Quotations

excerpted from the book

Casting Her Own Shadow

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism

by Allida M. Black

Columbia University Press, 1996

p27

The cornerstone of ER's emerging political philosophy was as simple as it was powerful: if the nation was to flourish, Americans must accept the responsibility of hving in a democracy. They must study the issues and develop informed opinions about the best ways to solve the nation's problems because "knowledge will forever govern ignorance." Americans "must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives" because government could only be as good as its people. Democracy was a two-way street. It not only "must have leaders who have the power to see farther, to imagine a better life but it must also have a vast army of men and women capable of understanding these leaders."

p29
ER
The unemployed are not a strange race. They are like we would be if we had not had a fortunate chance at life.

p59
ER
Government has to ensure not only political democracy to the people but economic democracy as well.

p75
I wonder whether our greed makes it impossible for us to profit by the lessons of the past?

p77
When Joseph Lash implied that a new party might be necessary to challenge a backsliding Democractic Party, she agreed that new alignments were necessary.

"I would still be opposed to a third party, but in the end you are right and I think we must have a new party, not necessarily a 3rd party."

p78

When Fiorello La Guardia tried to recruit her support for an alternative party, her refusal was even more blunt.

"It takes so long before a third party wields any power. I cannot see much point in trying to build up one at the present time when things need to be done quickly."

p79
ER
We cannot be more conservative than the Republicans so we cannot succeed as conservatives.

p85
ER's commitment to racial justice was both so public and so routine that her name became synonymous with early demands for civil rights.

p85
... once aroused to the racial abuses blacks suffered at the hands of American democracy, ER increasingly confronted this undemocratic behavior and called it by its rightful name. As she continued to grow as an individual, her insight into this "American dilemma" increased. No other noted white American of her stature spoke out so consistently, so eloquently, and so brazenly on this issue or encountered such vicious public ridicule for this stand than Eleanor J Roosevelt.

p86
ER's overt commitment to racial justice bespoke not a sporadic response of conscience but an unwavering allegiance to democratic principles. She believed wholeheartedly that a democracy must be inclusive and protect minority rights and insure safe, peaceful protest or it ceased to be democratic.

p87
[ER] was so closely associated with the movement for racial justice that the almost 4,000-page dossier the FBI kept on her is filled with references to her civil rights activities and the outrage it generated among her detractors. Rumors spread throughout the thirties and forties reflected this connection. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, even speculated that "Negro blood" inspired ER's perverse behavior. Other Americans suspected this as well. "I don't mean to be rude," a woman wrote to ER as part of her monthly "If You Ask Me" column, "but do you have colored blood in your family, as you seem to derive so much pleasure from associating with colored folks?"

p89
ER to Ralph Bunch - Americans wanted to talk "only about the good features of American life and to hide our problems like skeletons in the closet."

p89
This conviction led Ralph Bunche to report to Gunnar Myrdal
"I do not believe I have interviewed anyone about whose sincerity I am more impressed."

p136
ER in The Nation magazine, I940
"We do not move forward by curtailing people's liberty because we are afraid of what they may do or say. We move forward by assuring to all people protection in the basic iberties under a democratic form of government, and then making sure that our government serves the real needs of the people.''

p137
[the United States must] "be willing to listen or to allow people to state any point of view they may have, to say anything they may believe."

p138
In I936, she seconded recommendations made by a senatorial investigation of the munitions industry chaired by George P. Nye that characterized the relationship between weapons manufacturers and the military as "shameless profiteering." The government, she declared, either should nationalize or tightly control the munitions industry.

p139
ER worried that the war against fascism could easily inspire an ever-escalating domestic propaganda campaign to promote unquestioning compliance with American policy. She recoiled at the arguments made by America Firsters.

p141
Despite her suspicion that some Americans would experience sudden religious conversions to avoid military service, Eleanor Roosevelt supported Americans who, out of a genuine commitment to a "higher calling," refused to take up arms but who agreed to serve their nation as noncombatants. Indeed, from early I940 until V-J Day, she admonished those who attacked conscientious objectors. In a nationally broadcast radio address on October I4, I94I, ER not only praised the service the objectors were providing in medical facilities, but also reproached her audience for condoning those who impugned the objectors' convictions and harassed their families. Make no mistake about it, she insisted, "the test of democracy and civilization is to treat with fairness the individual's right to self-expression, even when you can neither understand nor approve of it."

p148
"One thing I deplore in this country is the fact that we occasionally find people here and there who allow themselves to be carried away by hysteria and fear." Such constant and easy acquiescence was a pervasive threat to civil liberties. Whether people agree or not was not the point. "We must not reach a state of fear and hysteria which will make us all cowards! Either we are strong enough to live as a free people or we will become a police state. There is no such thing as a bystander on these questions."

p149
Hoover's distrust of ER bordered on obsessive hatred. To Hoover, ER was nothing but an "old hoot owl" whose conduct approached treachery.

p151
"I have never liked the idea of an Un-American Activities Committee," ER wrote in late I947. "I have always thought a strong democracy should stand by its fundamental beliefs and that a U.S. citizen should be considered innocent until he is proven guilty." That the committee did not behave in such a fashion alarmed her. "[L]ittle people have become frightened and we find ourselves living in the atmosphere of a police state, where people close doors before they state what they think or look over their shoulders apprehensively before they express an opinion." Americans must learn to hear both bad and good opinions about their actions. Since the fear generated by the committee continued to dominate political discussion, ER concluded "the Un-American Activities Committee seems to me to be better for a police state than for the U.S.A."

Casting Her Own Shadow

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