Eleanor Roosevelts Discovery Of Black Americans

An in-depth history exploring the evolution, impact, and ultimate demise of what was known in the 1930s and ‘40s as FDR’s Black Cabinet. In 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the presidency with the help of key African American defectors from the Republican Party. At the time, most African Americans lived in poverty, denied citizenship rights and terrorized by white violence. As the New Deal began, a “black Brain Trust” joined the administration and began documenting and addressing the economic hardship and systemic inequalities African Americans faced. They became known as the Black Cabinet, but the environment they faced was reluctant, often hostile, to change. “Will the New Deal be a square deal for the Negro?” The black press wondered. The Black Cabinet set out to devise solutions to the widespread exclusion of black people from its programs, whether by inventing tools to measure discrimination or by calling attention to the administration’s failures. Led by Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator and friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, they were instrumental to Roosevelt’s continued success with black voters. Operating mostly behind the scenes, they helped push Roosevelt to sign an executive order that outlawed discrimination in the defense industry. They saw victories?jobs and collective agriculture programs that lifted many from poverty?and defeats?the bulldozing of black neighborhoods to build public housing reserved only for whites; Roosevelt’s refusal to get behind federal anti-lynching legislation. The Black Cabinet never won official recognition from the president, and with his death, it disappeared from view. But it had changed history. Eventually, one of its members would go on to be the first African American Cabinet secretary; another, the first African American federal judge and mentor to Thurgood Marshall. Masterfully researched and dramatically told, The Black Cabinet brings to life a forgotten generation of leaders who fought post-Reconstruction racial apartheid and whose work served as a bridge that Civil Rights activists traveled to achieve the victories of the 1950s and ’60s. Praise for The Black Cabinet “A dramatic piece of nonfiction that recovers the history of a generation of leaders that helped create the environment for the civil rights battles in decades that followed Roosevelt’s death.” —Library Journal “Fascinating . . . revealing the hidden figures of a ‘brain trust’ that lobbied, hectored and strong-armed President Franklin Roosevelt to cut African Americans in on the New Deal. . . . Meticulously researched and elegantly written, The Black Cabinet is sprawling and epic, and Watts deftly re-creates whole scenes from archival material.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

Volume 1 chronicles Eleanor Roosevelt's development as diplomat, politician, and journalist in the years 1945-1948. It is filled with original writings and speeches that have been annotated and made easily accessible through a comprehensive index. This is part of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project as the first of a five-volume set covering the years 1945-1962.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEE • The riveting history of how Pauli Murray—a brilliant writer-turned-activist—and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt forged an enduring friendship that helped to alter the course of race and racism in America. “A definitive biography of Murray, a trailblazing legal scholar and a tremendous influence on Mrs. Roosevelt.” —Essence In 1938, the twenty-eight-year-old Pauli Murray wrote a letter to the President and First Lady, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, protesting racial segregation in the South. Eleanor wrote back. So began a friendship that would last for a quarter of a century, as Pauli became a lawyer, principal strategist in the fight to protect Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and a co-founder of the National Organization of Women, and Eleanor became a diplomat and first chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Presents a breakthrough portrait of America's longest-serving first lady that covers her major contributions throughout critical historical events and her essential role in advancing international human rights.

Introduces the wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and U.S. delegate to the United Nations.

This book is about Eleanor´s humanitarianism and her fight for social justice. She started out early in life as an orphan by the age of eleven. Sent to her grandmother´s home, she then was sent to England to a finishing school for girls. Here she met an extraordinary teacher, Mlle. Souvestre, who opened the world for her to see and experience. Her teacher promoted self awareness and ´think for yourself´ attitude to help women become more sustained in their own lives. Once she finished school after three years, Eleanor came back to New York to have her coming out party for high society. Here she met FDR once more since childhood. They started to get to know one another and soon found they were in love and dating. They married in March of 1903 even though FDR´s mother Sara did not approve. However, Eleanor did many things to help the many men, women, and children of Rivington Street in New York. She took FDR down there before they were married and this I believe helped to fuel the injustice in the world seen by Eleanor and FDR, allowing them to make the wrongs right as best as they could. This in turn follows segregation of all levels and including the military, helping the disabled, children of all ages, refugees including those running from Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, and many other reasons to state. The book highlights on some of her work that she did alone, with FDR and with some women friends whom she became very close with over the years. I hope that people would be intrigued enough to read about this extraordinary woman whose work and ideals are still sought after and followed to this day. Thank you. Crystal Roberts

A candid and insightful look at an era and a life through the eyes of one of the most remarkable Americans of the twentieth century, First Lady and humanitarian Eleanor Roosevelt. The daughter of one of New York’s most influential families, niece of Theodore Roosevelt, and wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt witnessed some of the most remarkable decades in modern history, as America transitioned from the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and the Depression to World War II and the Cold War. A champion of the downtrodden, Eleanor drew on her experience and used her role as First Lady to help those in need. Intimately involved in her husband’s political life, from the governorship of New York to the White House, Eleanor would eventually become a powerful force of her own, heading women’s organizations and youth movements, and battling for consumer rights, civil rights, and improved housing. In the years after FDR’s death, this inspiring, controversial, and outspoken leader would become a U.N. Delegate, chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, a newspaper columnist, Democratic party activist, world-traveler, and diplomat devoted to the ideas of liberty and human rights. This single volume biography brings her into focus through her own words, illuminating the vanished world she grew up, her life with her political husband, and the post-war years when she worked to broaden cooperation and understanding at home and abroad. The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt includes 16 pages of black-and-white photos.

This original and vital study enriches our understanding of the New Deal, the African American experience, and liberal reform.

Transforming the power in Eleanor's story to your story starts now. Whatever the scale of your rendezvous with destiny, the fact remains it is up to you to live it. Eleanor's story is a do-it-yourself guide that shows us how to accomplish many things. From a childhood plagued with drunks and drama queens, Eleanor must now discard her dependency on Franklin and face off with her grand dame mother-in-law. Refusing to cave in to society's rules, Eleanor's exuberant style, wavering voice, and lack of Hollywood beauty are fodder for the media. First Lady for thirteen years, Eleanor redefines and exploits this role to a position of power. Using her influence, she champions Jews, African Americans, and women. The audacity of this woman to live out her own destiny challenges us to do the same. After all, it's not about Eleanor. Her story is history. Her life shows us how to live.