroppers inthe south. New Deal reformers refused to think ofblacks as a grop deserving speial attention and calimed to be color-blind,assuming that blacks would propser along with others in American society ifthe New Deal were successful and the Depression ended. The issue ofaccreditation of journalists caused even more dissension. Elizabeth's mentalhospital. The pressconferences she held for women only proved mutually beneficial. She met a wide assortment of people andlearned much about the political and diplomatic scene as a consequence.[iv] It should be noted that during these years, Eleanor was not happy inher marriage for a variety of reasons. She joined the Women's TradeUnion League, then seen as "left-leaning." She worked for programs such asthe regulation of maximum hours and minimum wages for women and helpedraise funds for the organization. William T. When she becamecoordinator for the League of Women Voters, however, she worked to keeptrack of bills on the issue and drafted laws providing for equalrepresentation for men and women.[ix] As noted, Eleanor would become an important supporter of women'spolitical rights, and her power and influence would only increase duringthe Roosevelt Administration and even beyond it. Eleanor saw how deeply racial prejudice was embedded in theAmerican political system. She perfected the technique of the fact-findingtour, and this would become one of the staples during the New Deal when shewould tour coal mines, sweatshops, and sewing rooms. Endnotes BibliographyBeasley, Maurine H. Between 191 and World War I, Eleanor's activitiescentered more and more on Franklin's growing political career. She did not want her husband to bepresident, seeing the White House as confining, but once ensconced thereshe continued and expanded the scope of her activities. The position of first lady in American society is not codifiedanywhere. William T. Franklin was paralyzed by polio in 1922,after which Eleanor's public life expanded still more as she became hisrepresentative in the political arena. Many journalistsat the time were among her detractors, and many saw her willingness toenter the fray as evidence that she had a ruthless craving for personalpublicity. She provided the impetus for appointing several women toimportant posts in the New Deal and offered a forum for transmitting theirviews and concerns across the country. She also found that she could command attentionfor her views in her own right, though not without criticism since thepublic in the 193 s at first resented this outspoken and untraditionalfirst lady.[x] Eleanor's ability to benefit women extended beyond politicalappointments, and many of her actions had the effect of increasingemployment for women whether that was the intent or not. She also had no more guidance than any other first lady as to whather role should be, and she shaped that role to her own liking to as greata degree as possible. She returned to the United States at 17 and "came out"in New York society. She became the center ofan ever-growing female reform network. Eleanor Roosevelt: A Personal and Public Life. Youngs, Eleanor Roosevelt: A Personal and PublicLife (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985), 1 5-1 6.Chafe, 6-7.Youngs, 115-116.Scharf, 57.Ibid., 57.Chafe, 8.Susan Ware, "ER and Democratic Politics: Women in thePostsuffrage Era," in Hoff-Wilson and Lightman, 51-53.Scharf, 88.Maurine H. She was the first woman toserve as first lady through two presidential terms since the Ulysses S.Grant administration.[i] Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York in 1884 to ElliottRoosevelt and Anna Roosevelt. She had an advantage in the diplomatic community in that shespoke three foreign languages. She would becalled upon by President Kennedy to head the President's Commission on theStatus of Women.[xix] Eleanor Roosevelt changed the role of First Lady andleft subsequent White House wives with an example that would be difficultto match. She was also dedicated to alleviating the racial prejudice seen towardblacks in America at the time. In truth, the job she had been given was anadministrative nightmare that would have taxerd a veteran, but the press--especially the male press, feeling slighted by Eleanor's support of womenjournalists and by other changes she was instituting in press coverage--blamed her for what she could not control. Chafe, "Biographical Sketch" in Joan Hoff-Wilson andMarjorie Lightman, Without Precedent (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1984), 6-7.Ibid., 7-1 .J. There is no mention of it in the Constitution and no body of lawrelated to it. Eleanor then continuedto manage a large household and also became expert at hosting the multiplesocial events required of a subcabinet member.[ii] Eleanor would reassert her public role when America entered World WarI, and she began by coordinating activities at the Union Station canteenfor soldiers on their way to training camps and took charge of Red Crossactivities. She also acquired a gooddeal of information for herself in this manner and could use it to her ownpurposes as necessary. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985.-----------------------Lois Scharf, Eleanor Roosevelt: First Lady of AmericanLiberalism (Boston: Twayne, 1987), 6-7.William H. Much of the legisaltioncreated during the New Deal codified the social agenda Eleanor rooseveltand her female colleagues had been advocating for some time.[xvi] She sawthe road to peace as leading to a time when the potential of democraticsociety and the obligation of that society to the needs of its citizenscould be fulfilled, and she wanted the young to be committed to democraticvalues as the threats of European communism and fascism grew. Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume I: 1884-1933. In 1919 she wrote inher diary, ".
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