Happy birthday, Eleanor!

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself.

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

All those are expressions of perhaps the most admired (and at times hated) American woman of all time.  On this day in 1884, Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York, living until November 7,  1962.  It is thus appropriate to take a look back at her life and influence on what would have been her 123 birthday. 
I teach at at high school appropriately named after Eleanor Roosevelt.  We are located in Greenbelt, MD, one of three planned communities designed by close FDR advisor Rex Tugwell, and established in the mid 1930s created under the Resettlement Administration under authority of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act.  It was mixed in religion, altough given the times all white, and when the Federal government surrendered ownership was actually bought by a cooperative of the residents, and the city has a long history of communal associations (and for a pictoral history visit Virtual Greenbelt.

At age 62, my life overlapped that of Mrs. Roosevelt.  When I was in junior high school she came and talked with us.  She was a major figure in American history who had a major role until the end of her life, serving this nation officially and unofficially in the 17 years she lived after her husband's death.

It would be useful exercise for those who don't know much about her to read the obituary in the New York Times published the day after her death.  That will be the source of much of the information I will offer below, before I offer a personal reflection.

Let me begin by offering the opening four short paragraphs of that obit:

Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt was more involved in the minds and hearts and aspirations of people than any other First Lady in history. By the end of her life she was one of the most esteemed women in the world.

During her 12 years in the White House she was sometimes laughed at and sometimes bitterly resented. But during her last years she became the object of almost universal respect.

Again and again, she was voted "the world's most admired woman" in international polls. When she entered the halls of the United Nations, representatives from all countries rose to honor her. She had become not only the wife and widow of a towering President but a noble personality in herself.

In the White House and for some time thereafter, no First Lady could touch Mrs. Roosevelt for causes espoused, opinions expressed, distances spanned, people spoken to, words printed, precedents shattered, honors conferred, degrees garnered.

She was on occasion a lightening rod for criticism, even as she was admired.  As the obituary notes

She was accused of stimulating racial prejudices, of meddling in politics, talking too much, traveling too much, being too informal and espousing causes critics felt a mistress of the White House should have been left alone.

Let me explore perhaps her most famous "racial" meddling.  There was no Kennedy Center in those days.  The most important performance space in the Washington was Constitution Hall, owned by the Daughters of the American Republic.  When singer Marion Anderson sought to have her first DC concert other than in a Church or a school at that benue, the management cancelled the booking when they found out it was a singer of color.  Upon learning of this, Mrs. Roosevelt did two things.  She resigned her own membership in the DAR and used her influence in the Administration to obtain another venue.  On April 9l 1939, Easter Sunday, Marian Anderson perforemd at the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of 75,000.with the performance broadcast live to millions.

Mrs. Roosevelt was outspoken ways never seen previously in First Ladies.  She wrote newspaper columns (something she continued until her death), spoke out on issues, and it was not unknown for her to intervene in policy. 

After he husband's death, President Truman appointed her as a delegate to the United Nations, where she served from 1945 until 1952.  She was reappointed as a delegate to the 15th Session of the General Assembly in 1961 by JFK.  .  She supported partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab areas.  She served as chair of he National Issues Committee formed in an effort to restore Democratic control of the Federal Government.  She addressed the 1952 and 1956 Democratic conventions.  And she was not afraid for standing up for what Paul Wellstone would later label the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.  At an event held in honor of her 75th birthday, when former President Truman lashed out at "hot-=house liberals" accusing them of giving enemies of the party ammunition, Mrs. Roosevelt responded

"I know we need a united party. But it cannot be a united party that gives up its principles."

That is but one example of how her experiences might be relevant to our own.  Another that speaks to my concerns was her reaction on the issue  of federal assistance to parochial schools, where she clashed with the very powerful Francis Cardinal Spellman, archbishop of New York.  Let me quote two relevant paragraphs from the Times obituary:

In discussing a measure for aid to education then before Congress, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote in her "My Day" column that "those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money."

The Cardinal accused Mrs. Roosevelt of ignorance and prejudice and called her columns "documents of discrimination unworthy of an American mother."

It is possible that our next president will be a female, herself a former First Lady, who has experienced her own series of attacks, and like Eleanor Roosevelt has, both during her husband's presidency and in her own subsequent public career, been simultaneously greatly admired and very much denigrated, hated and even feared.  I think it almost inconceivable that Hillary Clinton could have the kind of career she has had without the trailblazing of prior first ladies, a group that would included of course Mrs. Kennedy and the recently deceased Lady Bird Johnson, but of whom the most important would be Eleanor Roosevelt.

I think she is one of the most admirable and remarkable women in American history, one of whom not enough current Americans know.  Herself born of privilege, she had a sense of obligation to the larger society.  She was unafraid of speaking out on behalf of those who lacked the voice to speak for herself.  She was quite willing to fight as a partisan because she believed her side had the right and the responsibility to act on behalf of others.  Perhaps another quote, which like the others I plucked from this site, might be appropriate in helping understanding this magnificent human being:

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

She was a woman of uncommon courage.  So let me end this birthday tribute to her with one more selection of her own words, a selection that at least I find relevant in our time, a time in which it might be easy to become discouraged:

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Happy Birthday, Eleanor Roosevelt.  Thanks for having honored this nation with your life.

Peace.

Comments