American Realities with Bill Youngs
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        • The Native Americans
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        • The Limits of Jacksonian Democracy
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          • Two Soldiers
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        • The “Taming” of the West
        • Beyond Emancipation
        • The New Industrial Era
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        • Modernity versus Tradition
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        • Total War
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        • 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, American Realities, Volume Two: 
Historical Episodes from Reconstruction to the Present, Chapter Nine


"Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt" courtesy of the Wikipedia Commons

09. The New Deal
      Eleanor Roosevelt and the Politics of Compassion

Picture

Summary

This essay begins by showing Eleanor Roosevelt at the inauguration in 1933 of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as president. The moment serves as a point of departure for exploring Eleanor’s tragic childhood, her marriage to Franklin, and her emergence during the 1920s as a leading public figure. The essay then moves ahead to her role as first lady, where she becomes an advocate for the victims of prejudice and poverty-her “politics of compassion.” The last section traces her activities as a widow, especially her contribution to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Author reads from the Text

As significant as Franklin Roosevelt’s achievement was, Eleanor Roosevelt’s career was just as distinctive. She redefined the role of first lady and, arguably, she set a standard that has not been matched in the half century since she left the White House. During her dozen years in Washington, Eleanor Roosevelt shook more hands, gave more teas, and attended more public functions than any other first lady before or since. These social activities were the sort of thing that presidents’ wives were expected to do. More importantly, Eleanor Roosevelt devoted her time to dozens of activities that went well beyond the traditional sphere. She wrote newspaper columns, delivered hundreds of speeches, and served as an advocate for various causes. One of Eleanor Roosevelt’s many nicknames was “America’s public energy no. 1.” A popular New Yorker cartoon in the 1930s showed two miners deep in the bowels of the earth, looking at an approaching figure. One miner was saying to the other, “Oh, my God, it’s Mrs. Roosevelt!” Just as her uncle, Theodore Roosevelt, recognized that the presidency is a “bully pulpit,” Eleanor Roosevelt demonstrated that the position of presidential spouse provided opportunities for promoting the public good.

Her energy allowed Eleanor Roosevelt to make contact with thousands of people: out-of-work coal miners, impoverished sharecroppers, and wounded soldiers. She seemed to be perpetually in motion, but at the same time she could immerse herself in each new moment as if nothing else mattered. Greeting the one-hundredth guest at a reception, she could make the person standing in front of her sense that he or she was the most interesting person in the room. Leaning over the bed of the fiftieth soldier in a hospital ward, she could manage to make that patient feel that he was uniquely important.


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Chapter 8: Modernity versus Tradition
Chapter 10: Total War