Eleanor Roosevelt's Views on Diplomacy and Democracy: The Global Citizen [1st ed.] 9783030423148, 9783030423155

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xi
Introduction (Dario Fazzi, Anya Luscombe)....Pages 1-15
The Great National and Transnational Communicator: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Use of Radio to Promote Peace and Understanding (Anya Luscombe)....Pages 17-40
“Mrs. Roosevelt Goes on Tour”: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Soft Diplomacy During World War II (Raffaella Baritono)....Pages 41-64
Eleanor Roosevelt in Yugoslavia Between Wedge Strategy and Cold War Internationalism (Carla Konta)....Pages 65-82
Behind the Iron Curtain: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Visit to Poland in 1960 (Halina Parafianowicz)....Pages 83-103
Liberalism Meets Radicalism: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Internationalization of the Black Liberation Struggle (Tim Kies)....Pages 105-123
Dancing Barefoot and Politicizing Dance at the White House: Eleanor Roosevelt and Martha Graham’s Collaboration During the Rise of Fascism in Europe (Camelia Lenart)....Pages 125-141
“I Know What You Are Doing for Other People Too”: Dutch Journalist Mary Pos Reaches Out to Eleanor Roosevelt (Babs Boter)....Pages 143-169
Eleanor Roosevelt’s Autofabrication as Gendered Premediation of a Female Presidency (Sara Polak)....Pages 171-192
Eleanor Roosevelt and the Nature: Bridging Conservationism with Environmentalism (Dario Fazzi)....Pages 193-210
Back Matter ....Pages 211-219

Citation preview

THE WORLD OF THE ROOSEVELTS

Eleanor Roosevelt’s Views on Diplomacy and Democracy The Global Citizen Edited by

Dario Fazzi Anya Luscombe

The World of the Roosevelts

Series Editor David B. Woolner The Roosevelt Institute New York City, USA

This longstanding series has published high-quality monographs and edited collections related to the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt for nearly two decades. Combining economic, political, diplomatic, social, and intellectual history, it constitutes a comprehensive, multi-faceted exploration of a pivotal era in American and global history. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14319

Dario Fazzi  •  Anya Luscombe Editors

Eleanor Roosevelt’s Views on Diplomacy and Democracy The Global Citizen

Editors Dario Fazzi Roosevelt Institute for American Studies Middelburg, The Netherlands

Anya Luscombe Utrecht University Middelburg, The Netherlands

The World of the Roosevelts ISBN 978-3-030-42314-8    ISBN 978-3-030-42315-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42315-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Leonardo, Elise and Imme. May you all in life “do the thing you think you cannot do.”

Contents

Introduction  1 Dario Fazzi and Anya Luscombe  The Great National and Transnational Communicator: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Use of Radio to Promote Peace and Understanding 17 Anya Luscombe  “Mrs. Roosevelt Goes on Tour”: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Soft Diplomacy During World War II 41 Raffaella Baritono  Eleanor Roosevelt in Yugoslavia Between Wedge Strategy and Cold War Internationalism 65 Carla Konta  Behind the Iron Curtain: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Visit to Poland in 1960 83 Halina Parafianowicz  Liberalism Meets Radicalism: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Internationalization of the Black Liberation Struggle105 Tim Kies

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Contents

 Dancing Barefoot and Politicizing Dance at the White House: Eleanor Roosevelt and Martha Graham’s Collaboration During the Rise of Fascism in Europe125 Camelia Lenart  Know What You Are Doing for Other People Too”: Dutch “I Journalist Mary Pos Reaches Out to Eleanor Roosevelt143 Babs Boter  Eleanor Roosevelt’s Autofabrication as Gendered Premediation of a Female Presidency171 Sara Polak  Eleanor Roosevelt and the Nature: Bridging Conservationism with Environmentalism193 Dario Fazzi Index211

Notes on Contributors

Raffaella  Baritono (Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna, [email protected]) teaches US history and politics. She has published extensively on US political culture and institutions, with particular reference to women’s political history, American liberalism, American state, social sciences, and politics. She is the author of Eleanor Roosevelt. Una storia americana (Il Mulino, forthcoming). Babs  Boter  (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, [email protected]) is Assistant Professor at the faculty of humanities where she teaches literatures in English (travel writing, world literature). She is writing a biography of the Dutch travel journalist Mary Pos (1904–1987) and is also initiator and convener of an international and interdisciplinary research group called Unhinging the National Framework: Platform for the Study of LifeWriting and Transnationalism. Boter has a background in history (Leiden University), American studies (University of Minnesota), and cultural studies (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam) and has worked for humanities programs at various Dutch and American universities. Dario Fazzi  (Roosevelt Institute for American Studies, d.fazzi@zeeland. nl) is a historian of US social and foreign policy history. In particular, he is interested in public intellectuals’ and social movements’ impact on US Cold War relations. His main field of research lies in peace history and transatlantic history. He is the author of Eleanor Roosevelt and the ix

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Anti-Nuclear Movement: The Voice of Conscience (Palgrave, 2016) and has published articles, book chapters, and reviews on nuclear culture, peace movements, youth protests, transatlantic crossings, and base politics. Tim  Kies  (Leiden University, [email protected]) holds an M.A. in US social history. He is particularly interested in black Americans’ long struggle for freedom. His main field of research lies in the history of nineteenth-century US slavery. Carla Konta  (University of Rijeka, [email protected]) is a historian of US foreign relations, the Cold War, and socialist Yugoslavia. She is the author of US Public Diplomacy in Socialist Yugoslavia, 1950–70: Soft Culture, Cold Partners (2020). Her research interests focus on governmental and nongovernmental linkages between the US and Yugoslavia, including public diplomacy and international relations, and, recently, on Yugoslav nuclear civilian program, scientists, and activism. Her articles and chapters appeared in Contemporanea; West Croatian History Journal; The Legacy of J. William Fulbright: Policy, Power and Ideology (2019); and Cahiers du Monde Russe. Camelia Lenart  (State University of New York at Albany, ilenart@albany. edu) is a historian whose work is at the interface of diplomatic, dance, and women history. Focusing, in particular, on the embodiment of American cultural diplomacy during the Cold War, she analyzes the role played by the State Department in Martha Graham’s European tours. Lenart’s work—published in journals and edited books—was supported by fellowships and awards, including an Andrew W.  Mellon Fellowship from University College London. Her article “Dancing Politics Beyond the Iron Curtain: Martha Graham’s 1962 Tour to Yugoslavia and Poland” won the prestigious Dance Chronicle Founding Editors’ Award. Anya  Luscombe (Utrecht University, [email protected]) is Associate Professor of Media at University College Roosevelt, where she teaches Rhetoric and Journalism, and affiliated researcher at Utrecht’s Department of Media and Culture Studies. Her research interests include radio history, cultural history, and Eleanor Roosevelt. She is the author of BBC Radio News, from the Swinging Sixties to the Turbulent Noughties (2013) and has published articles, book chapters, and reviews on media, (transnational) broadcasting, and women’s history. She is a former BBC journalist and has

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been a Fulbright scholar at Bard College, New York, and a research fellow at the Dutch Institute of Sound and Vision in Hilversum. Halina  Parafianowicz  (Faculty of History and International Relations, [email protected]) is Full Professor of World History at the University of Bialystok. She was a Fulbright Fellowship recipient, which resulted in a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, Eleanor Anna Roosevelt (1884–1962). In the Shadow of the Great Husband (2000). Her research focuses on American political history and diplomatic relations between the US and Central Europe in the twentieth century. She has published books and articles on cultural and diplomatic relations between the US and Poland and Czechoslovakia during the interwar period as well as on other topics related to American diplomacy, modern presidency, and first ladies. Sara Polak  (Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, s.a.polak@ hum.leidenuniv.nl) is Assistant Professor of American Studies, focusing on US presidents and their media. She wrote This Is Roosevelt’s World: FDR as a Cultural Icon in American Memory (2020) and co-edited Embodying Contagion: The Viropolitics of Horror and Desire in Contemporary Discourse (2020) and Online Vitriol: On the History, Affect and Effects of Violence and Trolling on Social Media (2020). She focuses on Trump’s use of Twitter. Polak teaches American literature and regularly comments on US politics and culture in Dutch media.

Introduction Dario Fazzi and Anya Luscombe

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, from the pages of her widely syndicated “My Day” columns, former US first lady Eleanor Roosevelt set out her own views of diplomacy. Taking stock of her uncle Theodore’s famous dictum, she emphasized the relevance of “speaking softly” while managing international affairs. “The art of diplomacy,” she argued, “was meant to teach us to do what has to be done truthfully, in straightforward fashion, but with courtesy and consideration for those with whom we deal.” This exercise of empathy required for Eleanor “a certain amount of imagination and the ability to put oneself in the other fellow’s place.”1 To her, the possibility of building a lasting peace and a prosperous future depended on the consolidation of a basic, common understanding among human beings, one that could counterbalance simultaneously the rise of hyper-individualism and the threats posed by authoritarian statism.2 Individuals, she argued, “should care about other human beings all over

D. Fazzi (*) Roosevelt Institute for American Studies, Middelburg, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] A. Luscombe Utrecht University, Middelburg, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Fazzi, A. Luscombe (eds.), Eleanor Roosevelt’s Views on Diplomacy and Democracy, The World of the Roosevelts, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42315-5_1

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the world regardless of race, creed, or color, and should be determined that they will not seek for purely personal advantage.”3 Such a radical and idealistic view of diplomacy was a double-edged sword to Eleanor Roosevelt’s reputation. Like-minded liberals and peace advocates praised her efforts and utterances; humanitarians of various nature still celebrate her legacy nowadays. And yet, political conservatives and the champions of national security poured scorn on her; economic isolationists and nationalists of any sort still dismiss her views as unrealistic and naïve at best, preposterous and detrimental at worst.4 This volume casts a new light on this seemingly irreconcilable debate, in order to reconsider Eleanor Roosevelt’s views on and approach to diplomacy under a broader and more nuanced perspective. In this regard, a necessary preliminary consideration is that, mostly due to her unique status, Eleanor Roosevelt’s diplomatic conduct was as much public as it was private. Her diplomatic actions constantly reverberated into the public sphere and perfectly mirrored Nicholas J. Cull’s now classic taxonomies.5 Her diplomatic endeavors and her engagement with foreign publics, in general, were usually preceded by careful listening to the counterparts, whose preferences, interests, and considerations she considered fully legitimate. In many instances, the pursuit of public diplomacy meant to her the promotion of mutually advantageous, when not universally acceptable, principles. And she employed cultural differences adroitly, by creating space for cross-pollination that ended up favoring rather than hampering the whole diplomatic process.6 At the same time, she carried out her diplomacy first and foremost through a close net of personal and powerful contacts: throughout her life, she maintained direct access to key positions of power, cultivated influential friendships, and built around her an extensive network of national and international decision-makers and gatekeepers.7 A curious heterogony of ends, though, made so that her personal and private diplomacy seldom helped her advancing her own public political agenda.8 In spite of the fact that more than 200 academic works, including biographies, encyclopedias, and companions, have scrutinized, contextualized, criticized, and assessed practically any aspect of Eleanor Roosevelt’s life, her views on foreign policy in general and diplomacy in particular remain not only rather under-researched but also a matter of debate among historians. Jason Berger’s first comprehensive analysis of the matter, which is now almost forty-year-old, had the merit to point to the continuity of Eleanor Roosevelt’s entanglements with foreign affairs.9 The promotion

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of human welfare, the defense of (American) democracy, and the international safeguard of freedom constantly topped, according to Berger, her foreign policy agenda. By contrast, Joan Hoff is of the idea that Eleanor Roosevelt’s thinking on foreign policy was volatile, inconsistent, and wavering, as she spent most of her public life rather unsuccessfully trying to find an equilibrium between idealism and pragmatism.10 Quite obviously, she often needed to be politically cautious because of her public role and, most importantly, because of her husband’s political objectives and maneuvers. This made her, as Blanche Wiesen Cook paradoxically argues, “a practical idealist.”11 Other scholars, however, have tried to reconcile these two interpretations and have placed Eleanor Roosevelt at the center of a complex reconfiguration and deep transformation of pre-war New Dealism into post-war liberalism.12 In so doing, these authors have depicted Eleanor Roosevelt as a facilitator, an intermediator whose public utterances popularized the American visions for a post-war world order. This book contributes to this debate by considering Eleanor Roosevelt not just as a passive interpreter of global changes, but as part and parcel of them, a protagonist whose moves, ideas, and opinions were directly aimed at shaping—symbolically and practically—foreign affairs. What this volume reveals, in the end, is Eleanor Roosevelt’s distinctive version of citizen diplomacy. The main compass for her diplomatic action, indeed, was a peculiar conception of international affairs, one in which she universalized the role of the citizen. In this context, the concept of “citizen diplomacy” is not necessarily related to the presence of structural exchanges among private citizens from different countries, but it rests more with the efforts that single individuals and organized groups make, in order to foster mutual collaboration and understanding at a global level.13 “Citizen diplomacy,” thus, refers here primarily to the idea that all citizens function as representatives of their nation to the world. It is therefore a concept stressing more those individual or collective attempts made by common citizens to overcome the limits of formal, official, and state-­ to-­state diplomacy, rather than leaning toward what Jessica Gienow-Hecht has defined as nation branding, where the main objective of the diplomatic action ultimately lies in the active promotion of the public image of a given country abroad.14 With respect to this, the analysis of Eleanor Roosevelt’s citizen diplomacy proposed by this volume takes on Justin Hart’s invitation to historicize public diplomacy, keep it separate from nation branding, and read it in its contemporary context, in order to bring back to the fore the real purposes and motivations of any diplomatic agent,

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from common citizens to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and governmental agencies.15 The historical backdrop against which Eleanor Roosevelt advanced her citizen diplomacy was a genuinely progressive one. Born in 1884, Eleanor was a wealthy knickerbocker whose lineage descended, on her father’s side, from the Oyster Bay-based, Republican branch of the Roosevelt family. On her mother’s, her origins linked her up with the renowned and patriotic Livingston family.16 As both her mother and father died when she was still a child, it was her paternal uncle Teddy who became her main role model.17 A civil servant and a rancher, colonel of his own regiment in the Spanish-American War, a talented politician and a terrific campaigner, intransigent on financial matters, and a progressive reformist on environmental and social issues, Theodore’s life, ideas, and achievements were to Eleanor an example of commitment, passion, and sense of duty.18 In her formative years, Eleanor was infused with liberal worldviews. She studied in England, where she attended a French-speaking finishing school led by the intriguing Mlle Marie Souvestre. Her schoolmistress imbued Eleanor with a love of history, arts, theater, and music; more importantly, Souvestre invited her to reject strict Victorian social norms, challenge stratified gender roles, and fight against injustice, exploitation, and disenfranchisement.19 Back to the US in the early 1900s, Eleanor started putting the noblesse oblige principle into practice and busied herself with community works and volunteering. She paid numerous visits to sweatshops, warehouses, and garment factories so to gain firsthand experience of children’s, women’s, workers’, and immigrants’ marginality. She even took her fiancée Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), a distant cousin of hers, to a tour of some of the worst tenement houses of New York City.20 For a short period after her marriage in 1905, family duties took Eleanor away from her social activism: mothering her six children and taking care of her households became her main tasks. But a few years later, two major changes contributed to revamping Eleanor’s public engagement. First of all, in the early 1910s, FDR’s political career took off, as he was first elected as New  York State Senator in 1910 and then appointed by President Woodrow Wilson as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1913. This meant for Eleanor being catapulted in a world that was familiar to her—her uncle had served twice as US president by then—even if she did not fully perceive it as her own, filled as it was with formal receptions, fashionable gatherings, and recurrent meetings with policymakers and socialites of all

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sorts. Pragmatically, she took the most out of her new role and began broadening her personal network and cultivating her own political interests.21 Second, the outbreak of the Great War pushed her back to the streets, volunteering for the American Red Cross, the Navy Relief Association, and for various hospitals and canteens of the federal capital.22 Eventually, she became “an accomplished, widely known, and admired public figure in her own right,” one who was able to set her own agenda and fight for her own social and political priorities.23 Throughout the 1920s, Eleanor Roosevelt transformed herself into a shrewd politician, an efficient campaigner, and a terrific organizer.24 She officially joined the Democratic Party and the National League of Women Voters with the aim to foster women’s political participation.25 She also became of a member of the Women’s Trade Union League and the bi-­ partisan New York Women’s City Club. She learned how to reach out to different audiences by mastering a variety of communication strategies, “which included the use of radio broadcasts, newsletters, and magazines, in addition to such well-tested methods as public debates, speeches, fundraisers, and community events.”26 This also gave her the opportunity to cultivate several pivotal and long-lasting personal contacts, many of which developed into trusted friendships, as the ones with Rose Schneiderman, Elizabeth Read, Esther Lape, Nancy Cook, Marion Dickerman, Clarence Pickett, Clark Eichelberger, Walter White, and Caroline O’Day, all of whom infused into her a constant drive for social reform. As she wrote in 1923, she shared with like-minded progressive and (liberal) democrats a genuine concern “with welfare and interests of the people at large, and less with the growth of big business interests.”27 This inclination to advocate for the underdogs also characterized her years at the White House. She made out of the first ladyship, a constitutionally powerless and theoretically marginal position, one of the best offices from which to push for her progressive agenda. She incessantly traveled across the country to closely observe the consequences of the Great Depression.28 She personally supervised, coordinated, and funded homestead and child-feeding programs in the coal mining areas of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, with the aim to transform them into successful examples of participatory and communitarian democracy.29 She continued to capitalize on all the various forms of media communication available to her at the time to reach ordinary American men and women, urging them to write to her to keep her informed of their troubles and answering their questions.30 On several occasions, she condemned racial

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segregation as inconsistent with the principles of American Republicanism.31 She kept defending human dignity and fighting for minorities’ rights even when this meant colliding with her husband’s necessarily pragmatic political agenda.32 After FDR’s death, she continued to carry out the progressive and liberal legacy of the New Deal both at home and abroad. While serving as an official representative at the newly established United Nations (UN) or reaching out to the people through her columns, public speeches, lectures, and radio and TV programs, she kept defending the linchpins of American liberalism. Throughout this time, she frequently voiced her concern that America’s race relations policies were badly affecting her country’s standing in the world: “Much of the feeling [at the UN] is that of the colored races against the white race. We are classed with the Colonial Powers as having exploited them…I think we have to reckon with this in our whole world outlook because we will need friends badly and it is surprising how few we have.”33 Eleanor Roosevelt’s life, thus, is chiefly a testament to public engagement. Scholars have variously argued about the naïveté of her pronouncements; nevertheless, Eleanor Roosevelt represented for many a voice of liberation, a beacon of progressivism and liberalism that casted its light for decades. It is therefore no surprise that American people still tend to consider Eleanor as one of the leading figures of the twentieth century, a liberator, or a role model.34 Scholars have also tended to focus on Eleanor Roosevelt’s role as a First Lady in light of supporting her husband, looking at her contributions as a woman, wife, and mother, and less so as a politician and activist. For example, Tamara Hareven argued that Eleanor Roosevelt “never visualized herself as an influential leader but as a woman performing a citizen’s duty to the democratic community.”35 Her ability to serve as a role model for women and her desire to encourage women to be active citizens is interesting and worthy of examination; as Congressman William Ryan of New York said in a 1963 memorial address, “she became the symbol of the new role women were to play in the world.”36 However, her gender and femininity (or lack of it) is not the only element of her personality that deserves attention. At the same time, it is striking to notice that when pundits, commentators, and scholars assess Eleanor Roosevelt’s contribution to world politics, they draw their attention almost exclusively on the role she played in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Her rich and complex views on global citizenship, democracy, civic

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awareness, and education go well beyond the pages of that document, and well beyond the traditional schemes of state-centered diplomacy. Accordingly, this edited volume aims to provide a multifaceted, and yet preliminary, account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s all-encompassing ideas on democracy and diplomacy. In doing so, the chapters in this book stress the various efforts she made, in order to support internationalism on a global scale and simultaneously further a peculiar interpretation of world affairs, which she saw as fair and equal cooperation among people, not merely among nation-states, based on common understanding and mutually beneficial crossings. Furthermore, reconstructing Eleanor Roosevelt’s involvement in diplomacy is particularly timely and compelling nowadays, especially from a historiographical point of view. In the past few decades, indeed, scholars have redefined diplomatic history by broadening its theoretical scope and extending its empirical boundaries. Environments, cross-cultural interactions and encounters, transnational flows, individual inputs, and societal efforts have progressively become part and parcel of a new historical narrative.37 In particular, such an extensive body of scholarship has tended to de-emphasize the role of the nation-state as the sole agency molding international affairs. Authors have recognized that exchanges across borders have been and continue to be shaped by many non-state actors who use their public prominence, personal experiences and contacts, intellect and tact for the benefit of the public interest. Eleanor Roosevelt, who as her biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook says, “touched the imagination of people everywhere, because she included in her vision people of all economic and social classes,” is among the most prominent examples of these actors.38 The book presents therefore chapters that tackle the various elements of Eleanor Roosevelt’s citizen diplomacy. Chapter “The Great National and Transnational Communicator: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Use of Radio to Promote Peace and Understanding” by Anya Luscombe is centered on the former first lady’s ability to reach out to different national publics, and especially the European ones, through her masterly use of radio. In it, Luscombe explains that Eleanor Roosevelt’s broadcasts, whose perceived success is proven by the hundreds of letters of admiration she received, while part and parcel of America’s Cold War battle to win over the hearts and minds of foreign audiences also contributed to spreading a message of peace, cooperation, and mutual understanding. This sort of empathic diplomacy, at times complementary, at times openly at odds with

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Washington’s official policy, served in the end the purpose of normalizing high politics to the benefit of the common citizen and convincing people of the authenticity of American progress. The following three chapters focus on a particular feature of Eleanor Roosevelt’s citizen diplomacy, very much intertwined with her personal character, that is, her passion for travel. Her numerous visits to foreign countries, indeed, both conducted in official and unofficial capacity, further expanded the outreach of America’s public diplomacy. During the war, as chapter ““Mrs. Roosevelt Goes on Tour”: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Soft Diplomacy During World War II” by Raffaella Baritono suggests, FDR gambled on her appeal in order to boost the morale of American troops overseas and reassure US allies at the same time. Here, Baritono suggestively highlights Eleanor’s idiosyncrasies as an official diplomat. Her personal opinions, rarely silenced, received a lot of (bi-partisan) criticism at home and on several occasions caused a considerable amount of friction between American officials and foreign counterparts abroad, especially on such thorny issues as race and colonialism. Chapter “Eleanor Roosevelt in Yugoslavia Between Wedge Strategy and Cold War Internationalism” by Carla Konta brings to the fore Eleanor Roosevelt’s personal diplomatic style by uncovering the relatively unknown story of her tour of Tito’s Yugoslavia. Through that experience, which Konta interprets as instrumental to Washington’s “wedge” strategy between the Balkan state and Moscow, it is possible to recognize some of Eleanor’s most distinctive diplomatic traits: a genuine interest in poor and dispossessed people; a reluctance toward official gatherings, which she, nevertheless, oftentimes, turned to her advantage; her reliance on personal networks; her active promotion of the UN mission and image, which after 1948 naturally accompanied her everywhere she went. Then, chapter “Behind the Iron Curtain: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Visit to Poland in 1960” by Halina Parafianowicz gives fascinating insights into Eleanor Roosevelt’s excursions behind the iron curtain, recounting the story of her participation in the 15th Plenary Assembly of the World Federation of the United Nations Associations (WFUNA) and her visit to Poland in the fall of 1960. Further elaborating on the impressions and achievements of her trips to Russia, which have been accounted in great details by Eleanor’s friend and biographer Joseph Lash, Parafianowicz explains how, in Eleanor Roosevelt’s own words, trips of this sort were fundamental to “build a bridge of understanding and good will” in an era

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otherwise characterized by rising tensions, mistrust, and Manichean divides. The second part of the volume focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt’s interest in such global issues as human rights, education, and democracy and some of the obstacles that she, as a pragmatic diplomat, aimed to overcome. It was in the appeal to universal principles that she traced the roots of global citizenship, and it was in these principles that she found a common denominator though which to spur citizens into action. Chapter “Liberalism Meets Radicalism: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Internationalization of the Black Liberation Struggle” by Tim Kies stresses the relevance that race relations had in codifying Eleanor Roosevelt’s transnational message to the citizens of the world. Here, Kies emphasizes Eleanor’s difficulties and ambiguity in dealing with what was the greatest contradiction of America’s Cold War public diplomacy: the unremitting tension between the ambition of spreading freedom worldwide, while being burdened by racial segregation at home. The limits of Eleanor Roosevelt’s diplomacy are evident in this field, whereas her positive role in advancing women’s empowerment transpire from the following three chapters. The first one, chapter “Dancing Barefoot and Politicizing Dance at the White House: Eleanor Roosevelt and Martha Graham’s Collaboration During the Rise of Fascism in Europe” written by Camelia Lenart, stresses Eleanor Roosevelt’s intimate love for arts instrumentally and interprets it as a way to endorse and publicize modernity and modernism. In fulfilling her mission as public educator, Lenart argues, Eleanor Roosevelt also employed the power of silent messages, metaphors, and live performances—like Martha Graham’s ones, which are at the center of Lenart’s analysis—knowing that they might crucially contribute to moving citizens’ conscience and awareness and overcoming class, gender, and racial barriers. The second one, chapter ““I Know What You Are Doing for Other People Too”: Dutch Journalist Mary Pos Reaches Out to Eleanor Roosevelt” by Babs Boter, is on the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Dutch journalist Mary Pos. In it, Boter highlights how Eleanor’s worldviews were, oftentimes, appropriated, (re)negotiated, and translated into terms that sounded familiar to foreign audiences by the many cultural mediators, like Pos, that she encountered throughout her life. The third one, chapter “Eleanor Roosevelt’s Autofabrication as Gendered Premediation of a Female Presidency” by Sara Polak, is an exploration into Eleanor Roosevelt’s political persona. Here, Polak argues

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that Eleanor, while serving as US First Lady, was able to transform an apparently powerless position into a highly influential one, and that this also helped the (auto)fabrication of FDR’s quasi-epic presidency. Finally, chapter “Eleanor Roosevelt and the Nature: Bridging Conservationism with Environmentalism” by Dario Fazzi concludes the book with a journey into one of the less explored traits of Eleanor Roosevelt’s personality, namely her environmentalism. In this chapter, Fazzi reveals how Eleanor’s own understanding of nature bridged the gap between traditional conservationism and modern environmentalism, by questioning the long-term sustainability of humans’ consumption and exploitation of natural resources and, more importantly, by inviting people to act, transnationally, in defense of the global ecosystem. All the chapters, then, revolve around the basic assumption that it was the very notion of citizenship endorsed and promoted by Eleanor Roosevelt that entailed a performative diplomatic role. In fact, in an influential booklet published in 1940 and suggestively titled “The Moral Basis of Democracy,” she wrote that good, democratic citizens must “model themselves on the best and most unselfish life,” should be oriented to the pursuit of the common good, and should, above all, fully recognize and appreciate their own individual responsibility. Making the citizens of the world aware of such a great responsibility was one of Eleanor Roosevelt’s main missions as public educator, but fulfilling the duties that descended from it became the main driver of her diplomacy.

Notes 1. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1945. My Day, August 24, 1945. https://www2.gwu. edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1945&_f=md000112. Accessed March 5, 2019. 2. See Chafe, William H. 1992. Biographical Sketch. In Without Precedent: The Life and Career of Eleanor Roosevelt, eds. Joan Hoff-Wilson and Marjorie Lightman, 7. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 3. See Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1938. If You Ask Me. New  York: AppletonCentury, quoted in Bilsborrow, Eleanor J. 1957. The Philosophy of Social Reform in the Speeches of Eleanor Roosevelt. Denver: University of Denver, Ph.D. Dissertation, 43. 4. To explore some of the positive assessments of Eleanor Roosevelt’s achievements, see among the others Black, Allida M. 1996. Casting Her Own Shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press; Glendon, Mary Ann. 2001. A World Made

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New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New York: Random House; Henry, Richard. 2010. Eleanor Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson. New York: Palgrave; O’Farrell, Brigid. 2010. She Was One of Us: Eleanor Roosevelt and the American Worker. Ithaca: Cornell University Press; Binker Mary Jo and Brigid O’Farrell. 2014. This Is What Ken Burns Neglected to Tell You About Eleanor Roosevelt. History News Network, December 7. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157795, accessed March 5, 2019; Fazzi, Dario. 2016. Eleanor Roosevelt and the AntiNuclear Movement: The Voice of Conscience. New York: Palgrave. Of particular relevance here are the experiences of some contemporary women who shared their encounters with and opinions on Eleanor Roosevelt in Klemesrud, Judy. 1984. Assessing Eleanor Roosevelt as a Feminist. The New York Times, November 5. Finally, see also Transcript, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2018. Remarks at Bonavero Institute of Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University, October 9. https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxlaw/keynote_speech_by_secretary_hillary_clinton_20181009_0.pdf. Accessed March 5, 2019. Among those who criticized Eleanor Roosevelt, particularly worth mentioning is the troubled relations she had with both Arthur Vandenberg and John Foster Dulles, see Atkins, Ann. 2011. Eleanor Roosevelt Unleashed: A Life of Soul Searching and Self Discovery. From Depression and Betrayal to “First Lady of the World”. Paoli: Flash History Press; an overview of Eleanor Roosevelt’s critics is given by Koch, Cynthia. 2016. They Hated Eleanor, Too. Commentary, The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Foundation at Adams House, Harvard College, August 20. http://fdrfoundation.org/they-hated-eleanor-too/. Accessed March 5, 2019. Finally, one of the most recent critical publications is Kidd, Geraldine. 2018. Eleanor Roosevelt: Palestine, Israel and Human Rights. New York: Routledge. 5. See Cull, Nicholas J. 2008. Public Diplomacy: Taxonomies and Histories. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 616, 1: 31–54 and Cull, Nicholas J. 2009. Public Diplomacy: Lessons from the Past. Los Angeles: Figueroa Press. 6. In this regard, Eleanor Roosevelt may be considered a forerunner of the so-­called new public diplomacy; see Melissen Jan (ed.) 2005. The New Public Diplomacy. New York: Palgrave. 7. On “private diplomacy,” see Scott-Smith, Giles. 2014. Introduction: Private Diplomacy, Making the Citizen Visible. New Global Studies. https://doi.org/10.1515/ngs-2014-0012 8. One of the most brilliant examples of this difference between her goals and her achievements is represented by the negotiations concerning the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Eleanor Roosevelt led as

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chair of the Third Committee of the United Nations. Eleanor Roosevelt’s main goal was to achieve a binding treaty, enforcing human rights globally. The international and domestic political situations though, and the balance of power within the UN led her to accept the Declaration—and its purely moral value—as the best outcome possible. See Roosevelt, Mrs. Franklin D. The Struggle for Human Rights (also known as, “The Struggle for the Rights of Man”), Paris, Sorbonne, September 28, 1948 (publication released February 1949). In The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Volume 1: the Human Rights Years, 1945–1948, ed. Allida Black. 2010, 900. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. 9. Berger, Jason. 1981. A New Deal for the World: Eleanor Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy. New York: Columbia University Press. 10. Hoff, Joan. 2001. Foreign Policy. In The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia, eds. Beasley, Maurine H., Holly C.  Shulman, Henry R.  Beasley, 195. Westport: Greenwood Press. 11. See Cook, Blanche Wiesen. 1984. Turn Toward Peace: ER and Foreign Affairs. In Without Precedent. The Life and Career of Eleanor Roosevelt, ed. Hoff-Wilson, Joan and Marjorie Lightman, 109. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 12. Black, Allida M. Casting Her Own Shadow; Glendon, Mary Ann. A World Made New; Borgwardt, Elizabeth. 2005. A New Deal for the World: America’s Vision for Human Rights. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 13. As Giles Scott-Smith argues, exchange programs fall under the more fitting category of “public diplomacy”; see Scott-Smith, Giles. 2008. Exchange Programs and Public Diplomacy. In Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, eds. Snow, Nancy and Philip M. Taylor. New York: Routledge. 14. Davidson, William D. and Joseph V.  Montville. Winter 1981–1982. Foreign Policy According to Freud. Foreign Policy, 45: 145–157. See also Warner, Gale, and Michael Shuman. 1987. Citizen Diplomats: Pathfinders in Soviet-American Relations. New York: Continuum; Kelley, John Robert. 2010. The New Diplomacy: Evolution of a Revolution. Diplomacy and Statecraft. Vol. 21, 2: 286–305. On the concept of “nation branding,” see Gienow-Hecht, Jessica C.  E. 2016. Nation Branding. In Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 3rd Edition, eds. Costigliola, Frank, and Michael J.  Hogan. New  York: Cambridge University Press; and Viktorin, Carolin et al., eds. 2018. Nation Branding in Modern History. New York: Berghahn Books. 15. Hart, Justin. 2018. Historicizing the Relationship between Nation Branding and Public Diplomacy. In Viktorin, Carolin, et al., eds. Nation Branding in Modern History.

 INTRODUCTION 

13

16. Cook, Blanche Wiesen. 1992. Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One. The Early Years, 1884–1933. New York: Penguin: 21–22. 17. Burns, James MacGregor, and Susan Dunn. 2001. The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America. New York: Groove Press. 18. Ricard Serge, ed., 2011. A Companion to Theodore Roosevelt. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing. 19. Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One, 102–124. 20. O’Farrell, Brigid. She Was One of Us, 6–10. 21. Black, Allida M. Casting Her Own Shadow, 8. 22. See Chafe, Biographical Sketch, 6. 23. Israels Perry, Elisabeth. 1984. Training for Public Life: ER and Women’s Political Networks in the 1920s. In Without Precedent: The Life and Career of Eleanor Roosevelt, eds. Hoff-Wilson, Joan, and Marjorie Lightman, 44. 24. Fenster, Julie M. 2009. FDR’s Shadow: Louis Howe, The Force that Shaped Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. New  York: St. Martin’s Griffin. Scharf, Lois. ER and Feminism. In Without Precedent: The Life and Career of Eleanor Roosevelt, eds. Joan Hoff-Wilson and Marjorie Lightman¸ 226. 25. Burns, James MacGregor, and Susan Dunn. 2001. The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America. New  York: Groove Press: 172 and 186. 26. Beasley, Maurine H. 2010. Eleanor Roosevelt. Transformative First Lady. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas: 77. Phillips, Julieanne. League of Women Voters. In The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia, eds. Beasley, Maurine H.  Holly Cowan Shulman, and Henry R.  Beasley, 314–316. Westport: Greenwood Press. 27. Beasley, Eleanor Roosevelt. Transformative First Lady, 35; Eshet, Dan. 2010. Fundamental Freedoms. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Brookline: Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation. 28. Black, Casting Her Own Shadow, 23–28. 29. For a detailed account of the Arthurdale project and Eleanor Roosevelt’s role in it, see Hoffman, Nancy. 2001. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Arthurdale Experiment. North Haven: Linnet Books. See also Austin, Allan W. Quaker Brotherhood: Interracial Activism and the American Friends Service Committee, 1917–1950. 2012. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Along with a few Quaker friends of hers, she also developed Norvelt, a self-­ sufficient community in Pennsylvania that was supposed to provide housing and services, and an alternative to unemployment and misery, to the coal miners and poor people in the area. Norvelt was named as such after EleaNOR RooseVELT. See Kelly, Timothy, Margaret Power, and Michael

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Cary. 2016. Hope in Hard Times: Norvelt and the Struggle for Community During the Great Depression. University Park: Penn State University Press. See also Eleanor Roosevelt to W.W.  Alexander, January 22, 1938, in Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS), The Paper of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933–1945, Reel 1, 00002. In another letter to Alexander, who was Arthurdale’s administrator at the Department of Agriculture, she presented the story of a boy living in the homestead community whose family could not afford his training, and she admitted: “I have placed several other children from there [Arthurdale] in various capacities in Washington and they all seem to make good. If you think there is any chance, I will pay his transportation and give him enough money to live on until he gets his first pay check.” Eleanor Roosevelt to W.W. Alexander, January 11, 1940, RIAS, The Paper of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933–1945, Reel 1, 00008. On her financial involvement, see Bernard Baruch to Eleanor Roosevelt, December 18, 1934, RIAS, The Paper of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933–1945, Reel 1, 00220. See also Chafe, Biographical Sketch, 18. 30. Beasley, Eleanor Roosevelt. Transformative First Lady. 31. Roosevelt, Eleanor. The Negro and Social Change. In Courage in a Dangerous World. The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt, ed. Allida M. Black, 1999. 34–37. New York: Columbia University Press. See also Abramowitz, Mildred W. 1971. Eleanor Roosevelt and Federal Responsibility and Responsiveness to Youth, the Negro, and Others in Time of Depression. New York University, Ph.D. Dissertation, 141–183; and Cooper, Melissa. 2017. Reframing Eleanor Roosevelt’s Influence in the 1930s AntiLynching Movement around a “New Philosophy of Government.” European Journal of American Studies, Vol. 12, 1. Doi: https://doi. org/10.4000/ejas.11914 32. Zangrando Joanna Schneider, and Robert Zangrando. ER and Black Civil Rights. In Without Precedent, eds. Joan Hoff-Wilson and Marjorie Lightman, 88; and Lash, Joseph P. 1971. Eleanor and Franklin. New York: Norton & Company. 33. Eleanor Roosevelt to Harry Truman, December 14, 1950. In The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers: The Human Rights Years, 1949–1952, ed. Allida Black, 2012, 484–485. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. 34. Ranking America’s First Ladies. 2003. Siena Research Institute Survey. https://scri.siena.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/ranking20americas20first20ladies.pdf. Accessed March 5, 2019; and Rogers, Katie. 2015. Eleanor Roosevelt Is Top Choice for the $10 Bill, Poll Finds. The New York Times, August 5. 35. Hareven, Tamara K. 1968. Eleanor Roosevelt: An American Conscience. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 278.

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36. Ryan, Rep. William. 1963. Memorial Addresses in the House of Representatives. Together with Tributes on the Life and Ideals of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. March 18. 88th Congress, 1st Session House Document No 152, 17–18. 37. In this regard, see the publications listed on https://newdiplomatichistory.org/literature/. Accessed March 5, 2019. 38. Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One, 17.

The Great National and Transnational Communicator: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Use of Radio to Promote Peace and Understanding Anya Luscombe

In the early part of the Cold War, radio was one of the most prominent tools for public diplomacy, as Risso says, “one of the weapons of choice” that policymakers had.1 Radio as a means of communication to the masses had been around since the early 1920s, and by the late 1940s it was well established in every US home and in an increasing number of homes outside the United States too. Until television was widely available, radio was the most effective way to reach large swathes of people. As the medium was a comparatively low-cost way of reaching large numbers of ordinary men and women, including those without much education or money and those who were flung far and wide apart, it was capable of forging transnational links and creating a sense of community—real or imagined.2

A. Luscombe (*) Utrecht University, Middelburg, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Fazzi, A. Luscombe (eds.), Eleanor Roosevelt’s Views on Diplomacy and Democracy, The World of the Roosevelts, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42315-5_2

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As Vaillant argues, “broadcasting, sound, and listening helped constitute a mass-mediated geopolitics.”3 The United States Information Service thus included radio broadcasts along with its films and printed publications to communicate what Belmonte calls a “carefully constructed narrative of progress, freedom and happiness.”4 It frequently called on major figures from politics, science, and the arts to appear on the airwaves. Among those was Eleanor Roosevelt (ER), First Lady of the World and First Lady of Radio, as WNBC had already dubbed her in 1939.5 Eleanor Roosevelt traveled extensively to meet people in person, gave hundreds of speeches in places big and small, wrote articles and books, had a syndicated newspaper column (“My Day,” 1935–1962) that reached millions in the United States, a question-and-­ answer column for the Ladies Home Journal (1941–1949) and McCall’s (1949–1962), and hosted TV programs, but it was through the radio both domestically and abroad that she could speak most directly to people in their own homes and bind those people together, in whichever part of the world they found themselves, into a community of shared understanding. This chapter examines the goals and impact of some of Eleanor Roosevelt’s radio broadcasts both nationally and internationally during the late 1940s and early 1950s in which she spoke about the value of international cooperation, the struggle for peace, and the need for “ordinary” citizens everywhere to join that struggle. It first considers her role in radio programming within the United States, including her own two series of programs on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and National Broadcasting Company (NBC) networks and her close involvement in United Nations (UN) Radio, and then turns attention to public diplomacy activities in Europe, particularly broadcasts in France and the Netherlands.

A Radio Pioneer and Educator Eleanor Roosevelt was a broadcasting pioneer, one of a very small number of women who was frequently on the air in the 1920s and 1930s, talking about subjects that were not limited to homemaking and children. During her time as First Lady, she hosted her own programs for which she was paid handsomely by commercial sponsors, with the money she earned going to charity.6 She was heavily criticized for being involved in broadcasting and having her own career by those who thought her conduct unbefitting to a woman, even more so a First Lady. As with many things

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in life, Eleanor carried on despite the opposition as she felt she would be damned by some whatever she chose to do.7 Besides earning money and proving a woman could have a career, radio was to her a means to connect with citizens. She could use it to form a bond, to elicit responses from those who needed help or might have a different view from her or the government, and as a tool to explain, and persuade, how to understand complex issues. She was a paid-up member of both the Association of Women in Radio and Television (a network of professional women who sought to further the careers of women in broadcasting) and the American Federation of Radio Artists, a labor union. During World War II and its immediate aftermath, Mrs. Roosevelt realized that if the United Nations were to be a success and if keeping and building the peace were to happen, then people everywhere had to join forces to make it so. To join something, one must first understand how it works and why it is important, so critical numbers of citizens everywhere—at home and abroad—had to be informed. In particular, she placed her hopes in the desire of women to keep the peace, and as such many of her broadcasts were especially aimed at informing and empowering women to do so. In 1946, Eleanor Roosevelt joined the US delegation to the United Nations. She soon became chair of the Human Rights Commission that was charged with drafting an International Bill of Rights with its first task the creation of a Universal Declaration of Principles. This was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948. The delicate process of drafting and getting countries to agree on this document as well as other contentious issues between countries was not an easy one for citizens to follow. Fears of World War III, the danger from atomic weapons, and the rise of Communism also exercised the minds of many “ordinary” people everywhere. Eleanor Roosevelt who was a frequent speaker on radio during these years, decided in the Fall of 1948 to take to the airwaves with a program of her own to focus on some of these international topics for a domestic audience, although this time she did the presentation together with her daughter.8 Anna presented from Hollywood and Eleanor from New  York or wherever she happened to be for the United Nations or other engagements at that time: the programs were a deliberate blending of national and transnational messages, bringing the views and problems of the international community into a national and local community. The 15-minute program, a combination of forum and commentary, covered a host of topics: “we expect to talk about books and cities and people and probably even cabbages and kings – everything from the latest ‘-ism’ to

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the latest fashion. Most of all, we want to talk to you about things of greatest interest to you,” said Anna in the first episode.9 In that inaugural broadcast, Eleanor Roosevelt contributed from “far away Paris, France, by shortwave radio telephone,” where she reflected on President Truman’s reelection and argued that the Dixiecrats, southern Democrats who had formed their own group, should be ousted from power.10 While the subjects were important, the tone of the program was also homely, with Anna creating a sense of a radio family through the power of the voice connected to her mother and in close connection with American listeners, particularly women, who were missing friends and loved ones: Thanks, Mother. You know that’s the first time I’ve heard Mother’s voice in two months, and hearing it makes me think of the many other mothers and daughters, husbands and sons who are parted by an ocean or a continent. A close friend of mine has a daughter in Germany who’s been there for two years. Her daughter’s husband is in the army of occupation and they can’t come home until next year. My friend and many others like her just long for the sound of the voices of their loved ones, so I am lucky. And not only is this a big day for Mother and me because it’s the kickoff of our new radio program, but also it’s an important family anniversary – a day which brings back close family memories, particularly as we’ve been talking about elections. It was just four years ago today Governor Dewey conceded the election to my father.11

“We women appreciate especially having the world come in to us while we are working at home,” wrote listener Mrs. Helen O’Toole from New Bedford, Massachusetts.12 In the next few months, the world events described and commented upon by mother and daughter included the situation in Germany, elections in France, the responsibilities of French farming women, the structure of the United Nations, and the way to prevent Communism. Each time tying the issue as much as possible to the possible interests of the American listener, particularly the housewife. For example, an interview with Secretary-General Trygve Lie started with the construction of the new UN building in New York, compared the slow decision-making in the General Assembly to the process in Oslo’s parliament and the US Congress, and concluded with why the UN was so important for peace everywhere. “I appreciate your taking the time from your busy schedule to come and tell the people of the United States something about our greatest bulwark against war,” Eleanor concluded.13 The importance of radio as a means of public education was highlighted in the

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Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt Program of 27 April 1949 when Mrs. Roosevelt’s guest was Coordinator of US Station Relations for UN Radio, Dorothy Lewis. Her job was to persuade American broadcasters to schedule programs about UN activities which had been produced by UN Radio. Eleanor asked Lewis about UN Radio’s primary objective and its chief difficulty: [DL:] It is to ensure the American public a complete and regular report of United Nations activities. They say, I believe, that 50 million people are reached by press in the world and 400 million by radio. This instantaneous means of intelligent transmission is a great challenge to us because we can reach the people instantly day by day with this story of this great operation […the chief difficulty is] reducing this enormous subject in terms that the layman can understand…and to bring to the people an impartial view of the activities.14

Between November 1948 and March 1949, the Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt Program was aired three times a week in the mornings; between March 1949 and the final episode on 26 August 1949, it was broadcast daily in the afternoons; in total, the series contained 175 episodes. In October 1950, Eleanor joined forces with her son Elliott for a daily program on the NBC network.15 The 45-minute program aired at lunchtime (New York time) would, given the time of day, mainly have attracted women.16 The format involved mother and son first discussing a topic raised in a listener’s letter or directly answering a question, followed by an interview conducted by Mrs. Roosevelt with guests, including politicians, scientists, journalists, artists, and celebrities (e.g., Secretary of War Judge Robert P. Patterson, Director of the American Association for the United Nations Clark Eichelberger, the actress Tallulah Bankhead, and the entertainer Bob Hope), but also less well-known people, for example, UN Interpreters.17 Subjects involved mundane matters (Christmas shopping, Fala the dog, beautiful holiday views), but more frequently serious topics such as economic hardship, labor unions, the military, children’s welfare, the threat of war, the Korean conflict, and the United Nations. Her usual friendly informality (including the occasional laughter or evidence of frustration) mixed with her curiosity to learn new things and her thorough knowledge of politics and international affairs enabled her to communicate with her listeners as a good, knowledgeable friend or teacher might do. Such was the case in the episode of 18 April 1951:

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I’m most happy that I’m able through the medium of radio to visit with you each day at this time, and I trust that you will feel that you are friends visiting with me right here in my living room at the Park Sheraton Hotel in New  York, where you will meet my guests selected from all walks of life. Sometimes just to entertain you and sometimes to be informative and increase our knowledge.

In that particular program, Eleanor discussed with Elliott her worries about the ability of Human Rights Commission members to meet on time to discuss the drafting of a covenant. She showed herself to be a regular person just like the listener who might be worried about their own deadlines and implied that UN members could just like the listener sometimes be baffled by United Nations business: I apparently am the only one that am a little bit worried, because I feel that the General Assembly through Committee Three delegated an almost impossible task to the Human Rights Commission for this next meeting. And it would take, I think, the most experienced workers who did not have to fill in much background, and I’m not at all sure that even they could do what they were told to do in the five weeks allotted to them…I feel we should have the most experienced and the best representatives to explain what the commission does in the next session to the General Assembly.18

Thus, the individual listeners were able to connect to Mrs. Roosevelt who was talking to them in their own home from her very own living room and at the same time could connect to the UN diplomats through her, in which they could somewhat recognize their own predicaments and feelings. Eleanor also used her guests in the role of educator, such as on 7 February 1951 when the Republican senator from California, William F. Knowland, was asked to explain, “for the benefit of our listeners,” the US Senate’s resolutions on designating China as an aggressor and not admitting Communist China into the United Nations. They went on to discuss, in as simple language as possible, the threat of Communism in Asia, colonialism, and India’s reluctance to arm itself. By conversing with and agreeing with each other on several points of foreign policy, Eleanor could also use the program to show that a Democrat like herself could get along with a Republican like Knowland who, like her, believed in the role of the United Nations:

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Well I am very glad to have had you with me today sir, and I am grateful to you for coming because I feel it very important for the American people to have clarified as much and as often as possible the thinking of the important legislators who are responsible for so much of the action of our country and its leadership.19

There appeared to be a great desire for explanation about international affairs on the part of the listeners. In episode 100, Elliott mentioned that the show was attracting an increasing amount of mail, with a large number of letters requesting “further enlightenment in both national and international matters.”20 In the last episode, number 233, mother and son discussed whether the program series overall had been successful: [Elliott:] Well, do you feel that possibly our audience gathered a little more information about the political life of our country through the many public officials that you interviewed…? [Eleanor:] Well, judging from the letters, a great many people and strangely enough…today I had a whole batch of letters when I got to town, all about the program and all saying now that they were on holiday they were able to listen to it every day which they had not been before…and that they were getting a great deal of out of it. What interests me most is that frequently it’s not just the visiting guest who’s being interviewed, they apparently like very much questions and answers…I was quite pleased that they felt…it had cleared up certain things for them.21

In addition to her own radio series during this early part of the Cold War, Eleanor Roosevelt was interviewed on other American shows about the UN and international peace building, and she promoted the United Nations and its radio division as often as she could by other means. In October 1947, she was asked to become the moderator of “World Security Workshop” on the ABC network, a program on Sundays in which she could invite UN representatives and officials.22 Together with the President of the UN General Assembly, Dr. Herbert Evatt, she told the influential American Radio Executives Club in 1949 that support from US citizens was vital to the future of the UN, implying that US radio stations had a role in trying to garner that support.23 Roosevelt frequently corresponded with Dorothy Lewis from UN Radio about the benefits of radio to reach people, particularly women listeners, as well as the difficulties they faced in their efforts, not only in terms of explaining the complex issues for a general public but also in the resistance in getting radio stations and the press

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to pay attention to the UN.24 Eleanor supported Women United for the United Nations (WUUN), a nationwide coalition of women’s nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that started working with United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Office of Public Information in 1946.25 WUUN used popular media, especially radio, to get its media across. The group’s Radio Committee which thought UN radio broadcasts were “dull and academic” decided to produce a monthly script entitled “United Nations News for Women Broadcasters” for the UN Radio Division.26 Edited by Lewis, the tone was meant to be “intimate and chatty” where a “human interest angle was used to innocuously present the work of the UN.”27

An Embedded Broadcaster A few months after The Eleanor Roosevelt Program came to an end, Mrs. Roosevelt was asked to do a series of radio broadcasts for the Voice of America (VOA) to explain the workings of the United Nations to listeners in France and other French-speaking countries. Mrs. Roosevelt was no stranger to broadcasting to audiences in other parts of the world, neither on their national broadcasters nor for the Voice of America or United Nations Radio. When she attended the first meeting of the General Assembly in London in January 1946, she went on the BBC to share her disappointment that the British representative Ellen Wilkinson and she were the only two senior female delegates. She was surprised, she said, that men who did the appointing to such positions had not considered the interest of women in peace building.28 In February 1946, she addressed the French public in French via the services of the BBC, expressing her joy at being able to greet “her French friends” and hoping that France would soon recover from World War II and that by working together France and America could bring about peace.29 The involvement in Voice of America represented a qualitative change in Eleanor Roosevelt’s broadcasting. Rather than simply conveying the messages she genuinely cared about, she was now part and parcel of America’s organized and structured Cold War propaganda. In other words, she became an instrument of the US cultural diplomacy offensive. In the early years of the Cold War, US international broadcasting was focused on containing the threat from Communism.30 The Voice of America, which had started broadcasting in February 1942 and rapidly expanded during World War II, faced budget cuts once the war was over.31

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Eleanor Roosevelt frequently criticized those who were not willing to fund this form of public diplomacy, arguing that military spending alone would not persuade people to reject Communism. She wrote in her “My Day” Column of 9 May 1947: One grows to feel that our representatives in Congress are willing to give money for military opposition to Communism, but are not willing to give money to the spread of intellectual understanding of democracy. Yet if we do not want to see our sons go off to war again, we must spread the understanding of the value of our way of life and of our type of government…32

She also explained to listeners of the Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt Program how important international broadcasting was as “perhaps the best way of getting behind the Iron Curtain…we don’t know how much gets beyond, but we hope a great deal gets beyond.”33 Gradually, as relations between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated and the Soviets started investing heavily in their own international broadcasts, American politicians and the public came round to the position of the State Department that “military power dissociated from a persuasive idea may neither deter an enemy nor persuade an ally” and agreed that public and cultural diplomacy including radio broadcasting was a necessary part of the Cold War arsenal.34 The United States gave more than US$12 billion dollars in aid as part of its Marshall plan to help boost economic production and raise living standards in Western Europe, but it became increasingly apparent that more was necessary than the battle to provide enough food and infrastructure, the battle for the hearts and minds needed a greater insight into what constituted shared Western values.35 On 9 March 1950, President Truman, then, approved NSC59 II, which called for a “campaign of truth,” a dramatic expansion of US information programs and the VOA.36 The US Under-Secretary of State, James Webb, proposed spending US$130 million on new operators and transmitters.37 In addition to trying to reach those behind the Iron Curtain, the State Department set its sights on persuading publics in Western European countries not to be tempted by Soviet propaganda. As Nelson says, “The intellectuals with whom the Radios had to battle after the war were not in the Soviet Union […] they were in the West, and it was they who were legitimizing the communist regimes.”38 France, in particular, formed a headache for US diplomats; economically and militarily weak, strategically vulnerable, and with a Communist party that attracted a great deal of

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support, they worried that the French could be easily tempted by the Soviets.39 In addition, many French intellectuals and conservative groups were wary of American interference in France, seeing it as a form of “capitalist imperialism.”40 James Webb urged that the VOA should target the French as a matter of priority.41 While it was estimated that only approximately 17% of French inhabitants owned a radio receiver, the United States Information Service (USIS) Radio Unit in France wrote to the State Department in 1952 that approximately 20 million persons were considered radio listeners.42 By the turn of the next decade, radio was still the dominant medium by which French households accessed news, information, and entertainment, with 80% owning a radio as opposed to only one in five owning a television.43 In post-war Europe, much more than in the United States, there was a desire to return to a society where family life was paramount, with the women staying at home and looking after their husbands and children. In France, President De Gaulle’s call for “twelve million beautiful babies” did not go unheeded: the birth rate shot up from 15 per 1000 before the war to nearly 21,000 in the period between 1946 and 1950.44 On the political front, women did not play a major role; while they (finally) gained the right to vote and stand for office in 1944, seven years later, just 3.5% of National Assembly seats were won by women.45 However, Rebecca Pulju argues that looking at women’s political representation is not enough and instead historians should also take into account women’s power as “consumers for the nation.”46 The French government supported the consumer organizations of which many women were a member as this coincided with its goals of stimulating demand for consumer goods to boost economic productivity, creating “a gendered form of citizenship which was essential to the national economy, but did not upset the gendered structure of home, workplace and polity.”47 The French authorities’ views on the benefits of mass consumerism fit perfectly with those in Washington and encapsulated in the Marshall Plan.48 French post-war state radio’s identity was similarly formed by the idea of “cultural conservatism” in which women’s lives revolved around the home.49 One of its programs on the Paris Network, Changement de Decors (Change of Scenery), interviewed Eleanor Roosevelt on 24 October 1948 and asked her what American women could learn from French women and vice versa.50 She praised the way French women ran their household, but believed they could learn from American women to be freer:

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I think that the French women could learn from American women that they could have a little more freedom, and not remain so attached to their family. With us, we demand that our merchants and other people concerned provide commodities in order to make life easier for women. For example, we have many articles for children and for the house that you do not have here. I understand that at present these things would cost too much. But our women demand that they become less expensive so that everyone can afford them and life becomes less complicated. … [Interviewer:] – I hope that many industrialists and merchants will think of this material side of family life and will help French women to “get organized.”51

The implication in this episode of Changement de Decors is that French women could be a little bit more like American women and a little bit happier if they had access to more consumer goods; this chance to become a little more “Americanized” would make France more economically prosperous and freer than if the French turned to the Soviets. The radio program appeared to adopt a similar strategy to advertisements in women’s magazines in France, which Colvin says stressed the Americanness to “emphasize superiority” and “reflect[ed] a sense of anxiety that French women were not keeping up with their American counterparts aesthetically.”52 While Mrs. Roosevelt did also talk about the United Nations and its role in trying to build world peace during de Changement radio interview, here, much of her public diplomat’s role also appeared to focus on supporting American economic and strategic interests, feeding into France’s nationally stereotypical views on the role of women. Arguably, this was different to her more usual calls to women to be more politically active citizens. However, the emphasis on consumer choice does fit within the idea that the ability to exercise freedom to consume was one of the characteristics of the ideal early Cold War citizen, and as such, particularly, that of female citizens.53 The broadcast also strikes a very different note than the one Mrs. Roosevelt adopted a month earlier in her speech at the Sorbonne in which she explained the progress on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, outlining the differences between countries about the concept of human rights and of freedom: We must not be deluded by the efforts of the forces of reaction to prostitute the great words of our free tradition and thereby to confuse the struggle. Democracy, freedom, human rights have come to have a definite meaning to

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the people of the world which we must not allow any nation to so change that they are made synonymous with suppression and dictatorship.54

William Tyler of the US Foreign Service wrote to ER that that Sorbonne speech had “struck a powerful blow for Franco-American relations and for the cause of freedom.”55 Mrs. Roosevelt also took every opportunity to warn that without freedom, peace was not attainable, as she did in April 1949 when she broadcast a message over French Radio from the Paris Peace Conference: Peace without freedom is a stagnant pool. It may look alluring at a distance, the lily pads may gleam white in the sun, but underneath the water is foul. Freedom is a fresh and running stream in which there is refreshment for the soul – a thing of beauty and power to be used for the common good.56

The head of the Voice of America’s French service, Fernand Auberjonois, asked Mrs. Roosevelt in 1951 to broadcast weekly commentaries about her work as a delegate to the sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly which was taking place in Paris.57 The VOA was having a difficult time in engaging French listeners. A telegraph sent to the Secretary of State in July 1951 described how its regular program Ici New York had been “obliged to modify its perspectives which are chiefly psychological and therefore very complex. VOA must not (rpt not) only find radio listeners but retain them.”58 It was hoped that weekly commentaries delivered in French by the popular and well-respected Eleanor Roosevelt (either because of her own stature or because of the goodwill toward her late husband) would “establish a link with the French public.”59 The commentaries were broadcast over the French National Network (Radio Diffusion Francaise, RDF) on Sunday evenings at 8 p.m. Paris time and through the VOA to Belgium, Switzerland, Eastern Europe, and North Africa, from 18 November 1951 to 3 February 1952.60 Each broadcast, approximately 1000-words long, contained a mixture of personal stories by Mrs. Roosevelt of people and places she had visited that week with commentary on issues of peace and nuclear disarmament. Her style was simple, frequently using the all-inclusive “we” to denote her bond with the French listeners, and included numerous metaphors, for example, describing peace like a delicate plant that had to be nurtured, in order to paint pictures in the minds of the listener.61

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Mrs. Roosevelt also often stressed the desire on the part of the American delegation to take action together with other nations who genuinely desired peace, criticizing communist countries that in her view only spoke about peace but failed to really work for it. “Hold firm to your will for peace,” she told listeners, “and make sure that peace is safeguarded by deeds and not merely by words.”62 The French communist newspaper, L’Humanité, argued that the French broadcaster was biased for not offering radio opportunities to other delegations and accused Mrs. Roosevelt of holding a “sermon” in which she ignored Soviet actions on peace.”63 The attacks in the Communist Press were taken by USIS as proof that Mrs. Roosevelt’s talks were effective.64 The listening figures for the commentaries were put at approximately five million, twice as many as the Sunday audience for Ici New York and popular VOA music programs.65 It is impossible to say for certain whether the estimated listener numbers paint a reliable overview, nor do letters received by listeners give us a full picture. Nevertheless, surveys of letters received by the RDF suggest many of the hundreds of letters received in response to Mrs. Roosevelt’s broadcasts were favorable.

A Special Connection Eleanor Roosevelt enjoyed enormous prestige in many European countries besides France where she spent a great deal of time when the UN was in session at the Palais de Chaillot. In the Netherlands, in particular, she was held in very high regard, not least because of her family’s Dutch heritage and her friendship with the Dutch Royal Family. While she did not have her own radio program in the Netherlands, she was the subject of or speaker during a number of broadcasts in the early Cold War. She was also frequently covered in newspapers and magazines, and she wrote about the Netherlands in her “My Day” column several times. She made four trips to the Netherlands (1948, 1950, 1951, and 1956), all of which she partially used as fact-finding missions to ascertain how the country was developing with the aid of Marshall Plan funding, so as to report back to her American listeners and readers and increase their interest in American public diplomacy efforts. “I still write my column and for that reason I think I can be useful in finding out all I can about conditions and telling the people of [the United States] something of what I see in order to make them realize more fully what their responsibilities are,” she wrote to

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Princess Juliana in preparation for a visit to the Netherlands in which she was to receive an honorary degree from Utrecht University.66 The Dutch had suffered greatly under Nazi occupation, with extreme hunger in many parts of the country, infrastructure and housing destroyed. According to American intelligence, state debts had more than quadrupled during the war, the soil had deteriorated drastically, there were no precious metals, and the Germans had “systematically dismantled and cannibalized” key industries.67 By 1947, the country was experiencing several balance of payment problems because although exports were rising, they were still less than half their 1938 level, the worst situation—apart from Germany—in Western Europe.68 In addition, defense spending was very high because of its operations in Indonesia.69 According to William Hitchcock, as the Netherlands had reached prewar levels of industrial production by 1949, Marshall Plan money was not really needed to boost economic growth, but it did help sustain the recovery.70 The honorary doctorate ceremony in April 1948 and a subsequent visit to a female student association were covered on the radio, by newsreel, and in the printed press. The day before the award ceremony, Mrs. Roosevelt attended (accompanied by Princess Juliana and American ambassador Herman Baruch) a National Dutch women’s committee event at the buildings of the Houses of Parliament, organized in her honor. Among the guests was the Dutch prime minister, several other ministers, female parliamentarians, representatives of a host of women’s organizations, and a group of farmers’ wives from Friesland. Eleanor used her speech to talk about the Marshall Plan and the United Nations and called on the women of the Netherlands to help build the nation to be strong economically, spiritually, and morally. Newspaper De Tijd was very enthusiastic about her message: “this woman is so interesting because she speaks from the fullness of her heart, including when she talks about the Marshall Plan that she expressly defends as not being a form of control of Europe by America. But the European nations must be strong if the United Nations is to be strong.”71 The Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant was confident that its readers were aware of the joint struggle: “May Mrs. Roosevelt, when she returns to America, take with her the impression that we follow her battle for freedom and progress with great sympathy, convinced that we are, that this battle after all is also our battle.”72 In June 1950, Eleanor came to the Netherlands again as part of a trip to Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium, and Luxemburg. The State Department’s Dean Rusk was overjoyed at the prospect as she was

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considered “our finest ambassador abroad.”73 Eleanor again used the visit to see for herself the situation on the ground and how the people felt about the United States. While she believed the situation in the Netherlands to be better than on her last visit, she expressed to her friend Trude Lash her worries about the situation on the continent, especially in Denmark where she felt people were very fearful.74 The two-day visit to Amsterdam and Oud-Vossemeer (the birthplace of her ancestor) by Eleanor and her son Elliott was covered extensively in the Dutch media. The Newsreel Polygoon showed pictures of her doing a book signing for This I remember at the Amstel Hotel in Amsterdam and a short statement on film where she urged young people to work toward a peaceful future for the world: “I think the young people of the Netherlands can help very much to bring parts of the world together and help people, young people to be more useful as citizens,” she said.75 At a press conference after the signing session, she gave an interview to radio reporter Netty Rosenfeld.76 The subject soon turned to the Marshall Plan and the interviewer wondered what ordinary American citizens felt about supporting the economies of Europe. Eleanor, convinced that Americans had no choice but to support the war-torn societies, both former allies and enemies, was nevertheless frank in her assessment that not every one of her fellow citizens would share her opinion: [I]f they understand what it’s for and why it is essential for our own well-­ being that Europe get back on its feet then of course they are for what is being done. But you have to realize that in the United States you might go into many towns and find that they did not even know what the Marshall Plan was about, because ours was a very big country and when you get away from the Eastern seaboard there is less carried in the papers of things that happen outside the country.77

As someone who regularly spoke of the desire to achieve peace in the world, Eleanor was asked what she thought were the prospects for peace in the following 10 or 15 years, to which she replied that the availability of atomic energy made now a particularly challenging time: We know that today through the use of atomic energy we can either make life much better for people or if we choose to destroy our civilization, we can destroy it, and it seems to me that though men have tried for many generations to find out how they can live peacefully together, they’ve never quite had that challenge. And I’m hoping very much that although the progress

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is slow and though the understanding that grows between nations comes slowly that we can keep the peace and gradually learn to live together because the stakes we play for today are very high.78

To the State Department, Eleanor Roosevelt must have been invaluable as a public diplomat to help reach audiences in the Netherlands, particularly women who it considered a very difficult group to communicate with.79 In October 1950, USIS in the Hague started a program with the broadcaster AVRO specifically aimed at housewives called Onze Amerikaanse Buren (Our American Neighbors), in which listeners could send in questions about anything related to the United States. According to USIS, the program was an instant success, not only with housewives but also teenagers and “a few intellectuals and professional people…and employees who may listen while they work.”80 However, even this radio show, US officials in the Netherlands had to conclude, could not reach Dutch women who just did not seem interested in international affairs and defense matters. “For a Dutch woman to be interested in things other than babies and the kitchen is the rare exception,” they cuttingly summed up in their 1952 report to the State Department.81 Achieving one coherent radio message in the Netherlands was further complicated by the fact that broadcasting organizations were divided along confessional or special interest lines. This so-­ called verzuiling meant that there were separate broadcasters for Protestants, Catholics, secular audiences, and Socialists; listeners tended only to tune in to the broadcaster that represented their “pillar.”82 In 1958, the Dutch broadcaster VPRO broadcast a radio portrait of the then 73-year-old former First Lady.83 “The social conscience of America,” “intellectually ahead of her time,” and “courageous” were some of the words used to describe her: There are days when a rail timetable is more interesting [than her column] but now and then she surprises [us] with her remarks and proposals that without exception are evidence of her good intentions and her firm faith that everything is possible if only people put in the effort needed. It is clear that the significant influence she has now already had on the American people for 36 years has been directed to the common good.84

Besides broadcasting to audiences in France and the Netherlands, Eleanor Roosevelt could be heard over the airwaves in countries around the world, including Argentina, Australia, Italy, Germany, New Zealand, and South

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Africa. When she stepped down from the UN delegation in 1953, she volunteered for the American Association for the United Nations and in that capacity continued to frequent the airwaves to promote the values of international cooperation and human rights. Risso argues that historians “cannot measure the actual impact of information programs on the public, [but] they can […] measure the perceived success of such programs in the eyes of their promoters and […] what their personnel thought were the interests, sensibilities, and concerns of their listeners.”85 Given that both officials in the State Department and at the UN lauded Mrs. Roosevelt’s public diplomacy efforts, including her broadcasts, we can conclude that her radio contributions had such perceived success. Then given the many hundreds of letters from listeners to her foreign and domestic programs, we can conclude that for those people at least, her words did have great impact. To her official diplomatic position as a member of the US delegation to the UN and chair of the Human Rights Commission, Eleanor Roosevelt added the position of public and indeed citizen diplomat to promote the UN and call for concerted action by women, young people, and anyone else who did not want a return to war, but instead build a life for themselves and their children. Radio played an essential part in helping her—and via her efforts, American policymakers—to reach out to the ordinary men and women who were part of her imagined community of listeners, firmly embedding her into a system that aimed to promote Americanness abroad and win the battle for the hearts and minds of foreign audiences. Her role as a radio broadcaster was additionally significant for educating American citizens about the rest of the world and multilateral efforts to secure peace and cooperation. Reaching directly into their homes, Eleanor Roosevelt could besides First Lady of the United States, First Lady of the World, and First Lady of Radio, truly be the First Lady of Transnational Broadcasting and thus the First Lady of Public Diplomacy.

Notes 1. Risso, Linda. 2013. Radio Wars: Broadcasting in the Cold War. Cold War History, Vol 13, 2: 145–152. Accessed 22 March 2015. doi: https://doi. org/10.1080/14682745.2012.757134 2. See, for example, Michele Hilmes and Kate Lacey who argue that live listening to radio, the medium’s intimacy and the “blindness” (that the broadcasters and other listeners cannot be seen) create an imagined community. Hilmes, Michele. 2012. Radio and the Imagined Community, In

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The Sound Studies Reader, ed. Jonathan Sterne, 351–363. New  York: Routledge; Lacey, Kate. 2013. Listening Publics. The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. 3. Vaillant, Derek. 2017. Across the Waves: How the United States and France shaped the International Age of Radio. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 4. 4. Belmonte, Laura A. 2010. Selling the American Way: US Propaganda and the Cold War. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 7. 5. Beasley, Maurine H., and Paul Belgrade. 1985. Eleanor Roosevelt: First Lady as Radio Pioneer. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (68th, Memphis, TN, 3–6 August 1985) https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ ED258200.pdf,13. Accessed 4 February 2019. 6. Ibid. As Beasley and Belgrade explain, Eleanor Roosevelt (ER) earned as much as US$3000 for a six-minute broadcast. Most of the money (though not all) went to the American Friends Services Committee to benefit Arthurdale, a New Deal homestead subsistence project in West Virginia. For more on her radio broadcasts during her time as First Lady, see also Belgrade, Radio Broadcasts. 2001. In The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia, eds. Beasley, Maurine H., Holly C. Shulman & Henry R. Beasley, 425–429. Westport: Greenwood Press; and Smith, Stephen D. 2014. ed., First Lady of Radio: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Historic Broadcasts. New  York: New Press, 2014. 7. Black, Allida M. 1996. Casting Her Own Shadow, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism. New York, Columbia University Press, 21. 8. Eleanor agreed to this commercial program to help her daughter who was financially strapped at the time. Likewise, money from the 1950–1951 commercial program that she hosted with her son Elliott went to her children. In that sense, there is a distinction between these domestic commercial programs and those she did for the Voice of America (VOA) and foreign broadcasters, which were part of the official US response to the Cold War. VOA programs were not allowed to be broadcast domestically. In all of Mrs. Roosevelt’s broadcasts of this time, the themes of the UN, world peace, and cooperation between countries were prominent. 9. Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt Program, 8 November 1948. The transcripts of the programs are available via the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project at George Washington University. https://erpapers.columbian.gwu.edu/ eleanor-and-anna-roosevelt-program. Accessed 1 August 2019. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt Program, 15 November 1948. 13. Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt Program, 10 November 1948.

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14. Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt Program, 20 April 1949. Lewis had joined the UN in 1948; previously, she had worked for the National Association of Broadcasters and had founded the Association of Women Directors. She went on to co-found in 1951, together with the Dutch broadcaster Lilian van der Goot, the International Association of Women in Radio (IAWR); the T for television was added later. See Skoog, Kristin, and Alexander Badenoch. 2016. Networking Women: The International Association of Women in Radio and Television. In Transatlantic Interactions: Broadcasting in the UK and US in the 1950s, eds. J.  Medhurst, S.  Nicholas and T. O’Malley, 189–218. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Lewis had first written to Mrs. Roosevelt in 1943 asking for her “thoughts as our most distinguished woman listener and broadcaster [on] the democratic processes of American radio,” and in 1944, she asked Mrs. Roosevelt to be involved in an editorial radio campaign for the new to be formed organization. ER White House Correspondence 1933–1945. 15 March 1943, Collection 170, Box 1209 and ER White House Invitations 1933–45. 11 December 1944, Collection 30.1 Box 39, FDR Library, Hyde Park (hence: FDRL). 15. By 1950, almost all households had a radio, up from 40% in 1930 to 95.6% in 1950; see Craig, Steve. 2009. Out of the dark: A history of radio and rural America. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. 16. See, for example, Halper, Donna L. 2001. Invisible stars: A social history of women in American broadcasting. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. And Ware, Susan. 2005. It’s one O’clock and here is Mary Margaret McBride: A radio biography. New York: New York University Press. The Eleanor Roosevelt Program also received letters from men, so we know women were not the only listeners. It was broadcast over some 20 other programs throughout the country. The program ran from 11 October 1950 to 31 August 1951. 17. UN Interpreters Rory Crim and David Chang Xi Ho were interviewed by Mrs. Roosevelt at the United Nations Headquarters in the episode of 22 December 1950. The transcripts of the programs are available via the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project at George Washington University. https://erpapers.columbian.gwu.edu/eleanor-roosevelt-program. For a deeper analysis of several of the episodes and Mrs. Roosevelt’s communication style, see Luscombe, Anya. 2014. Eleanor Roosevelt as “Ordinary” Citizen and “Expert” on Radio in the Early 1950s. SAGE Open. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244014551712 18. The Eleanor Roosevelt Program, program 136, April 18, 1951. The quotes used here have had the hesitations (uhms) that were in the transcript available on the erpapers website removed to make for easier reading. 19. The Eleanor Roosevelt Program, program 86, 7 February 1951. 20. The Eleanor Roosevelt Program, program 100, 27 February 1951.

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21. The Eleanor Roosevelt Program, program 233, 31 August 1951. 22. Gould, Jack. 1947. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt will be Moderator on ABC’s World Security Workshop. New York Times, October 1. 23. 1949. Support of UN Urged: Dr. Evatt, Mrs. Roosevelt speak to Radio Executives Club. New York Times, 6 May. 24. Lewis to Roosevelt, 23 February 1950, Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence UN Part I, reel 7, 430–2, Roosevelt Institute of American Studies, Middelburg, the Netherlands (hence: RIAS). 25. de Forest, Jennifer. 2005. Women United for the United Nations: US women advocating for collective security in the Cold War. Women’s History Review, Volume 14, 1: 61–74; Laville, Helen. 2002. Cold War Women: The international activities of American Women’s Organisations. Manchester, New  York: Manchester University Press, 172. The Radio Advisory Committee members were Helen J. Sioussat (Director of Talks at CBS), Darragh Aldrich, Victoria Corey, Ruth Crane, Katherine Fox, Martha Gaston, Anne Hayes, Alma Kitchell, Hazal Markel, Mary Margaret McBride and Barbara Welles. See Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence UN Part I, reel 27, 675, RIAS. 26. de Forest, 65. 27. Ibid., 65–66. 28. 1946. Mrs. Roosevelt Affirms Women’s Value to UNO. New York Times, 28 January. 29. 1946. Mme Roosevelt S’Adresse a La France. Le Monde, February 11. Eleanor Roosevelt had learned to speak French fluently as a child. 30. Rawnsley, Gary D. 1996. Radio Diplomacy and Propaganda. The BBC and VOA in International Politics, 1956–64. London: Macmillan. For a detailed consideration of US containment policies during the Cold War, see, for example, Gaddis, John Lewis. 2005. Strategies of Containment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 31. Cull, Nicholas. 2008. The Cold War and the United States Information Agency. American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989. New York: Cambridge University Press, 20. For extended histories of the VOA, see also Pirsein, Robert William. 1979. The Voice of America. An history of the International Broadcasting Activities of the United States Government 1940–1962. New York: Arno Press. Shulman, Holly C. 1992. The Voice of America: Propaganda and Democracy, 1941–1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 32. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1947. My Day, 9 May 1947. Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project. George Washington University. http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/ myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1947&_f=md000647.Accessed 1 August 2019.

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33. Eleanor & Anna Roosevelt Program 26 January 1949. ER recorded speeches and utterances. 80–5 (22). FDR Library, Hyde Park and transcript on erpapers website, see note 9. 34. Cull, The Cold War, 65. 35. More than US$2 billion of Marshall Plan aid went to France; see Hitchcock, William I. 2010. The Marshall Plan and the creation of the West. In The Cambridge History of the Cold War, eds. Melvyn P.  Leffler, Odd Arne Westad, 154–174. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: https:// doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521837194 36. Cull, The Cold War, 53. 37. Nelson, Michael. 1997. War of the Black Heavens. The Battles of Western broadcasting in the Cold War. New York: Syracuse University Press, 55. 38. Ibid., xv. 39. On the situation in post-war France and its relationship with the United States, see, for example, Creswell, Michael. 2002. “With a Little Help from Our Friends”: How France Secured an Anglo-American Continental Commitment, 1945–54. Cold War History, 3, 1: 1–28. doi: 10.1080.713999975; Gribaudi, Gabriella, Olivier Wieviorka, and Julie le Gac. 2015. Two paths to the same End? The Challenges of the Liberation in France and Italy. In Seeking Peace in the Wake of War. Europe 1943–47, eds. Stefan Ludwig Hoffmann et  al., 91–116. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press; Pulju, Rebecca J. 2011. Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France. Cambridge, New  York: Cambridge University Press; Wall, Irwin M. 1991. The United States and the Making of Postwar France 1945–54. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. 40. Gildea, Robert. 2002. France since 1945. Oxford: OUP.  See also Brogi, Alessandro. 2011. Confronting America. The Cold War Between the United States and the Communists in France and Italy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 41. Cull, The Cold War, 55. 42. Summary of USIS Radio Unit Activities, 1 December 1951 through 31 May 1952, D-107 pp. 44–52, Box 2385, RG59 511.51, NARA, College Park, Maryland; Statistics on radio and television 1950–60. 1963. UNESCO statistical reports and studies. Paris: UNESCO, reported 620 receivers per 1000 inhabitants in the United States in 1951, 176 per 1000  in France, 205 per 1000  in the Netherlands, and just 80 per 1000 in Italy. 43. Kuhn, Raymond. 1995. The Media in France. London, New  York: Routledge, 78. 44. Rioux, Jean-Pierre. 1987. The Fourth Republic 1944–1958. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 351–2.

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45. Murray, Rainbow. 2008. Fifty Years of Feminizing France’s Fifth Republic. Modern & Contemporary France, 16, 4: 469–482. For a ­description of the Women’s movement in France in the early years after World War II, see Chaperon, Sylvie. 2000. Feminism is dead. Long live feminism! In When the War was over, eds. Claire Duchen and Irene Bandhauer-Schoffman, 146–160. London, New York: Leicester University Press. Women suffrage by comparison: Finland 1906, Germany 1918, the United Kingdom 1918, the Netherlands 1919, and the United States gained 1920. France was earlier than Italy 1945, Belgium 1948, and Switzerland 1971. 46. Pulju, Women and Mass Consumer Society, 10. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., 8. 49. Vaillant, Derek W. 2013. Sounds from the Life of the Future. In Radio’s New Wave. Global Sound in the Digital Era, eds. Jason Loviglio and Michele Hilmes, 180–193. New York: Routledge. 50. Chaine Parisienne (Paris II network, regional program of Radio Diffusion Française (RDF)), 8.45 p.m. The interview was in French. 51. Interview with Mrs. Franklin D.  Roosevelt  – transcript translation into English 8 November 1948. Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence UN Part I, Reel 7: 0122. RIAS. 52. Colvin, Kelly R. 2015. “A well-made up Woman”: Aesthetics and Conformity in Postwar France. French Historical Studies, 38, 4: 691–717. doi https://doi.org/10.1215/00161071-3113863 53. Skoog and Badenoch, 191; Oldenziel, Ruth and Karin Zachmann, eds. 2010. Cold War Kitchen Americanization, Technology, and European Users. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. 54. The speech at the Sorbonne on 28 September 1948, was entitled “The Struggles for Human Rights.” ER told her audience that she had chosen to speak in France “because here in this soil the roots of human freedom have long ago struck deep and here they have been richly nourished.” Full transcript available at: https://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/documents/ speeches/doc026617.cfm. Accessed 1 August 2019. 55. Tyler to ER, 28 September 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence, UN Part I. Reel 7. 226, RIAS. 56. Eleanor Roosevelt, Peace Conference in Paris. Radio Message Paris 14 April 1949, ER Speech and Article File undated 1948–1950. Box 1419, FDRL. 57. In the 1930s, Auberjonois hosted The French Hour, one of the programs produced by NBC radio’s international division; during World War II, he worked for the Office of War Information. See Vaillant, Across the Waves. 58. Telegraph from BRUCE to Secretary of State, July 2, 1951. Box 2390, RG59 511.5141, NARA.

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59. Gardner, Richard. 1952. “First Lady” of the Voice of America. New York Times, 3 February. 60. Although the commentaries were delivered in French, here, the English translations—issued as press releases of the US delegation to the UN—will be used. Press Release No. 1295, 16 November 1951. United States Delegation to the General Assembly of the United Nations, Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence. UN Part I. Reel 26. 522–543, and Reel 27, 0649, RIAS. 61. Eleanor Roosevelt, Commentary 18 November 1951. See note 53. For a more detailed examination of the commentaries, see Luscombe, Anya. 2017. Eleanor Roosevelt’s Radio Broadcasts in France. European journal of American studies. Document 8, Online since 14 March 2017, accessed 29 January 2019. http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/11946; doi: https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.11946 62. Eleanor Roosevelt, Commentary 16 December 1951. UN Part I. Reel 26. 522–543, RIAS. 63. Translation L’Humanité December 17, 1951. Enclosure D to Despatch No 1667 of 26 December 1951 from American Embassy, Paris, France. Copy in Summary of USIS Radio Unit Activities 1 Dec 1951, through 31 May 1952. Box 2390, RG59 511.51, NARA. 64. Letter from Charles Hulten to Edward W. Barratt (Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs), 7 January 1952, Box 2390, RG 59, 511.5141, NARA. 65. Summary of USIS Radio Unit Activities 1 December 1951, through 31 May 1952. Box 2390, RG 59, 511.5141, NARA. 66. ER to Juliana, Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence 1945–1952, Container 1585, File Juliana, 3 February 1948, FDRL. As well as gathering impressions for her “My Day” column, Mrs. Roosevelt had been asked by the Netherlands Information Bureau to write an article about the 300th commemoration of the Westphalia Treaty (ER to Juliana, 22 March 1948). 67. Posthumus Meyjes, W.  Chr. (Commissioner general Netherlands economic recuperation). 1945. Colonel Meyjes’ report on the desperate economic situation in the Netherlands, Isador Lubin collection, Container 107, July 17, 1945, FDRL. 68. Mallinson, William. 2010. From Neutrality to Commitment: Dutch Foreign Policy, NATO and European Integration. London: I.  B. Tauris & Co, ProQuest Ebook Central, 15. 69. Ibid. 70. Hitchcock, William I. 2010. The Marshall Plan and the creation of the West. In The Cambridge History of the Cold War, eds. Melvyn P. Leffler, Odd Arne Westad, 154–174. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521837194

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71. Eleanor Roosevelt gehuldigd door de vrouwen van Nederland. 1948. De Tijd, April 19. Delpher.nl. Accessed 25 January 2019. 72. 17 April 1948, Delpher.nl. Accessed 25 January 2019. 73. Lash, Joseph P. 1972. Eleanor: The Years Alone. New York: Norton, 191–2. 74. ER to Trude Lash, 18 June 1950  in Lash, Joseph P. 1984. A World of Love, 324. 75. Polygoon Hollands Nieuws, Weeknummer 50-25, National Institute for Sound and Vision (Beeld & Geluid), Hilversum. 76. The item was introduced by the announcer with the comment that the reporter had almost the same name as her interviewee. The interview was in English with a summary in Dutch given by Rosenfeld: Vraaggesprek met Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. 1950. AVRO, 19 June. Beeld en Geluid. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid. 79. Snyder, David J. 2013. Domesticity, Rearmament and the Limits of US Public Diplomacy in the Netherlands during the Early Cold War. Cold War Studies 15, 3: 47–75. MIT Press, Project Muse. 80. Eleanor Templeton to Ambassador, 9 March 1951, RG 59 511.56 Box 2411, NARA. 81. Cited in Snyder, 69. 82. Alice R. Hager to Henry F. Arnold, 8 August 1952, RG 59 511.56 Box 2409, NARA. 83. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. 1958. VPRO, 7 July. Beeld & Geluid. 84. Ibid. 85. Risso, Radio Wars, 149.

“Mrs. Roosevelt Goes on Tour”: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Soft Diplomacy During World War II Raffaella Baritono

In the autumn of 1942, Eleanor Roosevelt went on a three-week tour of Great Britain to find out how the British were facing up to the war effort and pay a visit to the American troops stationed there. That trip was followed in August–September 1943 by a visit to the Pacific front, and in 1944, one to the Caribbean to take stock of the American soldiers’ situation. This last zone was away from any key war front, but for that reason Franklin D. Roosevelt thought it crucial to pay attention to the American soldiery, to convey the message that the President had the general picture of American involvement well in mind and no one should feel out on the fringe of the grand project proclaiming the values of democracy. The great interest of all of these journeys was not just that once again Eleanor Roosevelt was deviating from the traditional role of a First Lady, but that they formed part of F.D.  Roosevelt’s strategy for mapping out a new

R. Baritono (*) Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Fazzi, A. Luscombe (eds.), Eleanor Roosevelt’s Views on Diplomacy and Democracy, The World of the Roosevelts, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42315-5_3

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post-­war order. Adopting that angle, this chapter focuses above all on the technically ‘non-official’ tours of Great Britain and the Pacific, and especially on the public debate they unleashed. Eleanor was tasked with upholding the basic principles of the war effort, presenting an image of the United States as ‘benevolent’ toward the allies and its own citizens who were sacrificing their lives in the name of liberty and democracy. Eleanor’s task might be described as soft diplomacy, part of the public diplomacy strategy that the Roosevelt administration embarked on even before joining in the war.1 Nicholas J. Cull has spoken of public diplomacy as the process whereby international agents try to pursue their foreign policy goals with an ear open to international public opinion, using the methods of listening, cultural diplomacy, international exchange, and communications.2 Just as with domestic politics, however, in international affairs too, Eleanor would not just play ‘the voice and ears’ of the President, but conveyed her own specific vision of democracy, the principles she thought should underlie the new international order, playing a critical role more akin to citizen diplomacy.

The First Lady as a Public Diplomat In October 1942, then, Eleanor Roosevelt set off on what would be a tour of England, Ireland, and Scotland. The official reason was the acceptance of Queen Elizabeth’s return invitation after the British royals’ 1939 stay with the Roosevelts at the White House and their private Hyde Park residence. But in view of Eleanor’s well-known commitment to women’s rights, the invitation also allowed for the First Lady observing first-hand how British women were contributing to the war effort. The visit was organized by Lady Stella Reading who had founded the Women’s Voluntary Service in 1938, an organization Eleanor was keen to inspect for the model it might provide for American women. Stella Reading was a longtime friend of Eleanor and belonged to that network of friends and contacts that dated from the time Eleanor studied at Allenswood near London. Accompanied by her personal secretary Malvina ‘Tommy’ Thompson and by Oveta Culp Hobby, president of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, the First Lady was scheduled to inspect American troops stationed in England, as well as factories, naval bases, hospitals, schools, distribution centers, Red Cross offices, refugees, and military installations. Franklin D.  Roosevelt was firmly behind the tour, believing that Eleanor’s stay would help cement the Anglo-American alliance which had been officialized by the Atlantic Charter, but was beginning to feel strained

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by differences of strategy between the United States and Britain.3 In early October 1942, Wendell Willkie, Republican candidate for the 1940 elections and author of One World, completed his world tour, during which he had put his finger on some sore points: the indifference of the colonial authorities to the poverty and backwardness of the British dominions, and the reasons behind the anti-colonial movements.4 Churchill was not amused.5 Willkie also revealed the talks he had had with Molotov and Stalin, who had emphasized the tragic social and economic situation in the Soviet Union and shown their frustration at what they considered Roosevelt’s broken promise—the opening of a second front. So, Eleanor had a job to do: as it has been observed, “Part of her task would be to use her personal warmth and diplomatic magic to fortify the Anglo-American alliance, encourage troop morale, and keep the United Nations together.”6 Eleanor, however, had her own objectives; in particular, she wanted to demonstrate to the president and the American public that security mobilization could be combined with participatory democracy. As will be discussed later, in her capacity of assistant director of the Office of Civil Defense, Eleanor Roosevelt was convinced that military mobilization was an opportunity to spread New Deal reform efforts and revive civic spiritedness. Great Britain was showing how “home defense” could be the occasion to strengthen community bonds. As she wrote in her column on 1 January 1941, this was proven by the rise in England of a “sense of cooperation and fellowship between all groups of peoples who find themselves the victims of a common danger and are bound together by a common determination.”7 As Matthew Dallek has pointed out, Great Britain became a model for American politicians, and administrators and delegations were sent to London to study home defense planning.8 Eleanor’s correspondence with Lady Stella Reading had the same scope: to learn how to maintain civil morale, provide social services, and involve volunteers in the effort. As Eleanor explained during this trip: “My real interest lay in the people, particularly the women, who were at work. I wanted to know the working conditions and the way they organized their lives.”9 In her autobiography, Eleanor recalled: “Naturally the British looked upon my visit as providing an opportunity to get that story told in the U.S.”10 The British set great store by a visit that would give the American public a more accurate picture of what the British population were going through, for at the time, US polls showed that over half of those interviewed had no clear idea what the reason for the war was, some were lukewarm about fighting fascism (and more convinced about the war against Japan), while

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over 30% thought peace should be made with Germany if Hitler were removed from power.11 As The Times put it: “We shall expect that the results of a searching though friendly observation of England at war will ultimately find their way to the President, whose insight into our affairs cannot be too penetrating for our desire.”12 Lord Halifax, the British ambassador to the United States, said: “I think it will be of immense value your going over…and you will have no difficulty in getting the kind of direct impression of typical people in their homes of which you spoke yesterday.”13 As hinted, although this was the first international mission Franklin had given his wife, the Great Britain tour followed on a series she had performed at home. Eleanor was supposed to be a ‘surrogate,’ ‘the president’s eyes and ears.’ Though unofficial, the visit was arranged through the war minister and the secretary of state and may be seen as a first example of institutionalizing the diplomatic role of the First Lady; it would lead in the 1970s to a First Lady’s first real diplomatic mission when Rosalynn Carter toured Latin America in 1977.14 Once again, Eleanor broke with the traditional pattern. She was the first First Lady to fly across the Atlantic and brave the dangers of wartime. Though Edith Wilson had set a precedent in accompanying Woodrow Wilson to the Paris conference, it was the first time a First Lady had crossed the Atlantic alone. The American and British press were quick to pick up on this. Said The Times: “In an age when the increasing complexity of administration tends more and more to shackle the President to his desk in Washington, she has not hesitated to break with an old usage and travel widely throughout the United States.” The First Lady, it went on, “shares her husband’s devotion to great ideals” and hence on her arrival in England, “the country will be eagerly thrown open to her – its camps, its workshops, and its bomb-scarred homes.”15 The New York Times listed the ‘firsts’ entailed by the journey, and continued: “departing from tradition is nothing new to this 58-year-old 5-foot-11 inch, 160-pound mother of six children, five of them living.” And yet “there can be no doubt, especially among her critics, that she is a potent force and that her trip to England, however ‘unofficial’ it may be labelled, will have important political connotations.”16 To the Washington Post, “As a personality she is almost as familiar to Britons as to us…. As the First Lady doubtless realizes, moreover, at least part of British enthusiasm is due to her official position. Her visit, then, affords our ally across the sea an opportunity to express the friendship of the British for the American people.” However, “It is only right to point out to our British friends that

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the usefulness of her visit lies not so much in the personal honors to be paid her as in the opportunity to get about the British Isles, to witness the war effort on the home front, and to visit American troops.”17 For his part Stephen T. Early, White House press secretary, alluded openly to the ambiguities of an “unofficial” tour: “When Mrs. Roosevelt gets to England, within easy reach of the German bombers, the Commander in Chief will have ‘a wife and four sons in the service,’” The New York Times reported Early as saying.18 And indeed, the ceremonial welcome Eleanor received in London was hardly that of a ‘private’ person, as the newsreels attest.19 All the honors were paid: the American Ambassador John G. Winant came to the airport to take her to London; an impressive welcome was accorded at Victoria Station by, among others, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, General Dwight Eisenhower, and Admiral Harold Stark commanding American forces in Europe, Stella Reading, and leading politicians. The route to Buckingham Palace, where she would stay for several days, was lined by a cheering crowd “which, while not fully aware of the arrivals’ identities [no details of the tour had been announced for reasons of security], were attracted by numbers of American and British flags.”20 At a London County Council venue, Eden later said his welcome went first to the First Lady, then to the wife of a powerful nation’s president, and last but above all to Eleanor “for herself.”21 The Times leader-writer remarked how Eleanor had “also imposed herself on American public life as a personality in her own right.”22 Her years of exposure in public allowed her to tread this thin ice without putting a foot wrong to compromise the mission Franklin had given her, as when she observed that the welcome was naturally for her husband and what the United States was doing to support the British nation. At the same time, she paid tribute to the British public: “I think there are none of us who sense that spirit who cannot but feel humbled before the greatness that has made a people able to defend itself and able to carry on in spite of all difficulties and discouragement.”23 Throughout her visit Eleanor was careful to prevent her words or gestures causing the American administration embarrassment; she was well aware of her own role in her government’s strategy of public diplomacy and soft power, and equally aware that the conservative opposition might make great political play with any high-profile excesses by the First Lady. Roosevelt’s decision to send Eleanor to Great Britain first and then to the Pacific seemed to sum up the style of his public diplomacy. As Frank Costigliola has pointed out, the category of ‘emotional belief’ could be a useful tool to explore Franklin

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Delano Roosevelt’s wartime diplomacy. In fact, “FDR’s effectiveness as president and as keystone of the Grand Alliance depended on his personal alliances with dedicated, live-in aides who entertained him, translated his notions into pragmatic policy, and got results.”24 Even if Costigliola seems to underestimate Eleanor Roosevelt’s role, she was part, in my view, of those emotional and personal alliances which molded Franklin D. Roosevelt’s diplomacy and political touch. With the battles she was fighting in her homeland and the international echoes they had raised, Eleanor was the symbol of the values the war was being fought to uphold. Her credibility was the result of years of campaigning; she belonged to the American elite educated in England and could hence boast (and exploit) deep bonds, solidarity, and a network of social, intellectual, and political relations bound up with the transnational activism of women’s movements in the Atlantic area.25 She also knew how to play it simple and listen to the women and menfolk of the less wealthy classes, as she had learnt to do in the tough years of the economic crisis.26 Mrs. Roosevelt herself would admit as much during a BBC radio broadcast: I realize that I am here as a symbol, a symbol representing an Ally whom the people of Great Britain are glad to have fighting with them, not only because we bring them material strength, but because the peoples of the two countries feel they are fighting for the same objectives – a world which shall be free from cruelty and greed and oppression – a world where men shall be free to worship God as they see fit, and to seek the development of their own personalities and their own happiness within the limits which safeguard the rights of other human beings to do the same.27

Just as she had at home, and would do in the United Nations, Eleanor regarded her goal as listening and building up bonds of empathy. Her mission was to embody the will, objectives, and principles that fueled American democracy, and at the same time ‘open up’ the American people to the world, to building ‘bridges of dialogue.’ To the women working in an English munitions factory she said: “I hope from what I have seen and learned over here that I can take something back to the United States which will make all of us work hard to make the war short and, at the same time, make us as a people work with you after the war, so that we may have a better chance for a permanent peace.”28 Rather than targeting British public opinion, her ‘soft diplomacy’ seemed chiefly designed for the American people; it conveyed values of community and social cohesion

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that a war context urgently needed, lest it end by breeding tension, prejudice, and diffidence toward one’s neighbor. Writing that year in The New Republic, she had made this clear when she raised the issue of racial discrimination toward Afro-Americans and citizens with a Japanese background: “perhaps the simplest way of facing the problem in the future is to say that we are fighting for freedom, and that one of the freedoms we must establish is freedom from discrimination among the peoples of the world, either because of race, or of color, or of religion.”29 The war should be an opportunity to strengthen community feeling and democratic participation: so much she had argued during her brief and unsuccessful stint at the Office of Civil Defense from which she had been forced to resign only that February. In the autumn of 1942, the women and men of Britain set an example for the American people: “It seemed to me as I walked through the brick compartments of that shelter that I learned something about fear, and the resistance to total destruction which exists in all human beings. How could people be herded together like this, night after night without some epidemic being the result and yet it was done and the spirits of kindness and cheerfulness pervaded, and those who had lost so much still managed to smile.”30

The ‘spirit’ of the British people needed transmitting to American citizens, as she told Eden: I like to think…that in the months to come many of our young people will know more of the British people than ever before…. I feel…that the growing understanding between us will perhaps mean more to the future than we can now know…. It may mean that we will use our combined strength to help the world as a whole and that we need not know a period such as this again.31

Eleanor’s mission to England, Scotland, and Ireland was a clear success as the press noted, and as we glean from her letters to her husband. Eden, King George VI, and the Queen Mother, as well as Stella Reading and Clementine Churchill, all voiced their appreciation of Eleanor’s trip. Even Churchill, whose cordial relations with Eleanor were tempered by their difference on the question of empire, wrote to Franklin: “I thought you would like to know that Mrs. Roosevelt’s visit here is a great success. She has been very happy about it herself.”32 And in a note to Eleanor, he declared: “You certainly have left golden footprints behind you.”33

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Chalmers Roberts from the Office of War Information, who escorted Eleanor Roosevelt on her tour, would later tell the President that “Mrs. Roosevelt has done more to bring real understanding of the spirit of the United States to the people of Great Britain than any other single American who has ever visited these islands.”34 Franklin, too, wrote to Ambassador Winant: “I think she is having a thoroughly successful visit and from this end her publicity has been extraordinary good, especially considering the fact that we are in the last week of a campaign which I wish to heavens was over.”35 Even months afterwards, King George VI wrote to Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “The efforts of our two countries, whether separate or combined, have already shown to the world that we are determined to destroy the enemies of civilization … The Queen and I were so delighted to entertain Mrs. Roosevelt here last October, and we hope that she returned to you none the worse for her strenuous visit.”36 It was probably the success of the British visit that decided President Roosevelt in favor of another goodwill tour, this time to the Pacific front in Australia and New Zealand, scheduled for late August through September 1943. In “My Day,” Eleanor claimed her purpose was to see “the work that the women are doing…. This, too, I think will be of interest to other women all over the world.” She went on: “I hope that our soldiers, sailors and marines, wherever I see them, will know how much I appreciate this opportunity to bring them a greeting from their Commander in Chief, and how deeply interested I am in them and their achievements.”37 Yet, the political implications were obvious, both as concerned the situation of the American soldiers and as a way of reasserting American ties with Britain and the Commonwealth countries. The journey was one of her longest—some 6500  miles—and also most taxing emotionally and physically in view of the climate, discomfort, and dangers. Part of it was kept secret, as in the case of her visit to the American soldiers at the Guadalcanal base, which she herself set great store by. She had met many soldiers wounded from Guadalcanal and the Pacific arena in hospitals on the West Coast. As she recalled later: “At once I put up a strong plea to be allowed to see our men on Guadalcanal and other islands. …I told my husband that it would be hard to go on doing it if, when I was to be in the Pacific area anyway, I were not permitted to visit the places where these men had left their health or received their injuries.”38 Eleanor wrote that she could not remember when her husband first suggested it would be a good idea to tour the Pacific. His aim, of course,

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was to send a message of support to foster patriotic cohesion. “He felt,” wrote Eleanor, “that Australia and New Zealand, being so far away, had been neglected in the matter of visitors. Both countries were exposed to attack and the people were under constant strain and anxiety.”39 Yet, his decision came up against opposition and resistance from officials in the armed forces who saw the trip as interfering with their operations. Franklin knew this. In a letter sent on 15 August 1943 to General MacArthur, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and other officers serving in the Pacific, Franklin wrote: “She is, of course, anxious to see everything, but I leave it wholly to your discretion as to where she should go and where she should not go. […] Also, I would not have you let her go to any place which would interfere in any way with current military or naval operations –in other words, the war comes first.” However, Roosevelt went on: “I think that Mrs Roosevelt’s visit to places where we have military or naval personnel will help the general morale, because Mrs. Roosevelt has been visiting and will continue to visit the various hospitals in this country, especially on the West Coast where she meets returning sick or wounded personnel from the Southwest Pacific.”40 For the first time, Eleanor would not be accompanied by her secretary Malvina Thompson, so as to avoid the criticisms of the previous year “by taking up as little room as possible.”41 On her arrival, Air Transport Command assigned her Major George Durno.42 MacArthur himself refused to host her in New Guinea since, as Eleanor quipped to a friend, “it would require too many high-ranking officers to escort me.”43 Her letter to Franklin voiced greater irritation at the obstacles preventing her from getting a real sense of the situation: “The papers here complain that I see none of the plain people. Neither do I really see any of the plain soldiers. I have an MP escort everywhere that would do you credit. I have all the pomp & restriction & none of the power! I’m coming home this time & go in a factory!”44 Once again, the Republican opposition queried the utility of the mission, the problems of security, and the wisdom of spending public money on a trip by a ‘private’ person. The criticisms tended to have an ulterior purpose: getting at Eleanor was a way of attacking the president. On her tour of Great Britain, one of the harshest critics, Westbrook Pegler, went so far as to suspect collusion with the socialists and communists whose aim was to overthrow the American system. The charge verged on the absurd, and indeed there were those who hinted that Pegler was “an unfortunate man who finds himself with a keen style and no mind to match it.”45 Again, in his decision, Franklin had to bear in mind the complaints about

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the First Lady that summer when race riots broke out at Detroit and other American cities over the racial integration policies she was so keen on. The conservative press had accused her of having “blood on your hands…. More than any other person, you are morally responsible for those race riots in Detroit where two dozen were killed.”46 Eleanor thus started out amid doubt and anxiety: “This trip will be attacked as a political gesture, & I am so uncertain whether or not I am doing the right thing that I will start with a heavy heart.”47 To counter the opposition, Eleanor took Red Cross president Norman Davis’ advice and traveled at her own expense as a “special envoy” of the Red Cross, wearing an association uniform: “I hoped in this way to show that I was doing a serious job and not just running around the war area causing trouble.”48 But it was hard for Eleanor to pass for a private person. Both in Australia and in New Zealand, the political and military authorities paid her the honors due to a political personage, however much she might claim “she was here in a good will capacity and would prefer to visit troop concentrations and hospitals and meet women engaged in war activities rather than attend social functions.”49 At Canberra, she was hosted by the Commonwealth Government, with a welcome from Governor General Gowrie and wife, as well as Prime Minister John Curtain. She was then received by the Australian parliament, “the second American to be accorded that honor” after General Douglas MacArthur.50 As the press put it, “Australia is not accustomed to visits from world potentates – or in this case a potentatess – so this contact with the wife of the United States President was an epoch-making event for this country.”51 In her speeches, as will be pointed out later, Eleanor could hardly not touch on political issues to do with the future world order: “Wherever Mrs Roosevelt spoke…she emphasized three things in particular – the need for orientation in economic and social thinking, the necessity for the people themselves to work and sacrifice for peace, and the belief that women have as great a part in molding the future as men.” Above all, “she speaks…in international language, crystallizing hopes for the future, whether they be American, Australian, British or others…. If the United States had wanted to send a good-will ambassador to this country, no better choice could have been made, unless it had been the President himself.”52 During her stay in the Pacific, she visited all the places where the Red Cross was at work, sending detailed reports to Norman Davis and the

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president about the conditions of soldiers in hospitals as well as their life in barracks. To Franklin, she wrote: “Tell Dr. MacIntire his hospitals are tops – not for publication, they are better than the army. The Red [Cross] is doing a swell job but needs more personnel badly & they must work out a better basis for cooperation with the Navy & Marine Corps.”53 Despite the obstacles raised by the military command, her tour of the barracks and hospitals ended up being another act of public diplomacy in public opinion throughout Australia, New Zealand, and various Pacific islands, as well as in American opinion at home. The area was not without logistical problems and tough living conditions; consensus was also an issue, and the need to underscore the reasons for the war seemed still more urgent. As Eleanor wrote to Lorena Hickok, “These boys break your heart, but they’re so young & so tired. Malaria is almost as bad as bullets. They are hardly out of the hospitals before they are at Red Cross Clubs & dances & they laugh at everything. I take my hat off to this young generation & I hope we don’t let them down.”54 While her strategy in Britain had been to play up her image as First Lady and working woman activist rather than mother or wife, the key to her success in the Pacific was the reverse: playing the “supportive mother” persuaded even the military authorities to change their view of the merits of her mission. Eleanor was “the most recognizable woman in the United States…she transcended her public persona and provided a genuine human connection for thousands of young Americans.”55 That fact eventually registered in the Pacific war zone. Admiral Halsey claimed that “she alone had accomplished more good than any other person.”56 She visited the wounded American soldiery ward by ward, and as in England, she was prepared to voice any public or private appeals or requests made by the soldiers. Just as in the American depression, her tour made her a public figure, the symbol of a benevolent America, of a president mindful of his people. In her memoirs, she confessed that, with all the red tape shrouding her visits, whenever she went to a hospital, she was afraid she might disappoint the soldiers who may have been expecting a beauty queen. Yet, when she appeared, those soldiers greeted her with “Gosh, there’s Eleanor,” showing they recognized her empathy and familiar touch; for all the respect due to a leader, she broke through the barriers and set up a virtuous circle.57 Major George Durno commented: “She did a magnificent job, saying the right thing at the right time and doing 101 little things that endeared her to the people.”58

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From Public Diplomat to Citizen Diplomat Once again, though, Eleanor Roosevelt did not confine herself to the role of the president’s surrogate or even public diplomat. A few years back, in 1939, Time magazine’s 17 April issue featuring the First Lady on the front cover printed an article entitled “Where is foreign policy made?,” referring to the Roosevelts’ meeting with the British royals.59 The article compared two powerful women—the Queen and Eleanor—the difference being that the First Lady’s power lay not so much in her influence over her powerful husband, as in her direct influence on public opinion.60 Her growing involvement in international questions was not just a matter of historical contingency but stemmed from a long-term interest in the issues of peace and peaceful settlement of conflict, dating from World War I.61 But the rise of Nazism and its systemic threat brought a change to her beliefs: the conviction that use of force was inevitable. In a 1939 press conference, she even claimed she had never been a “radical” pacifist, but perhaps a realistic pacifist.62 When her This Troubled World came out the year before, it provided further evidence that she could stand as a key figure in that “multilateral internationalism,” advocated by Clark Eichelberger, of the League of Nations Association and his committee, the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace directed by James T. Shotwell.63 Eleanor collaborated with Eichelberger and Shotwell, and became a benchmark figure in that public-private network, handling relations between the American government and private organizations. Roosevelt approved of it and saw the network as a useful way of sounding public opinion, above all when the idea of the United Nations began to take shape.64 Eichelberger in particular viewed civil organizations as an essential part of democratic society: not only were there tasks an organization might carry out, there were some objectives that only such organizations could pursue.65 Since World War I, within female pacifism, a form of activism had been emerging which might be called ‘citizen’s diplomacy’: the power of the individual’s pressure to persuade a government to take the diplomatic initiative toward settling crises and conflict.66 The ambition of associations and civic groups to play a part that counted in planning the post-war scenario found Eleanor Roosevelt in full sympathy. The tours of Britain and the Pacific gave Eleanor an opportunity to pursue her goals of reconstructing an international democratic area which could only happen if the domestic and foreign political orders welded together. She believed that only international democracy could ensure and

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bolster democracy within the United States, and only a strong inclusive American democracy could provide a guarantee that such an order would endure. At the time of F.D. Roosevelt’s speech on the four freedoms in 1941, Eleanor had written: America is not a pile of goods, more luxury, more comforts, a better telephone system, a greater number of cars. America is a dream of greater justice and opportunity for the average man and, if we can not obtain it, all our other achievements amount to nothing…. Devotion to democracy, devotion to liberty, what we call patriotism, depends upon the realization of such conditions in our country as really give us the opportunity and hope for future dreams.67

In both her tours of Great Britain and the Pacific, she saw that ideal democracy would only come about by the commitment of individuals, men and women. Winding up a radio broadcast in Liverpool, she stated that “we failed before because we could not think on international lines…the peoples of the world left their business in the hands of self-­ seekers who thought of themselves and their temporary gains, but now and in the future you the women and the youth of all the United Nations will have to awaken and accept full responsibility.”68 At Canberra, on 4 September 1943, Eleanor emphasized again the idea of an active citizen body as the only way of building a peaceful democratic world: Then, we shall have to win a peace. Last time, we lost the peace. Perhaps my nation was partly to blame. …I do not think that leaders alone can do what is required, without the people understanding what are the objectives at which they are aiming, and willingly cooperating with their leaders…. This, I believe, is the great test which lies before democracy – whether individuals can forget themselves sufficiently to think of the good of the world as a whole and, though their constant activity as citizens, ensure that their governments will truly represent them.69

Three days later, she spoke in Sydney, reiterating the cornerstones of the new order, based on the values outlined in the Atlantic Charter and the speech on the four liberties.70 They were in danger of becoming empty values, she said, if they were not supported by a collective effort and participation by every man and every woman, regardless of social class, age, or education. Her vision of the new world order rested, inevitably, on

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surmounting the barriers that hamstrung democracy in the United States and elsewhere: above all, discrimination of gender and race. The central topics of her domestic politics were the focus of her attention and spirit of observation abroad: first and foremost, the crucial role of work and the commitment of women of all ages and all conditions. In Great Britain, women’s work in offices, factories, and traditionally masculine jobs in wartime industry was not just a key part of civil society’s response to the emergency of war but fast becoming the fulcrum of Britain’s capacity for drawing out the community capacity for reconstruction. Praising women’s responsible stand in coping with all sides of social living had various implications in Eleanor’s view of things: the need for women’s contribution to be recognized, confirming their full citizenship, women’s liberty as the litmus test for all of society’s degree of freedom, and the acknowledgment that women’s work enjoyed equal status with men’s sacrifice in war. Taking stock of the rubble, the dead, and the injured that made daily life such a struggle, Eleanor admitted she had learnt about fear, but also about the resources required to hold out against total destruction. That was the most important lesson to emerge. It was summed up by a woman she met who said: “We have all accepted the fact that we may be destroyed at any moment, so danger has no meaning to us.”71 The organization required in creating crèches for working women, providing ongoing education, and having women working side by side with men in the armed forces, industry, hospitals, schools, voluntary civic defense, or organizations like the Red Cross bore witness to an ability to build a sense of community amid the rubble. That, in her view, was the very basis of democracy: The women of Britain are helping to win the war, in fact they are a very vital factor in the man power of the nation and they know also that they will be a very vital factor in making the peace and in carrying on the crusade which will certainly have to be carried on in the future. Women may have had a feeling in the past that they did not have an equal responsibility with men in world affairs. The women of the future can not have that feeling because the writing on the wall is clear that if there is to be peace in the world, women as well as men will have to decide to work and sacrifice to achieve it.72

Eleanor believed that the future of peace could only depend on action by women, “a very potent factor in working out the necessary changes in existing economic systems as well as changes in social conditions which

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alone can bring real freedom to the people of the world.”73 What also emerged, she felt, was an enormous capacity for social cohesion and solidarity that challenged the image of a classist society, a place where social mobility seemed alien to social dynamics.74 Just before setting off for Britain, she had accompanied Franklin to Detroit on a tour of the Chrysler and Ford factories where she admired the presence of women on the assembly lines. Her analysis of the British situation where women took an active public, not just a private, role wove in with an ambition that she nursed at home: to promote female employment also in the industries geared for wartime mobilization, thus acknowledging their integral role in the community. Another reason why what she saw in Britain was so significant was that it came hard on the heels of a crushing defeat she herself had just suffered. As mentioned earlier, the year before, on 22 September 1941, Franklin D.  Roosevelt had appointed her assistant director of the new Office of Civilian Defense directed by Fiorello La Guardia—an official post though not remunerated, as a sop to the controversy over her nomination. The job of the Office was to set up programs of civil defense and projects for mobilizing the people. Eleanor and the mayor had a similar vision of democracy in terms of enlargement of social policies and expansion of social justice.75 However, while Eleanor considered the military mobilization as the occasion to spread New Deal reform efforts, La Guardia was primarily concerned with security efforts. Eleanor resigned on 20 February 1942 after a spate of accusations that she had favored friends and groups connected with the communist movement. But her resignation also sprang from incomprehension and conflicting views between those who saw the Office as solely designed to mobilize war resources and those, like Eleanor, who considered it an opportunity to re-knit the social fabric, encourage democratic participation, which was precisely what seemed to be the case in Britain and in the Pacific. To quote Matthew Dallek, “For Eleanor Roosevelt, the war was a fight to secure a better postwar future, which meant an expanded New Deal updated to meet wartime social needs […] In the battle for hearts around the globe, American democracy […] had to show that it was a superior system of government over fascism.”76 In Australia and New Zealand, just as in Britain, women had shouldered an equal share of responsibility—perforce, but also through choice and the opportunity to throw off the shackles that had kept them on the fringe in the past.77 It was not the first time this had happened, though

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never on such a wide scale. Eleanor was confident, therefore, that if women were to work for peace the way they had worked in wartime, there might be real hope of a “second chance,” a second possibility of winning the peace.78

Active Citizenship Eleanor Roosevelt had argued tirelessly since the 1930s and then again in her 1940 The Moral Basis of Democracy that democracy could only be based on active citizenship, which was inclusive and meant the respect of all differences. Both as a public diplomat and as a citizen diplomat, Eleanor knew full well that the issues she would be addressing on the British and Pacific tours were heavily charged with contradiction due to the color line inside and outside the United States. But even in the realm of public diplomacy, the new Office of War Information would soon realize that winning “the world war” would mean taking a stand on the issues of racial discrimination as used by Germany and Japan propaganda.79 Before leaving for the Pacific front, Eleanor argued: “We can make up our minds that we will work with any other human being who does his daily work beside us and that we will not inquire as to his race or religion, only as to whether he is doing an honest job.”80 Her commitment to the campaign to end racial discrimination—criticized by some as being too moderate—had to reckon, in the international even more than in the domestic arena, with her role as a public diplomat: informal, no doubt, but it forced her to avoid words and gestures that might damage the administration. The same attitude of realpolitik would distinguish her involvement as a US delegate to the United Nations.81 The tensions that the racial and anti-colonial issues raised both in the social fabric of America and in the alliance with Great Britain could thus not transpire directly from Eleanor’s public words, yet they heavily affected her drive to use her power in terms of citizen’s diplomacy. While her public speeches and writings looked jubilantly toward a united victory of the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and the Commonwealth countries, her personal position was much more critical and not always in harmony with her husband’s.82 One of the unspecified reasons for her visit to Britain was the tension arising between American and British soldiers over racial segregation in the American army. The tricky subject of relations between black and white soldiers in Britain, as well as the need for care in proportioning the respective contingents for

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service across the Atlantic, emerged from the correspondence between Ambassador Winant and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.83 The white soldiers from the southern states, for example, were dismayed that English or Irish or Scottish girls were not repelled by Afro-American soldiers, while racial tension among American soldiers caused conflict even with the British civilian population. Knowing of Eleanor’s pro-African-American sentiments, the Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson put pressure on the president to muzzle the First Lady on racial questions. Eleanor retorted to Stimson that “we will have to do a little educating among our Southern white men and officers.”84 Convinced that racism might cause conflict with the British, both General Eisenhower and Ambassador Winant sought the remedy of setting up a British-American Liaison Board to handle racial disputes. For her part, while bowing to the need for public silence, Eleanor sent regular letters to the president, Stimson, and General Marshall, pointing out forms of discrimination, including the use of black soldiers for menial duties alone, whatever their training or education.85 Nor did she fail to acknowledge black soldiers. At Bristol, for example, “Mrs. Roosevelt chatted with several Negro soldiers, who beamed delightedly when the First Lady spoke to them.” During that meeting, the First Lady was told that “men find the people here very hospitable and very anxious to make them happy.”86 News of the kind naturally raised eyebrows in the more conservative circles. It was not only America’s internal racial problems but also tensions over the incipient movement for colonial liberation which, as hinted, caused a strain in the Atlantic alliance. Here again, Eleanor was in an ambiguous position. One instance was when she declined to meet the leader of the Indian League in London and representatives of Indian anti-colonial movements, her reason being to avoid compromising relations between the American and British governments. But indirectly, she did pay attention to what was going on and gather all the wherewithal to understand the dynamics afoot in the Empire.87After Pearl Harbor, Eleanor had been sure that the end of white supremacy was “the theme” of international relations. On this, she thought she had Franklin’s support: he said he believed it necessary to grant India dominion status, just as the rights of African-Americans should be extended in the United States. On the other hand, they could not fight Hitler’s Aryan theories and meanwhile justify racial segregation and colonial dominion. To Eleanor, the theme was not one that could be ducked. A few days after Pearl Harbor, she had received

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a letter from the famous writer and Asian expert Pearl Buck who wrote: “More basic than China’s antagonism to Japan…is the colored race’s antagonism to the white.”88 The race issue also came up on the Pacific tour, though the situation appeared more nuanced. In New Zealand, Eleanor was received by the Maori minority. She agreed to be welcomed in their own culture’s way, her simplicity and affability winning their enthusiasm.89 But at home, her gesture was much criticized: the Southern press commented on the photos of her Maori welcome that it confirmed their belief that the First Lady had “niggerloving propensities” or, worse, that “she is stirring up racial prejudice,” as a Gallup poll indicated.90 What she saw in some areas of the Pacific persuaded her that, if not different, then at least non-conflictual racial relations might be achieved. After a visit to the American soldiers stationed on Christmas Island, she wrote: “There seems to be no trouble anywhere out here between the white and colored. They lie in beds in the same wards, go to the same movies and sit side by side and work side by side, but I don’t think I’ve seen them mess together, but their food is as good and everything just as clean in their quarters.”91 Though she could not speak out publicly as a public diplomat, Eleanor did not refrain from acting as a ‘citizen diplomat.’ She put pressure on the president, the secretary of war, the high command of the armed forces, and members of the Democratic Party who were closer to her, to get them to use influence, put forward draft bills, and try to introduce new ways of managing race relations. On her long flight home from the Pacific, she wrote a series of reports to submit to the president and politicians in Congress, especially as concerned the soldiers’ position when the war was over. She was afraid that when the fighting stopped, the veterans would be left to their fate, causing the same sort of resentment experienced in the years of the economic crisis. She probably remembered her first act as First Lady when, accompanied only by Roosevelt’s spin doctor Louis Howe, she visited the war veterans’ camp at Washington where they were indignant at being let down by President Hoover.92 She made recommendations: to the trade unionist Walter Reuther to form a Peace Production Board; to Franklin that he take fiscal steps to ensure that the war industries reconverting to peacetime guaranteed employment; and to members of the Democratic Party that they propose a bill to make sure the veterans received job training courses and the right to education—what would be a GI Bill.93

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On top of this, she felt alarm at the inhuman conditions she had witnessed in the Pacific which were multiplying the cases of soldiers with post-trauma syndrome. In her diary she wrote: “Hospitals and cemeteries are closely tied together in my head and heart on this trip and I think of them even when I talk to the boys who are well and strong and in training.”94 She told the press she was worried about the post-war reconstruction, especially the need to reckon with veterans who had been maimed or had grave psychological conditions. On that score she thought legislation in Australia and New Zealand to be decidedly more advanced than in America: “the boys asked me what my husband’s proposals were regarding education and post-war jobs.”95 Franklin urged the war minister and armed forces high command to review their policies: “I know that the Army and Navy are doing the best they can with the subject of fatigue and stress…but I wish that further special consideration be given in all combat services.”96 Eleanor’s capacity to act as a citizen diplomat would be put to the test on the issue of constructing the new international order. Her efforts to create and consolidate domestic and foreign consensus on setting up a United Nations, and to develop an internationalist spirit able to cope with the new emerging realities, would come up against serious obstacles. Her travels had convinced her that a democratic international order must be based on tools of dialogue and listening, respect for differences, and elimination of gender and racial contradictions, while the colonial question could no longer be shelved. But however powerful her voice, it clashed with the needs of domestic and international politics. On all the issues she was most wedded to—refugees, African-American citizenship, women’s rights, the search for dialogue with anti-colonial movements—Eleanor had to battle with resistance at home and abroad. Above all, when she raised the problem of racial equality, as she had tried in Britain, the efficacy of soft diplomacy revealed its limits: ambivalence due to the difficulty of reconciling beliefs with political constraints, which inevitably curbed action and autonomy. Despite all, she would never stop trying.

Notes 1. Hart, Justin. 2013. Empire of Ideas: The Origins of Public Diplomacy and the Transformation of US Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press. 2. Cull, Nicholas J. 2008. Public diplomacy: Taxonomies and histories. The annals of the American academy of political and social science 616, 1: 31–54.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716207311952; Nye Jr, Joseph S. 2008. Public Diplomacy and Soft Power. The annals of the American academy of political and social science 616, 1: 94–109. doi: https://doi. org/10.1177/0002716207311699 3. Borgwardt, Elizabeth. 2007. A New Deal for the World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 4. Willkie, Wendell Lewis. 1943. One World. New York: Simon and Schuster. 5. Cook, Blanche Wiesen. 2016. Eleanor Roosevelt: The War Years and After: 1939–1962, Vol. 3. New York: Penguin Random House, 438–39. 6. Ibid., 439. 7. Roosevelt Eleanor. 1942. My Day, January 1, 1942. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017). https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/ myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1942&_f=md056071. Accessed 14 July 2019. 8. Dallek, Matthew. 2016. Defenseless Under the Night. The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security. Oxford, New  York: Oxford University Press, 6. 9. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1942. My Day, November 14, 1942. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017). https://www2.gwu. edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1942&_f=md056342. Accessed 14 July 2019. 10. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1958. The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Harper Collins, 238. 11. Hönicke, Michaela. 1997. ‘Know Your Enemy’: American Wartime Images of Germany 1942–1943. In Enemy Images in American History, ed. Ragnhild Fiebig-von Hase and Ursula Lehmkuhl, 234–235. Oxford: Berghahn Books. 12. Mrs. Roosevelt. 1942. The Times, October 24. 13. Lash, Joseph P. 1971. Eleanor & Franklin. New  York: W.W.  Norton & Company, 849. 14. Carter, Rosalynn. 1994. First Lady from Plains. Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press. 15. Mrs. Roosevelt. 1942. The Times, October 24. 16. Lawrence, W.H. 1942. Mrs. Roosevelt Breaks Still More Traditions. New York Times, 25 Oct.; Mrs. Roosevelt Is Another ‘First’: First First Lady to Fly Atlantic. 1942. Washington Post, October 26. 17. First Lady. 1942. Washington Post, 23 October. 18. Lawrence, W.H. 1942. Mrs. Roosevelt Breaks Still More Traditions. 19. Pathé, 1942. America’s First Lady In Britain Aka Mrs. Roosevelt In Britain. British Pathé. YouTube, 13 April 2013, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=FHJIjPgGiU0. Accessed 23 November 2019. 20. Hill, Gladwin. 1942. Britain Greets Mrs. Roosevelt, WAAC Head. Washington Post, 24 October.

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21. Mrs. Roosevelt and the Peace. 1942. The Times, 28 October. 22. Mrs. Roosevelt. 1942. The Times, October 24. See also Rowley, Hazel. 2010. Franklin and Eleanor. An Extraordinary Marriage. New  York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (kindle edition), pos. 4496. 23. Mrs. Roosevelt and the Peace. 1942. The Times, 28 October. 24. Costigliola, Frank. 2012. Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances. How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 13. 25. Long, Tania. 1942. First Lady’s Ways Win the British. New York Times, 1 November; Kent, Frank. 1942. The Great Game of Politics. Wall Street Journal, 5 November. 26. For instance, see the letters to the column “If You Ask Me.” 27. BBC Broadcast from Liverpool, UK, 8 November 1942, https://erpapers. columbian.gwu.edu/eleanor-roosevelt-radio-broadcast-liverpool-england. Accessed 23 November 2019. 28. Mrs. Roosevelt and Spirit of Britain. 1942. The Times, 10 November. 29. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1942. Race, Religion and Prejudice. The New Republic, May 11. Vol. 106, Jan–June 1942, 630. 30. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1942. My Day, 27 October 1942. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017), https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/ displaydoc.cfm?_y=1942&_f=md056326. Accessed 1 January 2019. 31. Browne, B. Ellis. 1942. Anglo-American Accord Helped by Mrs. Roosevelt. The Christian Science Monitor, October 27. 32. Quoted in Lash, Eleanor & Franklin, 857. 33. Quoted in Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 3, 450. 34. Ibid. 35. FDR to Gil Winant, October 31, 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Papers as President: The President’s Secretary’s File (PSF), 1933–1945, Franklin D.  Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Digital Library, Series 3: Diplomatic Correspondence, Box 38, Great Britain  – Winant John G. http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/psf/psfa0370.pdf 36. George R.I. to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 12 January 1943, in Franklin D.  Roosevelt, Papers as President, Series 3 Box 36, Great Britain 1943, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/psf/psfa0350.pdf. See also the letter that the king sent to FDR on 25 October 1942, Franklin D.  Roosevelt, Papers as President, Series 3 Box 36, Great Britain 1942, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/psf/psfa0347.pdf 37. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1943. My Day, 28 August 1943. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017). https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/ displaydoc.cfm?_y=1943&_f=md056579c. Accessed 1 January 2019. 38. Roosevelt, The Autobiography, 253.

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39. Ibid. 40. F.D.R. to General McArthur, 15 August 1943, and letters, dated 15 August 1943, in the same vein to Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Lieutenant General Millard F. Harmon, Lieutenant General George C. Kenney, Lieutenant General Alexander A. Vandegrift, Admiral William F. Halsey, all in Franklin D.  Roosevelt, Papers as President, Series 5, Box 159, ER 1943–45 Undated, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/ images/psf/psfc0033.pdf 41. Roosevelt, The Autobiography, 254. 42. Kearns Goodwin, Doris. 1994. No Ordinary Time. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. New  York: Simon & Schuster, 463. 43. Quoted in Lash, Eleanor & Franklin, 885. 44. Ibid., 883–85. 45. Editorial, 1942. The Nation, 7 November, 462. 46. Sancton, Thomas. 1943. The Race Riots. The New Republic, July 5, 11. 47. Quoted in Lash, Eleanor & Franklin, 879. 48. Roosevelt, The Autobiography, 254. 49. Mrs. Roosevelt Tells Thanks of Americans to Australians. 1943. The Christian Science Monitor, 3 September. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. See also Mrs. Roosevelt Conquers Australia: Australian Hail Visitor. 1943. The Christian Science Monitor, September 24. 52. Lucas, W.E. 1943. Good-will trail by Mrs. Roosevelt. The Christian Science Monitor, September 15. 53. Eleanor Roosevelt to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 2 September 1943, https:// erpapers.columbian.gwu.edu/eleanor-roosevelt-franklin-d-roosevelt-september-2-1943. Accessed 1 January 2019. 54. Eleanor Roosevelt to Lorena Hickok, 1 September 1943, https://erpapers.columbian.gwu.edu/eleanor-roosevelt-lorena-hickock-0. Accessed 1 January 2019. 55. Purcell Sara J. and L. Edward Purcell. 2002. The Life and Work of Eleanor Roosevelt. Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 205. 56. Quoted in Lash, Eleanor & Franklin, 890. 57. Eleanor Roosevelt’s South Pacific travel diary, 20 September 1943, The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, https://erpapers.columbian.gwu.edu/ eleanor-roosevelts-south-pacific-travel-diary-excerpts. Accessed 1 January 2019. See also Roosevelt, The Autobiography, 258. 58. Quoted in Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 463. 59. Time cover, 17 April 1939, http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19390417,00.html 60. Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 3, 44.

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61. Fazzi, Dario. 2017. Eleanor Roosevelt’s Peculiar Pacifism: Activism, Pragmatism, and Political Efficacy in Interwar America, European journal of American studies, document 2, Online since 7 March 2017. http:// journals.openedition.org/ejas/11893. Accessed 2 January 2019. 62. Beasley Maurine, ed. 1983. White House Press Conferences of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York, Garland, 126. 63. Divine, Robert A. 1967. Second Chance. The Triumph of Internationalism in America During World War II. New York: Atheneum. 64. Johnstone, Andrew. 2009. Dilemmas of Internationalism. The American Association for the United Nations and US Foreign Policy, 1941–1948. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 9. 65. Ibid., 16. 66. Patterson, David S. 2008. The Search for Negotiated Peace. Women’s Activism and Citizen Diplomacy in World War I. New York, Routledge, xix. 67. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1941. My Day, 6 January 1941. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017). https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/ displaydoc.cfm?_y=1941&_f=md055778. Accessed 3 January 2019. 68. Eleanor Roosevelt Radio Broadcast from Liverpool, England, 6 November 1942, https://erpapers.columbian.gwu.edu/bbc-broadcast-liverpool-uknovember-8-1942. Accessed 23 November 2019. 69. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1943. Speech delivered in Canberra, Australia. 4 September 1943, https://erpapers.columbian.gwu.edu/speech-delivered-canberra-australia. Accessed 3 January 2019. 70. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1943. “Speech delivered in Sydney, Australia,” 7 September 1943, https://erpapers.columbian.gwu.edu/speech-delivered-sydney-australia. Accessed 3 January 2019. 71. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1942. BBC Broadcast, 8 November 1942 from Liverpool, England, https://erpapers.columbian.gwu.edu/eleanor-roosevelt-radio-broadcast-liverpool-england. Accessed 23 November 2019. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid. 74. Roosevelt, The Autobiography, 245. 75. Dallek, Defenseless Under the Night, 7. 76. Ibid., 10. 77. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1943. My Day, 28 August 1943. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017). https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/ displaydoc.cfm?_y=1943&_f=md056579c. Accessed 3 January 2019. 78. Roosevelt, The Autobiography, 262. 79. Hart, Empire of ideas, 91. 80. First Lady Appeals for End Racial Discrimination. 1943. Washington Post, 6 August.

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81. Baritono, Raffaela. 2017. Eleanor Roosevelt at the United Nations: ‘Diplomacy from Below’ and the Search for a New Transatlantic Dialogue. European journal of American studies, document 6, Online since 12 March 2017. http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/11920. Accessed 2 January 2019. 82. Roosevelt, Eleanor. Canberra speech. 83. See in particular FDR to John H. Winant, 10 September 1942, Franklin D.  Roosevelt Papers as President, Series 3, Box 38, Great Britain  – John Winant. 84. Lash, Eleanor & Franklin, 848 85. Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 3, 446. 86. Long, Tania. 1942. Mock Bristol Raid Stirs First Lady. New York Times, 7 November. 87. Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 3, 441. 88. Quoted in Lash, Joseph P. 1964. Eleanor Roosevelt. A Friend’s Memoir. New York, Doubleday and Company, 262. 89. Maoris Pay Honor to Mrs. Roosevelt. 1943. New York Times, 31 August. 90. Gallup, George. 1942. Mrs. Roosevelt Is Both Praised and Blamed for Her activities. New York Times, 9 December. 91. Eleanor Roosevelt’s South Pacific travel diary, 20 August 1943, The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project. 92. Lash, Eleanor & Franklin, 890. 93. Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 466; Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 3, 482. 94. Eleanor Roosevelt’s South Pacific travel diary, 20 September 1943, The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project. 95. First Lady Urges Help for Maimed. 1943. New York Times, 22 September. 96. Quoted in Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 3, 483.

Eleanor Roosevelt in Yugoslavia Between Wedge Strategy and Cold War Internationalism Carla Konta

After Dwight Eisenhower became president, Eleanor Roosevelt resigned as the US representative at the United Nations’ Commission of Human Rights, but began volunteering at the American Association for the United Nations. In this role, she started a five-week world trip in June 1953, visiting Japan, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Austria, and ending her tour in London in July.1 It was of course not the first time that Eleanor engaged in overseas informal, personal and cultural, diplomacy; for example, just the previous year she had made several extensive trips through the Middle East and Southeast Asia that the US Secretary of State Dean Acheson defined—in his letter of 11 April 1952 to President Truman—as efficient serving of

The research has been possible thanks to CERIC-ERIC and the University of Trieste financial support. All translations from Serbian and Croatian are mine.

C. Konta (*) University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Fazzi, A. Luscombe (eds.), Eleanor Roosevelt’s Views on Diplomacy and Democracy, The World of the Roosevelts, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42315-5_4

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public interest.2 Indeed, Roosevelt’s trip to Yugoslavia coincided with a very intense period of her life: she endorsed campaigns for the rights of workers, women, children, and minorities. She gave public lectures and speeches and kept writing widely syndicated columns. Domestically, she frequently spoke out against the consequences of the rising McCarthyism. Internationally, she started focusing more and more on non-aligned countries like India and Yugoslavia, promoting the need of establishing a friendly attitude in the USA toward the people of those nations. On top of this, her shrewd and extensive use of different media channels—including radio and television—gave her tremendous fame and further enhanced her international credit. This chapter looks closely at Eleanor Roosevelt’s 1953 visit to Yugoslavia, and it adopts a two-fold perspective: first, it considers Mrs. Roosevelt’s visit as an affirmation of the new US partnership with Yugoslavia. In fact, while traveling around the world, Eleanor Roosevelt considered herself mainly as a journalist who was interested in reaching out to different audiences, but her trip to Yugoslavia also had a crucial political relevance. Rather than just representing an act of personal diplomacy coming from a former First Lady, her visit to Tito embodied a proactive wedge strategy that the USA was at that time trying to implement in Yugoslavia. Second, looking at the Yugoslav socialist experiment, Roosevelt understood well before many of her contemporaries the existence of different communist paths and the importance of communicating with them. This chiefly reflected on Roosevelt’s post-visit writings on Yugoslavia. Both Eleanor Roosevelt and the Yugoslav leaders shared much UN activism together, that is, both held a particular predisposition to consider the United Nations as the best forum through which to pursue global aims. This was particularly evident in the case of disarmament issues, which made the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and the Yugoslav leadership strong and lasting. Certainly, the similarities and differences between their anti-proliferation and anti-nuclear positions are an interesting research theme that calls for further inquiry.3

From Enemies to Partners The Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties, more commonly known as Cominform (Communist Information Bureau), was founded in September 1947 as a political response to the Marshall Plan. Its main aim was to unify the European communist parties under Soviet

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auspices. Soon after its inception, Cominform decided to expel the Yugoslav Communist Party from its lines, on the accusation of disloyalty to Marxist and Leninist ideals. In fact, it was Tito’s expansionist ambitions over Greece, Bulgaria, and Albania that irritated the Soviet dictator and therefore originated the Soviet–Yugoslav impasse.4 Soon, it became clear that the breakup was one of no return and with long-term consequences. The Soviet–Yugoslav rupture would lay the ground for the launch of a Yugoslav-peculiar “way to socialism,” mostly centered on the socialist self-­ management of the national economy and characterized by a non-aligned foreign policy. The relative isolation and marginalization within the socialist bloc led the Yugoslav leadership, in the years following 1948, to search for new geostrategic partnerships, including political alliances and military backups. By 1950, Yugoslavia would turn toward the USA, and the USA toward Yugoslavia as well, in a process that transformed Tito’s regime into the “American Communist ally.”5 Yugoslavia became the first Communist country that defied Soviet domination and deviated from the orthodox Soviet model. As Yugoslav expert Dennison Rusinow has explained, Tito’s regime, due to its peculiar position, was able to experiment with free-market mechanisms, and it gradually replaced a centralized economy with a much more decentralized decision-making structure. At the same time, people in Yugoslavia could enjoy wider personal freedom and more articulate forms of political participation than people living in any other part of the Eastern bloc. Yugoslavs also benefitted from open borders and a wide-ranging integration into the international arena.6 By the early 1950s, therefore, Yugoslavia embraced what its ideologist and leader Edvard Kardelj called the doctrine of “active peaceful cooperation” with foreign countries, including the Western ones, foremost the United States.7 In the foreign policy realm, Yugoslav Secretary of State Koča Popović followed a path of neutralism that, only after the 1956 Soviet occupation of Budapest, moved boldly toward non-­ alignment. Together with Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru and Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Tito signed the Declaration of Brioni in July 1956, formally giving birth to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) organization.8 Given its geostrategic relevance and its peculiar position within the socialist bloc, Yugoslavia soon became a top priority for Washington’s foreign policy makers after 1950. First Truman and then Eisenhower adopted a policy of “keeping Tito afloat.”9 The State Department coined the term “wedge strategy” to indicate the foreign relations approach to Yugoslavia.

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The strategy consisted in supporting Yugoslav nationalism so to instigate divisions between the Soviet Union and other communist countries. Ultimately, the objective was to show that national declinations of socialism were possible outside the Soviet sphere and possibly compatible with democratic settings as well. Nevertheless, using Yugoslav nationalism as an example for other Soviet-dominated communist states, and struggling with Tito’s overwhelming presence and undemocratic rule, the American governments, as Lorraine Lees rightly argues, ended up jeopardizing their strategies, especially by the implementation of futile attempts to change Tito’s regime. Lees points to the short-term political overturns that the USA tried to support in Yugoslavia, and emphasizes how at times Americans failed to appreciate the partial but genuine reforms put forward by Tito’s regime in the following decades.10 In the making of this peculiar relation both with the rest of the communist world and with the main Western superpower, Yugoslavia went through different stages. One of the main watershed moments was represented by the signing of the “Treaty of Friendship and Assistance” in February 1953. This agreement, which in 1954 would become the so-­ called Balkan Pact, ratified a formal alliance between Belgrade, Ankara, and Athens. While securing a strategic alliance outside of Moscow’s direct sphere of influence, such a treaty also avoided for Tito the embarrassment of seeking a formal military tie with NATO. A formal association with two important members of the Atlantic Pact would have served exactly the same scope.11 The ratification of the treaty was then followed, in March 1953, by Tito’s first visit to a democratic Western foreign country: he stayed in London from 16 to 21 March. The visit, which gave Tito the opportunity to strengthen his ties with the Western powers, also came at a very auspicious moment: Yugoslavia, indeed, had just broken her diplomatic relations with the Vatican (late 1952), and its relations with the Italian government led by the Christian Democrat De Gasperi were turbulent due to the unsolved case of Trieste.12 Tito, thus, was simultaneously in search of—and in need of—diplomatic backup, reassurances, international recognition, and legitimization. Stalin’s death in March 1953 and the end of the Korean War proved to be another crucial game changer for Tito’s political gamble. On the international front, he felt freer to look for new allies, and from 1953 onward, he engaged in a series of long trips abroad that led him to Chile, Brazil, Burma, and India, in an attempt to solidify and reinforce the non-aligned, anti-bloc voices in the international arena.13 Internally, at the Sixth

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Congress of the Yugoslav Communist Party, in 1952, Tito imposed a change in the party’s name and transformed it into the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY). At the same time, the National Front became the Socialist League of the Working People of Yugoslavia, and more power was given to the local chapters of the LCY. Finally, in 1953 Tito approved a new constitution, which officially endorsed the partial abandonment of centralism, reinforced the autonomy of the several republics constituting the Yugoslav state, and introduced self-management for many organizations and institutions such as hospitals, universities, and small enterprises. All in all, 1953 represented a “historical turnover” in which “state-owned and bureaucracy monopoly” conceded the “larger autonomy of economic and political subjects as well as local and regional communities.”14 It was, without a doubt, a revolutionary year for Yugoslavia.

July 1953: “We Took a Short Trip on the State Yacht in the Adriatic” Eleanor Roosevelt’s trip to Yugoslavia was a personal one. “She made it clear she wanted no conducted tours,” the New York Times reported.15 Indeed, while Yugoslav newspapers reported on her arrival and the first official visits in Belgrade and Zagreb, there is a sort of “silence” after her departure from Belgrade on 9 July and her arrival at the Brioni Islands on 16 July. In fact, during these days she made her own, personal trips, going from Sarajevo to Montenegro, passing through the Kotor Mountains, to the coastal town of Dubrovnik, searching for personal contact with farmers, factory workers, and peasants. “Immediately on arrival,” recalls Roosevelt, “we were greeted by many of my old friends from the UN meetings, Mr. and Mrs. Vilfan, Dr. [Vladislav S.] Ribnikar, Mr. and Mrs. Brana Gebremovic [Jevremović], Brana [Jevremović] and Mr. and Mrs. Dedijer.”16 By a diplomacy of friendship, about which more will be said later, she won over her interlocutors and persuaded her collaborators. Upon her arrival in Yugoslavia and during her first embassy dinner, Mrs. Roosevelt was pleasantly entertained by Bogdan Crnobrnja from the Foreign Office, who told her “a little about the economic methods of running industrial plants,” and by Moša Pijade, Tito’s closest collaborator. Roosevelt remained fascinated by the, as she was told, “new plans for [Yugoslav] industrial management,” where not the state but “councils of workers” would run industries on their own. Eleanor intuitively

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understood that such an arrangement, nevertheless, could give rise to problems. As she underlined in her diary, “Yugoslavia seems to be in a state of experimenting, and it may be very valuable for they may hit upon methods which provide for individual freedom within the socialist framework.” And she added that the “[Yugoslav method] may be a valuable contribution to the development of some other countries where the resources […] do not make straight capitalism […] very possible.”17 Later on, during her 9 July dinner with Edvard Kardelj, a Slovenian communist and one of the most prominent constitutional experts and ideologists in Yugoslavia who had also greatly contributed to the drafting of the 1953 constitution, Eleanor Roosevelt had a chance to discuss Yugoslavian plans for development in great detail. Kardelj explained to her the new economic arrangements, the new election laws, and even the restructuring of the secret police. “Everyone seems to agree that during the last year great changes have taken place in the government of Yugoslavia,” Roosevelt recalled, and she also emphatically praised the decentralization of government’s power that the Yugoslav state was going through: “This is quite remarkable, I think, for it is rare when people have absolute power that they are willing to divest themselves of any of it.”18 As expected, Eleanor Roosevelt was highly impressed by Yugoslav women and their numerous organizations. Prominent public personalities such as Milica Dedijer, the mother of famous partisan and human rights activist Vladimir Dedijer, impressed Eleanor Roosevelt to a great extent. She praised Mrs. Dedijer’s social activism and her ability to head “many women’s organizations, particularly the Red Cross”; at the same time, Eleanor Roosevelt placed a particular emphasis on Yugoslav women’s ability to establish networks and alliances, many times overcoming the Yugoslav national borders, as in the case of the Yugoslav women who had reached out to “Miss Katharine Lenroot and Dr. Martha Eliot of our [US] Children’s Bureau” and had come “to the US some years ago to study child welfare.”19 On the Brioni Islands, she appreciated the company of Mrs. Jovanka Broz, “a very beautiful young woman,” not only intelligent but with “a good deal of character,” and “a Partisan who fought in the army during the war which interrupted her education.” Jovanka Broz’s story fascinated Eleanor Roosevelt as she had been able to “pick up [her studies] where she left off and go through university,” thus representing a model of virtue, courage, and passion for women in the USA as well.20 Once in Belgrade, the former First Lady met the Yugoslav Anti-Fascist Women’s League and attended a reception at the Yugoslav UN Association

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on 10 July. From Sarajevo, Roosevelt departed to Titograd (present-day Podgorica) on 11 July, and then turned to Cetinje, the old historical former capital of Montenegro; traveling through the region of Kotor, she arrived in Dubrovnik on 13 July. In her diary, she alternated descriptions of the mountainous Kotor area with glimpses of sea landscapes, “the most beautiful I have ever seen in my life,” as she defined them.21 Moved by her personal interest in women’s living conditions, she stopped many times during her trip to gain first-hand experience of the Yugoslav living standards. “I stopped to look during my drive on Friday morning at a small farmhouse, a very poor one, and found an old woman of sixty running […] a three-acre farm all alone,” she recalls. She asked this old lady, bringing up six grandchildren, what they ate. The lady replied: “Oh, I have two cows, and a little garden with vegetables and I make butter and cheese and bread.” Then, Eleanor annotated: “The State pays a sum for every child, but I did not think that the old lady or the children were getting much of variety in their diet. There was only one room beside the kitchen in use, and that had two beds, so the other children must have curled up on the floor.”22 After enjoying the “medieval atmosphere” of Dubrovnik—old monasteries and city walls, in addition to crystal-clear swimming holidays— Eleanor Roosevelt departed for Zagreb, where she had the opportunity to pay a visit to Rade Končar’s factory, a plant that until today produces electrical machinery, transformers, engines, and machinery needed for power development. Named after a factory worker, a communist national hero killed by the Italians in Split during World War II, the factory ran at a profit and exported its goods to Greece, Turkey, and some Near East countries. What attracted the former First Lady there was “the fact that the Workers’ Council, after the payment of taxes,” divided its entire profits, of which half went to the covering of interests, and the rest for production improvement. However, what was more important, “the other half of the profits,” she explained, “is divided among all the workers.”23 The fascination with the Yugoslav-peculiar industrial production, the admiration of Yugoslav women’s courage and activism, and the interest in Yugoslavia’s political experiment paved the way for Eleanor Roosevelt’s encounter with Marshall Tito on the Brioni Islands, the most important stop on her travels. When the two met, she was totally impressed by him. She stayed for two days.

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I entered the President’s villa, and I saw a young man come down the long room to greet me. I could hardly believe that this was President Tito and I was sure I must have been mistaken in his age. After I had sat looking at him for a few minutes, however, I realized that there were lines [on] his face denoting experiences no young man would have. The President has charm and a great personality, but I think the most important thing is that he impresses you as being completely honest and frank in his conversation.24

And, when Tito took her on a short boat trip around the archipelago constituting the Brioni Islands, she recalled: We talked until lunch time, and I found great virtue in this busy man. He seemed unhurried, un-harassed and interested in our conversation. […] We did not return to Brioni till after dinner, and I was certainly most grateful for the amount of time which had been given me and the great feeling of warmth and hospitality which we had all enjoyed.25

The next day, President Tito arranged a dinner in Eleanor Roosevelt’s honor. She noted about him: It is an interesting thing that this man can be jolly and ready with a laugh. Yet he told me yesterday that when he sat in his office, he felt the weight of accumulated problems on [his shoulders] and this weight only lightened when he went out and met the people. There is no lack here of appreciation of the problems but there is the kind of buoyancy which comes from courage, the kind of courage I saw both my husband and Winston Churchill show during the most trying times of World War II.26

At the farewell, she was so touched that she wrote: “as I waved goodbye to the President and Mrs. Broz standing on the pier at Brioni I really felt I had left a very homelike place and I certainly could not have asked for more understanding and warm hospitality.”27 While many US politicians including John F. Dulles in 1955, President Kennedy in 1963, and Senator Fulbright in 1964 were attracted by the imposing figure of Tito, none of them had ever expressed so high an appreciation of this controversial figure. To fully understand Eleanor Roosevelt’s keenness toward Yugoslavia and its leader, we must therefore explore the history of their “special relationship.”

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A Special Relationship? Roosevelt’s interest in Yugoslavia dates back to the World War II period. In April 1941, under the leadership of Frank Polk—who had been undersecretary of State during the Wilson administration—the American Friends of Yugoslavia (AFY) sponsored a relief agency, the United Yugoslav Relief Fund, a non-denominational and non-political organization set up to send clothing, medicines, and food to Yugoslav territories.28 Eleanor Roosevelt became the honorary patron of AFY in 1941, working hard to keep Yugoslavia among the nations designed to receive the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and food relief. As an international relief agency, largely dominated by the USA, UNRRA provided more than $415 million in food, shelter, and garment supplies between 1943 and 1948 to the Yugoslav population affected by war.29 Problems arose when, in August 1946, the Yugoslav government shot down two unarmed US civilian planes, thus provoking the outrage of both American officials and the general public.30 The US government seriously planned to quit food assistance to Yugoslavia, but Eleanor Roosevelt pushed for keeping the relief program alive, because, she believed, the UN’s main mission was charity, not politics.31 It was indeed the UN framework—and Eleanor Roosevelt’s activities in defense of human rights within it—that fostered the establishment of a special relationship between the former First Lady and the Yugoslav leadership. At the UN Human Rights Commission, Eleanor Roosevelt continued to maintain friendly relations with the Yugoslav representatives. In fact, it was at the UN headquarters that she got invited—by a “Yugoslav friend”—to visit the country. In a memo to President Truman, she reported a friendly conversation she had at the UN: [G]reat changes had come about since they [the Yugoslavs] [had broken] with the USSR; they had much more recognition of the individual’s importance and they had been brought to this because they had to acknowledge that passing edicts did not accomplish anything. People had to want to do the things. […] there had been a fearful fight in the revision of their penal code or constitution […]. […] when they brought it up again it was violently protested [by] large groups among the Yugoslavs. They finally succeeded in getting it changed, as now it protects the rights of the individual against the government instead of making the state superior [to] the individual.32

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Eleanor was aware of the fact that the UN could potentially act as a bonding agent to embed Yugoslavia into the international arena fully. Thus, it becomes clear why, when she spoke at the Yugoslav UN Association in Belgrade, on 10 July 1953, she emphasized: “There is no need in Yugoslavia to tell people what work the UN does or how valuable it is because they have it demonstrated for them every day.” And continued: “[Without] the UN itself Yugoslavia might not have been able to stand up against Russia, so the people of Yugoslavia know the value of the United Nations far better than do the people of the US.” Her conclusions appear even more interesting: “if Yugoslavia had stayed under Soviet domination, it would have seriously weakened the US in its struggle against Soviet Communism.”33 In a way, Roosevelt was interchanging the roles played by both the USA and Yugoslavia. With its exit from Cominform, Yugoslavia had helped the USA and not the opposite. Such a unique transnational perspective that Roosevelt gained from her UN experience surely helps explain her admiration for this small communist country positioned between the two blocs. In addition, both Eleanor Roosevelt and the Yugoslav delegates at the UN shared a firm belief in peace and disarmament. Writing about the UN Declaration, one of the first long-serving Yugoslav delegation members, Milan Bartoš, underlined: “Peace, the right for self-determination of all nations, respect for the [human] rights,” was the Yugoslav vision of the UN’s mission even if “great powers disagreed on the implementation of mutual cooperation.”34 The Yugoslav reaction to the first American regulations of atomic weapon proposal—the 1946 Baruch Plan—was, somehow expectedly, one of immediate refusal.35 During the discussions on the UN Atomic Energy Commission conclusions, Yugoslav delegate Aleš Bebler “evaluated the American project as completely incompatible with the UN Charter and its core principles.” Recalling the sovereignty and equality of all nations and the principle of non-interaction in the internal affairs of member states, Bebler expressed his disapproval of a program that “required the sacrifice of national sovereignty” and protected an American monopoly on nuclear weapons.36 Similarly, shortly after Baruch presented his plan, Eleanor Roosevelt remained quite disappointed: she “stressed the transitory nature of the American atomic monopoly and warned against the risk of atomic proliferation.”37 On nuclear matters, the Yugoslavs insisted on both the destruction of atomic weapons and the affirmation of a system of international control of the atomic power. However, while voting with the Soviets against nuclear

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proliferation, the Yugoslav delegation at the UN took a much more moderate and realistic position and insisted on gradual disarmament and more efficient general control and safeguards. They warned against the arms race costs that drained resources capable of raising living standards.38 Again, Eleanor Roosevelt strongly agreed with the Yugoslav positions on this last point. The arms race, in her views, generated an enormous waste of money “with yearly investment of billions of dollars for weaponry.” This was of special significance since it linked the nuclear debate with the sense of individual responsibility. Her criticism on nuclear weapons was directly addressed to both Truman and Acheson who, in her opinion, promoted “a negative image of the USA as a belligerent nation.”39 With the Yugoslavs, Eleanor shared the opinion that “the need for international control and verification of nuclear armaments” was crucial “to improve the international reputation of the USA.”40 As expected then, the 1948 Tito–Stalin breakup affected the Yugoslav position on atomic weaponry. The Yugoslav delegate at the UN, Sava Kosanović, cautioned against the dreadful consequences of a nuclear arms race. No reasons—humanitarian or palliative—justified the use of atomic artillery. “My country’s example proves that a man who defends a just cause against the aggressor could stop him even with weaker weapons. […] no weapon, no matter how modern, cannot solve the problem of war and its terror.”41 In line with Eleanor Roosevelt’s service at the UN Human Rights Commission and her public activism against the nuclear bomb, the Yugoslavs defended disarmament—and nuclear disarmament too—with a more peace-centered and less nuclear-centered argument. In 1950, indeed, Tito declared at the UN: “By eliminating the causes of war, I am convinced, it will be easy to solve the issue of atomic energy control.”42 He understood the nuclear weapon as one of the most terrible human inventions, but war was capable of mass destruction even with less damaging weaponry. The Yugoslav view transpired from their interpretation of international relations. In that sense, unequal relations of big powers with weaker states, the interference in internal affairs, the political and economic subjection, as well as the colonization practices, caused war. “Therefore,” Tito continued, “this is not only a question about the ban on atomic weapons but an issue of disarmament as well.”43 Along this line, as it was specified by the Yugoslav delegation at the Sixth General Assembly meeting in 1952, it was more necessary to eradicate the causes of armament rather than its symptoms.44 Eradicating the symptoms of war as a model of peace promotion entered Roosevelt’s agenda very early as well.

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As Dario Fazzi argued, in Eleanor Roosevelt’s pacifism and humanitarianism, food, relief, and even aviation, were matters directly influencing the establishment of a lasting peace. Eleanor knew that peace was grounded “in a pragmatic mutual recognition of interests” and that their “mutuality […], especially in practical fields, favored international agreements.” The idea that the UN agencies “were intended to produce mutual advantages such as increasing the health standards in all nations or improving the global educational level” was common to her and her Yugoslav friends.45 Once Eleanor Roosevelt departed to Yugoslavia in 1953, therefore, she had already spent many years arranging and defending food relief in Yugoslavia, and had gained first-hand experience in collaborating with the Yugoslav delegation at the UN. Both Roosevelt and the Yugoslav leaders wanted the visit to exploit the benefits of soft power through personal diplomacy. While Roosevelt intended to strengthen Yugoslav–American ties and become acquainted with Yugoslav’s changing realities, the Yugoslav leaders—her UN friends such as Dedijer, Ribnikar, Jevremović, and Miro Kreačić from the Foreign Office—decided that the number one priority was nation branding.46 “Mrs. Roosevelt need to discover the [potential] development and content of our socialist democracy.” Therefore, “she has to feel free to travel around Yugoslavia without formal accompaniment.” More importantly, “during her trip, she has to see the differences between our system and [the] Russian,” Kreačić said.47 In Yugoslavia, the former First Lady was treated as a special guest of President Tito. In Belgrade, she conducted productive meetings with Edvard Kardelj and Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo, prominent Yugoslav leaders, where, according to Tito’s cabinet reports, she sincerely got interested in how the ambitions of industry could support those of workers also, and how decentralization was implemented, always “formulating her doubts with affection towards us.” To Kardelj, Roosevelt emphasized: “Yugoslavia touches the Soviet world and represents a passage towards Africa and Asia, while, on the other side, touching the West. For this reason, Yugoslavia occupies a key position.”48 In contrast, David Gurewitsch, Eleanor Roosevelt’s personal physician, longtime friend and traveling companion, caused major headaches for Belgrade’s leaders.49 Gurewitsch acted more freely with the Yugoslav counterparts: according to Tito’s cabinet reports, he kept asking “how do we arrest people, how do we respect personal freedom, what are the relations between the secret police and the judiciary,” and so on. However, and in spite of such an insistence, during Eleanor’s travel through

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Montenegro, UDBA, the Yugoslav secret service, reported “no negative actions.” Similar information was given by UDBA Split.50 Finally, it is interesting to notice that we have no written records of what Eleanor Roosevelt and Josip Broz Tito discussed during those sunny days at Brioni. Tito’s papers remain utterly silent in this regard. Vjesnik, the Croatian newspaper that usually followed Tito’s Brioni meetings, summarized the news in a couple of sentences.51 In subsequent writings, Roosevelt recalled her Yugoslav experience in very tolerant tones. The enthusiasm of both sides for each other seems entirely—politically speaking—genuine. The Yugoslav editorial newspaper expressed keenness toward Roosevelt’s questions and remarks, in the brightest tones, as during the visit to the Končar factory.52 Eleanor Roosevelt possessed a strong and fascinating character. Her ability to pursue personal, “friendship” diplomacy, and the use of her networks in it, cannot be underestimated.53 Talking about Dedijer, Jevremović, and Ribnikar, she addressed them as “old friends from the UN.” She took brief, friendly calls from “Mrs. Mates, the mother of the permanent member of the Security Council now stationed in New York.”54 In her interview with Tito, commissioned by Look magazine and which, apparently, was never actually published, she wrote55: [T]his experience in Yugoslavia has been an extremely interesting one. [Yugoslavia] is an experiment and one that may have great meaning for the rest of the world if the main objectives [continue to be] freedom and democracy within the framework of their type of socialism. No one here likes the experiment which they are trying [to be] called “communism,” because the President says it is not communism and has nothing to do with what he calls Soviet imperialism. Socialism it certainly is, but socialism and freedom may go hand in hand and anything which curtails the freedom of these people is going to be difficult to establish.56

Roosevelt’s highly tolerant position, apart from being a part of her character, is suggestive of what kind of cooperation she assumed was necessary for peace in a Cold War context. “There was room for real collaboration with the Socialist countries,” she believed, arguing that the difference between Soviet-style and Yugoslav socialism should be identified. She admired the Yugoslav “pioneering experimentation” and the “youthful vigor” of its leaders in pursuing “top-down” reforms.57 She admitted quite frankly to her son in her letter from Sarajevo: “This is an interesting country. Everyone [agrees that] vast changes have occurred in the past year,

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and I do not feel the secret police, though I know they exist, and [the] ‘bourgeois’ is not in a comfortable position.”58 Unquestionably, Eleanor Roosevelt visited Yugoslavia when some reforms were taking place: general abandonment of the Stalinist legacy, the turn to self-management practices at the local factory level, and Tito’s travel to London, to name a few. Her being a guest of President Tito sent a strong signal of openness to the USA. She certainly knew about the lack of basic human rights and the treatment of “political enemies.” Nevertheless, her perception of Yugoslavia lacked, to a certain degree, a more critical attitude. When she visited a wine cooperative in Banja—a village near Belgrade—the peasants asked her “about Senator McCarthy and his activities [and] […] if the people of the U.S. were losing their freedom.” She told her American readers that she had been very surprised by this: “Here, in a little village quite a distance out of Belgrade, a local peasant was asking me about domestic politics in the US. I could hardly believe it!”59 Indeed, an arranged visit with a Yugoslav cooperative was organized by party organizations with the highest concern for the possible impact. Meetings of Yugoslav workers at cooperatives and industrial plants were carefully and judiciously planned, and the questions prepared in advance. This relied, of course, on local party organizations, but the participants were wisely chosen. Yet, Yugoslavia, in 1953, had no diplomatic relations with the Vatican, political imprisonments at the Goli Otok concentration camp boomed, and intra-party trails were frequent. Six months after Eleanor Roosevelt left Yugoslavia, Milovan Djilas, a prominent party ideologist and leader, was imprisoned after denouncing the party’s bureaucratization on the Borba pages, Belgrade’s newspaper. Was, therefore, Eleanor Roosevelt utterly wrong about Yugoslavia? A simple question usually requires a difficult answer. Her soft approach to Tito and his leadership had double origins: her attachment to the Yugoslav country as participants in the World War II liberation struggle against the Nazis had its share, while the sympathetic relationship she had had with the Yugoslav UN delegation, especially on peaceful international cooperation and disarmament, surely played a role. Certainly, she did a great favor to the enhancement of the USA’s relations with Yugoslavia. By underlining and embracing a different perspective about Yugoslav socialism on one side and Soviet imperialism on the other, she reinforced the so-called wedge strategy. The idea that Yugoslav socialism could open the path to liberal reforms remained one of her arguments for endorsing Tito’s Yugoslavia in the years to come.

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Notes 1. Beasley, Maurine H., Holly C. Shulman, and Henry N. Beasley, eds. 2001. The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia. Westport, CT, London: Greenwood Press, xxv. 2. Luscombe, Anya and Dario Fazzi. 2017. Eleanor Roosevelt and Diplomacy in the Public Interest. European Journal of American Studies 12, 1: 1–2. doi.org/10.4000/ejas.11890 3. This research is based on the personal papers of President Tito and Eleanor Roosevelt (ER), and Yugoslav newspapers. At the moment, the ER’s digital collection alone has been investigated. For a more comprehensive view, further research needs to be carried out at the Franklin D.  Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, New York. 4. Perović, Jeronim. 2007. The Tito-Stalin Split: A Reassessment in Light of New Evidence. Journal of Cold War Studies 9, 2: 32–63. doi.org/10.1162/ jcws.2007.9.2.32 5. Američki komunistički saveznik. Hrvati, Titova Jugoslavija i Sjedinjene Američke Države 1945.-1955. 2003. Zagreb: Profil. 6. Rusinow, Dennison I. 1978. The Yugoslav Experiment 1948–1974. Berkeley: University of California Press. From the same author, but indepth analysis, see 2008. Yugoslavia: Oblique Insights and Observations. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 7. Kardelj, Edvard. 1951. Nova Jugoslavija u savremenom svijetu. Komunist, 1 (January): 1–32. 8. Kullaa, Rinna. 2012. Non-Alignment and Its Origins in Cold War Europe: Yugoslavia, Finland and the Soviet Challenge. London; New  York: I.B. Tauris. 9. Lees, Lorraine M. 2005. Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. 10. Ibid. 11. Bogetić, Dragan. 2005. Jugoslavija i Zapad 1952–1955. Jugoslovensko približavanje NATO-u. Beograd: Institut za savremenu istoriju. Stone, David R. 1994. The Balkan Pact and American Policy. East European Quarterly. 12. Spehnjak, Katarina. 2001. Posjeta Josipa Broza Tita Velikoj Britaniji 1953. godine, Č asopis za suvremenu povijest 33, 3: 597–631. The Free Territory of Trieste was established by the 1947 Paris Treaty as an independent territory between Northern Italy and Yugoslavia, under the responsibility of the UN Security Council, to accommodate an ethnically and culturally mixed population and to relax territorial claims between Italy and Yugoslavia after World War II. From 15 September 1947, its administration was divided into two areas: Zone A comprising the Trieste port with a

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narrow coastal strip up to the north west; and the larger Zone B, formed by a small portion of the north-western part of the Istrian peninsula. The Free Territory of Trieste (FTT) was de facto split between its two neighbors, Italy and Yugoslavia, by the 1954 London Memorandum and formalized by the bilateral Treaty of Osimo of 1975, ratified in 1977. For more analysis, see Glenda Sluga, The Problem of Trieste and the ItaloYugoslav Border: Difference, Identity, and Sovereignty in TwentiethCentury Europe (New York, NY: SUNY Press, 2001). ̵ 13. Mates, Leo. 1976. Medunarodni odnosi socijalističke Jugoslavije. Beograd: Nolit; Dimić, Ljubodrag. 2014. Jugoslavija i Hladni rat. Beograd: Arhipelag, 16. 14. Bilandžić, Dušan . 1999. Hrvatska moderna povijest. Zagreb: Golden Marketing, 333–34. 15. Untitled. New York Times, 7 July 1953, 12. 16. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1953. My Day, 16 July 1953. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017). http://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/ myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1953&_f=md002591a. Accessed 9 November 2017. Eleanor Roosevelt stayed in Yugoslavia from 6 July to 22 July, when she departed to Vienna. This is confirmed by Yugoslav archival documents, New York Times articles, and Yugoslav newspapers. For unknown reasons, in her digitally edited papers, there is a ten-day time displacement. This means if something occurred on 6 July 1953, the digital edition quotes it as 16 July 1953. 17. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1953. My Day, 18 July 1953. In The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017). http://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/ myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1953&_f=md002593a (hereafter: Roosevelt. My Day, July 18, 1953.) Accessed 9 November 2017. 18. Roosevelt. My Day, 19 July 1953. 19. Roosevelt. My Day, 18 July 1953. Vladimir Dedijer was a prominent Yugoslav politician, historian and visiting professor, representative at the UN, and foremost, Tito’s personal biographer, and after his support for Djilas, a dissident who was permitted to leave the country in 1959. He acted as visiting professor of history at many prestigious international universities (Michigan, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Paris Sorbonne). As a human rights activist, he chaired the Third Bertrand Russell International Tribunal on War Crimes in 1977. 20. Roosevelt. My Day, 18 July 1953. 21. Roosevelt. My Day, 22 July 1953. 22. Roosevelt. My Day, 22 July 1953. 23. Roosevelt, My Day, 26 July 1953. 24. Roosevelt, My Day, 28 July 1953. 25. Roosevelt, My Day, 28 July 1953.

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26. Roosevelt. My Day, 29 July 1953. 27. Roosevelt. My Day, 30 July 1953. 28. United Yugoslav Relief Fund, 000385, Folder 17, Box 32, Records of the War Refugee Board, 1944–1945, Digital Collection, FDR Presidential Library, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/wrb/ wrb0943.pdf. Lees, Lorraine M. 2007. Yugoslav-Americans and National Security during World War II. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 173. 29. Hitchcock, William I. 2008. The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe. New York: Free Press, 220; Kržišnik-bukić, Vera. 1988. Hirana Kao Glavni Vid UNRRA-Ine Pomoći Jugoslaviji 1943–1948. Casopis Za Suvremenu Povijest 20, 3:59–76. 30. Lampe, John R. 2000. Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 241. 31. American Committee for Yugoslav Relief, 1946, Series 2, Selected Digitized Correspondence from the Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, General Correspondence Series, 1945–1947, Franklin D.  Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, NY (hereafter FDR Library), http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/ergen/ergen476. pdf; and American Committee for Yugoslav Relief, 1947, Series 3, Selected Digitized Correspondence from the Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, General Correspondence Series, 1945–1947, FDR Library, http://www. fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/ergen/ergen1082.pdf 32. Letter from Eleanor Roosevelt to Harry S. Truman, accompanied by a memo, 15 May 1951, President’s Secretary’s File, Harry S. Truman Papers, Truman Library. Available online at: https://trumanlibrary.org 33. Roosevelt. My Day, 20 July 1953. 34. Jovanović, Jadranka. 1985. Jugoslavija u Organizaciji Ujedinjenih Nacija (1945.-1953.). Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 19. 35. Written by Bernard Baruch, the US representative at the UN Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC), and based on the Acheson–Lilienthal Report, the Baruch Plan was a US government proposal to the UNAEC during its first meeting in June 1946. It foresaw the exchange of basic scientific information for peaceful ends, the implementation of control and inspection policies, and the elimination of atomic weapons from national armaments. At the time, it was considered too US-oriented. 36. Jovanović, 167. 37. Fazzi, Dario. 2016. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Anti-Nuclear Movement. The Voice of Conscience New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 54. 38. Jovanović, 168. 39. Fazzi, 86. 40. Ibid. 41. Jovanović, 171.

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42. Jovanović, 174. 43. Jovanović, 174–75. 44. Resolution n. 502 (VI General Assembly, UN), 11 January 1952, cited in Jovanović, 175. 45. Fazzi, 24. 46. Viktorin Carolin et  al., eds. 2018. Nation Branding in Modern History. New York: Berghahn Books. 47. Zabeleška o sastanku za program gdj-e Roosevelt, 1 July 1953, KPR-­ I-­3-a/107–6, Prijem Eleonore Ruzvelt, Kabinet Predsednika Republike, Archives of Josip Broz Tito, Belgrade (hereafter AJBT). 48. Dosadašnji razgovori g-dje Roosevelt u Beogradu, 8 July 1953, KPR-­ I-­ 3-a/107–6, Prijem Eleonore Ruzvelt, Kabinet Predsednika Republike, AJBT. 49. On the friendship between Roosevelt and Gurewitsch, see Gurewitsch Edna P. and Geoffrey C.  Ward 2002. Kindred Souls: The Friendship of Eleanor Roosevelt And David Gurewitsch. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. 50. Dopunski podaci o boravku g-dje Roosevelt u našoj zemlji, 15 July 1953, KPR-I-3-a/107–6, Prijem Eleonore Ruzvelt, Kabinet Predsednika Republike, AJBT. 51. Predsjednik Republike primio gospodu̵ Roosevelt. Vjesnik, 18 July, 1. 52. Gospoda̵ Roosevelt posjetila Zagreb. Vjesnik, July 16, 1 and 3. 53. Fazzi, 46. 54. Roosevelt, My Day, 26 July 1953. 55. The reason Look magazine decided not to publish Roosevelt’s interview with Tito is unclear: in a letter to her son she acknowledged that the magazine asked Adlai Stevenson to write an article about Yugoslavia and that Look’s editorial director Daniel Mich apologized and refused to accept her remuneration back. See Henry, Richard. 2010. Eleanor Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 50–51. 56. Roosevelt, My Day, 30 July 1953. 57. Yugoslavs Lauded by Mrs. Roosevelt. 1953. New York Times, 21 July, 5. 58. Eleanor Roosevelt to James Roosevelt, 10 July 1953, Sarajevo, The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project – George Washington University, http://www2. gwu.edu/~erpapers/maps/ERtoJamesRoosevelt.htm, accessed 15 October 2017. 59. Yugoslav newspapers frequently reported on events in the USA, particularly with respect to the Red Scare; My Day, 19 July 1953.

Behind the Iron Curtain: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Visit to Poland in 1960 Halina Parafianowicz

Eleanor Roosevelt’s achievements, her enduring activities in peace and disarmament promotion, foreign travels and various aspects of public diplomacy have been researched and interpreted in numerous ways. Yet, her participation in the 15th Plenary Assembly of the World Federation of the United Nations Associations (WFUNA) and her visit to Poland (September 1960) has somehow gone unnoticed or has been ignored or forgotten by the authors of books on Eleanor Roosevelt. None of the prominent historians and biographers of the “First Lady of the World,” not even Joseph P. Lash, mentioned her activities during her week-long visit to Poland. More surprisingly, Edna P. Gurewitsch, who—with her husband, David—accompanied Mrs Roosevelt during the trip, included just a few references to the visit, focusing on her personal impressions rather than on Mrs Roosevelt’s activities during the stay in Poland.1 This chapter shows Eleanor Roosevelt’s visit to the country on the other side of the “iron curtain” during the anti-nuclear and disarmament

H. Parafianowicz (*) Faculty of History and International Relations, University of Bialystok, Bialystok, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Fazzi, A. Luscombe (eds.), Eleanor Roosevelt’s Views on Diplomacy and Democracy, The World of the Roosevelts, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42315-5_5

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campaign and debate on denuclearization in Central Europe. I shall outline the background to the invitation of such an honourable and distinguished guest and the preparations by and expectations of the Polish officials. Drawing on Polish archival sources and media coverage of the visit, I shall also elucidate on hitherto unknown aspects of Mrs Roosevelt’s activities, meetings, interviews for the Polish newspapers and her trip to the south of Poland. In the years following World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt became an internationally respected figure in her own right as an activist and UN diplomat and not merely as the widow of the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She had championed her husband’s visions and policy but had never been afraid to also compassionately express her own thoughts and beliefs. As a member of the US delegation to the United Nations and chair of the Human Rights Commission responsible for drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which she considered her greatest achievement), she became internationally recognized as a devoted promoter of human rights, freedom, peace and the United Nations. However, her powerful stance on a variety of social justice and human rights issues, including controversial ones, often attracted conservative criticism and suspicion. Her public utterances and her writings—particularly her “My Day” column—were carefully followed by FBI agents from the time she was First Lady until the end of her life.2 She was denounced by many Americans who wrote letters and criticized her for various activities—principally for her honorary chairmanship of the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). As she was accused of being a naïve apologist of communism, her search for mutual trust and confidence was considered the “peril of communist infiltration and deceit.”3 Her denunciation of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s activities, which she considered unacceptable and dangerous for America’s ideals, ideas and its democracy, were seen by her detractors as further evidence of her alleged Communist sympathies.4 But she deplored McCarthy’s methods, slurs and unfounded accusations against American citizens and accused the “witch-hunters” of the premeditated use of certain methods and tactics to instil an atmosphere of fear. On August 29, 1952, in her column, she wrote: I know the danger of Communism. I know it perhaps better than many other American citizens because for nearly five months of every year for the last six years, I have sat in meetings with the Communists representatives of the USSR. I despise the control they insist on holding over men’s minds.

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That is why I despise what Senator McCarthy has done, for he would use the same methods of fear to control all thought that is not according to his own patterns – in our free country!5

She ended her United Nations service in 1953 when President Dwight D.  Eisenhower did not reconfirm her mandate. The “First Lady of the World” then decided to undertake voluntary work for the American Association for the United Nations (AAUN). Now she was even freer to express her views and devote her energy and compassion to building the AAUN, a member of the WFUNA. She recalled: But my interest in the United Nations had grown steadily during six years and later I volunteered to work with the American Association for the United Nations so that I would not be out of touch with the work of the one organization that has the machinery to bring together eighty-odd nations in an effort to maintain world peace.6

Mrs Roosevelt worked tirelessly for the AAUN and the WFUNA, focusing on the teaching of human rights and building a better world by supporting peaceful cooperation among nations and different political systems. She spent much time lecturing across America and abroad to popularize the idea of cooperation and used her media work, including her popular “My Day” column which was read by millions. Through her books, newspaper and magazine columns, lectures, TV and radio appearances and countless talks during her many travels throughout the US and countries across the world, she contributed enormously to raising awareness of the grave danger that a nuclear arms race posed to the security of the whole world. In the 1950s, she became a determined advocate of nuclear disarmament. Mrs Roosevelt considered it was predominantly the duty and moral obligation of politicians to find peaceful solutions to disagreements rather than resort to weapons.7 Therefore, she used her fame and uniquely peculiar position in meetings and debates with numerous decision-makers. Roosevelt’s hectic daily schedule, so full of obligations, did not allow her much flexibility or opportunities to escape it. As she entered her 70s, her children and friends suggested she slow down. Yet, Mrs Roosevelt recalled:

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I am willing to slow down but I just don’t know how. Even, when I am aware that people have used my time unjustifiably, but I find myself i­ nterested in them. Even when a new project makes demands on my already crowded schedule, I find it difficult to reject it, so long as it serves useful purpose. But I do feel that I am too old now to undertake any course of action or embark on foreign travel unless I am convinced that it will, in some way, be useful.8

Constantly invited by groups from several countries as a speaker on timely issues, she did not slow down for years. On the contrary, from 1953 to 1962, she travelled around the world—to Europe, the Middle East and Asia—with her message of human rights and the promotion of the idea of peaceful cooperation among nations, including between the contesting East and West. In 1953, she visited Yugoslavia and met Marshal Josip Broz-Tito.9 Eleanor Roosevelt’s international fame and involvement in public debates on the nuclear menace and her activities in AAUN and WFUNA meetings encouraged Polish officials to extend an invitation to visit their country. In 1957, Prof. Oskar Lange, honorary chairman of the Polish section of the WFUNA and the former Polish Ambassador to the US, who had known Mrs Roosevelt since his time in the diplomatic service in the US, initiated the invitation process.10 In Polish communist governmental circles, Prof. Lange presented Eleanor Roosevelt as a “trustworthy voice of peace and a true champion of disarmament.”11 The prospective visit of such an outspoken admirer and promoter of peace was connected with the growing danger of the rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany, recognized—within the Communist Bloc—as a nuclear threat for Poland and Central Europe. In response to Oskar Lange’s courteous invitation and telegram, on July 18, 1957, Mrs Roosevelt wrote with regret that, owing to her other commitments, she could not visit Poland that year: I had to wait to answer till I talked with the New York Post people. They have a correspondent going there this summer and therefore they are most anxious that I do the trip to China, if perchance the State Department will relax its present attitude, and the trip to Russia. I don’t think I can do more but I will be happy to try and come to you perhaps next spring or summer.12

In 1957, Eleanor Roosevelt embarked upon her first visit to the Soviet Union—as a New York Post correspondent. She carefully prepared the route of the visit and informed the American and Russian Ambassadors

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and the US Secretary of State about her journey.13 Although various Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) officials treated her with great esteem, the visit attracted scant press attention. Curiously, there was just an extremely brief article in the Soviet papers Pravda and Izviestija that a social activist, widow of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, came for a one-­ month visit to the USSR and had a meeting with Andrey Gromyko, the Minister of Foreign Affairs.14 Both newspapers also briefly mentioned the donation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s portrait from the conference in Teheran, painted by a noted Soviet artist, A. M. Gerasimov.15 A few days later, there was a terse remark on her meeting with Nikita Khrushchev and their “friendly talk.”16 Mrs Roosevelt shared her impressions and thoughts on her month-long visit to the USSR, including the famous interview with Khrushchev, on radio and TV shows and at talks at several public events, as well as in her biographies.17 It seems Polish officials were truly determined about getting Mrs Roosevelt to visit, especially once they received the “green light” from Moscow following her successful visit to the Soviet Union. The former Ambassador to Great Britain and Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jerzy Michałowski, undertook attempts to prepare the “climate for a potential trip of such a distinguished guest.” The desire to host Mrs Roosevelt was possibly connected to the scheme to create a denuclearized zone in Central Europe. On October 2, 1957, the Government of the Polish People’s Republic presented to the United Nations General Assembly a proposal (known as the Rapacki Plan) to establish a denuclearized zone in Central Europe, which should embrace Poland, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany. The use of nuclear weapons against the zone would be prohibited and no nuclear weapons would be produced, stored or installed in the area.18 It should be noted that immediately after World War II in the Soviet Union and its satellites, President Roosevelt’s name was recognized and cherished. In numerous cities and towns in Poland (e.g. Warsaw, Wrocław, Poznań, Łódź, Olsztyn, Gniezno, Inowrocław, and Ełk), streets and squares were commonly named after him. His name was associated with the New Deal social reforms and the US contribution to the allies’ victory over Hitler’s Germany. Consequently, official propaganda and writing presented President Roosevelt in a positive light, mostly in contrast to his successor.19 After the Fulton meeting (1946) and Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech, the Polish media pictured President Harry

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S. Truman as a “confrontational imperialist”; his effigies were sometimes burnt during political demonstrations in the early Cold War years. In the mid-1950s, the Republican President—Dwight D. Eisenhower—was similarly depicted by propaganda as a “staunch advocate” of the rearmament of Germany and a “dangerous hawk.”20 At the beginning of April 1958, Michałowski had dinner with Eleanor Roosevelt in New  York and talked to her about a potential journey to Poland. On 3 April, in a strictly confidential telegram, he informed Vice-­ Minister of Foreign Affairs, Józef Winiewicz (a former Ambassador to the US, 1947–1952), that Mrs Roosevelt was truly interested in coming to Poland. She believed it would be possible after her September visit to Brussels for the WFUNA meeting at the World Fair. Michałowski had the impression “she was genuinely interested in peace.” According to Michałowski’s report, Mrs Roosevelt and he mainly talked about the presidential election of 1960 and the Democratic candidates. He was pleased to learn that the Governor of Maine, Edmund Muskie (Marciszewski, a Pole by origin) was being considered as a potential candidate in Democratic circles. Director Michałowski also reported that John F. Kennedy—a Catholic—was not her favourite. He added that Mrs Roosevelt “is not well oriented in Polish matters”; yet, she was “kind and smart” and “despite her age (73 years) she is still vigorous and intelligent and has a strong personality.”21 Michałowski’s telegram was distributed to over 20 Communist dignitaries, including the Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) Władysław Gomułka, Minister of Foreign Affairs Adam Rapacki, Stefan Jędrychowski (an economist and high-rank politician) and Prof. Oskar Lange. From the diplomatic correspondence, it seems Mrs Roosevelt’s visit was perceived by high-level Polish officials as an important occasion: a handwritten comment by Winiewicz stated that the visit was an important challenge and “should be taken seriously for the preparation of all details by the Polish Embassy in the United States.”22 Yet again, though, a plan for Mrs Roosevelt’s visit to Poland came to nothing as she decided to visit the Soviet Union again instead. In September 1958, she journeyed to the Soviet Union for several weeks where she devoted most of her time to issues of education and medicine and also met the Russian counterparts of the AAUN.23 It is likely that, as some historians interpret it, this second visit to the USSR was inspired by the Sputnik implications and Russian-American competition in the space race and science.24

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The Polish attempts to invite Mrs Roosevelt became more promising and successful at the beginning of 1960 as the WFUNA meeting planned to take place in Warsaw in September 1960 seemed the perfect occasion. The Polish members of WFUNA thought the event would be a great opportunity to host such an active and prominent person, and their wish was eagerly approved by officials. On February 25, 1960, in a strictly confidential telegram to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Adam Rapacki, Director Michałowski reported he had visited Eleanor Roosevelt in New York and officially invited her to the WFUNA meeting in Warsaw. She cordially accepted the offer, informing him she would come with her friend and physician David Gurewitsch and his wife, her escort during her visits to the USSR.  As stated in the report, she had indicated that she would like to spend a few days outside the capital. She was keen to visit Cracow and, perhaps, Poland’s Western Territories (Ziemie Zachodnie). The diplomat added she did not plan to visit the Auschwitz German Concentration Camp; Eleanor Roosevelt realized her doctor would not allow her such a trip. Jerzy Michałowski observed Mrs Roosevelt was interested in the politics of Germany and the current issues of both German states. Concluding, he added in a contented manner: “she understands our position and in general approves it.” In his opinion, she opposed the arms race and was—in general—supportive to “our idea of full disarmament.”25 Evidently, the Polish officials’ attempts during the talks with Eleanor Roosevelt were closely connected with discussions on peace and disarmament, most timely questions in the region. Correspondingly, the Poles expected to win her public support in their dealings with the West for the recognition of Poland’s border with Germany. From the beginning, Eleanor Roosevelt’s visit and her participation in the WFUNA meeting were capitalized on by Polish dignitaries for their own political agenda. They appreciated her importance as an ardent peace activist, “bridge-­ builder” and famed, influential journalist. Ambassador Romuald Spasowski and his staff from the Polish Embassy in Washington coordinated the forthcoming visit to Poland. The Embassy sent Mrs Roosevelt basic information on the country, its situation and current foreign policy. In a dispatch dated April 27, 1960, Michałowski informed Minister Rapacki about a “long talk” he had had with Mrs Roosevelt in Hyde Park, “where I spent a day at her invitation.” Michałowski was presumably “encouraged” to pay Mrs Roosevelt a visit at Hyde Park after her meeting with the Soviet Prime Minister Nikita

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Khrushchev who together with his wife Nina had briefly visited Mrs Roosevelt at her cottage on September 18, 1958, and had laid a wreath on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s grave.26 As a result of her planning the trip to Warsaw, Michałowski and Mrs Roosevelt’s conversation focused on current Polish matters, its border with Germany (still not recognized by the West), the nuclear menace and the prospect of mutual disarmament. Nonetheless, the spectrum of her interests, he added, was “extensive  – including social problems, women and children issues but also modern paintings.”27 Planning her foreign visits, Roosevelt always prepared herself in advance about particular fields of interest, which afterwards she could share with American audiences, mainly “My Day” readers. The kind and hospitable hostess showed Michałowski the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Archive, which truly impressed him. He noticed there were important collections of various documents on Polish history from 1938 to 1945, principally the diplomatic reports and correspondence of among others Prime Ministers Stanisław Mikołajczyk and Gen. Władysław Sikorski and Ambassador Jan Ciechanowski. Director Michałowski suggested such abundant and significant archival sources be researched by the Polish historians.28 It is also worth mentioning that during his meetings with Mrs Roosevelt, the Polish diplomat repeatedly raised the question of the forthcoming 1960 presidential election, just as he had done at their New York meeting two years earlier. He inquired about the chances of both parties’ candidates. Obviously, Mrs Roosevelt supported the Democrats and hoped her favourite, Adlai Stevenson, would succeed. She expected he would win the Democratic Party nomination at the Los Angeles convention.29 In early July 1960, Eleanor Roosevelt went to Washington for State Department briefings in preparation of her impending September visit to Poland. As she recalled in her autobiography: Of course, our American Association for the United Nations is not controlled by our government, but we always ask to be told of any situation which may exist in a country to which we are to send delegates. Such background information helps us to be better-equipped citizens and better able to carry on discussions with the other United Nations associations that may be present.30

Polish officials, particularly at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were closely involved in the preparation of the Warsaw WFUNA meeting. Minister

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Adam Rapacki was deeply concerned about the event and inquired through diplomatic channels about the list of the most important foreign delegates. On August 27, 1960, Vice-Minister Winiewicz sent him a message, coded “strictly confidential,” listing three key foreign visitors recognized for their international cooperation and peace-building. They were Eleanor Roosevelt, Phillip J. Noel-Baker (a British activist and advocate of nuclear disarmament, Nobel Prize winner of 1959) and Paul G. Hoffman (the managing director of the Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development). Winiewicz suggested those important guests should be received by the government and party officials and—principally—by Minister Rapacki himself. In the case of Mrs Roosevelt, Winiewicz also suggested she meet the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party, Władysław Gomułka. He asked Minister Rapacki for instructions and the final decision in that matter. Vice-Minister Winiewicz, apparently an important player within the system, reminded Minister Rapacki of Mrs Roosevelt’s second visit to the USSR of September 1958 and her talks with Khrushchev and Politburo Member, Yekaterina Aleksiejewna Furcewa (from May 1960, the USSR Minister of Culture).31 Winiewicz stated, with no hesitation, that Eleanor Roosevelt was the number one and the most eminent person to participate in the session in Warsaw, the “widow of the late president of the United States.” “She is still an eye in American social and political life” and “has the respect of political circles of both parties.” She was, he reported, an influential figure in the Democratic Party, predominantly in New  York State, with former supporters of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and with intellectuals. He concluded Mrs Roosevelt was as a well-known anti-nuclear activist, who “supports our stand” and “is strong-minded to cease any tests with the nuclear weapons.”32 It seems evident the perception of Mrs Roosevelt and her views showed the expectations and high hopes of Polish officials, eager to support her for their political plans and the idea of full disarmament. Eleanor Roosevelt’s visit to Poland was cautiously prepared by Polish officials who demonstrated great care for the detailed program of her stay. The 15th Plenary Assembly of the WFUNA, which was held in the Polish Parliament (Sejm) in Warsaw, September 5–10, 1960, took place 15 years after the end of World War II, in which Poland and its capital had been dramatically affected. It was the first time the meeting was organized in a socialist country and just a few years after the Rapacki Plan.33 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs took an active role in planning the visit by Eleanor

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Roosevelt as well. In a Memo (Notatka) prepared in the Division of North America, L. Dorosz suggested that because of the timely schedule of the WFUNA sessions and its Plenary meeting on September 5, there could be a trip to Cracow on September 6, as she had expressed a wish to see the city. Owing to the government’s hospitality, she was able to make the trip on a special, government plane. Consequently, Mrs Roosevelt, accompanied by Edna and David Gurewitsch and their interpreter, Mrs F. Kalinowska, went to Cracow. The short visit was prepared wisely by the Division of North America, which kept their watchful eye on everything connected with the trip.34 The party newspaper Trybuna Ludu (The People’s Voice) announced the “main issue to be discussed by delegates [at the WFUNA] from over thirty countries from five continents will be disarmament.” The Plenary meeting would be opened by Prof. Roberto Ago, a prominent Italian lawyer and chairman of WFUNA. According to the newspaper, Eleanor Roosevelt, “the widow of President Roosevelt, eminent social activist and member of the US delegation” was cordially greeted at Warsaw airport by Polish officials, including Prof. Oskar Lange, the deputy chairman of the State Council and the honorary chairman of the Polish section of the WFUNA and its chairman—Prof. Michał Kaczorowski, Jerzy Michałowski, Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the US Ambassador Jacob Beam. In the press announcement and on radio, the newspaper said, “Eleanor Roosevelt declared joy on the occasion of her coming to Poland and sent best wishes for the Polish society.”35 During the following days, Mrs Roosevelt participated in the Plenary Assembly and had several meetings with various officials, journalists and schoolchildren. She was treated by Poles with respect and courtesy. She was presented, chiefly in the Polish media, as extremely important personality of the WFUNA meeting and the most outspoken champion of the United Nations’ peace and disarmament. Trybuna Ludu wrote about the WFUNA opening ceremony and Plenary Session on September 5, attended by government members and the diplomatic corps. The welcoming addresses of the Polish officials showed special reverence to Mrs Roosevelt. A lecture given by Prof. Oskar Lange, who associated global disarmament with economic growth, was received with great interest.36 According to the party newspaper, the proceedings were received with a “great interest and attention of the delegates” as a “constructive contribution” in the discussion on disarmament and peace.37 There were hopes the talks during the WFUNA sessions

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would be constructive and useful for the forthcoming UN meeting in New  York later that autumn. The paper also published a photograph featuring the meetings most distinguished guests, Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul G. Hoffman, the representative of the Secretary General of UN at the WFUNA meeting in Warsaw.38 A few days later, in his speech, Prof. Manfred Lachs—the Polish delegate and an acknowledged international lawyer—emphasized Warsaw, which had experienced such a tragic fate and destruction during the war, was a highly appropriate place to talk about disarmament and ways to implement it.39 On September 6, 1960 Mrs Roosevelt with the Gurewitsches and an interpreter visited Cracow. After a one-hour flight on the “government jet, comfortable in its handsomely appointed salon,” the American guests enjoyed refreshments at the Hotel Francuski.40 A prominent art historian and director of the arts collection at the Royal Castle, Prof. Jerzy Jan Szablowski, showed them the most noteworthy historical places in the Old City and the treasures of the Royal Wawel Hill. Then the company met with leading scholars, physicians and artists over a lunch, organized by the Municipal Council of Cracow chairmen, at Wierzynek, a fashionable and historic Cracow restaurant.41 After lunch, Mrs Roosevelt and her party went in the car provided by the organizers to the “steel city”—as she dubbed Nowa Huta in “My Day” on September 16, 1960. The hosts wanted to show their distinguished guest a “socialist experiment,” of which “the modern young Pole is proud.” She was interested in people’s everyday life there and visited the living quarters, a kindergarten and a children’s hospital.42 Eleanor Roosevelt was nicely surprised with some positive signs of an educational system and “universal medical care.” Compared with the Soviet system, she noticed a more open and freer Polish economy. She did, however, also comment on the shortages of goods and their poor quality.43 Edna Gurewitsch commented more critically and sarcastically on the trip to Nowa Huta: Much of Kraków’s population worked in steel plants on the city’s outskirts and lived in dreary newly built workers’ housing in the city itself. Our government escorts showed us this with great pride, briskly knocking on apartment doors at random to show us how well the people lived.44

On September 7, a meeting was organized between Eleanor Roosevelt, delegates of the WFUNA and the research staff in the Polish Institute of

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International Affairs (Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, PISM). Prof. Oskar Lange and other scholars as well as the members of the Polish parliament and journalists were among those invited. The gathering focused on the international circumstances and growing threat of the armament race and the nuclear menace to the world. The discussion proved Poles were uncertain about their security, mostly since their traditional enemy—Germany—was swiftly regaining strength. Therefore, the Polish government strongly opposed the re-militarization of the Federal Republic of Germany and was most afraid of the Germans’ access to nuclear weapons.45 During the WFUNA meeting in Warsaw, there were five plenary sessions and proceedings in 15 commissions and sub-commissions working on resolutions for the Plenary Assembly. Polish press briefly informed about the preparations in the commissions on two resolutions—concerning the global disarmament and the need for the educational campaign to win the international public opinion support.46 Eleanor Roosevelt participated in several sessions and had meetings with officials, journalists and schoolchildren. She was treated with reverence, respect and courtesy by Poles and presented in the Polish media, as a remarkable American woman, the most important WFUNA meeting personality and sincere and devoted champion of the UN’s peace and disarmament. Mrs Roosevelt’s views and comments were of great value for the Poles, who used them for media publicity. As one newspaper reported, she “nicely commented on Polish peaceful initiatives,” sent her autograph for daily Życie Warszawy and a “thank you note for Poles for the hospitality.”47 Besides the numerous WFUNA sessions, Mrs Roosevelt was also expected to attend meetings and dinners thrown in her honour by the Polish dignitaries. On the evening on September 7, Minister Rapacki’s wife organized a reception for the WFUNA delegates at the Office of the Council of Ministers at Krakowskie Przedmieście 48 in Warsaw. The next day, the US Ambassador Jacob Beam received them at the US embassy at Emilia Plater Street 17.48 On September 8, the WFUNA delegates watched the Varsovie, quand même film (1954) by Yannick Bellon. The short documentary presented glimpses of the beautiful pre-war city and, then, the ruins and terrible devastation by the Germans during the occupation and the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The final part of the film showed the achievements and effects of the rebuilding and reconstruction of the Polish capital from “ruins and ashes.” Eleanor Roosevelt wrote:

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We saw a film that I think every person in our country should see. It is called “Warsaw Remains”, and it shows what happened day by day in that city at the time of the German conquest and occupation. There was no effort to make it a horror or hate film. It is a documentary showing what happened to people and, incidentally, to one place.49

On September 9, Eleanor Roosevelt “had a long talk” with Minister Rapacki in Warsaw during the WFUNA meeting. Overall, it concerned the organization’s role in the popularization of the United Nations’ activities and the WFUNA’s contribution to the peaceful world. Yet, according to the confidential memo from their conversation, the main subject raised by the Minister was a problem of “the re-birth of German revisionism” and the “impact of the military complex on US foreign policy.” He found Mrs Roosevelt “is an opponent of Germany’s armament” and is against “access to the nuclear weapons of any other countries.” He also added she emphatically “well understands our feelings towards Germans” but believes “as long as the Federal Republic of Germany is a member of NATO there is no danger for the world’s peace.”50 A few days later, she referred to the topic in “My Day.”51 According to the wishes of Mrs Roosevelt who was profoundly interested in education and youth issues, on September 9, the WFUNA delegates visited the Narcyza Żmichowska Lyceum, one of the best schools in Warsaw. The school had introduced an experimental course on the United Nations in its curriculum. In a laconic note about the meeting with the students, there was information about Mrs Roosevelt’s presence as a special guest. The same day, the WFUNA delegates paid tribute and laid wreaths at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw and at the Palmiry Cemetery, the former village and the site of mass executions of more than 2000 Poles by the Nazis.52 Eleanor Roosevelt’s press conference of September 9, 1960, at the Polish Parliament turned out to be the most significant media event during her stay in Poland. The conference attracted the attention of both Polish and foreign journalists. Afterwards, numerous interviews with her—addressed to various audiences—appeared in several newspapers. The conference was announced as a “meeting with an outstanding social activist and widow of the American president.”53 Various questions referred to her opinions on the danger of German re-militarism as well as to the idea of general disarmament and a nuclear-free zone in Central Europe. According to Trybuna Ludu, Mrs Roosevelt demonstrated

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empathy towards the Polish people, who felt uncertain and were afraid of rising world-wide tensions and the lack of recognition of the Polish-­ German border by the West. Eleanor Roosevelt assured the audience she understood “very well the fears, which she had been observing in our country, and which were connected with events in the Federal Republic of Germany.” She also repeated: “nuclear weapon should be forbidden.”54 At the press conference, a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung correspondent asked if “she noticed a genuine danger of German militarism.” She responded she could not say if it was danger or not as she had not been to Germany for many years. Still, she remarked Germans caused both world wars; hence, they should not be allowed to create circumstances in which Germany could be, again, a peril to world peace.55 Eleanor Roosevelt’s final engagement on September 9 was a dinner in her honour, organized by Prof. Oskar Lange, with the participation of Polish officials, including the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Józef Winiewicz and US Ambassador Jacob Beam.56 In Życie Warszawy, Dominik Morawski published his reminiscences from his two meetings with Eleanor Roosevelt, a “distinguished and admired personality in America” and “champion of peace respected internationally.”57 He first met her in New York on April 10, 1958, when he was a scholar of the Ford Foundation. The second conversation took place at the WFUNA assembly in Warsaw on September 7, 1960. As he reported, they talked mainly about the rearmament of Germany and their shared concern of the growing tensions and potential hazard to the stability and peace in Central Europe. He commented: “her approach to the military and political aspect of Germany was extremely alert and reasonable.” During the second conversation, they—again—discussed the peril of the Federal Republic of Germany’s rearmament and the prospects of general disarmament and the nuclear-free zone in Central Europe. As he observed, she focused on the necessity to foster confidence in the East-West relations, essential to peaceful problem-solving.58 Hanna Golde interviewed Mrs Roosevelt for the Union of Socialist Youth’s (Zwia ̨zek Młodzieěy Socjalistycznej) Walka Młodych weekly. She introduced Eleanor Roosevelt as a distinguished guest and: [a] very active and outstanding American personality in the field of tolerance, progress, peace, freedom (…). Her recent pronouncements, particularly on Germany are also well-known from the foreign newspapers. It seems she notices of the danger of the remilitarization of the Federal Republic of Germany and understands the need to stop it.59

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The journalist emphasized 75-year-old Mrs Roosevelt impressed her “with her vitality, cheerfulness and sense of humor” and added that—despite all her tremendous achievements and position—she remained modest and kind in personal contact. Numerous Eleanor Roosevelt’s comments on her visit to Poland and comprehension of the Poles’ fears due to a probable change of borders, specifically sensitive, sympathetic and supportive to the Polish stance, recurred in her talks with Poles and, later, in the Polish media. During this time when there was vagueness and a lack of assurance in the East-West Cold War relations, her opinions were of great value not only for Polish officials, but also for millions of Polish citizens. Polish journalists frequently asked Mrs Roosevelt about her impressions of Warsaw and Poland and her responses were eagerly published in the Trybuna Ludu, Życie Warszawy, Stolica or Walka Młodych. Edna P. Gurewitsch noticed that in Warsaw: A woman Mrs. Roosevelt had known in the United Nations had been assigned as her escort by the Foreign Service Ministry of the Polish government. A Communist, of course, she had somehow survived Warsaw during the German occupation by moving through the city via its sewers and living in a complex pattern of hideouts. She took us around Warsaw on our first morning in a car provided by the government. She explained how the city had been rebuilt after being razed by the Germans.60

In an interview for the Stolica, Mrs Roosevelt highlighted that the visit to Poland and her sightseeing made her aware of the tragic fate and the obliteration of Warsaw. Although she had heard and extensively read about it, until then, her knowledge was incomplete, she said. Having witnessed the horrendous impact of the war, she was even more shocked. Simultaneously, she was awestruck by the “courage of people rebuilding and creating the city again.”61 She promised her hospitable hosts to write a number of articles about her visit to Poland. And she kept her promise; she shared her thoughts and impressions on Poland in her newspaper column, on the radio and TV shows and referred to it in her talks. In “My Day,” then in her memoirs, she repeated some of her comments on Poland. As you drive again around the city and are shown pictures of the destruction by the men who are doing the rebuilding and then look at what there is today, you marvel at the courage of people who can contend with that amount of rebuilding and create a city again.62

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On September 13, 1960, in “My Day,” Eleanor Roosevelt mentioned the Poles—government ministers and commoners in the streets alike— kept recurrently asking her two main questions. The first one concerned the American elections in the fall of 1960, as for Poles “our present future politics are of vital interest.” The second questions referred to the US policy towards Germany: “Do you think your government means to give Germany atomic weapons? We are afraid of the rearmament of Germany, of its growth in military strength again.”63 She commented: You cannot fail to understand their fear when you are in Poland. We in the U.S. are so many miles away. To be sure, the atomic bomb missiles, and all they mean, annihilate distance, but this is unreal and hard for us to grasp, just as it is impossible for us to understand the fear that grips every man who had once been driven from his home and seen his city completely destroyed.64

The still noticeable effects of the horrendous destruction of Poland, specifically Warsaw, which had happened during World War II gave Eleanor Roosevelt even stronger arguments for her anti-war and anti-nuclear stance. In talks she had with Polish officials and through examining her comments and interviews, her deep faith and commitment to world peace and global disarmament is evident. During the one-week visit to Poland in September 1960, she repeatedly emphasized the need for the world peace and international order. She also publicly voiced the necessity of disarmament, predominantly the nuclear one. This stance was promoted in the Polish media with great appreciation for her—an American delegate to the WFUNA meeting—as a generous contribution to the campaign for the disarmament and peace in Central Europe. As an important person and remarkable American lady, she was treated with reverence, friendliness and cordiality by Polish officials and Polish society alike. But more importantly perhaps, she became an “authoritative voice” for Poles, her own countrymen and for all the people in various countries across the world as a supporter of human rights, peace and anti-nuclear activism. Eleanor Roosevelt’s activities in the WFUNA, and her visit to Poland in 1960, as well as her public pronouncements and writings afterwards, became chief parts of public diplomacy and her permanent contribution to peace-building around the world. She commented: “On the whole, that trip to Poland was an interesting and a rewarding one and it made me see that in these people, we could build a bridge of understanding and good will.”65

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Eleanor Roosevelt remained an influential and widely recognized national figure, internationally acknowledged as a fervent activist for human rights, justice, equality and peace until her death in 1962. Poland paid a tribute to her life-long activities and commitment to peace by issuing an 80th Birthday Commemorative Stamp on October 10, 1964.

Notes 1. Gurewitsch, Edna P. 2002. Kindred Souls. The Devoted Friendship of Eleanor Roosevelt and Dr. David Gurewitsch. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 226–228. 2. Her biographers mentioned she had been investigated by the FBI since the 1930s, when she was accused of sympathy towards the youth leftist leaders and radicals. See, for example, Black, Allida M. 1996. Casting Her Own Shadow. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 150–151; Rowley, Hazel. 2010. Franklin and Eleanor. An Extraordinary Marriage. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 255–256. 3. Roosevelt Study Center (microfilm collection). Federal Bureau of Investigation. Eleanor Roosevelt. Part 2 of 14. BUFILE: 62–62,735. A.H. Belmont to L.V. Boardman, September 12, 1957. 4. Black, Casting Her Own Shadow, 150–169, 172. 5. After Black, Allida M. ed. 1999. Courage in a Dangerous World. The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt, New  York: Columbia University Press, 266. 6. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1958. On My Own. The Years Since the White House. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 95. 7. For more on that see: Fazzi, Dario. 2016. A Voice of Conscience: How Eleanor Roosevelt Helped to Popularize the Debate on Nuclear Fallout, 1950–1954. Journal of American Studies. Cambridge University Press, Vol. 50, 3: 699–730; Fazzi, Dario. 2016. Eleanor Roosevelt and the AntiNuclear Movement: The Voice of Conscience. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 8. Roosevelt, Eleanor. The Autobiography. New  York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1992, 389. 9. Roosevelt, On My Own. Two chapters cover her visit: Yugoslavia Is Not Russia, and A Day with Tito in Brioni, 140–156. 10. Oskar Lange (1904–1965) was a Polish economist and diplomat. In 1934, as a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, he went for research to Great Britain and then to the US. As an academic teacher, he was a professor at the University of Michigan and Chicago University (1938–1945). From 1945 to 1947, he was the Polish Ambassador to the US and a delegate to

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the UN and Security Council in 1947. After 1948, he became an influential Communist dignitary as a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party and then the State Council, since 1955, and its vice-­chairman (1957–1961). He was a professor at the University of Warsaw and associated with the Polish Academy of Sciences where he was recognized for his contributions to the economics of socialism. He also served as a chairman of the Polish State Economic Council (http://www. econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Lange.html). 11. Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Warszawa, Zespół 24, D.M.O, w. 4, t. 41, WFUNA. Discussions on the Polish section of the association, notes and comments on Eleanor Roosevelt’s activities in the WFUNA. 12. Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Warszawa, Zespół 9, Departament III, 1948–1960, Wydział Ameryki Północnej, w. 72, t. 883, Eleanor Roosevelt w Polsce. 13. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library (FDRL), Hyde Park, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers (ERP), Box 4670, f. Eleanor Roosevelt Trip File: Russia, August 30–September 29, 1957. On August 7, 1957, she informed Soviet Ambassador Georgi N. Zarubin in Washington about her trip and prepared plan of the journey. The same day she wrote to US Ambassador Llewellyn E. Thompson in Moscow informing him about her visit. In a letter on August 20 she also informed Secretary of State John Foster Dulles about her plan and cordially asked if he would have any suggestions. 14. Pravda, September 10, 1957; Izviestija, September 10, 1957. 15. Pravda, September 25, 1957; Izviestija, September 25, 1957. 16. Pravda, September 28, 1957; Izviestija, September 28, 1957. 17. Roosevelt, On My Own. There are three chapters in which she described her visit: In the Land of the Soviets, The Most Important Things I Learned About the Soviet Union, Interview with Khrushchev, 193–230; Parafianowicz, Halina. 2000. Eleanor Anna Roosevelt (1884–1962), W cieniu wielkiego męz˙ a. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 207–210. 18. More on the Plan in Ozinga, James R. 1989. The Rapacki Plan: The 1957 Proposal to Denuclearize Central Europe, and an Analysis of Its Rejection. Jefferson: McFarland. 19. Arski, Stefan. 1948. Cień nad ojczyzna ̨ Roosevelta. Ameryka, 1945–1948. Warszawa: Wiedza. 20. Pastusiak, Longin. 2004. Stosunki polsko-amerykańskie (1945–1955). Toruń, 484, 535–6, 562; Tomorowicz, Bohdan. 1955. Narody wzmagają walkę o pokój. Nowe Drogi, 1955, Nr 4, 70: 60–61. 21. Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, Warszawa, Zespół 9, Departament III, 1948–1960, Wydział Ameryki Północnej, w. 72, t. 883, Eleanor

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Roosevelt w Polsce. Wyciąg korespondencyjny Nr 4045 z Nowego Jorku z dnia 3 kwietnia 1958. 22. Ibid. 23. Roosevelt, The Autobiography, 389–398. 24. Michałek, Krzysztof. 2004. Amerykańskie stulecie.Historia Stanów Zjednoczonych Ameryki 1900–2001. Warszawa: Mada, 248. 25. Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Warszawa, Zespół 9, Departament III, 1948–1960, Wydział Ameryki Północnej, w. 72, t. 883, Eleanor Roosevelt w Polsce. Wyciąg korespondencyjny Nr 2515 z Nowego Jorku z dnia 25 lutego 1960. 26. Roosevelt, The Autobiography, 435. The following year Khrushchev came to visit Mrs Roosevelt in New York and most of his time, as she recalled, he deliberated about the success of the Soviet economy. Mrs Roosevelt shared her knowledge, thoughts and hospitality inviting her friends and foreign diplomats to the cottage at Val-Kill and Hyde Park. Many of them paid homage and placed a wreath on President Roosevelt’s grave as well as paid respect to the widow, an outstanding woman keeping her husband’s legacy alive. 27. Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, Warszawa, Zespół 9, Departament III, 1948–1960, Wydział Ameryki Północnej, w. 72, t. 883, Eleanor Roosevelt w Polsce. Wyciąg korespondencyjny Nr 5406 z Nowego Jorku z dnia 27 kwietnia 1960. 28. Ibid. 29. Henry, Richard. 2010. Eleanor Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 30. Roosevelt, The Autobiography, 428. 31. Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, Warszawa, Zespół 9, Departament III, 1948–1960, Wydział Ameryki Północnej, w. 72, t. 883, Eleanor Roosevelt w Polsce. Wyciąg korespondencyjny Nr 5406 z Nowego Jorku z dnia 27 sierpnia 1960. 32. Ibid. 33. Tomala, Mieczysław. 1960. O obradach WFUNA, Sprawy Międzynarodowe, R. 13, z. 11. 34. Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, Warszawa, Zespół 9, Departament III, 1948–1960, Wydział Ameryki Północnej, w. 72, t. 883, Eleanor Roosevelt w Polsce. Notatka z 31 sierpnia 1961 w sprawie planowanej wizyty p. Roosevelt w Krakowie w dniu 6 września b.r. 35. Trybuna Ludu, September 4, p.  3, “Rozbrojenie  – głównym tematem obrad Towarzystw Przyjaciół ONZ”; September 5, 1960, p. 1 “Federacja Towarzystw Przyjaciół ONZ rozpoczyna obrady w Warszawie.”

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36. XV Zgromadzenie Plenarne Światowej Federacji Towarzystw Przyjaciół Organizacji Narodów Zjednoczonych (WFUNA), Warszawa 1960, p. 23–33 (“Rozbrojenie a rozwój gospodarczy świata”). 37. Trybuna Ludu, September 5, p. 2, “Przyjaciele ONZ.” 38. Trybuna Ludu, September 5, p. 1; September 6, p. 1; September 8, p. 4, September 9, p. 3. 39. Prawo i Życie, September 18, p. 7. 40. Gurewitsch Kindred Souls. The Devoted, 227. 41. Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, Warszawa, Zespół 9, Departament III, 1948–1960, Wydział Ameryki Północnej, w. 72, t. 883, Eleanor Roosevelt w Polsce. Notatka z 31 sierpnia 1961 r. w sprawie planowanej wizyty p. Roosevelt w Krakowie w dn. 6 września b.r.; Trybuna Ludu, September 7, p. 2; Życie Warszawy, September 7, p. 1. 42. Trybuna Ludu, September 7, p. 2; Życie Warszawy, September 7, p. 1. 43. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1960. My Day, September 16, 1960. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017), accessed 5/01/2019 https:// www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1960&_ f=md004851; Eleanor Roosevelt (The Autobiography), 429–430. 44. Gurewitsch, Kindred Souls. The Devoted, 227. 45. Życie Warszawy, September 8, 1960, p. 2, “Pragniemy świata bez orę̌ża”; “Spotkanie z Eleonor Roosevelt.” She also mentioned about Polish fears and concerns in The Autobiography, 430–431. 46. Trybuna Ludu, September 9, p. 3; Życie Warszawy, September 10, p. 4; Sztandar Młodych, September 10, p. 2. 47. Życie Warszawy, September 8, 1960, p. 2, “Pragniemy świata bez orę̌ża”; “Spotkanie z Eleonor Roosevelt.” 48. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Box 4670, f. Eleanor Roosevelt Trip File: England, France, Switzerland, Poland, August 22–September 14, 1960. 49. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1960. My Day, September 13, 1960. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017). https://www2.gwu. edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1960&_f=md004849. Accessed 5 January 2019. 50. Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, Warszawa, Zespół 9, Departament III, 1948–1960, Wydział Ameryki Północnej, w. 72, t. 883, Eleanor Roosevelt w Polsce. Notatka z rozmowy p. Eleonory Roosevelt z tow. Ministrem A. Rapackim w dniu 9 września 1960 r. 51. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1960. My Day, September 16, 1960. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017). https://www2.gwu. edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1960&_f=md004851. Accessed 5 January 2019.

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52. Sztandar Młodych, September 10, p. 2; Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, Warszawa, Zespół 9, Departament III, 1948–1960, Wydział Ameryki Północnej, w. 72, t. 883, Eleanor Roosevelt w Polsce. Notatka z pobytu Eleonory Roosevelt w Polsce w dniach 4–11 września. 53. Trybuna Ludu, September 10, p.  3, “Konferencja prasowa z Eleonorą Roosevelt” (“The press conference with Eleanor Roosevelt”). 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Trybuna Ludu, September 10, p. 2. 57. Życie Warszawy, September 11, 1960, p.  5, Dominik Morawski, “Dwa spotkania z EleonorąRoosevelt” (“Two meetings with Eleanor Roosevelt”), including her photograph with the best greetings and wishes for the readers. 58. Ibid. 59. Walka Młodych, No 39, September 25, 1960, pp.  1–2, Hanna Golde, “Gościmy na łamach Eleonorę Roosevelt” (“We host Eleanor Roosevelt in our newspaper”). There was also a published picture of Eleanor Roosevelt with her best wishes for the Polish youth. 60. Gurewitsch, Kindred Souls. The Devoted, 226–227. 61. Stolica, 1960. No 39, September 25, p.  6. This also included her photograph. 62. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1960. My Day, September 13, 1960. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017). https://www2.gwu. edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1960&_f=md004849. Accessed January 5, 2019. 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid; Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography, 431. 65. Ibid.

Liberalism Meets Radicalism: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Internationalization of the Black Liberation Struggle Tim Kies

This study analyzes Eleanor Roosevelt’s legacy as a civil rights activist. In particular, it focuses on the ways she addressed racial equality during the postwar years by looking at the events leading up to and surrounding the so-called Genocide Petition, a document drafted by the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) under the supervision of William L. Patterson and presented to the United Nations (UN) in December 1951. During this period American civil rights organizations submitted three petitions to the UN, all of which failed to receive the support of Eleanor Roosevelt. My argument is that three interrelated elements help to understand Mrs. Roosevelt’s reluctance to support these petitions. First, regarding civil rights, she was a pragmatist and a gradualist, which made her rather hesitant to cooperate with radical organizations. Second, the events leading up to the submission of the petitions happened against the background of the Cold War, which affected Mrs. Roosevelt’s public statements and political stances. And third, while working at the UN as a US representative, she

T. Kies (*) Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands © The Author(s) 2020 D. Fazzi, A. Luscombe (eds.), Eleanor Roosevelt’s Views on Diplomacy and Democracy, The World of the Roosevelts, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42315-5_6

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pursued her own personal agenda—the creation of human rights principles, backed up by an internationally binding human rights bill. In the end, by shunning support for the UN petitions, Mrs. Roosevelt further contributed to the widening of the division between moderates and radicals within the movement for Black liberation. Some of Eleanor Roosevelt’s biographers have assessed her contributions to racial equality in the postwar period as fundamentally positive. Allida M.  Black argued in Casting Her Own Shadow that, “Once freed from the constraints of the White House,” Mrs. Roosevelt “eagerly expanded her career and unabashedly” committed herself to “a society that might maximize employment at a fair wage, respect diversity, tolerate dissent,” and “a more inclusive domestic policy agenda.” With regard to the Black liberation struggle, Allida Black contended that the former First Lady “gave unflinching support to the cause,” despite daily revelations of “the superficial nature of liberal commitment to racial justice.” Especially Mrs. Roosevelt’s role as communicator and promotor is considered essential in the emancipation movement. Maurine Beasley has described her mastery of using media to get her message out—even going so far as to call her “the most influential woman of her day”—and Blanche Wiesen Cook called her “the women’s ‘boss’ of the Democratic party,” indicating her importance as a politician. Moreover, Mary Ann Glendon made similar positive assessments on Eleanor Roosevelt’s role in the valuable creation of human rights, asserting, “Yes, the enterprise [of human rights] is flawed. […] But thanks in great measure to those who framed the Universal Declaration growing numbers of women and men have been inspired to something about them.”1 Such positive views on Eleanor Roosevelt’s contribution to the rise of human rights at the top of the international political agenda, while genuine, risk overlooking the overall marginalization that targeted the US Black liberation struggle at the dawn of the Cold War. The ideological battle with the Soviet Union brought about widespread anticommunism in US society that hindered racial progress, as many Black American leaders came to be scrutinized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and sidestepped by centrist liberals for possibly being Red. More interestingly, the ideological quarrels of the Cold War limited Eleanor Roosevelt’s room for maneuver, especially in the years she worked for the Truman administration. Joseph Lash, her close friend and biographer, was among the first ones to highlight such a change in Mrs. Roosevelt’s perception of the Soviets during the early Cold War: at the start of her career as a US

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representative, she was often critical of the Truman administration’s approach to diplomacy with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and at times agreed with the President’s Democratic adversary, Henry Wallace, who criticized Truman for unnecessarily escalating the conflict with the Soviets. However, Lash observed, the more she dealt with the Russians, the more cynical she became. By 1949, he argued, she had turned into a “reluctant cold-warrior.”2 More recently, however, Dario Fazzi has nuanced this portrayal somewhat, considering Eleanor Roosevelt as a “pragmatic cold war dissenter.” He has emphasized her resentment at the confrontational US foreign policy and her devotion to de-escalating the US-Soviet conflict in the interest of human security and human rights. Carol Anderson, on the other hand, described the effects of the tension between Mrs. Roosevelt’s role and her activism more cynically in Eyes Off the Prize, insisting that the postwar period represented a missed opportunity for both the domestic and international promotion of human rights, whose symbolic value ended up largely overshadowing their actual efficacy. Eleanor Roosevelt was the perfect example of such a tension, as Anderson claimed that human rights, which were opposed to the narrower civil rights, would have had “the language and philosophical power to address not only the political and legal inequality that African Americans endured, but also the education, health care, housing, and employment needs that haunted the black community.” For such reasons, she described Mrs. Roosevelt as “one of the masters of symbolic equality.”3 The truth is somewhere in the middle. As a matter of fact, Eleanor Roosevelt had many times throughout her life been forced to find balance between her personal convictions and the political climate surrounding her and her public persona. In the 1920s, she had privately supported the creation of the World Court to achieve security through international law, but isolationist sentiment in the United States after the First World War prevented her husband from speaking out on the issue of whether or not to join the institution. Moreover, in the 1930s, Mrs. Roosevelt aided the fight for anti-lynching legislation, but the president was unwilling to come out in favor of an anti-lynching bill because he needed southern Democrats to enact his New Deal policies. And again, in the late 1930s, she had sympathy for the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War, but the political climate did not allow for President Roosevelt to lift the Neutrality Act and come to their aid.4 Such experience in strategic maneuvering and political pragmatism made Eleanor Roosevelt into a gradualist. She fundamentally supported

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Black emancipation, but she also fundamentally felt the country needed time to adjust to civil rights. For example, in 1942, she wrote in New Republic, “It seems trite to say to the Negro, you must have patience, when he has had patience so long; you must not expect miracles overnight, when he can look back to the years of slavery and say—how many nights! he has waited for justice. Nevertheless, it is what we must continue to say in the interest of our government as a whole and of the Negro people.” And in Negro Digest, she imagined that if she “were a Negro today,” “I would not do too much demanding” and “I would accept every advance that was made in the Army and Navy, though I would not try to bring those advances about any more quickly than they were offered.”5

Sympathy, Not Endorsement Eleanor Roosevelt’s reluctance to cooperate with radicals on the civil rights issue, even when they were trying to offer positive contributions, fully emerged with the events surrounding the “Scottsboro Boys” case. This case was one of the largest clashes between the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Black communist organizations, and it showed the differences between centrist and radical African American movements during the 1930s. From that moment on, the radical wing of the civil rights struggle would unceasingly call for international solidarity and reject the progressive approach adopted by the NAACP and other more moderate groups. After it had become clear that the trials of the Scottsboro Nine were a farce and that the defendants were very likely innocent, both the NAACP and the International Labor Defense (ILD) attempted to take on the legal defense. Due to the fact that the NAACP branch in the area functioned poorly and that the national office needed more than a month to decide whether or not it should take on the case, the ILD took the lion’s share in supporting and legally assisting the defendants and their families. The ILD had been founded in 1925 as the legal department of the Communist Party, and it had garnered much attention with its defense of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-born American anarchists. The organization turned out to be rather successful in mounting a defense of the boys, both in legal terms—they successfully appealed all cases at the Supreme Court, resulting in eight mistrials—and in terms of public opinion. The NAACP protested that the ILD’s communism would alienate the jury and that its real agenda was only oriented toward the expansion of a

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communist platform, stating that “the whole thing has been dramatized from Moscow to Manchukuo” and that the Scottsboro Boys “want freedom, not martyrdom.” However, as with Frederick Douglass’s journeys to London in the fight for abolition, the ILD’s international approach actually proved effective, and the global outrage about the Scottsboro Boys mounted a widespread and transnational attack on Jim Crow itself.6 Protest actions and demonstrations took place in Sydney, Madrid, Riga, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Cuba, Beirut, Johannesburg, and the Netherlands, where they organized bike rides throughout the country and presented a petition to free the boys to the American consulate in Amsterdam. Moreover, well-known figures such as H.G. Wells, Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, and Gandhi took public stances for the Scottsboro Nine and against US segregation. It was no hyperbole, then, when the New York Times headed, “World Watches Case,” in 1933. Initially, the ILD’s activities were led by J. Louis Engdahl, who was the first editor of The Daily Worker, but he died suddenly in 1932, and his position was filled by William L. Patterson. Patterson was a Black American lawyer who had worked for the ILD in the Sacco-Vanzetti case and between 1927 and 1929 had attended the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, a famous training school for communist political leaders. Given the fact that the Comintern changed its agenda at the Sixth World Congress in 1928 to focus more on issues of race (particularly in the United States), a man such as Patterson was an ideal option to increase the level of public pressure in the United States. The NAACP’s warning of an expanding communist platform, then, was partly true. The USSR surely attempted to gain certain diplomatic advantages by pointing out the problems of Jim Crow as opposed to their egalitarian rhetoric. However, the ILD was able to save the lives of the Scottsboro Nine and incite global outrage over segregation by undertaking to “fight [the case] not as an isolated, accidental ‘miscarriage of justice,’ but as a typical example of the whole process of law and civilization of the South.” Even though much of the ILD’s campaign was communist propaganda that benefited the USSR, Black Americans benefited perhaps even more.7 The price for such an achievement, however, was a growing chasm within the American civil rights movement. Oftentimes, it was the First Lady who tried to bridge the gap and mediate between the many civil rights organizations and the Roosevelt administration. For example, she was in regular contact with Walter Francis White, the executive secretary of the NAACP. Most of their correspondence around this time dealt with

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the fight for anti-lynching legislation, as White actively sought to persuade the president to speak out in favor of the Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching bill of 1934. After talking extensively with her husband, Mrs. Roosevelt informed White that he would not “like or agree with” what FDR thought, so she even arranged a meeting where White could speak to the president himself. Moreover, she worked with Mary McLeod Bethune, among others, in establishing the Black Cabinet as an advisory organ to the Roosevelt administration. In the matter of the Scottsboro cases, however, she was unwilling to speak out, despite the fact that she had received letters that urged her, “as a mother,” to do so.8 This reluctance to work with people who maintained more radical tactics fitted a pattern for Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1941, Walter White assisted A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, in organizing a march on Washington on 1 July to protest segregation in the army and the defense industry. White urged Mrs. Roosevelt “to express [her] opinion to the President” if she agreed “that such a conference should be held.” Meanwhile, Randolph also requested her assistance. He hoped that she “may help this movement with a comment in [her] column.” The First Lady, however, responded, “I feel very strongly that your group is making a very grave mistake at the present time to allow this march to take place. I am afraid it will set back the progress which is being made, in the army at least, towards better opportunities and less segregation.” She believed the march “may engender so much bitterness that it will create in Congress even more solid opposition from certain groups than we have had in the past.”9 Now that direct action was a part of White’s tactics, she was unwilling to support him. Despite this, however, Randolph and White successfully pressured President Roosevelt into issuing Executive Order 8802 and the creation of the Fair Employment Practices Committee. Furthermore, in 1939, Mrs. Roosevelt had supported Marian Anderson, a Black singer who was banned by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) from performing at Howard University and Washington’s finest auditorium, Constitution Hall. The First Lady, who was a member of the DAR, resigned from the organization and, in fact, helped the singer perform at the Lincoln Memorial instead. By contrast, in referring to Paul Robeson, a Black artist with communist ties who had already been prevented from performing at Constitution Hall in 1930, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote, “I, myself, cannot understand why anyone goes to a meeting at which Paul Robeson is going to speak.” Moreover, she felt

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that in the United States, it should be “very clear that we disagree with and disapprove of many views of Paul Robeson,” even though she did acknowledge his hardships as a Black man, stating, “He was a brilliant law student,” who “could not find a job in any good New  York firm.” Furthermore, she wrote in a letter to Max Lerner: The American communists seem to have succeeded very well in jeopardizing whatever the liberals work for. Therefore, to keep them out of the policy making and staff positions in an organization, seems to be very essential even at the price of being called redbaiters, which I hope no member of this new group will really be!10

Of course, this pattern of refusing to cooperate with people with more radical tactics was not unreasonable. Her prominent social activism had indeed represented an obvious target for American red-baiters. In 1934, she was rumored to be part of a Red Network—together with William Patterson, among others—and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover even kept a large file on her activities. As understandable as some of these actions were, however, they certainly did not help the struggle for Black liberation.11

The Person Versus the Diplomat The confrontation between moderate and radical civil rights groups survived the Second World War, and Eleanor Roosevelt again found herself in the position of having to deal with distinct and competing lobbying efforts. In the war’s aftermath, many African American political leaders were optimistic about the possibilities that the postwar period could open up for them. They saw an opportunity in increased international cooperation to promote issues such as decolonization, to question the global system of White supremacy, and—specifically regarding the United States—to reveal and remove the systemic racial discrimination within the country. In support of such efforts, Mrs. Roosevelt invited an NAACP delegation to attend the 1945 San Francisco conferences where the United Nations was established. The delegation consisted of Walter White and W.E.B.  Du Bois, a prominent and radical Black intellectual, who were joined by McLeod Bethune on behalf of the National Congress of Negro Women since that organization did not have enough funds to send its own representatives. White and Du Bois had clashed many times in the past—even

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resulting in Du Bois’s departure from the NAACP between 1934 and 1944—but during these five weeks, they buried the hatchet to ensure that the new world order would implement racial equality.12 However, whereas Mrs. Roosevelt had helped the NAACP to address the international community in 1945, she was unwilling to do so in 1947. That year, Du Bois convinced White to draft a petition, called An Appeal to the World, which the NAACP would present to the United Nations. Du Bois had a long history of utilizing an international dimension to fight racial oppression. He believed that racism was not simply an American issue, but an issue of White supremacy across the globe. As early as 1903, he wrote in his famous book The Souls of Black Folk, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” and in 1921, he had already addressed the world in his “Manifesto of the Second Pan-African Congress,” entitled “To The World.” In it, he argued that “the absolute equality of races – physical, political and social – is the founding stone of world peace and human advancement” and that the Pan-Africanists “arraign civilization and more especially the colonial powers for deliberate transgressions of our just demands and their own better conscience.” Once again drawing the world’s attention in 1947, he stated in the introduction to the petition: “Our treatment in America is not merely an internal question of the United States. It is a basic problem of humanity; of democracy; of discrimination because of race and color; and as such it demands [the world’s] attention.” Included in the petition were some 100 pages of research on the process and effect of racial discrimination in the United States.13 The idea was to present this petition to the UN and ask Eleanor Roosevelt, who then was the chair of the UN Human Rights Commission, for support. As a US delegate, Mrs. Roosevelt was frequently tasked with negotiating with the USSR on important international issues such as the establishment of human rights and disarmament. In these negotiations, the United States struggled to maintain its leadership position on behalf of the “Free World,” as it was constantly undermined by its domestic system of segregation: the Soviets would, indeed, regularly point out the hypocrisy of international US moral superiority, when in reality they oppressed people of color domestically. Thus, on 22 October 1947, Eleanor Roosevelt communicated to Walter White that “as an individual [she] would like to be present” at the presentation of the petition, “but as a member of the delegation I feel that until this subject comes before us in the proper way, in a report of the Human Rights Commission or

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otherwise, I should not seem to be lining myself up in any particular way on the subject.”14 Circumstances had changed since Mrs. Roosevelt invited the NAACP to the UN in the spring of 1945. First, the Second World War came to an end that summer as the United States became a nuclear power. Both these developments influenced the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union from an at times successful alliance to a more frustrating one. Historian John Lewis Gaddis highlighted especially the early months of 1946 as the period in which the United States moved “into a fundamental reorientation of policy toward the Soviet Union.” Second, as Ellen Schrecker has argued, “the crucial developments that brought McCarthyism to the center of American politics occurred between 1946 and 1949.” This period saw the beginning of a public consensus for the need to be “tough on the Russians”—with Democrats and Republicans disagreeing only on the degree of toughness—as well as the intensification of the persecution of alleged communists (e.g., the signing by President Truman of Executive Order 9835, also known as the “Loyalty Order,” in 1947). And third, with regard to Eleanor Roosevelt’s personal agenda, 1946 saw the creation of the United Nations Commissions on Human Rights, followed by the drafting committee for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in early 1947. Here, too, the Cold War was visible: the Soviets suggested the creation of the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities and the Americans—backed up by France and Britain—requested the creation of the Sub-Commission on Freedom of Information and the Press. Such quibbles were potentially disastrous for a successful process of drafting a universal declaration, which, to Mrs. Roosevelt, was ultimately paramount (even without concrete implementation mechanisms). Thus, she chose to avoid association with the NAACP petition, even though she was a member of the board of directors of the organization at the time.15 After Mrs. Roosevelt’s response, Du Bois and White disagreed on her further involvement in the affair. Du Bois cynically argued that “Mrs. Roosevelt is following orders from a State Department determined that American Negroes shall have no chance to state their grievances before the world.” When it was decided that the petition was not processed by the Human Rights Commission, the former First Lady maintained that the USSR were to blame: “Jonathan [Daniels, another US delegate to the UN] also proposed that all petitions be received. This proposal was rejected and when the USSR proposed that petitions be received from the

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National Association for the Advancement of Colored People he was forced to vote against it on the ground that one organization should not be singled out in preference to others.”16 Walter White accepted this explanation; Du Bois did not. The latter urged Warren Austin, the chief US delegate to the UN, to get Appeal to the World on the General Assembly’s agenda. Warren, however, was unwilling to answer his letters and asked Mrs. Roosevelt to meet with Du Bois. During this meeting, as Du Bois recalled, the former First Lady voiced the State Department’s opinion “that it would be unwise to put [the] Petition on the agenda of the next Assembly for discussion, since no good could come from such a discussion.” Furthermore, he remembered, “Mrs. Roosevelt thought that [the petition] would be embarrassing; that it would be seized upon by the Soviet Government and others as an excuse for attacking the United States.” Du Bois, however, insisted that this “need not of necessity be a matter of embarrassment” and that the NAACP had done something similar in exposing lynching in the United States, from which he concluded “that we did right.” This was a good point. Three years later, Eleanor Roosevelt would complain, “I have never seen such bitterness as I have in Committee 3 this year on the race problem and on the ‘haves’ against the ‘have nots’, and small nations against big nations.” She elaborated in a memorandum: “My own feeling is that the Near East, India and many of the Asiatic people have a profound distrust of white people.” Moreover, she spoke about “some African or Pacific countries” having “fixed ideas:” One of those ideas was that the United States had always discriminated against its colored minority and had always throughout the world joined itself with other white races in looking down on colored races. You know, it is very difficult when you try to say, “Yes, there has been discrimination in this country but nevertheless, as you look back over 20 years, we have made great strides.”

She indicated she understood such sentiments since “their areas of the world have been largely visited for the purposes of exploitation,” which she clearly disapproved of. However, at the same time, she was unwilling to attempt to change such opinions by having the international community judge issues of White supremacy within the United States itself.17 After the meeting, Du Bois increasingly criticized Mrs. Roosevelt and the State Department, whereas White continued to support and work with

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the US government. The disagreement between the two civil rights leaders eventually became so harsh that Du Bois was ousted from the NAACP.18 Meanwhile, for Eleanor Roosevelt, it had become clear that there was a potential conflict of interest between her position as US delegate to the UN and her NAACP board membership. On 28 December 1947, she sent a letter of resignation to the Board of Directors. Walter White wrote to her that the organization “would suffer [an] irreparable loss” if she left, to which Mrs. Roosevelt replied that she was “flattered that the Board should want me to remain,” but that she feared that she was “going to be a very unsatisfactory member this winter and spring.” Thus, she stayed on the board, but she became less active.19

“We Charge Genocide” On 9 December 1948, one day before the approval of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which confirmed genocide as “a crime under international law.” In defining what exactly constitutes genocide, Article 2 of the genocide resolution clearly stated: Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.20

This broad definition of genocide piqued the interest of William L. Patterson. In 1946, he had founded the CRC as the successor to the ILD and the National Negro Congress (NNC), an organization which had also petitioned the UN earlier that year but had fallen into decline. Despite the limited success of both the 1946 NNC and the 1947 NAACP petitions, Patterson remained confident that international recognition of the tragedy of African Americans was essential in advancing their liberation struggle. One important reason for this was the UN’s decision-­ making in the South African-Indian dispute of 1946. In June that year, the Indian government addressed South African discrimination toward Indian

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migrant laborers, who were forbidden by law to purchase land in “Whites-­ only” areas. Despite the fact that the US delegation attempted to remove the issue from UN jurisdiction and that “human rights” had not been officially codified, the UN denounced the discriminatory practices and cautioned the South African government to adhere to the UN Charter.21 Patterson followed some of the tactics of An Appeal to the World in the sense that the CRC’s petition was also based on thorough research to make its case at the United Nations. However, this time the petition set out to prove the US government’s intent, as this was an essential part of the UN definition of genocide. Walter White had written a “Progress Report” in 1951, wherein he detailed the positive state of Black civil rights, claiming that even though they had not yet “achieved perfect democracy,” he identified that “more and more Americans are ashamed of [discriminatory] practices and are doing something about them.” Moreover, he observed 15 areas in which progress had been made, and he concluded with a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: “Probably the most important thing that has happened in the United States in the field of race relations is that so many things are now taken for granted where the integration of the two races is concerned.”22 Patterson’s petition, which was called “We Charge Genocide,” employed a much more cynical perspective. He opened the introduction as follows: Out of the inhuman black ghettos of American cities, out of the cotton plantations of the South, comes this record of mass slayings on the basis of race, of lives deliberately warped and distorted by the willful creation of conditions making for premature death, poverty and disease. It is a record that calls aloud for condemnation, for an end to these terrible injustices that constitute a daily and ever-increasing violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention of Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.23

Anticipating the US State Department’s response, he argued that “it is sometimes incorrectly thought that genocide means the complete […] destruction of a race or people,” whereas the actual definition reads “in whole or in part.” The final version of the CRC petition was over 200 pages, and its research focused heavily on examples of recent racial discrimination in the United States, thus showing that these practices were not simply an issue of the past. Moreover, the petition revealed that it was no coincidence that many of those in the United States who opposed the Genocide Convention were the people who wanted to prevent lynching

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and race riots to come under international scrutiny—the so-called Dixiecrats.24 Du Bois’s ousting from the NAACP meant further marginalization of the civil rights movement’s radical component, so there was more room for the association to cooperate more closely with the State Department. This cooperation meant that the NAACP also participated in staunch anticommunist rhetoric: whereas the organization had advocated decolonization at the 1945 San Francisco conferences, Roy Wilkins—who was part of the NAACP leadership—distanced the association from such international issues in favor of domestic policy, stating that “our brothers under the colonial yoke cry for our aid,” but that they would only receive aid “insofar as our resources permit.” Moreover, Walter White openly embraced fierce anticommunist statements, as he denounced Soviet criticism of US inaction concerning decolonization as nothing more than a “propaganda club” and devoted an entire column in the Chicago Defender on American communists’ strategic blunders. In reference to the accusations made against African Americans who were supposedly “un-American,” the NAACP declared it would be an “American organization.” Given such anticommunist views, some historians have even contended that the NAACP leadership “purged” the organization from communists, but historians such as Manfred Berg and Carol Anderson have powerfully questioned the validity of such claims.25 Even so, the NAACP’s anticommunist rhetoric was readily used by the State Department. As predicted, the US government’s first move was to deny altogether that the facts reported in the petition constituted genocide. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in a letter of a “communist inspired document” that “states an absolute untruth that the lynching of a Negro is genocide.” According to her, though not to the Convention’s text, “Genocide is the deliberate extermination of whole races.” Subsequently, Mrs. Roosevelt used her influence with Walter White, as the State Department asked the NAACP to attack the petition before its submission to the UN General Assembly in Paris in December 1951. White, whose dislike for William Patterson never disappeared after Scottsboro, was ready to condemn the petition as “a gross and subversive conspiracy,” but columnist and radio commentator Drew Pearson revealed the CRC’s document on 18 November and predicted an NAACP denunciation. Thereupon, even Roy Wilkins—one of the most outspoken anticommunists in the association’s leadership—doubted whether the organization should speak out on the matter. “How can we ‘blast’ a book that uses our

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records as source material?”, he wondered. In the end, the association publicly stated that the accusations did not constitute genocide, even though the discriminatory practices laid out should be taken seriously.26 In downplaying the legitimacy of the Genocide Petition, the State Department’s final tactic, in which Eleanor Roosevelt played a key role, was to emphasize the communist affiliations of the CRC and its agents. Dr. Channing Tobias and Edith Sampson were invited to join the December 1951 Paris delegation to imply that the petition’s grievances came not from Black but “Red” Americans and to show that the United States had made progress. Furthermore, when William Patterson arrived in Paris on 17 December and lobbied with delegates from various nations, he experienced the US power in international relations firsthand, as some states expressed interest in the petition, but they were unable to put it on the agenda because they were dependent on US economic aid. On top of that, in late December, Patterson was informed that the State Department required him to surrender his passport, as they had done with Paul Robeson earlier that year. In an attempt to keep his passport, he travelled to Budapest, Hungary. Upon this, Eleanor Roosevelt personally drove him into the margin, as she declared: “At a time when no visas are being given for Americans to visit Hungary, it seems a rather odd proceeding on his part and one wonders if he has decided to transfer his citizenship to the Soviets.”27 Such tactics were quite effective for the State Department, even though Mrs. Roosevelt declared that “we were hurt in so many little ways, for instance, the presentation of a pamphlet ‘WE (sic) Charge Genocide.’” The United States prevented the petition from being presented to the General Assembly, and domestically, only Black and far-left newspapers paid much interest. “We Charge Genocide” did sell around 45,000 copies in the United States and another 50,000  in Europe, though these estimates were made by the CRC itself, and the document’s impact was surely affected by its communist label. Moreover, the organization’s communist connections ensured that many of its resources, in terms of both capital and labor, were depleted by defending itself from FBI scrutiny, making it significantly more difficult to mobilize the Black community around the pamphlet.28 Throughout her life, Eleanor Roosevelt remained a convinced supporter of civil rights and desegregation. However, her political pragmatism often prevailed over such goals. Once she operated at an international level as a US delegate at the UN, she could have enjoyed a much broader

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room for maneuvering, and, free from the political restraints that had limited her civil rights activism as First Lady, she could have fully backed up the demands coming from many organizations. However, and especially, when Black activism involved communist connections, she distanced herself from the movement and actively participated in rhetoric that marginalized such groups. In fact, an anticommunist stance was so important to her that she even temporarily withdrew her support from her favorite son, when the NAACP petitioned the UN. After Du Bois was ousted from the organization, the remaining leadership moved closer to the center, as they were desperate not to fall into the margin themselves. Moreover, with Walter White still in charge and his close relationship with Mrs. Roosevelt intact, the association remained cooperative with the Department of State, which increasingly incorporated Black delegates to show the progress that the United States had made on ending racial discrimination. In focusing on such imagery instead of actual advancement, Eleanor Roosevelt revealed that she prioritized obstructing the USSR above the Black liberation struggle—thus hollowing her own rhetoric toward Asian and African countries about having made “great strides” in the United States. It is understandable that she could not let the accusation of genocide stand, even though there can be no question that it had (at least some) merit. Nevertheless, in doing so, Mrs. Roosevelt—the diplomat— put the interests of the US State Department above those of its citizens.

Notes 1. Black, Allida M. 1996. Casting Her Own Shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2–4; Beasley, Maurine H. 1987. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media: A Public Quest for Self-Fulfillment. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2; Cook, Blanche Wiesen. 1992. Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 1: The Early Years, 1884–1933. New  York: Viking, 5; Glendon, Mary Ann. 2001. A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New  York: Random House, 241; see also Mower Jr., A.  Glenn. 1979. The United States, The United Nations, and Human Rights: The Eleanor Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter Eras. In Studies in Human Rights, ed. George W. Shepherd, Jr., 4. Westport: Greenwood Press. 2. McDuffie, Erik S. 2011. Black and Red: Black Liberation, the Cold War, and the Horne Thesis. Journal of African American History 96, 2: 236–237; Dudziak, Mary L. 2000. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press;

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Borstelmann, Thomas. 2009. The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; Plummer, Brenda Gayle. 1996. Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; Lash, Joseph P. 1972. Eleanor: The Years Alone. New  York: W.W. Norton & Company, 69–73. 3. Fazzi, Dario. 2016. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Anti-Nuclear Movement: The Voice of Conscience. New  York: Palgrave Macmillan, 49–63; Anderson, Carol Elaine. 2003. Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1–3. 4. Cook, Blanche Wiesen. 1999. Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2: The Defining Years, 1933–1938. New York: Viking, 235–242; Fazzi, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Anti-Nuclear Movement, 17; Lash, Joseph P. 1971. Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship Based on Eleanor Roosevelt’s Private Papers. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 556–560, 567–570; Weiss, Nancy Joan. 1983. Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 105–106; White, Walter Francis. 1948. A Man Called White: The Autobiography of Walter White. New York: Viking, 1948, 169–170. 5. Race, Religion and Prejudice. 1942. New Republic 106, May 11: 630; Freedom: Promise or Fact. Negro Digest 1 (October); Black, Allida M. 1995. What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Carlson Publishing, 159–160, 165. 6. Murray, Hugh T. 1967. The NAACP versus the Communist Party: The Scottsboro Rape Cases, 1931–1932. Phylon 28, 3: 276–277; Janken, Kenneth Robert. 2003. White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 149–150; Horne, Gerald. 2013. Black Revolutionary: William Patterson and the Globalization of the African American Freedom Struggle. Baltimore: University of Illinois Press, 41–43; Pennybacker, Susan D. 2009. From Scottsboro to Munich: Race and Political Culture in 1930s Britain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 74–75; Murray, NAACP versus the Communist Party, 279–287; Bellamy, Jay. 2014. The Scottsboro Boys: Injustice in Alabama. Prologue-Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration 46, 1: 29–30, https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2014/spring/scottsboro.pdf. Accessed 25 November 2019; The Associated Press. 1933. Scottsboro Trial Begins Tomorrow: Nine Negro Youths to Start New Fight for Their Lives in Alabama Court. New York Times, March 5; The Battle of Scottsboro. 1934. The Crisis 41, no. 12 (December); World Issue Cited in Scottsboro Case: Leibowitz Asks for Tolerance and Defies Mob in Summation. 1933. The Washington Post,

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April 8; Plummer, Brenda Gayle ed., 2003. Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945–1988. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 7. Naar Enschedé. 1932. De Tribune, 28 May. https://www.delpher.nl. Accessed 1 September 2019; Organisatie-nieuws: Uit de I.R.H. 1932. De Tribune, 6 June. https://www.delpher.nl. Accessed 1 September 2019; Organisatie-nieuws: Van Het Scottsboro Front  – Zaanstreek. 1932. De Tribune, 21 September. https://www.delpher.nl. Accessed 1 September 2019; Actie Van Het Scottsboro-Comité. 1934. Het Volk, January 31. https://www.delpher.nl. Accessed 1 September 2019; Horne, Black Revolutionary, 2, 5–6, 29, 42–43; Pennybacker, From Scottsboro to Munich, 75; The Associated Press, Scottsboro Trial Begins Tomorrow; Martin, Charles H. 1985. The International Labor Defense and Black America. Journal of Labor History 26, 2:169; Scottsboro Case Called ‘Landmark’: Decision Ordering New Trials Is Viewed as Vindication of Labor Defense Policy. 1932. New York Times, 9 November. 8. Carter, Dan T. 1969. Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 248–251; Horne, Black Revolutionary, 55–56; Eleanor Roosevelt to Walter White, 2 May 1934, Folder: White, Walter (1); Selected Digitized Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933–1945; Papers of Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York; E. Davis to Eleanor Roosevelt, 29 April 1935; 158,260 sub 46; Straight Numerical Files, 1904–1974; General Records of the Department of Justice, Record Group 60; National Archives Building, Washington, D.C., https://www.docsteach.org/documents/ document/letter-from-e-davis-about-scottsboro-boys. Accessed 1 September 2019; New Deal Girls Club to Eleanor Roosevelt, 15 February 1935; 158,260 sub 46; General Records of the Department of Justice, Record Group 60; National Archives Building, Washington, D.C., https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/letter-from-newdeal-girls-social-club-about-scottsboro-boys. Accessed 1 September 2019. 9. Walter White to Eleanor Roosevelt, 13 March 1941, Reel 19, The Papers of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933–1945, FDR Library; A. Philip Randolph to Eleanor Roosevelt, 5 June 1941, Reel 20, ibid.; Eleanor Roosevelt to A.  Philip Randolph, June 10, 1941, ibid. 10. Black, Allida M. 1990. Championing a Champion: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Marian Anderson “Freedom Concert.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 20, 1: 719, 722–727; Eleanor Roosevelt to Max Lerner, 19 January 1947. In The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Vol. 1: The Human Rights Years, 1945–1948, ed. Allida M. Black, 473. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007.

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11. Horne, Black Revolutionary, 60; O’Farrell, Brigid. 2010. She Was One of Us: Eleanor Roosevelt and the American Worker. New  York: Cornell University Press, 1. 12. Black, Casting Her Own Shadow, 85–103; Lewis, David Levering. 2000. W.E.B.  Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 505; Martin, Charles H. 1997. Internationalizing ‘The American Dilemma’: The Civil Rights Congress and the 1951 Genocide Petition to the United Nations. Journal of American Ethnic History 16, 4:38; Plummer, Rising Wind, 125–166; White, Man Called White, 294–299. 13. Martin, Internationalizing, 38–39; Du Bois, W.E.B., and Eugene F. Provenzo. 2005. Illustrated Souls of Black Folk. New York: Routledge, 29; To The World (Manifesto of the Second Pan-African Congress). 1921. The Crisis 23, no. 1 (November); W.E.B.  Du Bois, Introduction to An Appeal to the World, W.E.B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312, Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B.  Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst (hereafter: W.E.B. Du Bois Papers). 14. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers: Vol. I, 680. 15. Gaddis, John Lewis. 1972. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947. New York: Columbia University Press, 281; Schrecker, Ellen Wolf. 1998. Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. New  York: Little, Brown and Company, xvi; Storrs, Landon R.Y. 2012. The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1; Glendon, A World Made New, 30–32, 36, 86. 16. W.E.B.  Du Bois to Walter White, 24 November 1947, W.E.B.  Du Bois Papers; Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois, 529–530; Janken, White, 309. 17. Martin, “Internationalizing,” 40–41; The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Vol. 1, 862–863; Plummer, Rising Wind, 182; Black, Allida M. ed. 2007. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Vol. 2: The Human Rights Years, 1949–1952. 2007. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 483, 504, 593. 18. Black, Casting Her Own Shadow, 100–102; Lewis, W.E.B.  Du Bois, 531–534; Janken, White, 309–313. 19. Walter White to ER, 31 December 1947, Papers of Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR Library; Eleanor Roosevelt to Walter White, 20 January 1948, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDR Library. 20. UN General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 9 December 1948, United Nations, Treaty Series 78, 277, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CrimeOf Genocide.aspx. Accessed 25 November 2019. 21. Martin, Internationalizing, 44–45; Anderson, Eyes off the Prize, 86–88.

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22. Anderson, Eyes off the Prize, 179–180; Janken, Walter White, 321; White, Walter. 1951. Time for a Progress Report. Saturday Review of Literature, file “White, Walter, 1951–52,” Papers of Eleanor Roosevelt. 23. Patterson William L. ed. 1970. We Charge Genocide. New  York: International publishers, xiv. 24. Ibid.; Martin, Internationalizing, 45; Horne, Black Revolutionary, 135; Anderson, Eyes off the Prize, 180–181. 25. Anderson, Eyes Off the Prize, 53–55; Anderson, Carol Elaine. 1999. From Hope to Disillusion: African Americans, the United Nations, and the Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1947. In The African American Voice in U.S. Foreign Policy Since World War II, Michael L. Krenn, ed. New York: Garland Publishing, 213; Walter White, syndicated column, 16 November 1948, part 2: General Correspondence, 1948–1949, Papers of Eleanor Roosevelt; Anderson, Eyes Off the Prize, 6; Horne, Gerald. 1994. Black Liberation/Red Scare: Ben Davis and the Communist Party. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 228; Plummer, Rising Wind, 188, 190; Berg, Manfred. 2007. Black Civil Rights and Liberal Anticommunism: The NAACP in the Early Cold War. The Journal of American History 94, 1:77; Anderson, Carol Elaine. 2014. Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 6–9. 26. Eleanor Roosevelt to Ida Alvarez, 22 May 1952, The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Vol. 2, 856; Martin, Internationalizing, 46; Anderson, Eyes Off the Prize, 186–187; Roy Wilkins to Walter White, memo, 21 November 1951, File: United Nations: Genocide, 1947–51. Papers of the NAACP, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 27. Martin, Internationalizing, 47–51; Horne, Black Revolutionary, 134. 28. The Papers of Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2, 742; Martin, Internationalizing, 51–53; Anderson, Eyes off the Prize, 208–209.

Dancing Barefoot and Politicizing Dance at the White House: Eleanor Roosevelt and Martha Graham’s Collaboration During the Rise of Fascism in Europe Camelia Lenart

Easily recognizable and highly respected in their country and worldwide, the names of Eleanor Roosevelt (ER) and Martha Graham are associated with dedication, prestige, and innovation. Women of the stage, in the literary and metaphorical sense of the word—one as a dancer and the other one as a politician—they were major contributors to American and world history and culture. After they met for the first time—shortly after Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR’s) reelection as a president—on February 25, 1937, upon Eleanor’s invitation, Martha Graham was “the first dancer ever asked to perform at the White House”.1 Martha Graham’s invitation preceded by two years “the Marian Anderson momentum,” which took place with the encouragement and

C. Lenart (*) State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Fazzi, A. Luscombe (eds.), Eleanor Roosevelt’s Views on Diplomacy and Democracy, The World of the Roosevelts, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42315-5_7

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support of the presidential couple, on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939. The African-American opera singer Marian Anderson’s singing of “My country, ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty” to an integrated audience, in front of Lincoln Memorial—as the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to let her sing inside the Constitution Hall which they owned—had a deep and strong meaning in the context of the civil rights movement, which was one of the causes Eleanor strongly believed in.2 Outraged by their decision, the First Lady sent a letter of resignation from the DAR on February 26, 1939. ER also sent a telegram to an officer of the Marian Anderson Citizens Committee, publicly expressing her disappointment that Anderson was being denied a concert venue, and the next day she addressed the issue in her “My Day” column, published in newspapers across the country. The First Lady told her readers that, in this situation, “To remain as a member implies approval of that action, therefore I am resigning.”3 As word of her resignation spread, Mrs. Roosevelt and others quietly worked behind the scenes promoting the idea of an outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial, a symbolic site on the National Mall overseen by the Department of the Interior.4 Few people knew that Eleanor Roosevelt invited Marian Anderson to perform in front of the American president at the White House already on February 21, 1936,5 and that the famous dancer Martha Graham also resigned from the DAR.  Afterwards, the dancer refused to socialize in places such as a reputed hotel in New York where Marian Anderson was poorly treated.6 One year later, Martha Graham also performed at the White House. Like in Anderson’s case, Graham’s performance was not only an artistic event but a mélange of arts and politics, as through the works performed, her dancing body made political statements. The invitation of the two artists to the White House coincided with a very important moment of Eleanor’s life and career taking place around that time, when the apprehension she felt when first entering high politics was changing into a confidence in her abilities as a politician and diplomat. However ER’s persona, popularity, and very diverse activities in which she was involved changed and remade the role of the First Ladies, whose position “did not have a handbook, was not an official government title, and did not come with a spelled-out set of obligations.”7 Until ER, most of the First Ladies lived in the shadow of their husbands, they had to navigate a tightrope of conflicting expectations and demands, and they rarely exited the social role which was expected from them. ER’s personal example and new approaches to the traditional role as a First Lady gave a new emphasis

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to the place they should and would have in American and world politics and led the way to the gradual expansion of the role of the First Lady.8 In the process of modernizing and recreating the role of the First Lady, ER used the White House in an innovative way “as the backdrop of her causes and her views.”9 Ironically, while she was among the First Ladies least associated with idea of domesticity and traditional roles for women while living in the White House, and her food choices for guests were the source of numerous anecdotes,10 ER was the First Lady who gave a new and multilayered dimension to the role of hosting and entertaining guests. Strengthening the historian Mary Dudziak’s statement that the “strategic dining” was a subtle form of diplomacy, which completed other informal politics and diplomatic approaches, it also proved the importance and power of human emotions as makers and propellers of history.11 While her husband collected stamps, ER “collected people,” quipped J. B. West, the executive director of the White House under six presidents, including the Roosevelts. The dinners at the White House became a place where people sharing Eleanor’s progressive political and social views would be invited. During her time as a First Lady, ER transformed the meal times in the White House in working meetings, as “there was hardly a private luncheon every day,”12 and guest were “working guests.”13 Besides, as Allida M.  Black, Director and Editor of The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers and Research Professor of History and International Affairs at The George Washington University suggested, the Roosevelts’ dinners at the White House were all about “politics, politics and laughter.”14 However, as during that time ER realized that the soft power of the arts could express political views, the American artists started to be among the guests. On Sunday nights, “Mrs. Roosevelt’s table was like a European salon (…) with authors, artists, actresses, playwrights, sculptors, dancers, world travelers, old family friends – mixed in with Ambassadors, Supreme Court Justices, Cabinet officers, and Presidential Advisors. Eleanor Roosevelt, using a large silver chafing dish she had brought from Hyde Park, scrambled eggs at the table. But the main course was conversation. We called the menu ‘scrambled eggs with brains,’” remembered J. B. West. In order to maximize the visibility of these artists and the impact of their messages to people, soon after their invitation to the White House, Eleanor would also promote them in her increasingly powerful column “My Day.” As the scholar Allida M.  Black suggests, it was a “political

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piece” through which Eleanor Roosevelt showed “what she wanted the country to see and how she wanted the country to be guided.”15 Martha Graham’s performance at the White House is an event that deserves close examination and analysis. On one hand, Graham was invited to perform at the White House during a very complicated time, when the rise and success of fascism in Europe was an unsettling reality. Unlike a large majority of Americans who believed in neutrality, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martha Graham were strongly and openly opposed to it, and the program of Graham’s performance was conceived as a dancing protest against Fascism. On the other hand, the Graham-Roosevelt collaboration marked a premiere, being the first time in American history when dance and high politics were directly connected at the White House. Even if modern dance was already extremely active on the American stages in addressing the social and political problems of the time, Eleanor Roosevelt was the first politician who envisioned and engaged the highly original American modern dance in politics. In fact, by inviting her to the White House and putting her in contact with high politics, Eleanor contributed to transforming Martha Graham into one of the first and the best American cultural diplomats of her country, who remained active at home and abroad for decades. During that time, Eleanor Roosevelt would continue to support Graham, and their collaboration would last until the end of the former First Lady’s life in 1962.16 The two women’s meeting and subsequent collaboration, which took place in the context of the political and social American “feminine consciousness,” was a very special moment of their personal and professional lives.17 Increasingly visible in the making of their country’s history, American women were expanding their lives outside of the traditional roles that society assigned them, while also creating a “women network” able to ease the process of gaining social and political power. Much was said about Franklin and Eleanor’s “extraordinary marriage,” as well as about Graham’s troubles with the loss of autonomy associated with a marriage.18 However, like other “powerful and stimulating women” whom they worked with and befriended, the moment they met, both Eleanor Roosevelt and Martha Graham were in search of independence, being more than “a footnote in someone else’s life.”19 Suggestively, both became “political” around the same time: after FDR’s reelection, Eleanor was embarking on “a more independent phase of her political life,” while Graham “aligned herself politically” and looked at the political changes and challenges of her time as a source of inspiration for her work.20

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Imagining, Dancing, and Fighting the Spanish Civil War Eleanor Roosevelt and Martha Graham first met on the occasion of a fundraising demonstration at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City for the cause of the Civil War in Spain. Eleanor considered Americans’ involvement in Spain a “moral equator.”21 Many Americans supported isolationism and a series of Neutrality Acts were meant to discourage American involvement in international conflicts, including the Spanish Civil War. Even if her husband had to navigate stormy political waters and had to carefully negotiate between interventionist and isolationist tendencies in the United States, Eleanor’s committed interest in the Spanish Civil War was sparked and furthered by the journalist, writer, and social activist Martha Gellhorn.22 Gellhorn and Eleanor Roosevelt were friends since the days the former worked as a field investigator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), a body created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help people during the Great Depression. The two met when Gelhorn traveled across the United States on behalf of FERA in order to report on the impact of the Depression on different parts of the country.23 After meeting Ernest Hemingway during a 1936 Christmas family trip, they traveled to Spain to cover the Civil War, and she reported for Collier’s Weekly.24 (Later, Gelhorn reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler from Germany and Czechoslovakia.)25 She would write to Eleanor Roosevelt from Spain, giving her firsthand accounts of the event in which Gelhorn actively participated.26 Back in the country, Gelhorn would also be invited by the First Lady to lunch at the White House in 1936.27 The fundraising demonstration event that put Eleanor and Graham in contact was organized by Rita Morgenthau, who was the director and curriculum coordinator of the Neighborhood Playhouse, and the sister-in-­ law of Henry Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury under the Roosevelt administration, who introduced Graham to the First Lady. Martha Graham and her longtime collaborator Louis Horst attended the event as part of the faculty of the “School for Arts Related to the Theater” associated with the Neighborhood Playhouse, but also because Graham was set to perform during that evening.28 Eleanor Roosevelt’s interest in arts, and also in linking arts to politics, can be traced back to her school years in England. In Mlle Marie Souvestre’s school, Eleanor’s education was infused with the responsibility she had

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toward others and in bettering the world around her; at the same time, she was also introduced to numerous arts, including dance.29 Back home, at the age of 18, Eleanor started working at the Rivington Street Settlement House, teaching calisthenics and dancing in the impoverished neighborhoods.30 But Eleanor Roosevelt’s interest and support for the American arts became even more visible during her husband’s first mandate, in spite (or maybe because) of his cautiousness when it came to supporting them.31 Feeling strongly that American society had not done enough for the arts, she became a key advocate for the creation and development of “Federal One” (Federal Project Number One) in 1935, which was constructed as a subdivision of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and which sought to extend the relief of the New Deal to artists, actors, writers, and musicians.32 Eleanor was also the one who encouraged Henry Hopkins, more than the president, to continue with the project supposed to support “thousands of artists, musicians, actors, and writers.”33 Federal One became a powerful tool for infusing arts and culture into the daily lives of Americans, and ER was delighted in the artistic work crafted with federal dollars. Her commitment to this project was total, praising it in her columns and speeches, and defending it against congressional critics. She was particularly interested in the Dance Project, most active in Chicago and New York, where people from the dance milieu such as Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Ruth Page, and some of Graham’s dancers gave a number of WPA-supported concerts.34 Not surprisingly, the involvement of ER in the arts during the Depression created the image of the First Lady as a patron of the American arts and associated her with the idea of State patronage. During her years at the White House, Eleanor Roosevelt attended numerous artistic performances and received hundreds of letters from artists including many from African-American ones. Due to her “wide vision” in this field, “interest in contemporary art,” and her “very forward and progressive policy in the arts,” the senders were regarding the First Lady as the country’s most important and reliable arts’ protector.35 Dina Huebert of California, who was hoping to perform at the White House her “contemporary dances with American themes,” went even further, claiming that American art patronage was “synonymous with her (Eleanor’s) name.”36

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“We Will Meet Again” The day after Martha Graham met the First Lady at the Neighborhood Playhouse in December 1936, Graham’s press agent and manager Frances Hawkins sent Roosevelt a letter containing a souvenir booklet, accompanied by an invitation and tickets for the premiere of Chronicle. Graham’s new work, dedicated to the Civil War and considered one of Graham’s most important, engaged, and politically inspired works, was to be presented to the public at the Guild Theater in New York, on December 20, 1936. On a score composed by Wallingford Riegger (one of the first American composers who wrote contemporary dance music) and using a set designed by Isamu Noguchi, the dancing body and the political consciousness of Graham openly opposed the war in Spain and carried a very strong anti-war protest.37 Compared to Kurt Jooss’ famous anti-war ballet The Green Table, Chronicle completed Graham’s “previous attempt at an extended choreographic work with historical and sociological implications.”38 The dance, which is more than an hour long, chronicles the time frame from 1914 to 1936 and was divided into three major sections: Dances Before Catastrophe, Dances After Catastrophe (which includes Tragic Holiday-In Memoriam), and a final section Prelude to Action. The dancers move with stiff, robotic gestures in response to offstage drums and trumpets, an embodiment of the inevitability of marching off to war. They shuffle dejectedly, occasionally rallying to execute rebellious gestures, and then return to their resigned trudging. Carrying a black flag, the soloist (Martha Graham) leads the ensemble in a service of commemoration (Tragic Holiday-In Memoriam), while the finale Prelude to Action depicts a call for “a brave new world.”39 The First Lady did not honor the invitation as her activities for the month of December were scheduled in advance. Besides, that month of the year, which she believed “should be a time of joy not shadowed by the weariness created by too much attention to the material side of it,” was a most busy one on that specific year. While FDR returned from the cruise to South America he had embarked on after his reelection, ER had to honor a lecture tour which ended shortly before Christmas, and she also planned to spend it with her family: “This year I had to have it a whole week before Christmas because so many of the family will be in Washington next week that I could not get away.” Two days before Graham’s premiere, ER came to New York City from Washington to see a “Christmas

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Play given at the MacDowell Club by the Todhunter School in which Sistie (the nickname of her granddaughter Anna Eleanor Roosevelt) had a small part,” and to preside over a Women’s Trade Union League party.40 The morning of Saturday, 19 December, found her in Hyde Park, “preparing for our party at the cottage late Saturday afternoon,” before leaving again for Washington where she was supposed to spend Christmas.41 But despite not being able to honor Graham’s invitation, Eleanor soon invited Graham to present “a few dances” at the White House.42 The timing of this invitation was essential in proving the momentum’s significance: Graham came to the White House shortly after the two women met at an anti-fascist event in December 1936, just a couple of days after Graham spoke in public against Fascism, and, last but not least, on the occasion of celebrating a friend with whom the First Lady was sharing the most of her worries related to the rise of Fascism in Europe.

Dancing Modern at the White House Friendship had a special significance, role, and place in ER’s life; she met regularly with her childhood friends, the “Four of Hearts” (Mary Harriman Rumsey, Isabella Greenway, Elizabeth, and Lady Lindsay) as they used to define themselves, whose company was able to “air our minds.”43 Eleanor “prized most highly” the friendship and commitment of Elinor Morgenthau, the wife of Henry Morgenthau Jr., with whom she worked and traveled together.44 A couple of days before Graham’s visit to the White House, Elinor accompanied the First Lady to Cornell University, where on February 16, 1936, the First Lady delivered a talk.45 Graham would perform in the East Ballroom of White House on February 25, 1937, on the occasion of a birthday party for Elinor. It was one of the most beautiful rooms of the White House, ornated with sumptuous chandeliers, but also one of the most historical ones, where “opulent balls and receptions were historically held” since the times of Abigail Adams; it had a massive, gilt-framed portrait of George Washington, and it was the place where the casket of Abraham Lincoln laid.46 The room had a piano but not a stage, so Graham rehearsed and afterwards danced on the parquet.47 To the amazement of the butler and other employees, Graham danced barefoot in front of the American president, the First Lady and their guests.48 However, when at the dinner there were the people involved in the projects in which ER was interested—subsistence homestead, National Youth Administration, Work Corps for single women,

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WPA art, and anything else to do with public welfare or social justice—and unless the dinners were a state occasion, the president rarely appeared.49 Significantly, for Martha Graham, the American president made an exception. Graham’s invitation to dance at the White House was not the result of a spur of the moment or a mere social event, but it was a gesture with a political undertone, meant to send Americans and the world a message. When Eleanor invited to the White House Martha Gelhorn and Marian Anderson, she used these social occasions and the very special setting to meet up with people who shared her social and political views, to bring to the public’s attention the causes they supported, and, last but not least, to make subliminal yet powerful statements about her own political and social standings. By inviting Martha Graham to perform at the White House, and discussing shortly afterwards the performance in her column “My Day,” Eleanor performed a similar task. Associating her name and persona with Martha Graham, one of the most openly anti-fascist American personalities of that time, seen by the Nazis as the personification of the United States,50 Eleanor Roosevelt showed that she was neither unaware nor oblivious about the tragic development of her time’s history and the threat of Fascism. Furthermore, Graham was a perfect choice as a guest-artist to dance at the White House, and as a topic of a “My Day” column, as her Americanness was a strong asset during those sensitive times. The dancer was proud to stress in her interviews that she was a sixth-generation American with a line of Scotch-Irish ancestors, which included the Mayflower’s Myles Standish.51 When awarded a Guggenheim Memorial fellowship in 1932, Graham declined the modern dancer Mary Wigman’s offer to study with her in Germany, as her artistic aim was “to create something American” and “an art of and from America.”52 Her creation aimed to bring a distinctly American sensibility to every theme she explored, which was deeply ingrained in the rhythm of American life. She believed that, as she wrote in the 1937 essay A Platform for the American Dance, “a dance reveals the spirit of the country in which it takes root. No sooner does it fail to do this than it loses its integrity and significance.”53 By the time the First Lady invited Graham to the White House, the First Lady was extremely worried about Nazi Germany’s aggressive politics. She strongly believed that American neutrality could be a “silence without repair” and that her country’s role was saving the world from a terrible fate.54 One of the friends with whom she shared the anguish over

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the Nazi’s rise to power in Europe was Elinor Morgenthau, confessing to her in a letter that “the horrible German news” made her believe even more strongly that “if we remain neutral we will suffer in the end. It makes me sick.”55 Graham shared Eleanor’s political views vis-à-vis the rise of fascism in Europe. Alongside her response to the tragedy of fascism in Spain, Graham one of the most “politically visible” artistic personalities of her time—also strongly disapproved of the Nazis’ aggressive politics and discriminations, believing that “the very real and terrible developments [which] are taking place in the world leave no one unaffected.”56 On February 14, 1937, just a couple of days before dancing at the White House, Graham addressed the symposium “Nazi War over Europe” held by the American Committee for anti-Nazi Literature in New  York City. However, Graham’s anti-fascist convictions were tested when she received an invitation from the Reichsminister of Volksaufklarung und Propaganda, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, to perform at the International Arts Festival organized in conjunction with the Olympic Games in Berlin.57 Graham’s popularity as a “committed artist” grew after she refused it, openly stating her disapproval of the Nazi treatment of Jewish people and the persecution of Jewish artists.58 The gesture infuriated the Germans and was positively commented by numerous American newspapers, including New York Times59 and Dance Observer.60 The dancer-choreographer was also very active in the American Artists Congress, whose agenda was an anti-Nazi one,61 and on December 17, 1937, she was present at the second Congress which aimed to organize the artists “For Peace-For Democracy-For Cultural Progress.” At Carnegie Hall in New York City, next to Pablo Picasso, and Erika Mann (who transmitted a message from Thomas Mann), Graham delivered her talk “Dance, an Allied Art,” and along with Barbara Morgan, Graham also signed the Congress members’ declaration which condemned Nazi politics, discrimination, and censorship.62 But more than her public utterances, it was Graham’s art that could speak for her: the art of dance might be nonverbal, but it could, nevertheless, make powerful statements. The dancing program performed by Graham in front of the president, the First Lady, and their guests, was revealing and thought-provoking. After more than a decade of choreographing dances through which she aimed “to reach through the people without the benefit of story and with as much freedom from superimposed meaning as possible,” there was a very large selection of works Graham could choose from for her White House audience. Clearly

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suggesting deliberation and intention, she and the personnel in charge of the event—as she could not perform at the White House without a previous approval of the program—decided to present recently created works which, separately and together, were able to map and suggest the time’s political challenges and her own beliefs.63 The program had two parts. During the first one, Graham brought together Spain and America through dances inspired by their culture and history. Thus, she performed Sarabande—a dance which was a part of the larger work Transitions, created in 1934 on a music by Lehman Engel— which was the name of a Spanish dance which inspired Graham in creating her work. It was followed by Frontier—premiered in 1935 on a music by Louis Horst—known as Graham’s first exploration of the American space and American identity, with the soloist/Graham as a dancing tool meant to “bring forth an art as powerful as the country itself.” Graham made the costume (which was a stylized version of a nineteenth-century homespun dress) while the very original sets (two lengths of rope are arranged in a V-shape, an effect suggesting limitless perspective and space) were created by the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, with whom Graham had a very successful and long collaboration.64 The second part started with Imperial Gesture, premiered in 1935 (also on a score by Lehman Engel) and created based on Graham’s belief that people have the right to individual expression. Criticizing the arrogance of imperialism, and expressing Graham’s concern that history can repeat itself and the victims would suffer from people’s lack of action, the work fully established Graham as a “political choreographer.”65 Suggestively, the program of the night ended with Harlequinade, which contained subtle yet biting portraits of the “Pessimist” and of the “Optimist,” which were intended as symbols of all the tragedy and comedy in the world, and also as subliminal options for the dancing and political audiences of those times.66 Graham and her party were invited to spend the night at the White House. Louis Horst, who was supposed to share the room with the son of the presidential couple, Elliott Roosevelt, recounted the evening to the choreographer Agnes de Mille, peppering it with anecdotes, all hinting at the well-known First Lady’s lack of formality in hosting people and in creating the menu of the White House.67 Graham and her party gracefully declined the invitation and would leave for New York City the same evening. Eleanor then recalled Graham’s invitation in the “My Day” column on March 1, 1937:

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Sunday-Friday night, Miss Martha Graham of New  York came down and danced for us after dinner. I asked her afterwards if it did not require the most tremendous amount of training to keep her body under such perfect control and she told me she had to work four hours every day, and that if she took six weeks off in summer it took her two months to regain what she had temporarily lost. How few of us realize when we watch a performance that what may interest us for a short time requires so much hard work and devotion on the part of the artist.68

For “My Day” readers who already knew Martha Graham, the invitation of the political dancer who, through her work and personal statements addressed and opposed Fascism, carried strong significances, while also revealing the First Lady’s allegiances; for those who did not know the dancer yet, the First Lady’s endorsement of “the work and devotion” of the artist was an incentive to find out more about the first dancer who ever performed at the White House. After the White House momentum, Graham would continue to create work inspired by the fight against Fascism. Immediate Tragedy, based on the tales of La Pasionaria (Dolores Ibárruri, a fervent communist and champion of the Spanish Republic) premiered on July 30, 1937, while Deep Song, also inspired by the Spanish Civil War, premiered on December 9, 1937. Two years later, in 1939, Anderson’s singing in front of the Lincoln Memorial was a historic event, which exceeded cultural boundaries and carried political and social statements of major significances. Without mentioning the DAR or Anderson by name, Eleanor Roosevelt made her decision in simple terms and chose to resign honoring the power of silent gestures. Graham’s presence and performance at the White House in 1937 was the very first time when dance was linked to and achieved high visibility in the American politics. By inviting Martha Graham to the White House, Eleanor proved not only her political consciousness and awareness, but with her intuition, abilities, and visionary qualities, she sensed and used modern dance’s power to challenge and change the world dynamics, including political regimes, concepts of selfhood, and visions of society. Graham and the First Lady continued to see each other during the War; they became “good friends,” attending social events together, often riding in the same car. Graham remembered Eleanor as a special and courageous woman and as one who had a positive impact on her life. “Martha come

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with me,” Graham remembered that Eleanor asked her on one instance, and that “Martha came.”69 Once the American cultural diplomacy started during the 1950s, modern dance and Martha Graham became some of the most highly praised and successful assets of it. The former First Lady remained a steady and courageous champion of all of them. Ahead of others and ahead of her time, Eleanor Roosevelt found, in the complex and often contradictory developments around her, a new way of understanding the power of modernism and of the arts for the cultural diplomacy, and of their ability to transform the world for the better. Last but not least, ER created a new dimension to the place and role of the American First Ladies and of their importance in their country and in the world. If she had lived longer, she would have definitely loved to see other First Ladies following in her footsteps and using dance as a way of helping the politics of the White House.70 Most probably, she would have also applauded Betty Ford, who was captured in a picture dancing on the cabinet room table during her last full day as a First Lady.71 Like ER, Betty Ford was not only a courageous woman, a proponent of equal rights and of the arts, but also of Martha Graham, with whom she studied dance at Bennington College. In 1976, Betty convinced President Ford to honor modern dance by awarding Martha Graham a Medal of Freedom.72 Thus, Miss Graham returned one more time to the White House, the place where she had danced a little less than four decades ago, invited by that time’s First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Notes 1. McDonagh, Don. 1973. Martha Graham: A Biography. New  York: Praeger, 232. 2. Stamberg, Susan. 2014. Denied A Stage, She Sang for A Nation. NPR Interview, April 9. 3. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1939. My Day, February 27, 1939. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017) George Washington University, Washington. https://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/browsebyyear. cfm. Accessed July 1, 2019. 4. Black, Allida. 1990. Championing a Champion: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Marian Anderson “Freedom Concert.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 20, 4: 719–736. 5. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1936. My Day, February 21, 1936. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017), George Washington University, Washington.

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6. Graham, Martha. 1991. Blood Memory. Washington Square Press, 154–155. 7. Obama, Michelle. 2018. Becoming. New  York: Penguin Random House, 283. 8. The lives and legacies of American presidents were the topic of numerous scholarly books and articles, but the ones of the First Ladies are still waiting to become a major topic of interest for scholars. Books such as Kate Anderson Brower’s First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies (New York: Harper Paperbacks; Reprint edition, 2017), and Margaret Truman’s 2009 work First Ladies: An Intimate Portrait of White House Wives (New York: Ballantine Books) offer very thoughtful, informed, and thought-provoking insights into the First Ladies’ lives, but they were written mostly for a more general audience. The memoirs and biographies dedicated to the First Ladies added valuable information and knowledge to this topic, especially Hilary Rodham Clinton and Michelle Obama’s memoirs, which were published more recently. 9. Black, Allida M. 2014. My Day Columns. White House Historical Association Videos. Posted on YouTube, 2014. Accessed January 2019. 10. For more on the choice of serving hotdogs to the British Royals, on the occasion of their visit to the United States in 1939, see Franklin D.  Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum website, https://www. fdrlibrary.org/iw/royal-visit. Accessed July 25, 2019. 11. Dudziak, Mary. June 22, 2019. Twitter post. Dudziak said that “besides coffee diplomacy, there’s alcohol diplomacy, and strategic dining.” 12. J. B. West was the chief usher of the White House during six administrations, including the Roosevelts. 13. West J. B. and Mary Lynn Kotz, 2013. Upstairs at the White House. My Life with the First Ladies. Open Road Media. 14. Ibid. 15. Black, My Day Columns, White House Historical Association Videos. 16. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Day by Day, January 26, 1937. http://www. fdrlibrary.marist.edu/daybyday/daylog/february-26th-1937. Accessed December 20, 2018. 17. Franko, Mark. 2012. Martha Graham in Love and War. The Life in the Work. New York: Oxford, 68. 18. Rowley, Hazel. 2011. Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage. London: Picador, 77; Kowal, Rebekah J. 2010. How to do Things with Dance. Performing Change in Postwar America. Middletown: Wesleyan University, 65 cited by Mark Franko, Martha Graham in Love and War, 63. 19. Roosevelt, David B. 2002. Grandmere. A Personal History of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Warner Brooks, 2002, 148; Foner, Eric. 2017. Give

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Me Liberty. An American History, Vol. 2, from 1865. New  York: W.W. Norton & Company, 866. 20. Cook, Blanche Wiesen. 1999. Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2, 1933–1938. New  York: Viking Press, 420; Franko, Martha Graham in Love and War, 14. 21. Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume Two, 471. 22. Ibid., 455. 23. Together with photographer Dorothea Lange, Gellhorn documented the everyday lives of those were hungry and homeless during the Great Depression. Their investigations into topics that were usually out of bounds to women at this time became part of the official government files and made both women major contributors to American history. Gellhorn also used what she had observed as inspiration for a collection of short stories called The Trouble I’ve Seen (1936). 24. The American magazine Collier’s, founded in 1888, pioneered investigative journalism and quickly gained a reputation as a proponent of social reform. 25. See more on Martha Gelhorn’s experience as a war journalist in The Face of War. 1959. New York: Simon & Schuster. 26. See Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence with Martha Gelhorn, Selected Digitized Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933–1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY. 27. Letter from Eleanor Roosevelt to Martha Gelhorn, April 21, 1936, Selected Digitized Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933–1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY. 28. See more in Tomko Linda. 1999. Gender, Ethnicity and Social Divides in American Dance, 1890–1920. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Horst continued to develop his choreography courses, while Irene Lewisohn produced dance performances. 29. Jacobs, William Jay. 1983. Eleanor Roosevelt. A Life of Happiness and Tears. New York: Coward-McCann, 26–27. 30. Cott, Nancy F. ed. 2000. No Small Courage. A History of Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 457. 31. Garber, Marjorie. 2008. Patronizing the Arts. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 65. 32. Bel-Kanner, Karen. 1998. Frontiers: The Life and Times of Bonnie Bird. American Modern Dancer and Dance Educator (London: Harwood Academic Publishers), 185–186. 33. Kennedy, David M. 1999. Freedom from Fear. The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 254. 34. Bel-Kanner, Karen. 1998. Frontiers: The Life and Times of Bonnie Bird. Singapore: Harwood Academic Publisher, 186.

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35. Letter to ER from Genevieve Jones, August 16, 1939, Box 440, Paper Events, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, WH Correspondence, 1933–1946, Presidential Library, Hyde Park; Letter to ER from Dina Huebert, June 19, 1939, Box 440, Paper Events, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, WH Correspondence, 1933–1946, Presidential Library, Hyde Park. 36. The role of ER as the patron of the arts was proven even more on the occasion of the visit by Britain’s King George VI his wife to the United States. The letters and messages received by ER from artists ready to perform for the royal guests tripled, even if it was widely known that the events and the programs at the White House (WH) were arranged by Henry Junge, Steinway and Sons. For Americans, the First Lady was becoming the most respected maker of the cultural image of their country, inside and out, while her involvement in the arts gave ER the opportunity to meet some of the most innovative American artists of the moment. 37. Ibid., 119. 38. Bohm, Jerome D. 1936. Suite Features Martha Graham Dance Program, The New York Herald Tribune, December. 39. Irving Kolodin. 1936. Martha Graham Offers New Dance. New York Sun, December. 40. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1936. My Day, December 19, 1936. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017), George Washington University, Washington. 41. Ibid. 42. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Day by Day. January 26, 1937. http://www. fdrlibrary.marist.edu/daybyday/daylog/february-26th-1937. Accessed December 2018. 43. Quinn, Susan. 2016. Eleanor and Hick. The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady. New York: Penguin Press, 155. 44. Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (New York: Da Capo, 1992), 123. 45. Cook, 433. 46. Obama, Becoming, 283. 47. DeMille, Agnes. 1992. Martha. The Life and work of Martha Graham. New York, First Vintage Books Edition, 221. 48. Graham, Blood Memory, 153. 49. West and Kotz, Upstairs at the White House. 50. Franko, Mark. 2013. Myth, Nationalism and Embodiment in “American Document.” In Dance, Politics & Co-Immunity, eds. Stefan Holscher and Gerald Siegmund. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 163. 51. The English military officer who accompanied the Pilgrims on their journey on the Mayflower.

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52. Burt, Ramsay. 1998. Alien Bodies: Representations of Modernity, “Race,” and Nation in Early Modern Dance. London: Routledge, 132; Foulkes, Julia Lawrence. 1997. Dancing America: Modern dance and cultural nationalism, 1925–1950. PhD Thesis, University of Amherst, 3. 53. Nedham, Maureen. 2002. I See America Dancing: Selected Readings, 1685–2000. University of Illinois Press, 176. 54. See Kennedy, Freedom from Fear. The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. 55. Elinor Morgenthau and Eleanor Roosevelt’s collaboration was described in detail by the former First Lady in her autobiography: they worked together on the Democratic State Committee in 1928 (148), the WPA projects (176), while Morgenthau was her assistant in the Office of Civilian Defense (225–229); Cook Blanche Wiesen, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2, 1933–1938. New York: Viking Press, 1999, 283. ER’s implication in the problem of the possible war and of the American participation in it was described in detail in the chapter “Mobilizing for New Action” and “A Silence Beyond Repair.” 56. Martha Graham. Dance Observer, March 1937. 57. McDonagh, Don. 1975. Martha Graham. New York: Popular Library. 113. 58. DeMille, Martha. The Life and Work of Martha Graham, 223. 59. German Invitation Refused by Dancer. 1936. New York Times, March 13. 60. Olympic Protest. 1936. Dance Observer, April. 61. Franko, Martha Graham in Love and War, 15. 62. Ibid., 14. 63. Martha Graham cited by Mark Franko, Martha Graham in Love and War, 64. 64. See Terry, Walter. 1975. Frontiers of Dance. The Life of Martha Graham. New York: Thomas Crowell Company, 80. 65. Jones, Kim. 2015. American Modernism: Reimagining Martha Graham’s Lost Imperial Gesture (1935). Dance Research Journal, 47/3 (December), 54. 66. Music by Ernst Toch, 1930. 67. DeMille, Martha. The Life and Work of Martha Graham, 221–222. 68. Roosevelt, Eleanor. My Day, March 1, 1937. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017), George Washington University, Washington. 69. Graham, Blood Memory, 153. 70. Bedell Smith. Sally, 2004. Grace and Power. New  York: Random House, XXII. 71. Parkinson, Hillary. 2018. Betty Ford, Dancer. National Archives blog, April 6. https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2018/04/06/first-ladiesbetty-ford-dancer. Accessed September 7, 2019. 72. Ibid.

“I Know What You Are Doing for Other People Too”: Dutch Journalist Mary Pos Reaches Out to Eleanor Roosevelt Babs Boter

Mary Pos, the self-proclaimed first female travel journalist from the Netherlands, wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt on 3 December 1937, angling for an invitation to the White House for a book she was writing about her impressions of America. Using her personalized Dutch stationery, she had produced the letter on her travel typewriter while staying at a hotel in Chicago. In broken English, and with no less than ten corrections on the one page, she presented herself as an accomplished and internationally known writer and lecturer with an extensive social and professional Portions of this chapter reflect the author’s views as expressed in Boter, Babs. 2017. First Female Travel Journalist Meets First Lady: Mary Pos and Eleanor Roosevelt Speak on Women’s Roles and Intercultural Understanding. European Journal of Americans Studies, document 3. http://journals.openedition.org/ ejas/11908. doi: 10.4000/ejas.11908. B. Boter (*) Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Fazzi, A. Luscombe (eds.), Eleanor Roosevelt’s Views on Diplomacy and Democracy, The World of the Roosevelts, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42315-5_8

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network of people and carrying significant letters of recommendation. Princess Juliana had granted her a rare interview, she stated, because “she knows about my trips, always alone, many times in diffcult [sic] circumstances,” after which the writer elaborated on her visits to the slums in Paris and London.1 Pos was a clever networker and may have mentioned the slums because she was informed about Roosevelt’s tours of slum areas, as well as her involvement in settlement housework in the New York City slums when she was young.2 Another tactic to persuade Roosevelt to invite her was her declaration that through her writings she wished to give the poor “a little relief” and “be able to do something for others by my work.” The Dutch journalist then added: “I know what you are doing for other people too and specially [sic] therefore you can understand how anxious I am to meet you one time in my life.”3 Emphasizing the resemblance of their personal and social ambitions, the Dutch writer from the small Dutch town of Zaandam desperately hoped she could have a personal appointment with the world-famous First Lady. The meeting would, we can imply, offer her inspiration and information, an experience to refer back to when lecturing and writing her travel books but also an encounter to add to her list of meetings with high-ranking public figures who could open doors elsewhere. The long, imploring letter in typescript shows a short and decisive note at the top, written in pencil and directed at Stephen Early, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR’s) press secretary: “Mr Early, can she come to press conference” [sic].4 Earlier on, in November, Mary Pos had made a first attempt to meet with the President and his wife, but FDR had been ill and Mrs. Roosevelt was out of town. Prudence Shannon, the secretary to Early, had met her at that time and, when she received the new request to arrange for a meeting, sent a warning note to Malvina Thompson Scheider, private secretary and personal aide to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt: “It is my personal opinion that you will have to ‘keep an eye’ on her if she attends the conference—because she strikes me as the kind of person who, if given an inch, will take a mile. This, just for your information.”5 Shannon was right: after Pos was informed she could attend a press conference, but would not be allowed to have a personal interview with the First Lady, she wrote again, asking for a private rendezvous. In order to support her request, she included documentation about her work and offered to present Eleanor Roosevelt with “the very simple, but real, Dutch pair of wooden shoes in miniature (one can keep them on his hand)

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which I brought with me from my country.”6 In the end, it was arranged that Pos would attend both the presidential press conference on Tuesday, 21 December 1937, and the women’s press conference the day after, followed by a short interview with the First Lady, together with a Finnish journalist. Still, Pos wanted more than even the mile: the day after the women’s press conference, she instructed the Harris and Ewing News Service to send photo portraits to FDR and his wife to be autographed.7 When, on 3 January 1938, she had not received the photos back, perhaps failing to take into consideration the Christmas holidays, the Dutch journalist sent a reminder to the First Lady. She pressed her to sign the photo, dedicate it to her, and return it that very same week, as she would travel back to Europe within a few days. In addition, she invited Mrs. Roosevelt to read a New York Times article about herself that, she boasted, a well-known American had referred to on the radio. The clipping, which she included in the envelope as both reading assignment and trophy, was entitled “Hollander Finds Us Too Serious: Mary Pos, Writer, Wonders at Few Laughing Faces in midst of Holiday Brightness. Roosevelts the ‘Gayest.’” It expressed, Pos states, “my feelings for you.”8 Indeed, the piece quotes Pos as saying: “I have met many important women in the world, but I have never met one so naturally brilliant. She never hesitates in giving an answer, she never speaks a careless word for which she couldn’t take full responsibility. She would make an excellent ambassador for this country anywhere abroad.”9 Pos’ reference to the responsible way in which Mrs. Roosevelt answered questions from journalists is ironic: years later, Pos would publicly push Roosevelt to speak about a political issue she did not wish to discuss.10 Eventually, Mrs. Roosevelt did sign the picture and had her secretary send it back to Pos, but the president, Pos was informed, was too busy. On the Harris and Ewing News Service request was written “Explain to Pos – Doesn’t do it.”11 Mary Pos’ frantic attempts to reach out to Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as her gushing about her in the winter of 1937, are in sharp contrast with her assessment 12 years later. Having met the First Lady in the summer of 1950 during her European tour, she refers to her in her diary as “an unsympathetic business woman.”12 This chapter examines that change of appraisal. In addition, it shows how Pos’ narratives of her encounters with Eleanor Roosevelt expose the professional and psychological forces at work in the transnational and gendered arena of journalism in the late 1930s and early 1950s. It especially looks at the way in which Pos,

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Roosevelt, and other women positioned themselves during Roosevelt’s women’s only press conferences. Finally, it investigates potential correlations between Roosevelt’s and Pos’ ideas on women’s rights and intercultural understanding.13

Popular Travel Journalist and Speaker Mary Pos (1904–1987) was a world traveler, writer, and lecturer. Conversing with Eleanor Roosevelt, on 22 December 1937, she referred to herself as a “world citizen,” and although she did not explicitly use the term “citizen diplomat,” she usually presented herself as such to Roosevelt and others.14 Inspired at an early age by stories told to her by her father and uncle, both missionaries, she had developed the ambition to play a role in the advancement of intercultural understanding. Her travel accounts in thousands of articles and more than 20 books, as well as the hundreds of lectures all over the Netherlands and abroad, were meant to contribute to crucial connections between peoples and countries. To support her plan, she had worked hard to construct an extensive professional and personal network of notables, diplomats, and businessmen; relatives and acquaintances at home and abroad; and sponsors and admirers who would financially or otherwise support her self-presentation as a well-­ known, well-read, and well-traveled professional. Pos’ traveling was sponsored by organizations as diverse as KLM, Heineken beer, Wybert cough drops, and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She could be an extremely demanding person and oftentimes came across as headstrong, uncompromising, and self-important, as is evident in her correspondence with the White House. Her letters as well as diaries show how she struggled with feelings of insecurity in both the professional and personal spheres, which caused severe mental depressions. Pos’ mission was to travel and meet, write, and lecture, both building connections and earning her own money which she needed being a single woman. Her seven journeys to the US were successful in all these regards. She explored the country and its people by staying in hotels, at the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), and with acquaintances. She also presented lectures about Europe and the Netherlands at women’s clubs, churches, the YWCA, and other organizations, and she was interviewed by US newspapers and featured in American radio programs. Back in the Netherlands, she published several books, including, Ik zag Amerika [I saw America] (1940), which was based on her journey to the US in the

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Fall and Winter of 1937, Ik zag Amerika en bezocht het opnieuw [I saw America and visited again] (1952), and Californië: Dwars door Amerika op zoek naar Nederlanders [California: Across America in search of the Dutch] (1955). The first two books tell of her visits to families of various ethnic and class backgrounds and young people she befriended in Harlem. Her interest in poor urban areas dated back to 1926, when as a secretary for an advertisement firm, she traveled to a commercial conference in London where, she would later claim, she preferred to explore the local slums to being at the posh conference venues. In addition to meeting “ordinary” Americans, Pos arranged interviews with well-known Americans that she knew her Dutch audience back home would enjoy reading and hearing about. These included President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, industrialist Henry Ford, CIO-President John L. Lewis, the warden of the Sing-Sing prison, Lewis Edward Lawes, and deaf/blind author and activist Helen Keller. Pos prepared for these meetings in various ways. For her meeting with Eleanor Roosevelt, for instance, she dressed up in the “very nice, dark brown coat” and matching little velvet hat or turban, which she had purchased for the occasion. To her Swiss lover, she described the new outfit as “sehr schön mit einen dunkelbraunen voile.”15 We also know that she had read the “My Day” columns which the president’s wife started to write at the end of 1935.16 The two women were, each in her own way, engaged in the construction of their public persona.17 Most important, perhaps, is the fact that both women were involved in building bridges between people and cultures and in doing so moved beyond the gender boundaries of their times. These are the features that Pos stressed most in her published accounts of her meetings with Eleanor Roosevelt. However, Pos’ personal accounts show that the two women, who themselves were strong advocates of better intercultural communication and understanding, had difficulty connecting during the two press conferences at which they met.

A First Press Conference at the White House The first meeting between Mary Pos and Eleanor Roosevelt is preceded and framed by Pos’ encounter with the president on 21 December 1937 at a White House press conference. She relates of that visit in published work, in lectures held in the Netherlands, and in typed-up, personal notes.18 This private account of the press conference is much more

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gendered than her published one. When she entered the hall, Pos states she found it filled with a multitude of reporters, only three of them were women, whom she describes as “unattractive and dressed in bad taste.” Like the male journalists, the three called out to the president in loud voices. Later on, she would be hindered from coming up closely to the president’s desk, as two women reporters, “both unattractive creatures,” were “thrusting themselves forward.”19 Irritated by her female colleagues, Mary Pos seems to set herself off against her possible rivals. At the end of the meeting, Pos was granted some time alone with the president for reasons she does not explicate. Sitting down next to him, it seems that she had already adopted the jolly discourse of the male-­ dominated press conference. First of all, presenting herself as a collector of signed photo portraits and requesting one of the president’s, she informed him that she would prefer a “genuine” signature, not one copied by one of his officers. This teasing remark, Pos reports in her book, is followed by the president’s hearty laugh.20 Second, when Roosevelt “proudly” informed Pos that his ancestors were from Zeeland and that at heart, he still felt like a Dutchman although his last visit was in 1910, Pos jovially proposed a little vacation without his yacht but with the big steamer New Amsterdam, which would take him to old Amsterdam. The otherwise level-headed Dutch would instantly transform into exuberant characters and welcome him with open arms. Encouraged by Roosevelt’s smiling face, Pos then added a third joke: she mischievously inquired whether the two could perhaps already set a date so that she could forewarn her countrymen and—women—to prepare for the visit.21 Here, Pos bonded with Roosevelt in two ways. First of all, they shared a history and national heritage and talked about “all that is Dutch in the country, about the great and impressive achievements of the Dutch.”22 Second, the two connected in terms of the (gendered) professional discourse they shared, as Pos shows she was capable of adapting to the talk of her colleagues and the president. It is difficult to overstate the personal impact of her rendezvous with Roosevelt. When on Friday, 13 April 1945, she received the news of Roosevelt’s death, she wrote in her diary, in some state of shock and in a peculiar logical twist, “But you must keep calm, Mary, just be reminded of how calm Roosevelt himself would cope with such a message and would not let this knock him over. […] So I behaved calmly and told my family and others.”23 Only five months later, in September 1945, Mary Pos was involved in a memorial meeting at the Dutch reformed Church in

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Doesburg where hundreds of inhabitants, the mayor, aldermen, and the Salvation Army gathered “to commemorate jointly the indefatigable endeavours [sic] for peace and the principles of democracy, for the freedom of the peoples, of the President of the U.S.A. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who departed this life so prematurely.”24 Pos offered a speech about his great merits and was one of those who signed the certificate that, decorated with a windmill, church, boat, and canal, in ornamental letters pronounced one of Doesburg’s streets “Franklin Rooseveltsingel.” The certificate was later, in a leather binder, sent to Roosevelt’s widow.25 Mary Pos also honored FDR in the lectures she presented after the war. Newspaper reviews of such lectures would quote Pos’ pronouncement of Roosevelt’s noble character, his brilliance, his idealism and altruism, and his unwavering Christian faith.26 She subsequently emphasized the benefits of transatlantic connections and the significance of connecting “the virtues of the American people” to “the virtues of the Dutch.”27 “We” should stop just living for ourselves and forget about our own “I,” proclaimed Pos.28 This declaration fits well with Pos’ many platitudes and naïve sermons but also makes plain once again her ambitions of becoming an appreciated citizen diplomat. In that sense, Pos resembled Eleanor Roosevelt who from very early on expressed her commitment to intercultural understanding, as in her “My Day” columns and during her press conferences.29

Women-Only Press Meetings Between March 1933, when FDR was elected, and April 1945, when he died, Eleanor Roosevelt held 348 women’s only press conferences. At the time Pos attended, in the 1930s, an average number of 20–30 regular reporters were present.30 Apart from these regulars, Roosevelt invited women writers (Mary Pos among them), notables, performers, and artists to the conferences, as well as “woman leaders” such as Mary Anderson, head of the Children’s Bureau, Madame Chiang Kaishek, and Dutch Queen Wilhelmina.31 One rationale for organizing the women-only press conferences was Eleanor Roosevelt’s wish to advance the position of American women in general—and female reporters particularly. The other two reasons for holding the conferences were helping establish Roosevelt’s status as First Lady and supporting her husband’s New Deal.32 Roosevelt saw a major role for female newspaper reporters, who could “lead […] the women in the country to form a general attitude of mind and thought.”

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They had to be “interpreters to the women of the country as to what goes on politically in the legislative national life, and also what the social and personal life is at the White House.”33 Offered this new task, the female reporters attending the conferences gained confidence and recognition.34 Maurine Beasley, who has extensively studied the women’s press conferences, concludes that “In retrospect, the significance of the press conferences lies more, perhaps, in what they conveyed in general regarding women’s position in society than in their specific content.”35 In addition, I would say, they also reflected some of the social complexities of women reporters’ work. Although Roosevelt never let her reporters scoop each other, Allida Black refers to “in-house rivalry between reporters assigned to cover hard news and those assigned to the women’s pages.”36 For the period 1920–1940, Linda Lumsden has shown that women journalists emphasized “succeeding on individual merit” and were involved in an “ardent individualism that carried women to reporting’s top echelons.”37 This attitude may have played a role during Roosevelt’s press conferences, although Beasley also points out the reporters’ camaraderie. Roosevelt herself, reflecting on the press conferences in her autobiography This I Remember, refers to the reporters’ “trick questions” and concludes that “Every press conference was a battle of wits, and at times it was not easy for me, or for them, I imagine.”38 The rivalry among the female reporters becomes apparent in Pos’ coverage, in her travel book Ik zag Amerika (1940), of her visit to Eleanor Roosevelt’s press conference on 22 December 1937. Relieved to see a smaller number of reporters than at FDR’s press conference, Pos noted that the women reporters crowded by the door in order to be able to “conquer” a good spot, blocking the way for those arriving late until a guard solved the situation. This, she notes, was not “sympathetic.”39 Later on, as all female reporters rushed upstairs, Pos was unable to keep up, and concluded that “this performance under the eyes of the [Negro] servants is foolish.”40 Her feelings of triumph over the American press women resound when she proudly states that a reserved seat was available for her on the first row, near the door through which Eleanor Roosevelt would enter: “she would sit right across from me, on the low sofa.”41 This favorable position may very well be a fictive construction. The front-seat position at the FDR press conference the day before, of which she also relates in her published account, contrasts with the marginal place she found herself in according to her private account.42

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Pos spent her time waiting by studying paintings of sailing ships, and a portrait of the president, as well as a piano, book case, and open fire.43 Her detailed portrayal of the room must have had the effect of suspension on at least some of her Dutch readers. With her, they are awaiting Pos’ encounter with the American First Lady. But then, without warning, Pos—and implicitly her readers—were caught unaware when, “Suddenly, swift as the wind,” Mrs. Roosevelt entered the room. She was in horse-­ riding costume, and a white silken band held her “grey wavy hair” together.44 This is echoed in the photograph that accompanies Pos’ article in the Dutch national newspaper De Telegraaf, published a few months after her return to the Netherlands.45 The picture, taken from a position much higher than Roosevelt and her horse, seemingly has been shot by Pos herself, as if from a window in the waiting area. Pos’ written report portrays Roosevelt as tall, slender, and flexible, and with a sportive and natural look. Her naturalness is partially a result of a lack of makeup (in contrast to all reporters present) and partially enhanced by “the smell of the park” which she has brought along from her early horse-riding. Pos concludes by stating that Roosevelt is not attractive, but she has a friendly and lively face.46 Mary Pos admired Roosevelt and her self-presentation immediately and was surprised by the informal atmosphere during the conference. She noted the attention the president’s wife offered each individual reporter: upon entering the room, she “moves freely, and not in a forced way at all, between reporters and chairs to make sure she has shaken hands with everyone.”47 During the session, Roosevelt also showed a very personal and “almost jaunty” style: she talked freely, made jokes, laughed out loud, and came across as “natural” and cheerful. Comparing Roosevelt with Dutch women, Pos made up her mind that this mother of six children, who was also a grandmother, was “not at all like Dutch grandmothers.”48 Pos’ feelings of surprise also speak from yet another comparison with Holland: Dutch reporters, Pos knows, would never submit a First Lady to such personal questions. Discussing the American boycott of Japanese goods, the American reporters posed a “cunning” follow-up question, namely whether Roosevelt was planning to buy new silk stockings soon. Mrs. Roosevelt, however, was quick-witted to understand the question straightaway and stated laughingly that she did not need to buy them as she had all she needed.49

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Women at Work and Women in the World Despite such questions on personal details, the press conferences were no shallow social gatherings about stockings. Indeed, various scholars have pointed out that whereas the contemporary press, dominated by men, labelled the women’s conferences as trivial events, they were, in fact, focused on political issues relating to both women and legislation, as well as social issues and personal life at the White House.50 The combination of the political and the personal also stands out from one of the questions Mary Pos herself posed during the press conference, namely whether married women should be allowed to work. Pos must have been aware of Roosevelt’s adamant stance vis-à-vis married women working. The latter even used her news conferences as a channel to declare wives’ rights to work.51 On a personal level, it seems quite expected that Pos selected the above question about married women’s right to work. She had been engaged to a Dutch high-school teacher since 1929, but the two had so far been unable to get married, as Dutch social norms of the time required the husband to be capable of earning a living for the upcoming new family. The issue was eventually one of the reasons why the engagement came to an end after ten years.52 According to Pos’ unpublished notes typed up immediately after the interview, Roosevelt did not fully comprehend her question “about the ways in which she could lecture so much and accomplish so much work.”53 Pos then repeated the question during the exclusive session following the press conference, to which she and a Finnish female correspondent were invited. Although Pos felt “intensely bothered by this journalist” who “was asking all the questions,” she was able to take some notes about the issue that was a weighty one not only for her but also for many of her (female) readers in the Netherlands: “About married women who work, yes, [Roosevelt] gave much money to the poor, was able to do this because husband earned money, many marriages would be impossible if woman would not earn money, as Mother [of young children, Roosevelt] had given herself entirely to mothering.”54 In her published account of the press conference, in her book Ik zag Amerika, Pos eventually pieces together Roosevelt’s answer by referring to the economic conditions that necessitated married women’s entrance into the labor market and to the unnatural conditions and relations that would arise if a young wife would not be allowed to keep her paid position in order to help earn a living for the family. She concludes her discussion

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of the issue by stating that personally Roosevelt felt delighted with the possibilities to lecture and publish, and financially assisted others with the money she earned. Although “Mrs. Roosevelt” originated from a rich family, she had always been interested in the less fortunate, Pos explains, and she had often been distressed by the unjustifiable differences between immense richness and deep poverty. We see here that the personal question stated earlier has led to a somewhat moralizing lecture in which we can no longer differentiate between Roosevelt’s and Pos’ ideas. It therefore suggests Pos’ partial identification with the First Lady. In the late 1940s, in one of her many lectures for the Dutch, Pos would return to this issue and introduced American women as embodiments of modernity. She noted that married American women, who since the 1930s had had to work outside the home to earn money, were no drudges or victims. Instead, they were admirable and vital, active and industrious, informed and intelligent, adaptable and very interested in life in general, and in the lives of others. The American woman’s “position in life is completely equal to that of a man,” concluded Pos.55 Men attentively listened to women and valued their contributions during meetings, Pos said. She added how impressed she was with the institution of the American women’s club, as it enabled and stimulated American women to study, reflect on, and discuss political, economic, and social issues. Many women in these clubs, Pos clarified, were politically active, and in unity they were strong.56 Pos then turned to the roles for Dutch women, who are “economically far better off” than American women and whose family life is much more “comfortable and peaceful,” and “less restless and hurried” than that of Americans. The “great mission of every woman, and especially the privileged Dutch women [is to] acknowledge the responsibility to help out others who are needy.”57 Here, Mary Pos appears to hold up as examples both the American First Lady and herself, as both have always been engaged with the plight of the less fortunate. This “great mission” to help the needy is the focus of a second question that Mary Pos asked at the December 1937 press conference: could European women possibly contribute to peace in Europe? Pos reiterates this question in Ik zag Amerika, after which we read that European women have great geographical advantages, as they only need to “find” and “understand” other women across borders and reach out to them. The more they will learn about each other’s history, culture, and national character, the more they will be able to understand each other’s problems. In addition, they also have to pray for each other and for peace. Noteworthy

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here is that it is impossible to ascertain whether this recommendation comes from Pos or the First Lady. No quotation marks are used.58 Neither does Pos use quotation marks when she discusses a third issue she had brought up during the personal rendezvous with Roosevelt following the press conference: Will women eventually rule the world? Women all over the world, writes Pos, are steadily becoming more knowledgeable and entering new fields: “Women in the East are waking up more and more and in countries such as Russia and America, worlds in themselves, women are increasingly taking hold of high-ranking positions, positions which fifty years earlier no one would have dreamt they would occupy.”59 There are no quotation marks in the text, so for the reader, it is unclear whether this is Pos’ introduction of the topic to her readers and the First Lady, or Roosevelt’s response. The exposé thus seems to be co-­ authored by Roosevelt and Pos. In that sense, it is possible that Pos’ contemporaries read the exposé as a pep talk. But the latter is cut short when Pos paraphrases Roosevelt as saying that she does not believe “that women will ever overrule men. It is true that in some continents women are making immense progress; but the strengthening of one gender does not necessarily mean the weakening of the other. Both will have to work together in harmony and the understanding between the two must grow stronger.”60 Pos’ third query is also mentioned in her personal notes, where she points out that Roosevelt “extensively” answered her “question about strong women.” Here, however, the emphasis is more on strength than on “harmony” and “understanding”: “Roosevelt did not believe that we […] would enter an age of Amazons. Women were still making progress, albeit slowly, and were growing stronger, but that one sex became stronger did not necessitate the other to diminish in power. Both needed to become ever stronger. Something like this.”61 The last sentence suggests that Pos attempts to translate Roosevelt’s monologue, but feels unsure about the argument. Roosevelt herself indicated that Pos had some trouble understanding her: in her column “My Day,” she writes that the two foreign correspondents (who based on Pos’ reports must have been the Finnish journalist and herself) wished to accurately depict the US, but felt confused: “I think it must be a tremendously difficult thing to find yourself trying to grasp political and social situations at the present time with a somewhat limited knowledge of the country.”62 Roosevelt, here, expresses her empathy with the position of the foreign journalists, but at the same time has her doubts about the abilities of the ambitious and “attractive young women” to “write truthfully.”63

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The “somewhat limited knowledge” Roosevelt refers to in her column is ironically echoed in Pos’ published travel account Ik zag Amerika, where she admonishes her readers to shed the restricted lens through which Europeans sometimes view the US.  She fails, however, to consequently reflect on her own limited vision as a Dutch journalist visiting the country. In her book, Pos paraphrases Roosevelt as follows: “Naturally there were many things in America that those in Europe did not understand, but one should not attempt to look through European spectacles. Emil Ludwig had done exactly that! His book on the President [Roosevelt: Studie über Glück und Macht, 1938] had been written by someone who had been transfixed in the European tradition.” She then offers an exact quote from the First Lady: “‘Whoever wishes to understand America should not limit themselves to New-York [sic] and Washington, but should also venture into the Mid-West and Far West and certainly also into the South, where the results of slavery are still noticeable in the problem of the colored population, fully affecting southern life, pushing down the living standard.’”64 The use of the exclamation mark, and the “should not’s” and “should,” suggest that this is not merely a response provided at a press conference, but an instruction in itself. Roosevelt’s didactic style has been commented on by many. Maurine Beasley claims in her book on Roosevelt’s press conferences that Roosevelt performed as an instructor who informed the journalists on such things as how to teach women how to read a newspaper (15 June 1933) and on using a salutary new product, dried skim milk (7 May 1935).65 Beasley further points out that Roosevelt “used the conferences to lecture on women’s duties as citizens.”66 In her biography, Allida Black even refers to Eleanor Roosevelt as conducting classes and “deliver[ing] a tutorial.”67 Mary Pos clearly recognized, appreciated, and even copied this educational and somewhat moralizing practice. Significantly, her presentation of the advice does not make it clear whether it is she or Roosevelt who cautions and chides. This also holds for her other recommendations. Approximately ten years later, in a postwar lecture Pos held for her Dutch audience, Pos almost literally reiterated Roosevelt’s earlier recommendation that women and men should work together in harmony and understanding. She yet again seemed to mix her own text with that of Roosevelt as she, reporting on their conversation, offered a “passionate plea” for a “shoulder-to-shoulder and conjoint battle by both men and women,” to triumph over the injustices of the times and help the tens of thousands of victims struggling with the results of the

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war.68 Pos apparently employed Roosevelt’s words as a vehicle to both generate feelings of national solidarity and trigger the emancipation of Dutch women whose status, according to Pos, had been weakened and whose assistance was not employed effectively in the postwar reconstruction of the country: Dutch women had been systematically excluded from boards and committees, and they had therefore not been able to help make decisions in the best interests of women. In conclusion, although we have no verbatim account of what Roosevelt communicated to Pos in December 1937, the Dutch journalist certainly drew on that meeting to convey to her Dutch postwar audience a strong message regarding the need for national cohesion and a strong position for women.

Roosevelt’s Cautious and Pragmatic Diplomacy Pos’ personal notes testify to the degree of diplomacy and accuracy Roosevelt used with European reporters. The Finnish colleague, whom Pos describes as “an enormous showoff who dared a lot and was very cunning,” asked questions about labor, capital, and government that “a woman like Mrs. Roosevelt could impossibly answer. Impossibly.” Pos indicates having been impressed with the way in which Roosevelt took to answer, time and again, the Finnish reporter’s “daring questions.” However, the First Lady did not come up with anything “shockingly new” and she actually offered, concludes Pos, what anyone who is only a little informed about the American conditions already knew.69 Pos’ notes end with referring to the Finnish reporter once again, who after the session confided in Pos that Roosevelt “could not be caught articulating an irresponsible statement.” Pos then appropriates the Finnish reporter’s conclusion and states in her published account of the meeting, Ik zag Amerika, that Roosevelt never hesitated when giving her answers, but that no answer was careless.70 Ironically, this anticipates an incident at the chic Amstel Hotel in Amsterdam, years later, in the summer of 1950, which is discussed next. In June 1950, Eleanor Roosevelt visited the Netherlands as one of the European countries that received Marshall Aid. Pos’ report of the press conference held at the exclusive Amstel Hotel in Amsterdam is integrated in a one-page diary entry dated 5 July 1950, which refers to Roosevelt as “that unsympathetic business woman Roosevelt.”71 It is unclear exactly why Pos described Roosevelt in such strong terms and what caused her change of heart, as she had formerly partially identified with her and her

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ideas. From the remainder of the diary entry, we may infer that feelings of depression, and the way she is dealt with by her colleagues following the press conference, effected this labeling of the former First Lady. In addition, her negative judgment of Roosevelt may also be related to the latter’s unwillingness to respond to her demand for help to the Moluccan island of Ambon. On 25 April 1950, the Moluccan people had proclaimed the Republik Maluku Selatan (Republic of the South Moluccas; RMS), severing ties with both East Indonesia, the state to which they as a province belonged, and the federal United States of Indonesia, the Republik Indonesia Serikar.72 They feared the centralizing force of the federal state and the threat of Indonesian troops in East Indonesia. Moluccan representatives, both in Indonesia and in the Netherlands, urged political figures and institutions to take action. On 2 May 1950, for instance, a group of South Moluccans in the Netherlands sent a telegram to Trygve Lie, the Norwegian Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), to inform him of acts of aggression on the part of the federal state that had started to establish a blockade of the Ambonese islands. Anxious about new East-­ West tensions, and facing the 25 June 1950 invasion of South Korea by North Korea, the UN at first was reluctant to interfere in Indonesia. The United Nations Commission for Indonesia (UNCI), installed by the Security Council in 1949, also saw it as inappropriate to take action without first being approached in the matter by at least one of the parties involved.73 The UNCI did undertake attempts to encourage the Indonesian government to join a process of negotiation, but the latter saw the conflict as an internal affair. Although the Dutch government never acknowledged the RMS, a large part of the Dutch population felt sympathetic toward the South Moluccans. Thus, Eleanor Roosevelt, in line with her practice of citizen diplomacy, and like other public officials, received several appeals from Ambonese living in the Netherlands and Dutch citizens who supported the Moluccan case. One is a letter written by the Gemeenschappelijke Actie van Nederlandse Vrouwen (“Joint Action of Netherlands Women”) on 17 June 1950. Under the motto “Direction is everything. Distance is nothing,” and signed by “Presidentess” Wilhelmina van’t Rood-Gerth van Wijk, the letter urged Roosevelt to use all her influence so that justice can “take its course unhampered,” and that the Moluccans, “for the greater part Christians,” could determine their own future.74

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The second appeal came disguised as a hand-written card and bouquet of flowers, offered to Roosevelt by a small delegation of Ambonese women upon her visit of the Zealand town of Oud-Vossemeer on 20 June 1950, where quite a few inhabitants claimed to be descendants of the late president. On the card, one member of the delegation, Mabel Ruybrechts, had added to her signature “Whose father is still in Amboina.” The other “Wifes, widows [sic] and daughters” had written that their “native country … is in distress” and explain that the Dutch had collected money, but that they now needed the permission of the UN to send it to “our folks at home.”75 A third letter was co-written and signed by Mary Pos. Dated 16 June 1950, the document addresses Roosevelt as the “Champion for the Human Rights,” and highlights the role of the Ambonese, who had always been loyal allies of the Netherlands and during the Second World War played a significant role in the resistance movement on the Indonesian island of Java and elsewhere. It argues that it would be a violation of “the right of Self-Determination” and would go against the moral principles of “the International Community” if the United Nations would not help out the Ambonese in their legal fight for freedom. “If this group of Christians should be abandoned by the United Nations in their struggle for freedom, these peoples will be [sic] certainly be cruelly oppressed by the Mahommedans [sic] of the Republic of Indonesia.”76 “In the name of Christianity,” the letter’s authors beg Roosevelt to use her influence to help their fellow Christians, the Ambonese, by providing food and medicines. If Roosevelt would grant them an interview of ten minutes, they would be able to explain what is going on at “Amboina.” The signatories besides Mary Pos include two noblewomen, one of whom is a prisoner of war, a female professor in the English language, an ex-­ member of the Underground Movement of the Royal Netherlands Army, and the president of the New Guinea Netherlands Women Association who is also a former member of the Underground Movement of the Royal Netherlands East Indian Army.77 Of course, it was rather clever of the writers to refer to Christianity. They must have known that Eleanor Roosevelt was a religious person and practicing Christian, although she was as well respectful of other religions.78 It is unclear whether and how Eleanor Roosevelt responded to this letter, or to the two messages requesting support.79 We do know that she had been enthused about Indonesian independence but had also become worried about the situation of the postcolonial state. Almost exactly three

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years prior to the signing of the treaty of The Hague on 27 December 1949, which granted Indonesia independence and installed the Netherlands-Indonesia Union, Roosevelt had written in her daily column: “One of the most cheerful things I have read in a long while is the actual, gradual plan of a United States of Indonesia being formed under Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. It is the carrying out of the plan which I remember hearing her talk over with my husband when he was President, and it should bring gradual independence and the opportunity to develop self-government to all the peoples of the Indonesian area.”80 On the day on which the ratification took place, she had written in “My Day” that it would not be “all plain sailing” for the new Indonesian government. “Their immediate needs are going to be difficult to supply, and there will appear among their own people extremists who will probably try to bring about disturbances here and there, or even a real revolution. There has been, and perhaps will continue to be, a certain amount of guerrilla warfare. All of this is not easy for a new nation to face.”81 This means that as early as 1949, she anticipated complex disputes in the area, and she was aware of the complexities of the local situation. Other than this, her stance on the Moluccan dispute remains unclear. Likewise, none of Mary Pos’ published work clarifies her own stand on the Moluccan issue. Neither do we know whether she was aware of, and how she assessed, America’s role in the history of Indonesian independence. Pos had visited the Dutch East Indies since the 1930s and had published several books based on those travels. She had also built a significant network of friends and acquaintances in Indonesia. Her travel experience, her international network, and her background knowledge of the Dutch East Indies may have strengthened her decision to insist on the “daring” questions she posed Eleanor Roosevelt at the Amsterdam press conference in June 1950: could Roosevelt, as a member of the UN Commission, possibly use her influence to generate support from the International Red Cross for Ambon? Roosevelt did not answer Pos. In the case of Indonesia, she may indeed not have wanted to become involved in such a controversial question, neither going against the US government’s view, alienating the Dutch government, or preceding any UNCI decisions. This seems related to the fact that in much of what Roosevelt did, there was a large element of not only idealism but also pragmatism. Pos’ action, she states in her diary, was not tolerated by her colleagues from the “Red and papal gang,” partially due to feelings of jealousy. She

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had therefore suffered “from folks I had never seen before” and also from the “papal Marijke Vetter,” a journalist of the Volkskrant, whom Pos describes as “small, fat, arrogant, and jealous.” Pos does not explicate what she means by “suffered from,” but we may perhaps infer that this included verbal abuse, gossip, or giving dirty looks.82 Her intervention at the press conference, she conveys, furthermore engendered an “unfair piece” in the Dutch weekly paper Vrij Nederland, fitting with the “lowest way” in which “bright red” had “oftentimes attacked her.” Here, Pos probably refers to her affair with Het Parool, a formerly clandestine resistance newspaper which, in the Summer of 1945, after a study of Pos’ published reports on her trip to the Ostmark in 1940, had inaccurately accused Pos of journalistic collaboration with the Nazis. The Parool issue, which motivated the Military Authority to forbid her to write, would greatly affect her professional standing and seriously damage her career. Still, Pos was rehabilitated that same year, and in addition, she was invited to travel to Switzerland to present lectures on the Dutch resistance movement. It was perhaps a jealous colleague who upon her return sent her an anonymous and hateful letter labeling her “the incorrect missionary.”83 The “unfair piece” in Vrij Nederland following Pos’ query at the Amstel Hotel is one section in a front-page editorial called “In het vizier” [In sight].84 It declares the failure of both the reception held in honor of Mrs. Roosevelt and the succeeding press conference. The ambiance had been somewhat cold, snobbish, and chaotic, and Roosevelt was “charming,” but her book-signing session took too long, leaving no time for “Amsterdam” to become acquainted with her “life work.”85 In addition, there had not been much time left for the press conference, which was attended not just by members of the press but also by some lingering guests. Topping all of that was “Miss Mary Pos, who at times treads onto the slippery ice of journalism with her graceful little shoes.”86 The Dutch expression of treading onto slippery ice, meaning taking risks, is here reproduced with a gender-biased and belittling slant. This patronizing and chauvinist tone continues in the remainder of the editorial. Pos had posed the “accusing” question why Mrs. Roosevelt had not personally taken action in the case of Ambon. With a smile Roosevelt had apologized, stating “Because that is not my job, do you see?” This is taken up by the (unnamed, but presumably male) editor of Vrij Nederland who concludes that “Miss Mary Pos” did not “see” this like all others present. This caused such a commotion against Pos after Roosevelt’s

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departure, the editor claims, that Pos disappeared from the venue with a “quickness that did not match her self-confidence.”87 The incident at the Amstel Hotel is also covered by other newspapers that blame Pos for her embarrassing and disgraceful act and praise Roosevelt for weighing each question scrupulously and for the skills and tact with which she refuted Pos’ inappropriate questions. One reporter stated that Pos more or less “demanded of the Commission of Human Rights to provide accountability.” Another wrote that Roosevelt, “an extremely intelligent woman,” who was knowledgeable about Ambon’s current situation and a “natural diplomat,” could not be lured into impulsive answers to Pos’ “inappropriate question” about the possible effect of the petitions signed for Ambon, which were submitted to the United Nations Organization.88 When Pos pressed Roosevelt to “‘employ your personal influence at the support of millions of people,’” Roosevelt only “briefly smiled, charmingly and humbly, upon which she merely stated: ‘In the United Nations I have little personal influence.’”89 Ironically, the chauvinistic comments Mary Pos received about not being fit to be so outspoken echo the criticisms Eleanor Roosevelt had oftentimes heard about her being unfit, as a First Lady, to be meddling in politics and being so forthright and frank. According to her biographers, “She was frequently chastised for not knowing her place as a woman or how to dignify the role of the First Lady.”90 Noteworthy is that one of the newspapers critical of Pos’ act includes on the very same page, in a next column, an article about Pos having been involved in another, but very different, scene. “Do you still remember Mary Pos? As a journalist she repeatedly visited, toured, and reported of Indonesia.” Recently, the column reports, she was summoned in court for parking in a pedestrian zone. When the judge resolved the case by offering either a small fine or two days in prison, Pos stated that for her it was easy to decide: being in jail would provide her with a splendid opportunity to write an account of incarcerated life. In the midst of great merriment, she left the courtroom.91 The Dutch writer Mary Pos was one among a group of American and European female journalists who in the 1930s and 1940s strove to find her way into the male bastion of journalism. Many gatekeepers played a role in this process, for instance, by agreeing to be interviewed, acting as intermediators, writing positive reviews of their work, and functioning as role models and sources of inspiration. Both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt had such an impact on Mary Pos. They allowed her to

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attend their press conferences and had personal sessions with her. Their work and their lives inspired the once small-town Dutch journalist and offered examples of the public persona in which Pos could mirror herself. However, whereas at least according to her own travel narratives, Pos was able to bond with FDR in terms of jovial conversation and shared ethnic-national background, this was not so with Eleanor Roosevelt. Although Pos’ published work suggests that they fully agreed on issues such as women’s roles and intercultural understanding—indeed, in Pos’ Ik zag Amerika, the two women seem to speak as one—her personal accounts show that they, at times, had trouble understanding each other. However, in the late 1930s and 1940s, the two women were similarly engaged in activities that confirm as well as challenge existing gender expectations and versions of institutionalized femininity in the patriarchal models of early to mid-twentieth-century US and the Netherlands. Each worked within, but also stretched, the boundaries of their own gendered maneuvering space— one as (former) First Lady and chairwoman of the UN Commission on Human Rights and one as female journalist. Both women had to negotiate with various discourses of femininity available to them at the time, with biases and expectations. Both supported a resilient role for women in making connections with men, and between countries and cultures. Although Roosevelt operated on a much more global and political level, and with an entirely different set of tools and means, and although she had a far greater and much more civic and diplomatic reach than Pos, both women questioned and affected ideas of national and gender identity among those who made up their audience. Pos changed her original positive assessment of Eleanor Roosevelt into a rather unfavorable one. In addition, she seems to have felt alienated and marginalized among the self-assured, ambitious, and modern women she met during press conferences organized by or for the Roosevelts. This was partially caused by the competitive attitude of her colleagues and cultural differences but also perhaps by her own provincial and orthodox religious background, her somewhat naïve and stubborn stance, as well as her lack of tact and inadequate knowledge of world politics. She also seems to have been unaware of the various forces and interests Eleanor Roosevelt had to carefully negotiate when she was a UN representative, limiting the extent to which Roosevelt was always able, as she had wished, “to give expression and voice to the questions posed by American and European civic associations and their commitment to democracy, social justice, and human rights in the growing Cold War climate.”92

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Notes 1. Letter from Mary Pos to Mrs. Roosevelt, 3 December 1937, Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence 1933–1945, Series 110: Autographs, Container 863, 1938 N-Q, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY. 2. Beasley, Maurine H., ed. 1983. The White House Press Conferences of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York & London: Garland, 1983, x. 3. Letter from Mary Pos to Mrs. Roosevelt, 3 December 1937. 4. Stephen T. Early was FDR’s press secretary. 5. Letter from P.L. Shannon, The White House, to Mrs. Scheider, 8 December 1937, Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence 1933–1945, Series 170: Appointments, Container 1185, 1937 P, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY. 6. Letter from Mary Pos to Mrs. Scheider, 16 December 1937, Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence 1933–1945, Series 110: Autographs, Container 863, 1938 N-Q, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY. 7. These pictures would later be added to her collection of signed photos, which would in the 1970s still adorn one wall in her Dutch apartment in Rijswijk, the Netherlands. 8. Letter from Mary Pos to Eleanor Roosevelt, 3 January 1938, Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence 1933–1945, Series 110: Autographs, Container 863, 1938 N-Q, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY. 9. “Hollander Finds Us Too Serious: Mary Pos, Writer, Wonders at Few Laughing Faces in midst of Holiday Brightness. Roosevelts the ‘Gayest,’” undated New York Times article, included in letter from Mary Pos to Eleanor Roosevelt, 3 January 1938, Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence 1933–1945. 10. To top this published expression of admiration, the letter stated that during her upcoming radio interview while still in the US, she would not be able to do anything else “but speak about the impression you made upon me, too.” Letter from Mary Pos to Eleanor Roosevelt, 3 January 1938, Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence 1933–1945, Series 110: Autographs, Container 863, 1938 N-Q, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY.  Mary Pos must have been aware of the First Lady’s engagement with radio broadcasting. 11. Whether Mrs. Roosevelt actually signed the photo is not entirely clear. At the top of Pos’ letter of request, a short and barely legible note is written in pencil, which seems to read: “The photo was signed by your sect.” Letter by E.  Miller of Harris and Ewing Photographers of National

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Notables to Malvina Scheider, 23 December 1938 [1937]; letter from Malvina Scheider to Mary Pos, 31 December 1939. Both letters are from Eleanor Roosevelt Correspondence 1933–1945, Series 110: Autographs, Container 863, 1938 N-Q, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY. 12. Mary Pos, diary entry 5 July 1950, Folder 45 (Diaries 1945–1952), Mary Pos Papers, Historical Documentation Centre for Dutch Protestantism (1800 to the present day), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. 13. The main primary sources of this chapter consist of Pos’ correspondence, diary entries, personal and lecture notes, and reviews of lectures that make up part of the Mary Pos Papers housed by the Historical Documentation Centre for Dutch Protestantism (1800 to the present day) (HDC), affiliated with the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. 14. For a discussion of the term citizen diplomat, see Baritono, Raffaella. 2017. Eleanor Roosevelt at the United Nations: “Diplomacy from Below” and the Search for a New Transatlantic Dialogue. European Journal of American Studies, 12:1. Document 6. http://journals.openedition.org/ ejas/11920. doi:https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.11920 15. Letter from Mary Pos to Walter, Tuesday, 21 December 1937, Washington, Folder 10 (Correspondence), Mary Pos Papers, HDC. 16. Pos, Mary. 1940. Ik zag Amerika. Amsterdam: De Lange, 240. 17. “Persona” here refers to Mineke Bosch’s work on the performance of public identity. She has theorized this in “Persona en de performance van identiteit: Parallelle ontwikkelingen in de nieuwe biografische geschiedschrijving van gender en van wetenschap,” Tijdschrift voor biografie (Fall 2012) 1:3, 10–21. 18. Mary Pos, diary entry 21 December 1937, Folder 43 (Diaries 1936–1938), Mary Pos Papers, HDC. 19. Mary Pos, “Pers conferentie President Roosevelt, 21 Dec. 1937.” Folder 43 (Diaries 1936–1938), Mary Pos Papers, HDC; Pos, Ik zag, 221. 20. The signed photo portrait will later be included in a photo in which Pos poses next to a wall in her Dutch home covered with photo portraits, pointing at the photo of FDR. See image 1. “Vijf Werelddelen dragen haar voetstap: In een huis vol herinneringen woont Nederlands meest bereisde vrouw [Five continents hold her foot step: In a home filled with memories lives Mary Pos, the most travelled woman of the Netherlands],” n.d., n.p., Folder 64 (Interviews with Mary Pos, Typescripts and Interviews 1940–1941, 1949, 1963, n.d.), Mary Pos Papers, HDC. 21. Pos, Ik zag, 222. 22. Ibid. 23. Mary Pos, diary entry Friday 13 April 1945, “Roosevelt dood [Roosevelt dead],” Folder 45 (Diaries 1945–1952), Mary Pos Papers, HDC.

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24. Certificate, signed by Mary Pos, Doesburg, the Netherlands, 17 September 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt Photographs, Album 122, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY. 25. Author’s translation. 26. See, for example, “Franklin D.  Roosevelt.” De Waarheid Dordrecht, 30 January 1946, and “Amerika en President Roosevelt: Een onvergetelijke avond [America and President Roosevelt: An Unforgettable Evening],” both reviews in Folder 57 (Reviews of Ik zag Amerika), Mary Pos Papers, HDC.  See also “Mary Pos sprak over Amerika en Roosevelt [Mary Pos spoke about America and Roosevelt],” typed manuscript for Dordtsch Dagblad, 30 January 1946, Folder 51 (Newspaper clippings 1940–1949), Mary Pos Papers, HDC. 27. Amerika en President Roosevelt. 28. Mary Pos sprak over Amerika. 29. For an early example of Roosevelt’s discussion of the issue of intercultural understanding, see “My Day,” 25 November 1939. https://www2.gwu. edu/~erpapers/documents/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1939&_ f=md055433, Accessed 19 February 2019. 30. Beasley, The White House Press Conferences, 2. 31. Idem, x. 32. Maurine H. Beasley, “The Press Conference of Eleanor Roosevelt,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Corvallis, OR, 6–9 August 1983, 1. 33. Ibid., 7. 34. Beasley, “The Press Conferences of Eleanor Roosevelt,” 1; Black quoted in Beasley, “The Press Conferences of Eleanor Roosevelt,” 4. 35. Ibid., 2. 36. Black, Casting, 25. 37. Lumsden, Linda. 1995. ‘You’re a Tough Guy, Mary—And a First-Rate Newspaperman’: Gender and Women Journalists in the 1920s and 1930s. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 72, 4: 913–921. This also holds for the few Dutch female journalists who were on the dailies’ payroll: during the 1930s, they had no time for collective feminist actions, and they did not see any point in it: “each struggled for herself” (Elias, Mirjam. 1986. Voor zover plaats aan de perstafel: Honderd jaar vechten om een plaats te veroveren. In Voor zover plaats aan de perstafel: Vrouwen in de dagbladjournalistiek, vroeger en nu, eds. Els Diekerhof, Mirjam Elias, Marjan Sax. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 25. 38. Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), 103. 39. Pos, Ik zag, 224.

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40. Ibid. Pos uses the Dutch term “negerbedienden.” Ann Cootrell Free, one of the regulars at the press conferences, recalls years later “how women reporters rushed up the White House stairs in an unseemly dash for front-­ row seats in the second-floor Monroe Room” (Beasley, Maurine H. 2010. Transformative First Lady. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 88). 41. Pos, Ik zag, 224. Pos does not make clear whether other (female) foreign correspondents were granted a seat up front. 42. Reporting on her attendance of the presidential press conference, Pos states in her personal notes that she is not allowed to enter the “special door” for the foreign press but has to find her way to the press room with all the other reporters. In her published account, however, she has altered this awkward situation and states that upon arrival of the president, when all reporters rushed to the door that would open to the president’s study, she is allowed to enter another door: “[…] otherwise I would never have been able to see even a glimpse of President Roosevelt, as the others were crowding into the President’s desk. Now I was offered a seat on the first row.” Pos, Ik zag, 235. Apparently, having her Dutch audience in mind, Pos wishes to create a public persona that occupies a special place during presidential press conferences. 43. Other women writers who attended Eleanor Roosevelt’s conferences have similarly described the place, such as Knapp, Sally. 1949. Eleanor Roosevelt: A Biography. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 97. 44. Pos, Ik zag, 225. 45. Pos, Mary. 1938. Bij de First Lady van de Ver. [sic] Staten: Een vrouw, die zichzelf durft te zijn. [with the First Lady of the US: A woman who dares to be herself]. De Telegraaf 17 April 1938. 46. Pos on occasion described first ladies as simple, as is the case when she portrays Mrs. Elizabeth Verwoerd Schoonbee, the South African Prime Minister’s wife when she visits the couple in the 1960s. Mary Pos. 1968. Wie was Dr. Verwoerd? Utrecht: De Banier, 125. 47. Mary Pos, “vervolg conferentie Mrs. Roosevelt.” Folder 55 (Typescripts of articles and lectures 1948 and n.d.),” Mary Pos Papers, HDC. 48. Pos, Ik zag, 225. 49. Ibid., 226. 50. Cook, Blanche Wiesen. 2000. Introduction. Eleanor Roosevelt: Vol 2, The Defining Years, 1933–1938. New York: Penguin; Beasley, White House Press Conferences, 1, 3–4.; Beasley, Transformative, 97; Black, Allida M. 1996. Casting Her Own Shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism. New York: Colombia University Press, 1996, 25. 51. Caroli, Betty Boyd. 2010. First Ladies: From Martha Washington to Michelle Obama. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 195. Eleanor Roosevelt

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would continue to do so in later years; see Binker, Mary Jo, ed. 2018. If You Ask Me: Essential Advice from Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Atria Books. 52. During those years, Pos had several lovers, including the Swiss one mentioned above. Pos was not a believer in sex radicalism, as, for example, defined by Mary K.  Trigg in Feminism as Life’s Work: Four Modern American Women Through Two World Wars (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press 2014). Pos’ diaries indicate that she felt rather guilty about her secret love affairs, but when reproached about her infidelity, she would retort that she would negotiate with God later on. It seems that most of those who read Pos’ work and attended her lectures were not aware of her love life. Pos’ successful career appears not to have suffered from rumors about such private details. 53. Pos, “vervolg conferentie Mrs. Roosevelt.” 54. Ibid. 55. Mary Pos, undated and untitled lecture on “het leven van de vrouw in Amerika [woman’s life in America],” Folder 55, Box 8: Typescripts of articles and lectures, 1948; n.d. 56. Pos, undated and untitled lecture. 57. Pos, undated and untitled lecture. Pos does not mention here that at this time Dutch women still had to deal with household shortages, low wages, and other Reconstruction problems. 58. Pos, Ik zag, 240. 59. Pos, Ik zag, 239. 60. Ibid. 61. Emphasis added. Pos, “vervolg conferentie Mrs. Roosevelt.” In none of her written work does Pos use the term “age of Amazons,” neither has she otherwise referred to a matriarchal or utopian place. I therefore tentatively assume this is Roosevelt’s phrase. 62. Eleanor, Roosevelt. 1937. “My Day,” 23 December 1937, http://www. gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?Y=1937&f=md054831. Accessed 26 February 2019. 63. She does not mention any language barriers, but we know from personal sources that Pos felt insecure about her fluency in English. 64. Pos, Ik zag, 240 65. Beasley, The White House Press Conferences, 16, 25. 66. Beasley, Transformative, 98. 67. Black, Casting, 25–26. In this sense, the press conferences showed an interesting dynamic of reciprocity: whereas Roosevelt saw her job partially as educating her “press girls” (Beasley, The White House Press Conferences, 1), many reporters in their turn supported Roosevelt, and “some actively helped her avoid awkward situations by coming to her defense if questions

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seemed hostile. They saw her as naïve and in need of their protection,” Beasley, Transformative, 112, 88–89. 68. Pos, undated and untitled lecture. 69. Pos, “vervolg conferentie Mrs. Roosevelt.” 70. Pos, Ik zag, 227. 71. Mary Pos, diary entry 5 July 1950, Folder 45 (Diaries 1945–1952), Mary Pos Papers, HDC. 72. Parker, Karen. 2019. Republik Maluku: The Case for Self-determination A Briefing Paper of Humanitarian Law Project International Educational Development and Association of Humanitarian Lawyers. Presented to The United Nations Commission on Human Rights 1996 Session March Geneva. www.republikmalukuselatan.nl. Accessed 12 July 2019. See also Chauvel, Richard. 1990. Nationalists, Soldiers and Separatists: The Ambonese Island from Colonialism to Revolt, 1880–1950. Leiden, KITLV, Chapter XVIII. 73. Parker, Republik, 12; Smeets, Henk and Fridus Steijlen. 2006. In Nederland gebleven: De geschiedenis van Molukkers 1951–2006. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker and Moluks Historisch Museum 2006, 48. 74. Letter from Gemeenschappelijke Actie van Nederlandse Vrouwen to Eleanor Roosevelt, 17 June 1950, Eleanor Roosevelt Trip File 1950. Box 1991. File: European Trip 1950, Holland. Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY. 75. Hoog bezoek aan Oud-Vossemeer: Mevrouw Roosevelt werd een hartelijke ontvangst bereid. 1950. Eilandennieuws June 24, http://www.oudvossemeer.com/roos1.htm#.WBvsY8lAFf4. Accessed 12 July 2019. See also Nieuwe Leidsche Courant 21 June 1950. 76. Letter about Ambon signed by Mary Pos and others, Eleanor Roosevelt Trip File 1950. Box 1991. File: European Trip 1950, Holland. Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY 77. Ibid. 78. See, for instance, https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc. cfm?_y=1948&_f=md001146. Accessed 26 February 2019. 79. I have only found one (published) source where Roosevelt seems to have actively supported a Moluccan appeal for assistance, but that was later. In the early 1960s, she wrote a letter to Adlai Stevenson, enclosing a plea from the South Moluccas, stating: “I seem to be swamping you with letters & I apologize for taking your time.” Richard Henry, Eleanor Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson, Series: The World of the Roosevelts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 203. 80. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1946. “My Day,” 27 December 1946. https://www2. gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1946&_f=md000532. Accessed 12 July 2019.

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81. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1949. “My Day,” 29 December 1949. https://www2. gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1949&_f=md001475. Accessed 12 July 2019. 82. Mary Pos, diary entry 5 July 1950. 83. h t t p s : / / i l i b r a r i a n a . w o r d p r e s s . c o m / 2 0 1 2 / 0 1 / 0 4 / m a r y - p o s 1904-1987-de-eerste-vrouwelijke-reisjournaliste. Accessed 19 February 2019. 84. The discussed editorial or column titled “In het vizier” was possibly written by Johan Winkler (1898–1986), who was chief editor of Vrij Nederland starting in 1950. Henk van Randwijk, who was chief editor until Winkler took over in 1950, is most certainly not the author. He and Pos were both members of a Protestant Christian authors’ society (Christelijke Auteurskring), had jointly contributed to a collection of poetry (Verzeild bestek: Uitgave ter gelegenheid van het tweede lustrum van den christelijken auteurskring 1929–1939, 1939, red. G.  Kamphuis et  al. Kampen: Kok Publishers 1939), and had supported Pos when Het Parool accused her of collaboration with the Nazis in the summer of 1945. 85. “In het vizier,” 1. 86. Ibid. 87. Ibid. 88. De Tijd 106:3, 20 June 1950, 3. Notities uit Nederland, AID “De Preanger Bode,” Tuesday 4 July 1950, 1. Beasley discusses Eleanor Roosevelt’s media training, which included guidance in not being impulsive (Beasley, Maurine H. 1987. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media: A Public Quest for SelfFulfillment. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 42). 89. Ibid. 90. Beasley, Maurine H., Holly C. Shulman, and Henry R. Beasley, eds. 2001. The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia. Westport, CT, London: Greenwood Press, 118. See also Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2. 91. Ibid. 92. Baritono, Eleanor Roosevelt at the United Nations, 18.

Eleanor Roosevelt’s Autofabrication as Gendered Premediation of a Female Presidency Sara Polak

Eleanor Roosevelt was not keen on being called a feminist, and although she definitely took up many feminist causes, she also held on to principles that could be considered old-fashioned even in the 1940s.1 Eleanor Roosevelt was among the most influential women in American history, but at the same time would often in her communication stress her wifely role. As First Lady, she began to organize her own press conferences exclusively for women reporters, but also regularly insisted on the importance of domesticity and motherhood for women. For instance, in her advice column in the Ladies Home Journal, she advised a young woman working in the war industry not to prioritize work over family: “Since you married him, I should think a baby was something you would both want.”2 Eleanor Roosevelt’s insinuation that it was impossible for the letter writer to prefer putting off having a baby, even while the letter writer explicitly writes that she does prefer this, shows her tendency in this instance toward Victorian morality, at least in the context of the Ladies Home Journal. Although the

S. Polak (*) Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Fazzi, A. Luscombe (eds.), Eleanor Roosevelt’s Views on Diplomacy and Democracy, The World of the Roosevelts, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42315-5_9

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letter writer says: “My husband is all for having a baby right away, but I want to keep on with my job until the war is over,” Roosevelt stresses that having a baby is an only, perhaps the only, reasonable and appropriate ambition “since you married him.” Simultaneously, she often acted upon what seems to have been a fairly radical feminist agenda: because of her female-only press conferences, news media had to retain White House reporter positions for women throughout the Depression. Moreover, Roosevelt dedicated a great deal of time and attention to supporting women’s initiatives and educating women, particularly regarding political activism and global politics broadly, using a wide range of forms and media, including magazines, radio programs, and television shows for housewives. One might argue that there is a discrepancy between Eleanor Roosevelt’s somewhat old-fashioned discourse with regard to gender and her highly progressive practice. This could be considered a form of “tactics from the subjugated,” except that Roosevelt of course was hardly truly subjugated, certainly not during and after Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR’s) presidency.3 The people she helped empower often were, but Eleanor Roosevelt herself actually marshaled rather a lot of influence on politics, arguably indeed more than she should have had, because she did not formally have a public function, nor had she been elected to political office. Playing down the extent of her power, particularly as First Lady, was thus also a necessity. Rhetorically posing as traditionally feminine—modest, reticent, deferential—she tended to cast her positions and actions as unthreatening. She did contribute to the wider public debate, for example, after the USA’s initial engagement in World War II, when she defended her husband’s position; and she also at times opposed his political choices. She no doubt followed her own convictions in this, which were different from his policies, but in so far as she publicized her dissent or support, Roosevelt was careful and measured. The purpose of her “My Day” column (that ran six days a week from the end of 1935 to 1962), certainly initially, was ostensibly not to discuss politics, but rather to relate her own everyday life and experiences as First Lady. Particularly in the column’s early days, Eleanor usually did manage not to get dragged into politics.4 Her performance of domesticity and modesty gave her considerable space to act independently, particularly in the margin of what was seen as politically important or sensitive, both within Franklin Roosevelt’s administrations and after his death as a public intellectual, diplomat, and delegate to the United Nations.

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In this combination of reticent domesticity—often understood as shyness—and often-successful activism, Roosevelt’s public writing was one of the main ways she performed as domestic. Her activism was at least equally present, but it was less visible in the public perception. Indeed, Roosevelt’s more activist interventions were often highly invisible, or at least, her role remained invisible to the public. This invisibility of Roosevelt’s influential activism in the context of public and foreign policy, and the clear visibility of her homely writing, has led many Eleanor Roosevelt historians to the position that she has not been done enough justice in cultural remembrance. Jo Binker and Brigid O’Farrell, of the George Washington University “My Day” project which made a large portion of Eleanor Roosevelt’s papers digitally accessible, expressed their disappointment, for instance, that Ken Burns’ 14-hour PBS documentary The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (2014), spent less time on her life and achievements than on her husband’s and uncle’s: As a savvy producer and consumer of television, Eleanor Roosevelt would have been the first to appreciate Burns’s series on her family. She would have welcomed his interest in their lives and accomplishments but she would have been puzzled and dismayed at the amount of time devoted to her private life. […] Eleanor Roosevelt’s contributions are often overlooked and undervalued.5

Clearly, the assumption here is that Eleanor Roosevelt would be “puzzled and dismayed” that her private life did not receive enough attention, but there are many instances in which she expressed reticence about her private life and explicitly stressed that she did not consider it interesting or appropriate to direct a great deal of public attention to this aspect of her existence. Although the criticism that Eleanor Roosevelt’s contributions have been “overlooked and undervalued” is fair, especially compared to Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt’s, this effect should also be understood as a result of Eleanor Roosevelt’s successful self-presentation and invisible exercise of political power. If she would indeed have been dismayed at the lack of attention given to her by the series, the seemingly overlooked work in the public sphere would be at issue, rather than her private life. As Blanche Wiesen Cook and others have shown, however, there is a great deal of evidence that Eleanor Roosevelt, even if she denied this, enjoyed her active involvement in politics.6 Indeed, a key manner in which she played the game of politics was to present herself strategically to allow

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other interested parties to overlook and undervalue her influence. This was, as I shall discuss, with reference to Cynthia Enloe’s model of how international relations are invisibly negotiated, particularly successful in foreign policy.7 This chapter, therefore, analyzes the gendered genealogy and afterlife of Eleanor Roosevelt’s role in American foreign policy.

Genealogy of a Political Career on the Edge of the Establishment In the 1920s, in the years after Franklin Roosevelt had suffered polio and was starting to build up his political career again despite no longer being able to walk unassisted, Eleanor Roosevelt first entered the public arena. She did so to substitute for her husband before he was ready to perform publicly. Coached intensively by her husband’s right hand, Louis Howe, she got onto the campaign trail and embarked on a wide range of public speaking engagements. Although she at first feared and loathed being at the center of public attention, she soon started to enjoy public speaking. During the same period in which Franklin Roosevelt was learning to cope with disability, she learned the ropes of key parts of his public role, acquired enthusiasm for that role, and developed her talent for it.8 The argument has often been put forward, both by historians and others, that the time between 1918, when Eleanor found out that her husband was having an affair with Lucy Mercer, and 1924, when FDR for the first time after his illness took to the national political stage again, was crucial to both his and her personal development.9 They seem certainly to have been formative for Eleanor Roosevelt, who famously commented on her discovery of Franklin’s affair that “the bottom dropped out of my particular world, and I faced myself, my surroundings, my world, honestly for the first time.”10 What precisely Eleanor Roosevelt “fac[ed] honestly” remains implicit, but the suggestion is that she came to perceive herself to have lived within a fiction of harmony without realizing it. She seems to describe a fall into consciousness regarding the implicit but insidious, and gendered power relation, guiding “her particular world.” This fall into consciousness made her aware of the political reality of her world, and her place of limited but also usable power within it. Eleanor Roosevelt assumed a novel independence which had to be integrated with her somewhat old-fashioned performance of femininity, in order to deal with the culturally sensitive incongruity between autonomy

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and gendered expectations. When one thinks of her political activism as a function of how her marriage became a mutually advantageous partnership on an explicitly political level—or as something that was necessitated by her husband’s disability—the role can easily seem something that forced itself upon her. However, she had also been raised with a strong penchant for progressive activism, which came to the fore well before any marital discord. In any case, Roosevelt regularly positioned herself as having taken on a very visible position despite her natural inclinations. FDR’s personal assistant Louis Howe, who in 1921 became intensely aware of the need to have a mobile Roosevelt operate literally in the name of the one in polio rehabilitation, was a key figure in coaching Eleanor to occupy a mature position as an independent agent beside FDR. Such factors contributed to spurring Eleanor Roosevelt on to learn to juggle her femininity with a public role and increasing political clout. Autofabrication is a term to complement Stephen Greenblatt’s notion of self-fashioning.11 Whereas self-fashioning pertains primarily to how selves were fashioned in interaction with their environment, autofabrication refers to the process in which a leader’s public image (rather than self) is shaped, by this person and their entourage. Self-fashioning concerns the making of an individual self, driven both by the person involved and by environmental pressures and circumstances, which are shaped in turn by cultural and ideological demands. Self-fashioning as a concept works well to consider the fashioning of most selves, but to theorize the making of iconic political leaders, it is necessary to take into account the fact that political leaders embody and exert great power, and that they, in modern democratic systems, represent their electorate. Thus, they are under pressure to project themselves as relatable public icons that a diverse audience can identify with, which can function to obscure their exertion of power. FDR exemplified success in autofabrication, as his largely celebratory remembrance attests.12 Eleanor Roosevelt was a crucial agent in FDR’s autofabrication and, because she survived him and remained publicly active and visible, of his legacy. She became especially important to his autofabrication because of her adeptness at expanding his influence, informally and indirectly, into spaces such as the domestic sphere, entertainment sections of mass media, and also, beyond his death. Eleanor Roosevelt amplified FDR’s autofabrication by expanding his reach into areas not habitually considered the realm of presidential leadership. Limiting the concept of autofabrication to elected political leaders would mean that Eleanor Roosevelt could not have had her own

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autofabrication. However, as one of the agents in FDR’s autofabrication, and particularly after his death, she effectively and covertly used her own informal power—as if he were still president, and she the person with access to his wishes—while simultaneously presenting a consistent public image, visible but also stressing her modesty. Eleanor Roosevelt, for instance, used her deceased husband’s lingering authority when she— while she had previously always signed off as “Eleanor Roosevelt”—started to sign letters and columns with “Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt.” In a similar way, she used her name and authority during the McCarthy era to extend her protective chairmanship to organizations that were at risk of being targeted as potentially having communist sympathies.13 Thus, although autofabrication as a term refers specifically to leaders who hold formal power over and formally represent their subjects, Eleanor Roosevelt did actualy have real power, if not formally, and so she did not merely help create her husband’s public image, but simultaneously worked on her own gendered autofabrication. Unlike in formal, and male, leaders’ autofabrication, invisibility and a display of modesty were important. One illustrative instance of Roosevelt’s ambiguous stressing of her own modesty occurred in a “My Day” column in which she reviews the opening night of Dore Schary’s play Sunrise at Campobello, a dramatic narration of FDR’s illness with polio and initial rehabilitation (“My Day,” February 4, 1958). Regarding the play’s dramatic representation of herself, Eleanor Roosevelt writes: “Miss Mary Fickett did an excellent job of being a very sweet character, which she is in the play. I am afraid I was never really like Mr. Schary’s picture of myself, so I could even look upon the portrayal of myself in a fictional light!”14 When calling the actress’ representation of herself “very sweet,” while denying that she ever was “really like” that, Eleanor distances herself from the representation in the play, without giving away what she was “really like.” In doing so, she hints at her own modesty, and assertively refuses that cutesy view of herself. She seems to endorse the idea that sweetness is a positive trait, but also implicitly declares herself impervious to that compliment within the negotiation of power. Attending the play’s opening night and positively reviewing it, however, in itself already lends weight and a hint of veracity to the play. Sunrise at Campobello was adapted as a successful film in 1960, nominated for four Academy Awards, and won a Best Actress Golden Globe Award for Greer Garson’s role of Eleanor Roosevelt. Within Sunrise at Campobello’s universe, the Eleanor Roosevelt character is crucial to the narrative’s success; outside of that universe, the real Eleanor Roosevelt

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enabled its making. She mentioned in a column in June 1960 that the filming was “in full swing” at the main house and her private cottage at Hyde Park—thus once more advertising and officiously authorizing it. Endorsing Sunrise at Campobello, and especially her remark about Fickett’s “sweetness,” exemplifies how Eleanor Roosevelt, through her role as agent of her husband’s autofabrication, also attended to her own— insinuating that she was too modest to call herself sweet, and hinting at something sharper than the fictional rendering as sweet. However, the fact that this remains so diffuse in the end functions both to stress Eleanor Roosevelt’s mysteriousness and her elusive power. On paper, Eleanor Roosevelt had no more political power than any other American citizen, but in reality, she held a great deal of political influence, both through her husband and in his name. During the FDR administrations, the Democratic Party often enlisted her help to keep in the fold particular parts of its constituency on the more radical left wing in exchange for small or symbolic concessions to groups Eleanor Roosevelt particularly advocated for, and her willingness to engage in such deals often meant party officials would not be forced to address controversial or otherwise politically sensitive issues.15 This meant that many politicians and other leaders informally “owed” Eleanor Roosevelt favors, and after Franklin Roosevelt’s death, her voice also came to implicitly inherit some of his authority. Many of Roosevelt’s citations of what her husband would have said or wanted carried the suggestion of wifely deference, when in fact she used his name and presumable views to suit her own needs. For instance, in the “My Day” column of June 16, 1953, she expresses criticism at the USA’s use of the atomic bomb against Japan in 1945, and the usual arguments to defend the use of the bomb: “It is useless to say that Germany started the war and began the research which we were then obliged to take over and which led to the discovery of the atom bomb.” This was a firm conviction Eleanor Roosevelt held from right after the events onward. Since Franklin Roosevelt had the atomic bomb developed, it is by no means clear he would have agreed with her, or prevented its use. But Eleanor, following the passage above, refers to Franklin’s desolation after Pearl Harbor to denounce the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (“I can remember only too well my husband’s feeling and the feeling of the people of the U.S. when we first heard of Pearl Harbor. […] Out of all this came Hiroshima. […] As one contemplates Hiroshima, one can only say God grant to men greater wisdom in the future.”).16 Thus, she implicitly equates Pearl Harbor (which every

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reader would be presumed to deplore, like Franklin Roosevelt) with Hiroshima. FDR died before Hiroshima was bombed, but there is little evidence that he considered doing so a lack of wisdom. Eleanor Roosevelt cleverly avoids speculating about this, but her at the time extremely controversial critique of the use of the bombs is given weight through FDR’s presidential authority. Simultaneously, it is toned down by the humility expressed in her deferrence to her husband’s presumable feelings. Still, in suggesting that FDR might have disapproved of the atomic attack on Hiroshima, Eleanor Roosevelt “borrowed” some of his authority, continuing a pattern in which she had been one of his communication channels into places FDR was physically unable to access, or areas of society and public opinion making that were not the president’s natural terrain. After FDR’s death, Eleanor Roosevelt’s continuing representation of course no longer supported him politically, but it often did contribute to his celebratory remembrance. But what was more important: it did contribute to Eleanor Roosevelt’s own authority and influence, while it kept up her carefully built public image of modesty, even though, of course, after 1945, she began to accept public positions, and was thus responsible for her own actions. Another key manner in which Eleanor Roosevelt expanded the reach of Franklin’s autofabrication, as well as her own, was through operating as the writer and narrator of his nomos. Nomos, a term which Robert Cover defined as a “normative universe,” revolves around the constant process of creating and maintaining “a world of right and wrong, of lawful and unlawful, of valid and void.”17 As the leader of the federal government’s executive branch, FDR was deeply involved in the creation and maintenance of the American nomos on a political and legal level, and one might indeed argue that he changed it for the decades to come. Although he did not have the formal powers of legislation or jurisdiction, his visions and decisions regulated and ordered American society and lives around the world. More than other presidents, he reframed the relationship between citizens and the government, both through his media communication and by changing drastically what kinds of concrete support American citizens might expect from the government. He was both in the executive and in the dramatic sense of the word the lead actor, though simultaneously, he needed to consider the desirability of displaying his power. Eleanor Roosevelt’s narrative of the nomos the President inhabited and participated in shaping was a vehicle, among other things, for displaying some and occluding other elements of this dynamic. Eleanor Roosevelt effectively

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became the narrator of the nomos FDR produced and sustained, increasingly so over time, and she continued to act as the agent of his nomos and of his legacy after his death. Eleanor Roosevelt filled the gap left by her husband through writing. Franklin Roosevelt spoke and acted—appropriately for an executive and a dramatic actor. He left a large amount of voice recordings and a library filled with personal and public paper trail of his life and presidency, but he actually wrote little; indeed, he often avoided note-taking during meetings with cabinet members or staff. His signature was primarily performative, an act to transform a formulaic text into law—if he wrote, it was not in a narrative sense. Eleanor Roosevelt, in contrast, wrote a lot of narrative memoir, and when she signed off her writings with her name, in her own handwriting, this had the effect of stressing the personal nature of her writing. Winston Churchill was both a major actor in and a narrator of World War II; Franklin Roosevelt, however, did not write the history of the war or any event during his presidency, and in a sense passed on that role to Eleanor.18 She took this up with fervor through her daily columns, monthly pieces in a wide range of magazines, and a total of four autobiographies. One may understand Franklin Roosevelt’s disinterest in leaving narrative writing or any memoir as part of his modernity and his preference for mass media—radio, photography, newsreels—but at the same time, Eleanor Roosevelt’s writing did contribute proverbially to his immortality. She actively took forward the issues and ideals of his nomos through narrative. Eleanor Roosevelt’s writing can be read as contributing to Franklin’s autofabrication, but it is clearly part of a double deal: by enabling his public image to reach new (largely female-gendered, domestic) realms, Eleanor Roosevelt also built a massive platform for herself. Her narrative voice became a household article with unprecedented authority throughout the Western world. Politically, she also functioned to connect Franklin’s centrism with the much more radically progressive wing of the Democratic Party.19 The public persona she honed over time continued to relate back to her role representing FDR, often to lend authority to her own positions, while suggesting appropriate deference to a male leader’s perception. Nonetheless, Roosevelt assertively argued her own positions on national and international issues, thus educating and informing American audiences with a relatively large distance from the machinations of international politics. In that shape, and channeled through the well-known voice of the USA’s longtime First Lady, whom Harry Truman later dubbed

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“First Lady of the World,” Eleanor Roosevelt’s words were received as unthreatening and yet commanding respect. This reception, and Roosevelt’s astuteness in catering to the silent expectations and needs of formal stakeholders within foreign policy, suggests that Eleanor Roosevelt did actually autofabricate, but, through the use of gender and gender expectations, she could, at least to citizens with a reasonable distance from the process of politics, come across as less of a politician than she really was.

The Logic of Premediation: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Foreshadowing of Future Feminist Issues Richard Grusin, who, together with Jay Bolton, coined the term remediation to refer to new media’s logic of redesigning older media forms and genres,20 a few years later theorized the notion of premediation.21 Premediation refers to the way in which events, particularly since 9/11, often are premediated in advance, following a range of potential scenarios, so that when they do happen, they are always already a remediation. Grusin links this need for constant premediation to anxiety caused by 9/11 about the shock of the unexpected that marks terrorism. However, he also stresses that premediation has been around for much longer, and often also functions to make possible and imaginable certain scenarios, as various films premediating 9/11 (Independence Day [1996], Armageddon [1998]) in fact did. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt both seemed to lend themselves, and be interested in, the possibility of functioning as a premediation, and propelling either themselves or their political causes into the future, by explicitly imagining this and offering premediations of potential futures to others. Eleanor Roosevelt’s performative positioning as an activist on the edge of the establishment during her husband’s presidency, and after his death as a public official in the arena of international politics, can be understood in the context of Cynthia Enloe’s paradigmatic Bananas, Beaches, Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (1990).22 Enloe’s study expanded the perspective of international politics beyond its traditional focus on powerful white men who control the complex workings of global international politics. She argued that to grasp the massive and seemingly unalterable apparatus of world order, the focus must be expanded to include tourists, chambermaids, prostitutes, military wives at foreign

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bases, and all others who have little formal power but are impacted by and are part of the worldwide choreography of international politics. The key question “Where are the women in international politics?” is productive because it offers a perspective on international politics that is not limited to official institutional centers of power. The place of women globally supporting the international political system as secretaries, wives, and chambermaids seems so natural and unalterable, also to themselves, that the people involved are in perfect harmony with patriarchic ideology, unaware of their contribution. Since Enloe made this argument, some female American politicians have reached positions of great formal power in international politics—Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice—in part maybe as an effect of increased awareness of the culturally constructed character of an apparatus that once seemed unchangeable or even predestined. However, Eleanor Roosevelt’s presence as a force in international politics is both a precursor and a premediation to Enloe’s ideas. At the same time, she firmly supported the patriarchic nomos created and maintained by her husband, and she also used her grasp of her value to that nomos to maximize her influence. Moreover, by making a woman in charge of international politics imaginable, she functioned, through her position, also as a paradigmatic enabler to future, more formally established, power positions of women such as Albright, Clinton, and Rice. Enloe’s research convincingly shows that military wives were vital to the success, perceived legitimacy, and continued existence of many bases. However, groups of military wives only started to claim recognition of this in the 1980s; until then, their crucial contribution had been taken for granted by themselves as well as by the male military leadership.23 According to Enloe, this presumption of wifely support is essential for male leaders. What her analysis lays bare is essentially an internalized conviction that female contributions ought to be invisible sacrifices made out of devotion and borne in silence, rather than requiring compensation in money or power on an equal footing with men. The book radically pulls into the light the indispensable contributions of women, often made from marginalized or disempowered positions. This shows both their agency and their unused room for negotiation. Enloe expanded what was perceived as the realm of politics to show the potential for the empowerment of those who are not or only marginally involved in decision-making. Eleanor Roosevelt had a somewhat similar agenda in the way she took politics into spheres where it was usually less

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prominent. She did this in a manner far less pronounced or radical than Enloe, but she comprehended on a profound level that other spheres than the traditionally political could influence political decision-makers. Unlike Enloe, Eleanor Roosevelt, instead of wanting to radically redistribute power, used the political invisibility of her gender and traditional spheres of operation to covertly exercise power. By operating informally, on the edge or outside of politics, she employed her power to contribute to the enfranchisement of women, laborers, and minorities, by helping them in civically and medially symbolic ways, though still outside of traditional politics. Thus, Eleanor Roosevelt, in practice, shared Enloe’s vision that influence could be used from marginal and seemingly non-political spheres, particularly the domestic, that is, that the realm of politics was larger than it is commonly perceived to be. However, Roosevelt employed her invisibility during the White House years to help the marginalized, rather than exposing it as a problem, reinforcing the status quo. As such, she came to use the gaps Franklin left her to fill, both to his and to her own advantage and to the advantage of some of the causes she supported. From that position she could arrange for black contralto Marian Anderson to perform at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, in 1939. This was both a great symbolic act in the, at that time, slow-moving emancipation of African Americans, and simultaneously, it was indeed symbolic, and did little to concretely increase the political influence of African Americans. As such, she could be argued to have placed many of the people she tried to help in a similar position to her own: not directly powerful, but located so that indirect influence might be exerted while also supporting the status quo. Her own limited empowerment and way of using the space she had alerted her to the complex expectations of American femininity. In her “My Day” column on August 13, 1942, she wrote about the heroic work of women trying to preserve the “prewar world” while their husbands were absent. She quoted at length from a text on a statue of the Pioneer Woman, a quintessentially American archetype: the line in the inscription which I like best: “And with all she lived with casual unawareness of her value to civilization.” There we have the secret which should be driven home to every woman. In countless homes in this country today, there are women who are “casually unaware” of the great accomplishments which are theirs. They will be recognized by history, but today we forget them because they do their daily

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tasks so casually that their heroism and the vital place which they fill in our world passes almost unnoticed, and certainly unsung in the present.24

What is laudable about the frontier woman—who Eleanor Roosevelt affirms remains highly relevant in 1942—is her “casual unawareness” of her contribution and accomplishment for society. Women are crucial but do not command, or get, their due reward in money or power, and to Eleanor Roosevelt, this unawareness and undemanding attitude is appropriate, indeed ladylike. The frontier woman’s modesty and the casual nature of her accomplishment is itself part of her “value to civilization.” Roosevelt by no means spurs the women “in countless homes” on to demand recognition of the “great accomplishments which are theirs”; to the contrary, she celebrates their selflessness. However, she does explicitly stress that they “fill a vital place” at home and in wartime jobs left vacant by men, and moreover asserts that “their heroism” will be “recognized by history.” It “passes almost unnoticed” because women’s heroism, for Eleanor Roosevelt, must include their renunciation of any claim to recognition in the present, but she argues future narratives will not allow women’s heroism to go “unsung.” Thus, she suggests, that although women may receive little material recognition within the normative universe they inhabit, they will not escape the attention of future narrative. Whether or not this is really the case—Roosevelt’s own contributions to American history and culture tend to be underrepresented as Binker and O’Farrell deplore in their review of Ken Burns’ documentary The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (2014)—the suggestion is that a modest place in the narrative and a marginal, but not powerless, position in the nomos is suitable for the blueprint of the American woman. Importantly, Roosevelt also notes that this casual unawareness is “the secret which should be driven home to every woman,” alerting readers publicly to the value of women’s contribution, while simultaneously stressing the importance of hiding it. Thus, she points out that most women have many uncashed checks, and at the same time she praises their generosity in not demanding recompense. This was a strategy she used in negotiating power herself: if she did require concrete compensations, she did so, characteristically, not for herself, but for the groups and goals she came out to support. In the expanded understanding of the political sphere proposed by Enloe—which included groups and interests not traditionally regarded as part of that realm—Eleanor Roosevelt thus did claim political power, while disguising this fact at the same time.

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Eleanor Roosevelt’s Casual Unawareness in Cultural Memory In the representations of the Roosevelts that exist in American popular culture, their informal and personal style continues to be celebrated, and Eleanor Roosevelt’s penchant to act as an off-the-cuff presidential substitute is a key element of this dynamic. Even her clever ways of directing attention to some issues and avoiding others, her manner of allowing FDR an unofficial second voice, to own or distance himself from as he saw fit, is in itself reflected in cultural memory. The movie Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) contains various examples of this: throughout the film viewers are led to suspect that the Eleanor character takes the initiative to serve hotdogs to the British King and Queen to humiliate them by forcing them to publicly eat a vulgar snack associated with American Independence Day.25 As a result, Eleanor is depicted as secretly politically active and rebellious in the emotive margin of otherwise pragmatic and rational international politics. However, in the end, it is insinuated that the hotdogs were FDR’s idea after all and that he deliberately used his wife’s reputation in order to deflect suspicion away from himself. The historical event now known as the “Hot Dog Summit” of June 11, 1939, was, according to David Woolner, planned in detail by FDR, including the hot dogs.26 Whether or not there is evidence to believe that he attempted, as he does in the film, to suggest that the hot dogs were his wife’s devious plan, it is exemplary of an actual as well as a popularly remembered dynamic between them. A key effect of casting Eleanor Roosevelt as an officious voice alongside FDR’s official one, especially with her introduction of domesticity into the public icon, is that Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, in autofabrication and later, in public remembrance, have remained extremely successful as the nation’s projected parents. The broad knowledge that during the presidency they shared no sex life is no problem here—indeed for the popular imagination, this might be considered an advantage. They already did have five children, and so they had clearly had a sexual relationship in the past, and the lack of eroticism between them opened up the potential to fantasize about sexual relationships they may each have had with others, while at the same time, they remained real parents and successfully functioned as symbolic parents to the nation. This remembrance of the Roosevelts as a presidential couple whose officious acts and expressions are intertwined with their public policies and administration is echoed and (re)produced in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s

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paradigmatic No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Home Front in World War II.27 This biography carefully weaves the Roosevelts’ private and public lives into one fabric, initially through what in cinematic terms would be considered a parallel projection of the German occupation of Europe in 1940 and FDR’s illness with polio in 1921. Thus, the home front is consistently interpreted as “national American,” on the one hand, and “domestic,” that is, within the intimacy of the Roosevelts’ private home, on the other. The implied claim is that the Roosevelt home is a direct reflection of America as a whole, casting the family as an inclusive allegory for the nation and all its citizens. No Ordinary Time refers to its dramatis personae by their first names, and, like Daniel Petrie’s Eleanor and Franklin biopic, it often stages Eleanor Roosevelt as narrator—perhaps because the personal, familial side of the narrative relies heavily on Eleanor Roosevelt’s autobiographical writings.28 As signaled by the use of first names, the biography is intensely intimate. It infers strong links between private events in the Roosevelts’ lives and public affairs of the USA’s engagement in the war. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, for instance, is framed in an elaborate discussion of the deaths of FDR’s mother and Eleanor Roosevelt’s brother in the months previous to December 7, 1941. A great deal of attention is focused on the private memories and grieving process of both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. The book makes a recurrent suggestion that both worked so concertedly on preparing for the war they realized was coming, partly to alleviate their mourning, for instance, when Goodwin quotes Eleanor Roosevelt’s memoir: “I think it was in an attempt to numb this feeling that I worked so hard at the Office of Civilian Defense that fall.”29 The final chapter similarly links Eleanor Roosevelt’s personal grief after her husband’s decease, and her discovery that his extramarital relationship had been revived, to her decision to continue to bear out his political and ideological legacy. As the war ended, Eleanor Roosevelt, according to Goodwin, also made peace with the past of her troubled marriage. For the rest of her life, her son Elliott observed, Eleanor “chose to remember only the lovely times they had shared, never the estrangement and pain.” She loved to quote word for word the things they had told one another. She kept up the traditions he had established for the family— including the picnic on the Fourth of July and the reading of Dickens at Christmas. Maureen Corr, Eleanor’s secretary during the 1940s and 1950s, remembers her “constantly talking about what Franklin did or what Franklin said or…how Franklin thought about this or that. And

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every time she mentioned his name you could hear the emotion in her voice and see the glow in her eyes.” In these first months on her own, Eleanor derived constant comfort from a little verse sent to her by a friend. “They are not dead who live in lives they leave behind. In those whom they have blessed they live a life again.” These simple lines, she wrote, inspired her to make the rest of her life worthy of her husband’s memory. As long as she continued to fight for his ideals, he would continue to live.30 Goodwin here interweaves Eleanor Roosevelt’s public and private roles, suggesting that the constant references to “what Franklin did or what Franklin said” were motivated by her personal grief and wish to hang on to affectionate memories. The final sentence suggests that Roosevelt’s motivation for continuing “to fight for his ideals” after FDR’s death was to keep alive his memory. I would read this as at least also a pretext to demand attention for her own political ideals. Goodwin does include the Roosevelts’ private life, and particularly Eleanor Roosevelt and the Roosevelts’ marital dynamics in her discussion of American executive war leadership. However, she does not, like Enloe, expand the scope of what she regards as political by including the Roosevelts’ private lives, instead treating their lives as an allegory to national events, casting “Franklin and Eleanor” as metaphorically parental figures to the nation. As a family, they are treated as premediating and personifying the USA at war, and therefore able to guide the USA through it. Goodwin does not include the private and the officious in her perception of the political, but she does treat it as a separate level that mirrors the public level of international politics, a movement that Eleanor’s posing as “casually unaware of her contribution” alongside FDR in a sense makes possible. Goodwin essentially treats the Roosevelts as a remediation of US history. She points out that they share “the sense of a cause successfully pursued through great difficulties, a theme common to America itself and to the family which guided it” (11). She implies that both the USA’s and the Roosevelts’ success was predicated on the greatness of the difficulties encountered and that the Roosevelts’ triumph in “guiding” the USA to victory hinged on their personal experience of “great difficulties.” Goodwin’s phrase “the family which guided it” firmly espouses the notion that Eleanor Roosevelt took up a deputy position in leading the USA, while expanding the presidency into the private and the officious, to benefit FDR’s public image as a paternal war president.

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Eleanor Roosevelt remained extremely influential after the war and her husband’s death. Although she did initially lower her visibility, she held on to various ways of remediating the past and also got caught up, sometimes inadvertently, in premediating potential futures. Journalists often asked her if she would consider running for political office, including the presidency, but she continued to present herself as FDR’s widow, even if her projects in reality were more her own than extrapolations of her husband’s wishes. As she wrote about this in an article in Look magazine in 1948, following her refusal to run for vice-president with Harry Truman: At first I was surprised that anyone should think that I would want to run for office, or that I was fitted to hold office. Then I realized that some people felt that I must have learned something from my husband in all the years that he was in public life! (…) The simple truth is that I have had my fill of public life of the more or less stereotyped kind.31

She continued to autofabricate her public persona as FDR’s wife and suggested that fitness for political office would have to have been learned from him. Moreover, even if she continued to exert political influence, she simultaneously kept posing as someone who only reluctantly, and to her own surprise, had a public life at all. A Gallup poll in December 1945 invited respondents to name potential candidates who “might make a good president.” In this poll Eleanor Roosevelt came fourth.32 This fantasy of having her run for the highest office in the land has proved persistent, against a background of a cultural imaginary that includes very few cinematic or other projections of future female presidents. Indeed, the few premediations of potential female American presidents that there are often do cast Eleanor Roosevelt in that role. Robin Gerber’s historical “what if?” novel Eleanor vs. Ike (2008) portrays an Eleanor Roosevelt who runs for president against Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and wins, thus allowing her a position of real power in a fictional universe.33 In real life, Eleanor Roosevelt never expressed the aspiration to become president or otherwise run for political office. But despite the fact that she would probably never have had a serious chance to be nominated within the Democratic Party—because she was a woman, but also because she represented the party’s radical left wing—the idea that she could have been a good candidate is easily revived by Gerber. Clearly, the Eleanor Roosevelt icon remained at hand for Gerber as a premediation of the

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potential election of Hillary Clinton to the presidency. Ellen Feldman— herself the author of Lucy (2004), a historical novel about Franklin Roosevelt’s extramarital relationship with Lucy Mercer—in her appraisal called Eleanor vs. Ike “oh-so-timely” in the context of 2008, when Clinton was running for the nomination as Democratic candidate. It seems indeed that—much as Feldman’s own novel about Franklin Roosevelt’s affair may have been inspired by the scandal around and impeachment of Bill Clinton—Gerber offers an imagination and remembrance of Eleanor Roosevelt as a potential presidential candidate to rally support for Hillary Clinton. In the novel, Eleanor Roosevelt even encounters a five-year-old Hillary Rodham. If the novel aimed to stage a fictional premediation of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, Eleanor Roosevelt was the only historical character Gerber could have cast in the lead role. However, the novel does more than that—it draws Eleanor Roosevelt into the center of political power, a position in which it is only too easy to imagine her, especially with the benefit of hindsight. Obviously, Hillary Clinton, too, has seen the striking parallels between herself and Eleanor Roosevelt, possibly throughout her adult life. Clinton has said on many occasions that Eleanor Roosevelt functioned as a role model and inspiration for her, and even that she tended to “talk” with her in her imagination: “[Eleanor Roosevelt] usually responds by telling me to buck up, or at least to grow skin as thick as a rhinoceros,” Clinton wrote in 1995, in a weekly syndicated newspaper column, which ran from 1995 to 2000, titled “Talking It Over.” It was modeled explicitly on Eleanor Roosevelt’s “My Day” columns.34 Apparently, as an activist First Lady with a political agenda of her own, Clinton considered contributing to the narrative of her husband’s nomos, as Eleanor Roosevelt had done, helpful and appropriate. Nevertheless, there exists a crucial difference between Eleanor Roosevelt’s and Hillary Clinton’s potential space to become president after having been First Lady, even if neither happened. Eleanor Roosevelt had no serious option except to operate from the margins of the political establishment—relatively influential given that she did not hold elected office, but still marginalized—a position from which she leveraged her influence covertly. Hillary Clinton, however, has practically come to embody the Democratic establishment. Whereas male candidates for the presidency may have been strong candidates for the nomination because of their position as outsiders or politically more marginal figures, for a

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female candidate to be nominated as candidate for either of the major parties, it is vital to have ample party support. Although the context has obviously changed, to acquire her position as a viable candidate, Hillary Clinton did use some strategies similar to Roosevelt’s “casual unawareness,” not in the subservient style of the frontier woman, who is truly unaware of her vital importance. Rather, like Eleanor Roosevelt, she was sharply mindful of the necessity to seem unaware and act unimposing. Especially during the 2016 presidential race, it became increasingly important that Clinton would perform a traditional gender role. Unlike male opponents, she had to smile in debates and speeches, limit modulations in her voice and gestures, and refrain from interrupting male candidates who did interrupt her. However, she did talk openly to her audience about the existence of such implicit limitations, which created space for herself and others to challenge sexism in policies and politics. She called out her opponent’s coarse misogyny, while answering society’s tendency to address women by their first name and men by their surname, not by emphatically asking to be called by her surname herself, but by addressing her opponent by his first name. On the other hand, of course, Hillary Clinton neither became the Democratic nominee in 2008 nor won the presidency in 2016. There are of course many reasons why this happened, but one of those is that Clinton’s gender continued to play a major role, as Trump’s purely gendered slight “such a nasty woman” (October 19, 2016) attests. Even if she could, in the twenty-first century, become Secretary of State, and thus a traditional key player in foreign affairs, perhaps more so that Cynthia Enloe had considered possible, she lost the race for the presidency, despite being obviously better qualified for the role than her opponent. It seems fair to say that the lack of premediation of a female presidency played into this—it was simply hard for many voters to imagine a female president, and there were few popular cultural texts available that had familiarized them and the media with this idea. Portrayals of Eleanor Roosevelt and fantasies about how she might have filled the role of US president are among the few available templates. These fantasies, however, were perhaps less helpful to Hillary Clinton than they might have seemed, because of Eleanor Roosevelt’s embrace of the language and gendered performance of domesticity and “casual unawareness.” Roosevelt may have paved the way for a candidate who was a First Lady aspiring to become Commander in Chief, but eventually Clinton’s assertion that she was the best and her request that voters declare themselves “#WithHer” was far removed from

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Eleanor Roosevelt’s intentionally invisible manner and her premediations of a female presidency.

Notes 1. Portions of this chapter reflect the author’s views as expressed in 2007. “And with all she lived with casual unawareness of her value to civilization”: Close-­reading Eleanor Roosevelt’s Autofabrication. European Journal of American studies, document 7. http://journals.openedition.org/ ejas/11926. doi:https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.11926; Klemesrud, Judy. 1984. Assessing Eleanor Roosevelt as a Feminist, The New  York Times, November 5. 2. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1943. If You Ask Me. Ladies Home Journal, January 1943. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers (Digital Edition). http://www.gwu. edu/~erpapers/IYAM/January1943.html. Accessed December 13, 2015. 3. De Certeau, Michel. 2011. The Practice of Everyday Life, Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 38. 4. Roosevelt, Eleanor. My Day (Digital Edition). Accessed December 13, 2015. 5. Binker, Mary Jo, and Brigid O’Farrell. 2014. This Is What Ken Burns Neglected to Tell You about Eleanor Roosevelt. HNN.com. History News Network, 12 July 2014. http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157795. Accessed December 13, 2015. 6. Cook, Blanche Wiesen. 1993. Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. I, 1884–1933. New York: Penguin, 1993, 382. 7. Enloe, Cynthia. 1990. Bananas, Beaches, Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press. 8. Smith, Jean Edward. 2007. FDR. New York: Random House, 199. 9. Gallagher, Hugh Gregory. 1995. FDR’s Splendid Deception: The Moving Story of Roosevelt’s Massive Disability and the Intense Efforts to Conceal It from the Public. St. Petersburg, FL: Vandamere Press. 10. Lash, Joseph P. 1982. Love Eleanor: Eleanor Roosevelt and Her Friends. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 66. 11. Polak, Sara. 2015. This is Roosevelt’s World – FDR as a Cultural Icon in American Memory. PhD Dissertation. Leiden: Leiden University. 12. This is analyzed in detail by David Reynolds in “FDR’s Foreign Policy and the Construction of American History 1945–1955” and David Woolner in “FDR: Reflections on Legacy and Leadership, the View from 2008,” both in 2008. FDR’s World: War, Peace and Legacies. David Woolner, Warren Kimball, and David Reynolds, eds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 13. Fazzi, Dario. 2016. A Voice of Conscience: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Anti-­ Nuclear Movement. New York: Palgrave, 59; Borgwardt, Elizabeth. 2005.

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A New Deal for the World: America’s Vision for Human Rights. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 14. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1958. My Day, February 4, 1958. http://www.gwu. edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1958&_f=md004030. Accessed December 13, 2015. 15. This argument is made, for instance, in Kearns Goodwin, Doris. 1994. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Home Front in World War II. New York: Simon and Schuster, 185–186. 16. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1953. My Day, June 16, 1953. http://www.gwu. edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1953&_f=md002564. Accessed 13 December 2015. 17. Cover, Robert. 1993. Narrative, Violence, and the Law: The Essays of Robert Cover, eds. Martha Minow, Michael Ryan and Austin Sarat. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 95. 18. Reynolds, David. 2004. In Command of History, Fighting and Writing the Second World War. London: Allen Lane. 19. Black, Allida M. 1999. Courage in a Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Columbia University Press, 3–4. 20. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. 1999. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press. 21. Grusin, Richard. 2004. Premediation. Criticism, Vol. 46, 1: 17–39; Grusin, Richard. 2010. Premediation: Affect and Mediality After 9/11. New York: Palgrave. 22. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, Bases. 23. Ibid., 73. 24. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1942. My Day. August 13, 1942. https://www.gwu. edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1942&_f=md056263. Accessed December 13, 2015. 25. Hyde Park on Hudson, directed by Roger Michell. 2012. Day Break Pictures. 26. Michaels, Beth. 2014. The Royal Hot Dog Summit of 1939. HistoryAndHeadlines.com, June 11. Accessed December 13, 2015. 27. Kearns Goodwin, Doris. 1994. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Home Front in World War II. New York: Simon and Schuster. 28. Eleanor and Franklin: The Early Years and The White House Years, directed by Daniel Petrie. 1977. American Broadcasting Company. 29. Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 279–280. 30. Ibid., 633. 31. Quoted in Steve Neal, Correspondence: 1948. Harry Truman Presidential Library Website. http://www.trumanlibrary.org/eleanor/1948.html. Accessed December 13, 2015.

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32. Beasley, Maurine H., Holly C. Shulman, and Henry R. Beasley, eds. 2001. The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia. Westport, CT): Greenwood Press, 394. 33. Gerber, Gerber. 2008. Eleanor vs. Ike. New York: Avon A. 34. Koch, Cynthia. 2016. Hillary R[oosevelt] Clinton: Or, Channeling Eleanor and Franklin. FDR Foundation (blog), September 17, 2016, http://fdrfoundation.org/hillary-roosevelt-clinton-or-channeling-eleanor-and-franklin. Accessed October 15, 2016.

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Nature: Bridging Conservationism with Environmentalism Dario Fazzi

As historian Allida Black has hinted, most of the times the use of the words “conservation” and “Roosevelt” in the same sentence refers to either Theodore or Franklin.1 After all, the former famously established the National Park Service and the latter championed a series of innovative programs, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps or the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) that, in spite of widespread criticism, gave a solid legal foundation to the protection of the environment in the US.2 Eleanor Roosevelt too, however, had her own ideas about nature and how to safeguard it. She unceasingly supported environmental education, foresaw desertification, endorsed conservationist measures, and cautioned against the exploitation of natural resources. More intriguingly, as this chapter argues, through her writings, public utterances, and advocacy, she contributed to bridging traditional conservationism with modern environmentalism. In so doing, she also contributed to—and was simultaneously part of—the transformation of Americans’ common understanding of environmental issues, which ceased to be quintessentially nation-based and D. Fazzi (*) Roosevelt Institute for American Studies, Middelburg, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Fazzi, A. Luscombe (eds.), Eleanor Roosevelt’s Views on Diplomacy and Democracy, The World of the Roosevelts, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42315-5_10

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progressively moved on interpreting the quest for a safe environment as a human, and therefore global, goal. Usually, the distinction between conservationism and environmentalism lies in the switch from the mere preservation of the environment to the active care of it. Late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century environmental advocates furthered the conservation of natural landscapes and resources, as they emphasized the protection of wildlife, game mammals, and endangered species in general. It was after World War II, however, and especially after the publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, that pollution, toxic waste, and air poisoning rapidly climbed the environmentalist agenda. This paradigmatic shift implied, as John McNeill has argued, the rise of a combined and coincidental interest in the material, cultural, and political defense of the environment.3 In other words, this change almost completely reshuffled the relationship between mankind and nature: de-emphasizing the responsibility to positively protect the nature, such an environmental turn simultaneously pointed the finger at humans’ generally negative impact on it. But, according to Jens Ivo Engels, a genuine ecological turn only materialized from the 1970s onward, when three dynamics overlapped: first, nation-states institutionalized environmental practices; second, societies developed a widespread environmental consciousness; and third ecological practices multiplied across the world.4 A new interrelation between human beings and the environment, as it emerged in the postwar era, is therefore at the center of analyses of this sort: the rise of mass consumption posed new challenges to the environment and at the same time it broadened up the popular interest in environmental issues. According to these interpretations, modern environmentalism is intertwined with grassroots mobilization. This line of thinking has led scholars like Frank Uekötter to claim that the interwar years represented a sort of hiatus in environmental history, since at that time conservation movements were rarely politically effective, nor did they spur people on to action.5 Nevertheless, there are plenty of noble antecedents to modern environmentalism. These include such cultural outputs as Thomas Malthus’ analyses, John Ruskin’s romantic views, Henry David Thoreau’s philosophical reflections, or George Perkins Marsh’s famous Man and Nature. Furthermore, in the first half of the twentieth century, intellectual contributions have been sided with societal, bottom-up pressures too, as the ones put forward by the Sierra Club or the British Coal Smoke Abatement

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Society, and intergovernmental efforts such as the 1913 establishment of the Consultative Commission for the International Protection of Nature, which in 1934 became the International Office for the Protection of Nature completed the picture of what can be considered as germinal manifestations of modern environmentalism.6 Thus, a broader chronological perspective is instrumental not only to “better illuminate the transnational character” of modern environmentalism but also to explain how conservationism actually developed into it.7 Accordingly, modern environmentalism has deeper roots than reading it as a merely postwar phenomenon would entail. If that’s true, then American Progressivism was to a large extent the sap that, for many years, kept nourishing those roots. Its reformative spirit and gradualist approach were imbuing the perception that, as Ian Tyrrell explains, modernization and industrialization were putting nature, on a global level, under imminent threat. This shared feeling gave rise to a series of innovative “proto-­ ecological ideas,” mostly driven by “economic utilitarian pressures,” that Eleanor Roosevelt consciously endorsed.8 She was indeed well aware of the dire consequences that the introduction of mechanized agriculture and the persistence of forms of imperial exploitation had on the environment. Her environmentalism, which remains largely understudied, was a perfect example of what Richard White has dubbed “environmental hybridity.” In fact, whereas Blanche Wiesen Cook describes Eleanor Roosevelt’s defense of the environment as a structural element of her overarching “concerned motherhood,” my point here is that she actually promoted a more complex, gender-neutral, bipartisan and even transnational view of sustainable development, one that problematized conservationism, popularized it, and framed it globally.9

A Purposeful Nature Lover The first feature of Eleanor Roosevelt’s complex environmentalism was an almost spiritual approach to nature: the overwhelming beauty of natural landscapes, the indulgence in nature’s contemplation, along with a sort of reverent respect for it, were recurrent themes in her widely syndicated “My Day” columns. She confessed a few days after the death of her husband, I learned [many years ago] that nature had more to give, from the healing point of view, than any human being. As I awoke very early this morning

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and heard the first birds twittering around my porch, I realized what a great joy the fresh green leaves and the return of the birds in the springtime always are. This season lifts the spirit, no matter how busy one may be…My lilies-­ of-­the-valley are just young green shoots coming up out of the ground; but in the garden of the big house, where they are better protected, flowers are beginning to show. The lilacs are out, and as we walked through the woods two white dogwood trees gleamed, almost in full bloom. Yes, the world does live again. Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.10

Many times, she praised the restorative power of walks and rides in a natural setting. She found solace on the wind blowing “the gay yellow and red leaves down from the trees with a sighing, rustling sound.”11 She loved the woods surrounding her Hyde Park mansion—“a joy to go through”—so much that any human intervention put her “in despair.”12 And when her gardens needed seasonal pruning, she avowed all of her reluctance in interfering with natural cycles: I wish I did not have such a guilty feeling whenever I cut down even a small and worthless tree. I have been looking at them now, morning and evening, trying to decide which ones shall go, and then I see the birds hopping about on the branches and I say to myself: ‘That tree seems to be a favorite for the ‘gentleman’ who wakes me in the morning, I better not cut that down or he won’t sing for me.’ I haven’t yet been able to decide on doing away with a single tree!13

Rhetorically, Eleanor Roosevelt’s insistence on natural details such as colors and shapes was simultaneously a way to convey her aesthetics and an instrument to enrich and embellish her narrative. In a 1937 column, for instance, she spared no words in describing how lovely “the golden rod is just beginning to come out and the yellow mixed with the purple of the loose-strife is” and added: “I have learned so much about colors and their mixture from nature. Almost any colors, if you get the right shades, can be put together and nature seems to know just what these shades should be, and you want to watch her closely for sometimes combinations made by human hands are not so successful.”14 At the same time, however, her focus on nature was part and parcel of a consciously designed communication strategy that was meant to ultimately harmonize her readers’ feelings with her own peculiar, very intimate, and largely ethical relation to nature. She drew on the common joyful atmosphere characterizing Easter’s season in the US so to highlight

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the effects that the spring usually has on human beings, as this season should remind “us all of re-birth and the constant cycle in nature of birth and maturity.” This period of the year, in her own words, was an invitation “to be grateful for any achievements” and “to realize that discouragement is a luxury no one can indulge in. We must simply accept any defeats or setbacks and begin again, as the world around us is beginning. The spring is not a time for sadness. It is a time for joy and renewal of hope.”15 Such an intimate portrayal of nature was far from being merely poetic, contemplative, or self-referential. Eleanor Roosevelt was well aware that all living things are inextricably intertwined with one another through a very delicate equilibrium that human mismanagement may put at risk. She wanted to make others aware of that frangible balance. Commenting on the constructions of the great dams, a quintessential element of the New Deal that had eventually meant “navigation with cheaper transportation for goods, and cheaper electricity for thousands of homes,” she argued that “conservation of land and conservation of people” should go hand in hand not only for the sake of socioeconomic efficiency but also, and more importantly, for preserving human progress: “There are hillsides of corn which should never have become fields and cannot produce sufficiently good crops to pay for the labor which goes into the planting and cultivating. But over and over again you still see gulleys where green shrubs and trees are planted, which means that erosion there will stop.”16 For this reason, federal planning and coordination between state agencies and private companies were key pillars upon which to build a sounding agricultural policy. All of this was pursued in the US, chiefly by the Department of Agriculture’s Soil Conservation Service, which Eleanor Roosevelt commended highly. That agency supervised the local soil and water conservation policies and implemented them mostly through federal aid, which was crucial, according to Eleanor Roosevelt, to avoid desertification, deforestation, and recurrent droughts.17 In other words, not only did Eleanor Roosevelt consider environmental protection as a crucial field of public policy, but she also believed that the federal government had to take the lead in that field. As she wrote in 1953, “ever since the days when my uncle, Theodore Roosevelt, was President I have been hearing about the need for the conservation of our natural resources” and about “the importance of the government owning a sufficient amount of these resources to conserve them for the people as a whole to profit from them.”18 She was, in that way, endorsing Fairfield Osborn’s complex and innovative environmentalist views. Indeed, as

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Thomas Robertson has recently explained, Osborn was fruitfully and convincingly combining John Maynard Keynes’ ideas of interconnected economies with Aldo Leopold’s views on interconnected nature; it was an attempt to reconcile theories of consumption-driven development with theories of limited growth and environmental sustainability.19 While reviewing the manuscript of Osborn’s Our Plundered Planet, Eleanor Roosevelt condemned the exploitation of US natural resources as “the most violent and most destructive in the long history of civilization” and praised the achievements brought about by the New Deal, which made Americans “more conscious” of their needs and obligations.20 In contrast to states’ policies, which still lent a high degree of discretion and often failed to address destructive practices effectively, she saw the federal government as the ultimate guarantee against private exploitation of land and water supplies. And, for this reason, conservationist policy, whose relevance she compared to foreign policy, was better executed through a bipartisan approach cutting across party lines. It was with these ideas in mind that, in a 1950 article, she invited Republicans and Democrats to coordinate their agendas on the development of natural resources, on hydroelectric projects, on the control of floods, and on the protection of soil and forests. She fiercely criticized the increasing pressure “brought by livestock interests to take over land now administered under our conservation policy.”21 She publicly objected to any attempt to abolish or limit national forests, national parks, monuments, and grazing lands. She stigmatized such attacks on conservation policies as shortsighted and counterproductive.22 She was also worried that private enterprises’ interests conflicted with the preservation of trees and wildlife. Thus, she warned that unregulated businesses could negatively affect water supply and soil conservation nationwide. Eventually, she cautioned against clear-cutting of trees, particularly in mountain areas, because that could potentially result “in floods and bare hills,” and therefore “reduce populated, prosperous countrysides [sic] to deserted areas.”23 Far from envisioning the complete exclusion of private companies from the environmental economy or suggesting the nationalization of natural resources, Eleanor Roosevelt mainly stressed the importance of preserving, through national legislation, what she saw as a vital and inalienable common good: “If the government and the public are conscious of their interest in an asset affecting the well-being of the nation, I think we can help people to think of the long-run value of this industry. That is the only way in which it can serve the public interest in the best way.”24 Accordingly,

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people had to be educated so to perceive the environment as a common good and, ultimately, a human right.25 In fact, Eleanor Roosevelt believed that a constant and unceasing educational effort involving children and students at any level was the keystone of a successful environmental policy. She saw the study of nature as a form of art education, which could foster a critical, creative, and conscious appreciation of the nature.26 She considered farming and gardening as fundamental activities to teach people the respect for natural processes and praised the beneficial effects of rural education nationwide.27 “We could take a leaf out of the book of the European countries,” she declared in a 1950 interview: “There a child is taught in school how to behave in the country around the city where he lives. He is taught that it is valuable to reforest and that he must protect forests against fires because they not only keep up the water level in the area but provide a steady revenue.”28 Without engraining such an environmental conscience, through education, into American citizens’ DNA, Eleanor Roosevelt was afraid that US society would have soon encountered one of the main pathologies endangering the correct functioning of any democracy, namely apathy. Indeed, while commemorating the 50th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt’s National Park Act, she warned against the risk of simply considering “national parks as playgrounds” that “can be kept up without any worry on our part.”29 Environmental awareness was in her opinion tantamount to environmental protection.

An Environmental Activist Even though environmental awareness had a value on its own, it did not suffice to guarantee the success of environmental policies. Along with a solid environmental conscience, indeed, she deemed direct involvement, social engagement, and political activism necessary. For this reason, back in the 1920s, she had joined the National Consumers’ League (NCL), whose campaigns against toxic waste were aiming to ban industrial radium poisoning in the hope to protect people working in watch and clock factories. Eleanor Roosevelt backed the NCL’s protests against misleading advertising practices and supported NCL’s publication of a “white list” of retail stores which met minimum standards of hygiene and “treated their employees fairly.”30 Later on in her life, she publicly applauded the Audubon Society not only for its unremitting work on establishing sanctuaries for wildlife but also for its commitment to spread information and educate people in the study of and love for nature.31 Such grassroots

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organizations as the Junior Forest Council (JFC) also gained her approval. The JFC was an independent committee that was originally created in the states of Washington and Oregon to promote forest-fire-prevention work by groups of young people. It eventually spread to 19 different states, in a campaign to disseminate environmental information nationwide.32 In 1943, overcoming the resistance of the Department of Agriculture, she sponsored the reorganization of the American Women’s Land Army, in the hope that this would have helped the nation to sustain its war effort. She even used a section of the White House lawn to plant a vegetable garden, a so-called victory garden.33 In addition, Eleanor Roosevelt was an active member of numerous environmental associations, which she used to advance her own political agenda or to fight for those causes she wanted to support. She belonged to the Adirondack Mountain Club, a group that aimed at keeping the natural landscape of upstate New York pretty much uncontaminated and relatively untouched by modern progress. When, in the Fall of 1959, she heard that a project called “Northway Amendment” was proposing to build a roadway running through some secular stands of pine trees in the Adirondacks, she went to the barricades. By invoking the memory of her husband, who “always took a great interest in conservation,” she dubbed the project as the “most dangerous threat to the forest preserve which has been presented to us in many years.” In this particular instance, she proved to be very well informed of the technical details of the project, of its related environmental consequences, and of the existence of the possible alternatives to it. She said that the Northway Amendment “would damage much of the recreational value of the region and cut in on the fishing and wild life areas, paralleling as it would for approximately 45 miles the Schroon River.” Moreover, “putting through a concrete highway would damage not just the land taken for the roads, but all the neighboring areas,” thus creating problems to both the ecosystem and the socioeconomic structure of the valley. Pragmatically, she emphasized that building the roadway through the nearby Champlain Valley, “where a first-class highway is needed because of the obsolete condition of roads in that area,” was not only possible but highly advisable. In that way, the new road could serve “a larger, year-round population and a larger industrial population” without passing through any forest and preserving precious land.34 Due to her prestige and open support for environmentalist causes and groups, Eleanor Roosevelt was not surprisingly a much-requested sponsor among conservationist organizations. While she was busy drafting and

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negotiating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), she received numerous letters from animal rights organization. On November 20, 1947, the Animal Protective Association asked her to include animal rights into the UDHR. In particular, the petitioners asked her to embed mercy and compassion to the domesticated creatures into the developing human rights architecture and to mention the preservation of the natural wild habitat of the undomesticated creatures among the most basic human duties. The association also formally requested that the United Nations (UN) commission chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, in its intended process of framing an internationally binding Bill of Rights, refer to the recognition of animal rights.35 Then, The Canadian Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals followed up on that request and asked her to endorse a resolution passed by the American Humane Association, which proposed that the UDHR adequately recognize animal needs: “We believe that the protection of the weak and helpless, whether of the human or sub-human species, is an integral part of a true civilization, and that any Bill of Rights for humanity at large should contain a clause dealing with the rights of animals.” The group aimed to achieve nothing short of “total abolition of all vivisectional experimentation on living fellow creatures, human or animal,” and thought that Eleanor Roosevelt could represent the best backup for promoting its campaign.36 The same applied to a plethora of American conservationist groups and individuals who asked for her official endorsement. In 1948, prominent environmental advocates such as Lyle Ford Watts, Leland Olds, and Bernard DeVoto reached out to Eleanor Roosevelt and asked her to join their lobby efforts. In general terms, their goal was to reinstate, in Congress, a sound and bold conservation policy. In practice, they wanted to extend the environmental policies that the New Deal had originally set up. They sent her a memo evocatively titled “Conservation Credo of an American” and signed by the former director of the Rural Electrification Administration Morris L. Cooke. The document shrewdly combined Theodore Roosevelt’s renowned environmental legacy with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR’s) strenuous battle for reorganizing the management and control of rivers and hydroelectric power. To further convince Eleanor Roosevelt, the lobbyists stressed how important it was that “the concept of conservation … continue as a keystone of government policy” and that “peacetime uses of atomic energy […] be under public, civilian and democratic control at all time.” More specifically, they asked that “the nation’s waterpower be kept as inalienable possession of the

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people” and that “large-scale development and flood control works on the major streams [as envisioned by the New Deal and the TVA] must be safeguarded and supplemented by conservation practices on the croplands, ranges, and forests of the watersheds above them.” They were against the sale of reserved public lands and the reduction “of any National Park or National Monument, power reserve irrigation reserve, or Indian reservation, and against proposals to abolish the prerogative of the President to create National Monuments by executive order.”37 Eleanor Roosevelt proved to be very sensitive to these requests and constantly backed environmentalist proposals. Her engagement in environmental issues thus mirrored her broad social and political activism: in fact, her attention to women’s and civil rights issues did not exhaust the breadth of her political interests, which absolutely included natural conservation as well as nuclear disarmament and educational reforms.38 Her environmentalism was in sum fully embedded into her long-lasting commitment to social reforms and into her personal quest for rising civic awareness, an element that she considered crucial to strengthen American democracy and global hegemony.

An Advocate of Transnationalism The modernity of Eleanor Roosevelt’s environmentalism largely stemmed from its pronounced transnationalism. From this point of view, indeed, she stood by people like FDR’s former Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, who was fiercely promoting the establishment of forms of international environmental cooperation at all levels. In an address given to Bucknell University on June 5, 1948, Stettinius denounced the contradiction between an ever-growing world population and the inescapability of limited natural resources. Quoting Arnold Toynbee’s Civilization on Trial, Stettinius denounced that “exploitation and neglect of the resources of the world” had become, at an international level, “more often the rule than the exception.” Stettinius was advocating for rational, planned, and coordinated global investments in sustainable agriculture and environmental protection. “We have four things we need – men, tools, materials, and ideas. The problem is to utilize them wisely, to conserve them and to combine them in the right pattern.” If we fail to do so, “the specter of untapped resources, depleted supplies, stagnation and chaos,” hangs upon us.39

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Eleanor Roosevelt shared this view fully. She thought of the environment in a holistic way, thus transcending the cogency of national borders. She thought of the nature basically as an independent variable in the trajectory followed by human development, one whose outputs could and should be corrected by wise planning and investments in technology and in education worldwide. In a revealing 1950 column, for instance, she explained how the protection of nature, which she saw as one of the most urgent needs of a rising global interdependence, required concerted actions. “No country today can live in isolation from any other country and the cooperative development of the resources of the world is a necessity for all of us,” she stated boldly. Since “in some under-developed areas of the world lie raw materials which our highly developed industrial and mechanized civilization needs,” in Eleanor Roosevelt’s opinion it was “only when these under-developed countries are helped to increase their production and encouraged to inter-change their goods with the rest of the world, that we can hope, in the industrialized countries, to develop new markets and thereby retain our own high standards of living.” In purely Rooseveltian terms, thus, she believed that progress and development depended as much on a fair, correct, and sustainable use of natural resources as on the protection of free trade and exchanges.40 How important multilateral cooperation was for Eleanor Roosevelt is also proved by her correspondence with the leaders of the Post War World Council (PWWC). This organization, led by American pacifist Norman Thomas, was born from the ashes of the Keep America Out of War Congress and was led by American pacifist Norman Thomas. In 1946, the PWWC invited her to an informal, off the records conference on international resources development. The proponents of the meeting saw an internationally coordinated management of world’s resources as the only means to both sustain general employment and economic stability worldwide. Creating a global system to manage natural resources was considered instrumental to sustain the progress of heavily populated areas of the world and to improve the conditions of underdeveloped areas of it. Drawing on Truman’s Point Four Program, the conference organizers aimed at supporting a “universal mutual responsibility” on the management of natural resources: “The building of roads, railroads, dams, canals, ports, and power lines, mining establishments and manufacturing plants; organizing of irrigation and land conservation measures, and promoting agricultural practices,” all required global coordination and regional

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applications. A task that, in Eleanor Roosevelt’s words, was “comparable to the opening up of the American continent.”41 For the same reasons, she greatly valued the work of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). She praised FAO’s work on contrasting the depletion of natural resources and fighting world’s hunger, mostly because it was centered on overcoming “a lack of understanding on the part of individual human beings as to how to conserve their resources.” FAO organized its specialists and communication so to appeal not only to farmers but also, and most importantly, to those “individual housewives, and men who work in forests and mills,” to youngsters and common people in the hope to educate them and make them “understand why they must insist that their government embark on programs to conserve the things upon our planet which bring us food and sustenance.”42 In addition, FAO’s operations contributed to sharing the most innovative and advanced best practices in the field of food and agriculture. Of course, international cooperation of this sort also implied limits on national sovereignty, but that was a small price that governments had to pay since, as Eleanor Roosevelt argued, more than six decades before the Paris Agreement, “what we do alone is not sufficient to protect us.”43 However, while promoting the intergovernmental protection of the environment, Eleanor Roosevelt praised the constant exchange of best practices among private citizens and as well. In fact, while on the one hand she acknowledged that the American private-enterprise system that in the postwar era had progressively replaced the New Deal efforts was genuinely trying to combine innovative environment-led practices with profit-­ making solutions, on the other hand, she believed that Americans had still a great deal to learn from foreigner experiences, since, for instance, “countries like Germany, Austria and Great Britain, where some of the old estates had good yearly incomes from carefully tended forest land,” could lead the way in the setting up of eco-friendly policies and actions.44 At the same time, she followed with great interest the development of the International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUPN), a UN-led program composed of governments, international, and national organizations concerned with the conservation of renewable resources and coordinated by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Started in 1948, the IUPN aimed to institutionalize transnational cooperation on conservation and promote the sustainable use of natural resources.45 Eleanor Roosevelt was especially interested in its mission to foster analysis, research, and education, which brought the IUPN

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to assist societies throughout the world to properly conserve their natural resources. “[It] appeals to me particularly because it can develop the interest of the farmer and nature lover throughout the world to joint cooperation,” she wrote in 1952. Then, she stressed how important it was to de-provincialize environmentalism with words whose cogency still resounds nowadays: My husband was enormously interested in awakening our people to the conservation of our own natural resources. We know today, however, that it is not enough to preserve our own resources. We are all dependent on each other, and the waste of natural resources anywhere is important to all of us. In many areas of the world very little has been done to bring the people to an understanding of how important it is to preserve wildlife, to guard the top soil of a nation, as well as its waters and forests. This requires legislation and, very often, the education of children and adults in appreciation of their natural environment so that they will not endanger by their actions the preservation of their natural resources.46

How to assess, in conclusion, the breadth and influence of Eleanor Roosevelt’s environmentalism? On the one hand, parts of it are closely connected to what Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison define as “value-­ oriented environmentalism,” which mostly aims to foster a change in people’s minds rather than necessarily looking for political reforms. Especially for what concerns her rhetoric and intimate approach to nature, Eleanor Roosevelt fits in this definition very well. On the other hand, however, her educational efforts, active engagement, and her pronounced transnationalism tell a different story. In particular, they testify to her pragmatic approach to nature and put her way closer to modern environmentalism than to traditional conservationism. The modern element of Eleanor Roosevelt’s environmentalism stems, to use Jan-Henrik Meyer’s words, from the fact that she understood the natural environment as “a political concept” encompassing several different dimensions and that she conceived of environmental issues as essentially global problems.47 To Eleanor Roosevelt, indeed, the contemplation of nature was never an end in itself, but an instrument to raise awareness, sensitize people, and move consciences. Envisioning herself chiefly as a public educator, she used her communication skills and media presence adroitly. She penned her columns carefully, so that people could grasp both the beauty and the fragility of nature and the necessity of taking care

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of it. In the US in particular, she wanted people to understand that coordinated, federal intervention served as a way to spread and harmonize best practices throughout the country and limit private speculation at the same time. Eleanor Roosevelt also knew that environment-friendly policies needed support from below to be fully executed. For this reason, she endorsed campaigns, joined groups and organizations, and sponsored a number of events and associations that were active in the protection of the environment at any level, from the local to the global. She constantly invited people to take on the responsibility not only to preserve the environment, but also to oppose those practices that could endanger it. And in doing so, as Kevin Oldenburg has rightly emphasized, she championed “causes that sometimes seemed too few others were interested in.”48 Furthermore, through her numerous high-profile contacts, she helped strengthening and broadening those embryonic networks that, mostly by sharing knowledge and resources across borders and cultures, from the interwar years onward, gave rise to new, transnational shapes of environmentalism. She was among those who grasped early on both the threats and opportunities of globalization, and, for this reason, she advocated for de-territorializing environmental protection. Her environmentalism was, in substance, part and parcel of her crusade to universalize, both in time and space, the linchpins and best practices of her husband’s New Deal.49

Notes 1. Black, Allida M., ed. 1995. What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Carlson Pub. 2. On Theodore Roosevelt’s environmentalism, see, among the others, Brinkley, Douglas. 2009. The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. New  York: Harper Collins. On Franklin Roosevelt’s environmental efforts, see Woolner, David, and Henry L. Henderson, eds. 2005. FDR and the Environment. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. A critical approach to FDR’s environmental policy is offered by Weisiger, Marsha L. 2009. Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009. 3. McNeill, John R. 2003. Observations on the Nature and Culture of Environmental History. History and Theory, Vol. 42, 4: 5–43. 4. Engels, Jens Ivo. 2010. Modern Environmentalism. In The Turning Points of Environmental History, ed. Frank Uekötter, 119–131. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

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5. Uekötter, Frank. 2010. Thinking Big: The Broad Outlines of a Burgeoning Field. In The Turning Points of Environmental History, ed. Frank Uekötter, 1–12. 6. Tyrrell, Ian. 1999. True Gardens of the Gods: Californian-Australian Environmental Reform, 1860–1930. Berkeley: University of California Press; Tyrell, Ian. 2015. Crisis of the Wasteful Nation: Empire and Conservation in Theodore Roosevelt’s America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 7. The transition from conservationism to preservationism first and then to modern, urban environmentalism is at the center of Thomas Raymond Wellocks’ Preserving the Nation: The Conservation and Environmental Movements 1870–2000 (Wheeling: Harlan Davidson, 2007). See also Chester, Charles C. 2009. Environmentalism. In The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, eds. Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier, 339. New York: Palgrave. 8. Tyrrell, Ian. 2012. America’s National Parks: The Transnational Creation of National Space in the Progressive Era. Journal of American Studies, Vol. 46, 1: 1–21. 9. Cook, Blanche Wiesen. 1999. Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2: The Defining Years, 1933–1938. New York: Penguin, 7. 10. Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1945. My Day, April 26, 1945. All of the references and quotations from the My Day columns have been taken from My Day: A Comprehensive, Electronic Edition of Eleanor Roosevelt’s “My Day” Newspapers Columns, prepared by the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project of the George Washington University, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. They are all available online at https://erpapers.columbian.gwu. edu/browse-my-day-columns; hereby after the columns will be simply referred to as My Day, then followed by the date. 11. My Day, October 16, 1945. 12. My Day, July 1, 1944. 13. My Day, July 24, 1937. 14. My Day, August 16, 1937. 15. My Day, April 11, 1955. On Eleanor Roosevelt’s complex communication strategy, see Beasley, Maurine. 1986. Eleanor Roosevelt’s Vision of Journalism: A Communications Medium for Women. Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 16, 1: 66–75.; and Barry, Lisa R. 2005. Eleanor Roosevelt: A Rhetorical Reconstruction of First Ladydom. In Leading Ladies of the White House: Communication Strategies of Notable Twentieth-Century First Ladies, ed. Molly Meijer Wertheimer. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. 16. My Day, September 4, 1940.

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17. My Day, February 7, 1957, and My Day, April 16, 1953, when she defined the Soil Conservation Service as “probably one of the most ­important branches of our government today.” She praised the Soil Conservation Service’s achievements and its cooperation with other federal agencies such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Resettlement Administration in another My Day column, published on December 5, 1938. 18. My Day, April 16, 1953. 19. Robertson, Thomas. 2012. Total War and the Total Environment: Fairfield Osborn, William Vogt, and the Birth of Global Ecology. Environmental History, vol. 17, 2: 336–364. 20. My Day, January 16, 1948. 21. See Roosevelt, Eleanor. 1950. If I Were a Republican Today. Cosmopolitan, June 1950, quoted by Allida M. Black, ed., 1994. Courage in a Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt. New  York: Columbia University Press, 264. 22. My Day, November 15, 1947. 23. My Day, April 3, 1947. 24. My Day, April 3, 1947. 25. Commenting on a Supreme Court’s decision on soil conservation, which upheld “the power of the State of Washington to compel persons engaged in commercial logging operations to reforest cut-over areas” and “reaffirmed the concept that man is the trustee of the land for the general welfare,” Eleanor Roosevelt praised the work of both the Soil Conservation Society of America and the Conservation Foundation because they promoted an environmental view that every American citizen should have shared, “for it deals with subjects of vital importance to our ultimate survival”; see My Day, November 14, 1949. 26. My Day, August 16, 1937. 27. My Day, January 8, 1938. 28. This I Believe About Public Schools: An Interview with Eleanor Roosevelt, by Charl Ormond Williams. 1950. The Nation’s Schools, vol. 45, 3: 31–36, quoted in Allida M. Black, ed. What I Hope to Leave Behind, 325. 29. My Day, October 22, 1955. 30. Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2, 61–64. 31. My Day, August 14, 1937. 32. My Day, April 3, 1947. 33. Gowdy-Wygant, Cecilia. 2013. Cultivating Victory: The Women’s Land Army and the Victory Garden Movement. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 115. 34. My Day, October 14, 1959. 35. Virginia Sargent to Eleanor Roosevelt, November 20, 1947, in Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS), The Papers of Eleanor Roosevelt,

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1945–1962, Part 1: United Nations Correspondence and Publications (ER Papers 1945–1962, Part 1), Reel 4, document no. 541. 36. A.F.  Stevenson to Eleanor Roosevelt, undated, in RIAS, ER Papers, 1945–1962, Part 1, Reel 4, document no. 545 and “Resolution” by Theresa Dotzent, in RIAS, ER Papers, 1945–1962, Part 1, Reel 4, document no. 546. 37. Morris L. Cooke to Eleanor Roosevelt, February 4, 1948, in RIAS, The Papers of Eleanor Roosevelt from the Franklin D.  Roosevelt Library: General Correspondence, 1945–1952, Part 2: 1948–1949 (ER Papers, 1945–1952, Part 2), Reel 2, document no. 195. 38. Fazzi, Dario. 2016. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Anti-Nuclear Movement: The Voice of Conscience. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 39. See The Untapped Potential – An Address by E.R. Stettinius, Jr., Chairman of the Board of the Liberia Company, Former Secretary of State, before the Graduating Class of Bucknell University at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, June 5, 1948, in RIAS, ER Papers, 1945–1952, Part 2, document no. 287. 40. My Day, May 23, 1950. On FDR’s and trade, see Woolner, David B. 2011. FDR’s Comprehensive Approach to Freer Trade. Next New Deal: The Blog of the Roosevelt Institute, October 13. Accessed July 25, 2018. 41. See Norman Thomas to Eleanor Roosevelt, May 1, 1946, in The Norman Thomas Papers, 1904–1967, New  York Public Library, Series II, Organizational Files, Subseries D, Post War World Council, 1942–1966, Box 5, and Eleanor Roosevelt, “Making Human Rights Come Alive,” The Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 31, no. 1 (1949), 23–33. 42. My Day, June 30, 1949. 43. My Day, August 11, 1952. 44. My Day, April 3, 1947. 45. On the International Union for the Protection of Nature and its predecessor, the International Office for the Protection of Nature, see Kaiser, Wolfram and Jan-Henrik Meyer. 2016. International Organizations and Environmental Protection in the Global Twentieth Century. In International Organizations and Environmental Protection: Conservation and Globalization in the Twentieth Century, eds. Wolfram Kaiser and JanHenrik Meyer. 3–9. New York: Berghahn. 46. My Day, August 11, 1952. 47. Meyer, Jan-Henrik. 2016. From Nature to Environment: International Organisations and Environmental Protection before Stockholm. In International Organizations and Environmental Protection: Conservation and Globalization in the Twentieth Century, eds. Wolfram Kaiser and Jan-­ Henrik Meyer, 33.

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48. See Oldenburg, Kevin. Eleanor and the Environment. https://archive. epa.gov/region02/climatechangesummit/web/pdf/attachment%20 1%20-%20kevin%20oldenburg.pdf. Accessed July 25, 2018. An interesting analysis on the rise of transnational environmental networks in the interwar years is offered by Frioux, Stéphane. 2014. Sanitizing the City: Transnational Work and Networks of French Sanitary Engineers, 1890s–1930s. In Shaping the Transnational Sphere: Experts, Networks and Issues from the 1840s to the 1930s, eds. Davide Rodogno, Bernhard Struck and Jakob Vogel. New York: Berghahn. On this, see also Bashford, Alison. 2016. Global Population: History, Geopolitics, and Life on Earth. New York: Columbia University Press. 49. On the globalization of the New Deal, see Borgwardt, Elizabeth. 2005. A New Deal for the World: America’s Vision for Human Rights. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; and Patel, Kiran Klaus. 2016. The New Deal: A Global History. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Index1

A Acheson, Dean, 65, 75 Acheson-Lilienthal Report, 81n35 Adams, Abigail, 132 Adirondack Mountain Club, 200 Ago, Roberto, 92 Albania, 67 Albright, Madeleine, 181 Aldrich, Darragh, 36n25 Alexander, W.W., 14n29 Allenswood, 42 American Artists Congress, 134 American Association for the United Nations (AAUN), 21, 33, 65, 85, 86, 90 American Broadcasting Company (ABC), 18, 23, 36n22 American Committee on Yugoslav Relief, 81n31 American Federation of Radio Artists, 19

American Friends of Yugoslavia (AFY), 73 American Friends Service Committee, 34n6 American Humane Association, 201 American Radio Executive Club, 23 American Red Cross, 50, 51, 54, 70 Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), 84 American Women’s Land Army, 200 Anderson, Marian, 110, 125, 126, 133, 136, 149, 182 Animal Protective Association, 201 Argentina, 32 Arthurdale, 13–14n29, 34n6 Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals, 201 Association of Women Directors, 35n14 Association of Women in Radio and Television, 19

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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INDEX

Atlantic Charter, 42, 53 Atlantic Pact, see NATO Atomic weapons, 19, 74, 75, 87, 94, 95, 98, 177 Auberjonois, Fernande, 28, 38n57 Austin, Warren, 114 Australia, 32, 48, 50, 51, 59, 62n51 Austria, 65, 204 AVRO, 32 B Balkan Pact, 68 Bankhead, Tallulah, 21 Barratt, Edward, 39n64 Bartoš, Milan, 74 Baruch, Herman, 30 Baruch Plan, 74, 81n35 BBC, 24, 36n30, 46, 61n27, 63n71 Beam, Jacob, 92, 94, 96 Bebler, Aleš, 74 Belgium, 28, 30 Bellon, Yannick, 94 Bethune, Mary McLeod, 110, 111 Black Cabinet, 110 Borba, 78 Brazil, 68 Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 110 Broz, Jovanka, 72 Buck, Pearl, 58 Bulgaria, 67 Burma, 68 Burns, Ken, 173, 183 C Carter, Rosalynn, 44 CBS, 36n25 Chaplin, Charlie, 109 Chicago Defender, 117 Chile, 68

China, 22, 56, 58, 86 Churchill, Clementine, 47 Churchill, Winston, 43, 72, 87 Ciechanowski, Jan, 90 Civil rights, 105, 107–109, 111, 115–117 Civil Rights Congress (CRC), 105, 115–118 Civilian Conservation Corps, 193 Clinton, Bill, 188 Clinton, Hilary Rodham, 11n4, 138n8, 181, 188, 189 Coal Smoke Abatement Society, 194–195 Cold War, 17, 23–25, 27, 29, 34n8, 36n30, 65, 77, 105, 106, 113, 162 Collier’s, 139n24 Commonwealth, 48, 50, 56 Communism, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 77, 84, 108 Cook, Nancy, 5 Cooke, Morris, 201 Cootrell Free, Ann, 166n40 Corey, Victoria, 36n25 Corr, Mauren, 185 Costigan-Wagner Act, 110 Crane, Ruth, 36n25 Crim, Rory, 35n17 Crnobrnja, Bogdan, 69 Culp Hobby, Oveta, 42 Cyrankiewicz, Józef, 88 Czechoslovakia, 87, 129 D The Daily Worker, 109 Dance Observer, 134 Daniels, Jonathan, 113 Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), 110, 126 Davis, Norman, 50

 INDEX 

De Gasperi, Alcide, 68 De Gaulle, Charles, 26 De Mille, Agnes, 135 De Voto, Bernard, 201 Declaration of Brioni, 67 Dedijer, Milica, 70 Dedijer, Vladimir, 70 Denmark, 31 De Telegraaf, 151 De Tijd, 30 Dewey, Thomas, 20 Dickens, Charles, 185 Dickerman, Marion, 5 Dixiecrats, 20, 117 Djilas, Milovan, 78, 80n19 Douglass, Frederick, 109 Du Bois, W.E.B., 111–115, 117, 119 Dulles, John Foster, 11n4, 72 Durno, George, 49, 51 E Early, Stephen, 45, 144 Eden, Anthony, 45, 47 Eichelberger, Clark, 5, 21, 52 Einstein, Albert, 109 Eisenhower, Dwight, 45, 57, 65, 85, 187 Elizabeth, Queen, 42, 48, 52 Engdahl, Louis, 109 Engel, Lehman, 135 England, 42–47 Environmentalism, 10, 193–195, 202, 205, 206 Evatt, Herbert, 23 F Fala, 21 Fascism, 125–137 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 99n2, 106, 111, 118

213

Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), 129 Fickett, Mary, 176 First World War, 5, 52, 107 Ford, Betty, 137 Ford, Henry, 147 Ford Watts, Lyle, 201 Ford Foundation, 96 Fox, Katherine, 36n25 France, 18, 20, 24–27, 29, 32, 113 Fulbright, William, 72 Furcewa, Yekaterina Aleksiejewna, 91 G Gandhi, Mohandas, 109 Garson, Greer, 176 Gaston, Martha, 36n25 Gebremovic [Jevremović], Brana, 69, 76, 77 Gelhorn, Martha, 129, 133 Genocide, 105, 115–119 George VI, King, 47, 48, 140n36 Gerasimov, Andrey, 87 Germany, 20, 30, 32, 44, 56, 88–90, 95, 96, 98, 129, 133, 177, 204 Germany (Democratic Republic of), 87 Goebbels, Joseph, 134 Gomułka, Władysław, 88, 91 Gowrie, Alexander Gore Arkwright Hore-Ruthven, 50 Graham, Martha, 9, 125–137 Great Britain, 41–44, 46, 48, 49, 53, 54, 56, 113, 204 Great Depression, 5, 129, 172 Great War, see First World War Greece, 65, 67, 71 Greenway, Isabella, 132 Gromyko, Andrey, 87 Gurewitsch, David, 76, 89, 92, 93 Gurewitsch, Edna, 83, 93, 97

214 

INDEX

H Halsey, William, 51, 62n40 Harmon, Millard, 62n40 Hawkins, Frances, 131 Hayes, Anne, 36n25 Hemingway, Ernest, 129 Het Parool, 160 Hickok, Lorena, 51 Hitler, Adolf, 44, 87, 129 Hoffman, Paul, 91, 93 Holland, see Netherlands Hollywood, 19 Hoover, Edgar, 111 Hoover, Herbert, 58 Hope, Bob, 21 Hopkins, Henry, 130 Horst, Louis, 135 Howe, Louis, 58, 174 Huebert, Dina, 130 Hulten, Charles, 39n64 Human rights, 9, 27, 33, 38n54, 73, 80n19, 98, 106, 107, 116, 158, 162 Humphrey, Doris, 130 Hungary, 118 I Ibárruri, Dolores, 136 India, 66, 68, 114 Indonesia, 157, 159, 161 Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties (Cominform), 66 International Association of Women in Radio, 35n14 Internationalism, 7, 52, 65 International Labor Defense (ILD), 108, 115 International Office for the Protection of Nature, 195 International Red Cross, 159

International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUPN), 204 Ireland, 42 Italy, 32 Izviestija, 87 J Japan, 43, 56, 58, 65, 177 Jędrychowski, Stefan, 88 Jooss, Kurt, 131 Junge, Henry, 140n36 Junior Forest Council (JFC), 200 K Kaczorowski, Michał, 92 Kardelj, Edvard, 67, 70, 76 Keep America Out of War, 203 Keller, Helen, 147 Kennedy, John, 72, 88 Kenney, George, 62n40 Keynes, John Maynard, 198 Khrushchev, Nikita, 87, 89–91, 100n17 Kitchell, Alma, 36n25 Knowland, William, 22 Končar, Rade, 71 Korean War, 21, 68 Kosanović, Sava, 75 Kreačić, Miro, 76 L La Guarida, Fiorello, 55 Lachs, Manfred, 93 Ladies Home Journal, 18, 171 Lange, Dorothea, 139n23 Lange, Oskar, 86, 88, 92, 94, 96 Lape, Esther, 5 Lash, Joseph, 8, 40n74, 83, 106, 107 Lash, Trude, 31, 40n74

 INDEX 

League of Communist of Yugoslavia (LCY), 69 League of Nations Association, 52 Lenroot, Katharine, 70 Leopold, Aldo, 198 Lerner, Max, 111 Lewis, Dorothy, 21, 23, 24 Lewis, Edward Lawes, 147 Lewis, John, 147 L’Humanité, 29, 39n63 Liberalism, 3, 6, 105–119 Lie, Tryvge, 20, 157 Lincoln, Abraham, 132 Lindsay, Lady, 132 Look, 77 Lubin, Isador, 39n67 Luxemburg, 30 M Malthus, Thomas, 194 Mann, Erika, 134 Mann, Thomas, 109, 134 Markel, Hazal, 36n25 Marsh, George Perkins, 194 Marshall Aid, see Marshall Plan Marshall, George, 57 Marshall Plan, 25, 26, 29–31, 37n35, 66, 156 Martha, Eliot, 70 May-ling, Soong (Madame Chiang), 149 McArthur, Douglas, 62n40 McBride, Mary Margaret, 36n25 McCall’s, 18 McCarthyism, 66, 113 McCarthy, Joseph, 78, 84, 85 Mercer, Lucy, 174, 188 Michałowski, Jerzy, 87–90, 92 Mikołajczyk, Stanisław, 90 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 43 Montenegro, 77

215

Morawski, Dominik, 96 Morgan, Barbara, 134 Morgenthau, Elinor, 132, 134, 141n55 Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., 129, 132 Morgenthau, Rita, 129 Muskie, Edmund, 88 My Day, 18, 25, 29, 48, 84, 85, 90, 93, 95, 97, 98, 133, 135, 138n9, 138n15, 147, 149, 172, 173, 176, 177, 182, 188 N Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 67 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 108, 109, 111–115, 117, 119 National Association of Broadcaster, 35n14 National Broadcasting Company (NBC), 18, 21, 38n57 National Congress of Negro Women, 111 National Consumers’ League (NCL), 199 National League of Women Voters, 5 National Negro Congress (NNC), 115 National Park Service, 193 National Youth Administration, 132 NATO, 68, 95 Navy Relief Association, 5 Nazism, 52 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 67 Netherlands, 18, 29–32, 109, 143, 146, 147, 151, 152, 156–159, 162 Netherlands Information Bureau, 39n66 Neutrality Act, 107, 129

216 

INDEX

New Deal, 6, 12n9, 12n12, 34n6, 43, 55, 87, 107, 130, 149, 197, 198, 201, 202, 204, 206 New Guinea, 49 The New Republic, 47, 108 New York Post, 86 New York Times, 44, 45, 69, 80n16, 109, 134, 145 New Zealand, 32, 48–51, 55, 58, 59 Nimitz, Chester, 49, 62n40 Noel-Baker, Phillip, 91 Noguchi, Isamu, 131, 135 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), 67 North Korea, 157 Norvelt, 13n29 Nuclear Weapons, see Atomic weapons O Obama, Michelle, 138n7, 138n8 O’Day, Caroline, 5 Office of Civilian Defense, 55, 141n55, 185 Office of War Information, 38n57, 48, 56 Olds, Leland, 201 Osborn, Fairfield, 197, 198 O’Toole, Helen, 20 Oyster Bay, 4 P Pacifism, 52, 76 Page, Ruth, 130 Paris Peace Conference, 28, 38n56, 44 Patterson, Robert, 21 Patterson, William, 105, 109, 111, 115–118 Peace Production Board, 58 Pearson, Drew, 117 Pegler, Westbrook, 49 Picasso, Pablo, 134

Pickett, Clarence, 5 Pijade, Moša, 69 Poland, 8, 83–99 Polish Institute of International Affairs, 94 Polish United Workers’ Party, 88, 91, 100n10 Polk, Frank, 73 Polygoon, 31 Popović, Koča, 67 Pos, Mary, 9, 143–156, 158–162 Posthumus Meyes, W. Chr., 39n67 Post War World Council (PWWC), 203 Pravda, 87 Princess Juliana of the Netherlands, 30, 39n66, 144 Progressivism, 6 Propaganda, 24, 56 Q Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, 149, 159 R Radio Diffusion Française, 28, 29, 38n50 Radio Executives Club, 36n23 Randolph, Philip, 110 Rapacki, Adam, 88, 89, 91, 95 Rapacki Plan, 87, 91 Read, Elizabeth, 5 Reading, Stella, 42, 43, 47 Reuther, Walter, 58 Ribnikar, Vladislav, 69, 76, 77 Rice, Condoleezza, 181 Riegger, Wallingford, 131 Robeson, Paul, 110, 111 Roberts, Chalmers, 48 Rockefeller Foundation, 99n10

 INDEX 

Roosevelt, Anna, 19–21, 34n9, 40n76 Roosevelt, Anna Eleanor, 41–59, 132 Roosevelt, Elliott, 21, 22, 30, 34n8, 135 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 4, 9, 41–59, 84, 87, 90, 91, 125–137, 144, 147, 149, 171–190, 190n2, 190n4, 193, 201 Roosevelt, Theodore, 4, 173, 193, 197, 199 Rosenfeld, Netty, 31 Rumsey, Mary Harriman, 132 Rural Electrification Administration, 201 Rusk, Dean, 30 Ruskin, John, 194 Ruybrechts, Mabel, 158 Ryan, William, 6, 15n36 S Sacco, Nicola, 108 Sampson, Edith, 118 Schary, Dore, 176 Schneiderman, Rose, 5 Scotland, 42 Scottsboro, 108–110, 117 Second World War, 19, 24, 38n57, 72, 79n12, 87, 91, 98, 111, 113, 158, 172, 179 Segregation, 6, 9, 56, 57, 109, 110, 112 Shannon, Prudence, 144 Shotwell, James, 52 Sierra Club, 194 Sikorski, Władysław, 90 Sioussat, Helen, 36n25 Socialist League of the Working People of Yugoslavia, 69 Soil Conservation Service, 197 South Africa, 32–33 South Korea, 157

217

Souvestre, Marie, 4, 129 Spain, 129, 134, 135 Spanish Civil War, 107, 129–130, 136 Spasowski, Romuald, 89 Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development, 91 Sputnik, 88 Stalin, Joseph, 43, 68 Standish, Myles, 133 Stark, Harold, 45 Stettinius, Edward, 202 Stevenson, Adlai, 168n79 Stimson, Henry, 57 Stolica, 97 Switzerland, 28 Szablowski, Jerzy Jan, 93 T Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 193, 202 The Times, 44, 45 Third Bertrand Russel International Tribunal on War Crimes, 80n19 Thomas, Norman, 203 Thompson, Llewellyn, 100n13 Thompson, Malvina, 42, 49, 144 Thoreau, Henry David, 194 Time Magazine, 52 Tito (Josip Broz), 8, 67, 68, 72, 75–77, 86 Tobias, Channing, 118 Toynbee, Arnold, 202 Treaty of Osimo, 80n12 Truman, Harry, 14n33, 20, 25, 65, 67, 75, 81n32, 88, 106, 107, 113, 179, 187, 203 Trump, Donald, 189 Trybuna Ludu, 92 Turkey, 71 Tyler, William, 28

218 

INDEX

U Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), 25, 43, 56, 73, 84, 87, 88, 107, 119 United Nations (UN) (Organization), 6, 12n8, 19–24, 27, 30, 34n8, 35n17, 43, 46, 52, 53, 56, 59, 65, 66, 74, 84, 85, 105, 111, 112, 116, 157, 158, 161, 164n14, 172, 201 United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC), 74, 81n35 United Nations Commission for Indonesia (UNCI), 157, 159 United Nations Declaration, 74 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 204 United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization, 204 United Nations Human Rights Commission, 19, 22, 73, 75, 84, 112, 162 United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), 24 United Nations Office of Public Information, 24 United Nations Radio, 18, 23, 24 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA), 73 United States Children’s Bureau, 70 United States Congress, 20, 25, 57, 110, 203 United States Department of State, 25, 26, 30, 32, 33, 67, 86, 90, 113, 114, 116, 118, 119 United States Foreign Service, 28 United States Information Service (USIS), 18, 26, 29, 32, 37n42, 39n63

United States Senate, 22 United States Supreme Court, 108, 208n25 United Yugoslav Relief Fund, 73, 81n28 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), 6, 11n8, 27, 84, 106, 113, 115, 201 V Van der Groot, Lilian, 35n14 Van Randwijk, Henk, 169n84 Van’t Rood-Gerth van Wijk, Wilhelmina, 157 Vandegrift, Alexander, 62n40 Vandenberg, Arthur, 11n4 Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 108 Vatican, 68 Verwoerd Schoonbee, Elizabeth, 166n46 Vetter, Marijke, 160 Voice of America (VOA), 24, 28, 36n31 Volkskrant, 160 Vrij Nederland, 160 Vukmanović-Tempo, Svetozar, 76 W Walka Młodych, 96, 97 Wallace, Henry, 107 Washington, George, 131, 132 Washington Post, 44 Webb, James, 25, 26 Weidman, Charles, 130 Welles, Barbara, 36n25 Wells, H.G., 109 West, J.B., 127 Westphalia Treaty, 39n66 White, Walter, 5, 110–112, 116, 117

 INDEX 

Wigman, Mary, 133 Wilkins, Roy, 117 Wilkinson, Ellen, 24 Willkie, Wendell, 43 Wilson, Edith, 44 Wilson, Woodrow, 4, 44, 73 Winant, John, 45, 48, 57, 61n35 Winiewicz, Józef, 88, 91, 96 Winkler, Johan, 169n84 WNBC, 18 Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, 42 Women’s City Club, 5 Women’s Trade Union League, 5, 132 Women’s Voluntary Service, 42 Women United for the United Nations (WUUN), 24, 36n25 Wood, Edward Frederick Lindley (Lord Halifax), 44 Workers’ Council, 71 Works Progress Administration (WPA), 130, 133, 141n55

219

World Court, 107 World Federation of the United Nations Associations (WFUNA), 8, 83, 85, 86, 88–96, 98 X Xi Ho, David Chang, 35n17 Y Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), 146 Yugoslav Anti-Fascist Women’s League, 70 Yugoslav Communist Party, 67, 69 Yugoslavia, 8, 67–70, 76–78 Yugoslav UN Association, 70, 74 Z Zarubin, Georgi, 100n13 Ż ycie Warszawy, 94, 96, 97