American Realities with Bill Youngs
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    • Gods Messengers: Religious Leadership in Colonial New England, 1700-1750 >
      • Table of Contents
      • Preface
      • Chapter 1: The Ministers and Their Times
      • Chapter 2: The Minister's Calling
      • Epilogue
      • Appendix: Length of Ministerial Settlement
      • Abbreviations
    • The Congregationalists >
      • Timeline
      • Bibliographic Dictionary of Leaders
    • Eleanor Roosevelt: A Personal and Public Life >
      • Prologue: The South Pacific, 1943 >
        • Eleanor Roosevelt South Pacific
      • A Victorian Family
      • The Legacy
      • Growing Up
      • Eleanor and Franklin
      • A Politician's Wife
      • Grief
      • Public Service
      • First Lady
      • The Democratic Crusade
      • On Her Own
    • American Realities (Book) >
      • History as a Story
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      • Volume One >
        • The Native Americans
        • The English Background
        • The British American
        • Reform in Colonial America
        • Divided Loyalties
        • The American Revolution
        • Testing the Constitution
        • Republican Nationalism
        • The Limits of Jacksonian Democracy
        • Abolitionists and Anti-abolitionists
        • Texas Revolution
        • Reform in the Early Republic
        • Manifest Destiny
        • A Slave's Story
        • The Civil War >
          • Two Soldiers
      • Volume Two >
        • The “Taming” of the West
        • Beyond Emancipation
        • The New Industrial Era
        • The Birth of Environmentalism
        • New Immigrants
        • Expanding American Democracy
        • World War I
        • Modernity versus Tradition
        • The New Deal
        • Total War
        • The Cold War
        • The Civil Rights Movement
        • Turmoil on the Campuses
        • The New Computer Age
        • America, the Cold War, and Beyond
      • Additional Essays >
        • Norsemen in the New World
    • The Fair and the Falls >
      • Part I: Possessing the Falls >
        • Chapter One: James Glover: Purchasing the Falls
        • Chapter Two: Waiting for the Indians
        • Chapter Three: Harnessing the Falls
        • Chapter Four: "The World's Fair of the Northwest"
        • Chapter Five: The City Beside the Falls
      • Part II: Rediscovering the Falls >
        • Chapter Six: The Twilight of Old Spokane
        • Chapter Seven: Urban Blight and Urban Renewal
        • Chapter Eight: King Cole and The Heart of a City
        • Chapter Nine: Visualizing a World's Fair
      • Part III Redesigning the Falls >
        • Chapter Ten: From Spokane to Paris >
          • Tom Foley's Turn
        • Chapter Eleven: Wooing the Foreign Exhibitors
        • Chapter Twelve: Wooing the Domestic Exhibitors
        • Chapter Thirteen: The Environmental Debate
        • Chapter Fourteen: Building the Fair
        • Chapter Fifteen: Marketing, Money, and Management
      • Part IV: The Fair by the Falls >
        • Chapter Sixteen: Opening Day
        • Chapter Seventeen: A Mingling of Peoples
        • Chapter Eighteen: Days at the Fair
        • Chapter Nineteen: The Press of New Ideas
        • Chapter Twenty: The Final Tally
      • Part V: An American Environment >
        • Chapter Twenty-One: Spokane Falls, An American Environment
      • The Fair and the Falls Map
J. William T. "Bill" Youngs, Eleanor Roosevelt: A Personal and Public Life, Chapter Eight  
                                  "Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt" courtesy of the Wiki Commons

We are in a tremendous storm, and none of us knows where we are going to land.  The important thing, it seems to me, is our attitude toward whatever may happen.  It must be willingness to accept and share with others whatever may come and to meet the future courageously, with a cheerful spirit.
- Eleanor Roosevelt, to Lorena Hickok, 1933

Chapter 8: First Lady

Picture
"Eleanor Roosevelt" courtesy of the Wiki Commons

Summary

In this chapter Eleanor Roosevelt becomes accustomed to her position as first lady, she involves herself in the great civil rights struggle of the mid 20th century for black rights, and becomes part of the team selling the New Deal to America.  It details her relationship with the press including a loving friendship with Lorena Hickok.  Eleanor becomes a mother figure for a nation in the midst of a deep economic crisis, and she does it while simultaneously re-defining the role of First Lady.  

Author reads from the Text

Eleanor guided the driver unerringly through a maze of driveways to the Adams Memorial and led Hick to the statue of Grief.  For a long time the two women sat in silence on a curved stone bench before the figure.  Hick saw in Grief "a Woman who had experienced every kind of pain, every kind of suffering known to mankind and had come out of it serene - and compassionate."  Eleanor spoke in a hushed tone, as if she were in church.  "In the old days," she said, "when we lived here, I was much younger and not so very wise.  Sometimes I'd be very unhappy and sorry for myself.  When I was feeling that way, if I could manage it, I'd come out here, alone, and sit and look at that woman.  And I'd always come away somehow feeling better.  And stronger."  A decade and a half had passed since those troubled days, and during that time Eleanor had become, in the public eye, an embodiment of serenity and compassion.  But now, as she faced the greatest challenge of her personal and public life, she needed once more to draw strength from a statue.  

A Friendly Journey: Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok Tour the Northeast


View A Friendly Journey: Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok Tour the Northeast in a larger map


Links
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  • Study Questions
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Chapter 7: Public Service
Eleanor Roosevelt Main Page
Chapter 9: The Democratic Crusade