American Realities with Bill Youngs
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    • American History >
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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
      • A Note on Wikipedia as a Source
      • 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
Study Questions

1.  In The Moral Basis of Democracy Eleanor Roosevelt set forth her understanding of Democracy.  In this book she emphasized the ideal character of citizens of a democracy.  Describe the ways that Eleanor herself lived up to the ideals or addressed the problem noted in each of the following quotations from the book:

"Our own success, to be real, must contribute to the success of others."

"No one can honestly claim that either the Indians or the Negros of this country are free." 

"Hunger and thirst, lack of decent shelter, lack of certain minimum decencies of life can be eliminated if the spirit of good will is awakened in every human being,"

Democracy is "a method of government conceived for the development of human beings as a whole."

Democracy encourages "a sense of brotherhood, a sense that we strive together towards a common objective."

"Somehow or another human beings must get a feeling that there is in life a spring, a spring which flows for all humanity." 

2.  The coming of the Second World War reshaped life in the White House.  How did it affect Eleanor Roosevelt's daily life?  What kind of activities did she undertake in taking part in the war effort?  What was the importance of her wartime journeys to England and to the South Pacific (as described in the preface)?

3.  During the war Eleanor continued her efforts on behalf of African Americans.  What did she do to promote civil rights?  How did some Americans, opposed to equality, react to her efforts?

4.  During the war Eleanor and Joseph Lash became close friends.  Under what circumstances did they meet?  Why did Eleanor particularly admire Lash?  

5.  On April 12, 1945, after serving longer in office than any other president, Franklin Roosevelt died at Warm Springs of a cerebral hemorrhage.  How did Eleanor and how did the nation react to his death? 

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