Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.

Early on the morning of Sunday, December 7th, 1941, the imperial Japanese navy launched an attack on Pearl Harbor. That sound of the attack from the AP Archive. In less than 90 minutes, fighter planes destroyed 19 US warships and 300 aircraft, and they took the lives of more than 2,400 US service members. Americans knew that this meant the nation was now undeniably going to war. While President Roosevelt and his military advisors gathered to strategize, it was First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who addressed the nation.

Eleanor Roosevelt: You cannot escape anxiety. You cannot escape a clutch of fear at your heart, and yet I hope that the certainty of what we have to meet will make you rise above these fears.

Melissa: The First Lady was already scheduled to give her regular Sunday evening radio broadcast, so the task of speaking first to a terrified and angry country fell to her.

Eleanor Roosevelt: We must go about our daily business more determined than ever to do the ordinary things as well as we can. When we find a way to do anything more in our communities to help others, to build morale, to give a feeling of security, we must do it. Whatever is asked of us, I am sure we can accomplish it. We are the free and unconquerable people of the United States of America.

Melissa: Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was America's longest-serving first lady. Leading alongside FDR from 1933 to 1945. Her career as an activist, diplomat, and politician continued for decades after her husband's death.

Eleanor Roosevelt: This Universal Declaration of Human Rights may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere.

Melissa: Eleanor Roosevelt was so extraordinary, it's easy to regard her singular accomplishments as irrelevant to understanding the larger category of America's first ladies, but we're devoting today's episode of The Takeaway to the task of taking first ladies seriously as we seek to understand the unique ways these women have affected and continue to shape America.

Hillary Clinton: We are focusing world attention on issues that matter most in our lives, the lives of women and their families.

Nancy Reagan: I answered, "Just say no."

Laura Bush: To focus on the brutality against women and children by the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

Michelle Obama: When they go low, we go high.

Melissa: Now, our conversations today are inspired by a course I'm teaching this semester at Wake Forest University. Together, my students and I are exploring the contributions of America's first ladies, and it seems they've learned a lot.

Abby: Hi, this is Abby, Wake Forest class of 2023. Eleanor Roosevelt revolutionized the public-facing element of first ladyship and forever changed the role.

Janine: Hi, this is Janine, Wake Forest class of 2024. Lady Bird Johnson was the first first lady to hit the campaign trail alone, and her Lady Bird Special helped to capture the votes of Southern states during a time where many of them were angered by Lyndon B Johnson's support of the Civil Rights Act.

Lexi: Hi, this is Lexi, Wake Forest class of 2023. It was interesting thinking about first ladyship in the sense of an actress's role and what Nancy Reagan was able to bring to the table during the Reagan presidency.

Melissa: Our study of America's first ladies got a major boost when we had a class visit from an expert in the field.

Lauren Wright: My name is Lauren Wright. I'm an associate research scholar and lecturer in Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University.

Melissa: Professor Wright is an alumn of Wake Forest. She joined our class to talk about her book-

Lauren: -On Behalf of the President: Presidential Spouses and White House Communications Strategy Today.

Melissa: Lauren recently stopped by The Takeaway to keep the conversation going.

Lauren: As social scientists, we have not taken them seriously as these major political players, who really moved the needle when it comes to public opinion of the president and some very important policy issues. That's my research area, is how can we measure that impact and get political scientists and our colleagues on board with the fact that this is not a fluffy topic.

Melissa: Because isn't sometimes part of the communications strategy on the part of first ladies to make you think that they're not major political operatives?

Lauren: Yes, that's one of the really tough parts about this, is that it's advantageous for the White House and presidential campaigns to emphasize this humble outsider volunteer that doesn't have any stake in the political game because that makes them sometimes more likable and more relatable, but at the same time, if you look at how they're being mobilized, they have very qualified, sizable staffs, every move is scrutinized.

If you just look at how first ladies spend their time and what they talk about, you can very quickly ascertain that that veil of the humble volunteer is not representative of the very serious work that they are doing politically.

Melissa: What does that mean to have a professional office in the East Wing of the White House? What does that look like?

Lauren: If I was to sum it up as briefly as possible, a communications arm of the West Wing. It is the most effective communications arm they have because the commitment of the East Wing really is to push forward the president's agenda.

Melissa: Give me an example.

Lauren: One key example that came out from my research was this fascinating connection between the initiatives and projects first ladies choose and the president's policy agenda. They coincide with very serious and controversial policy goals. If you look at the Bush administration, Ready to Read, Ready to Learn, and Laura Bush's literacy initiatives, those coincided with No Child Left Behind, which is probably one of the most serious and controversial policy conversations that transformed the role of the federal government in our education system.

That literacy initiative allowed her to talk about No Child Left Behind in a way that wasn't seen as stepping on any toes. Same thing with the Afghan Women's Project and the War on Terror. The most effective initiatives of first ladies are not simply things they're interested in or have experience with, although that certainly helps the initiative gain legitimacy, but they are very effective frames for overarching policy agenda items that the West Wing and the president can't just get across the line themselves. They need that extra voice. That's been the gold standard for how to mobilize a first lady.

Melissa: How do you know that they're effective?

Lauren: I tested this in my book with various survey experiments that would test the effectiveness of presidents and first ladies, delivering the same message on a certain policy, so we can tell, for example, when it comes to a health care speech. Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama were, in some cases, more effective saying the same thing than the president himself in certain cases. Presidents just can't deliver some of these messages with the same credibility because first ladies do emphasize their outsider status, and they say, "I don't really have a horse in this race, I just care about American families."

That comes across very credible, especially in areas of domestic policy that affect children and families. They're some of the best voices the White House has to offer on those issues.

Melissa: What about when they do have a horse in the race? In other words, how valuable are candidate spouses during campaigns?

Lauren: When we ask about campaign effectiveness, it's really three things. I can talk about them in the context of Michelle Obama. First is how much media attention they get. In 2012, for instance, if we look at online views of the convention speeches that year, Michelle Obama's speech gets seven times more views than her husband, the actual nominee, more than a million more views than President Clinton's speech, and more views than the entire RNC combined. Then, in this testing hypothetical survey environment, when they give the same message, does it ring differently for different audiences? With Michelle Obama, she was very effective among independent voters, partisanship tends to have less to do with how first ladies are evaluated just from a baseline popularity standpoint on the campaign trail. Then there's the fundraising piece, which is really easy to track. First ladies especially in midterms are the most valuable fundraisers.

Staff would rather have them all around the country pretty much than any other person and it's because they carry this quality of, "I'm the last person that he talked to," and it's believable. The message seems very credible and close to home. If you're talking about someone like Michelle Obama, she happens to be a very talented communicator, she's really good at sharing emotion, which not all politicians do very well. There's these baseline traits that help but then, of course, individual personality does come into it and that can increase or decrease the effectiveness.

Melissa: Let's talk about Melania Trump.

Lauren: I actually think part of the story with Melania Trump is that she had all of these same attributes that come built-in with the first lady role and status that could have made her a very effective messenger but she chose not to engage heavily in that role. I think it is because it changed the standards and lowered the standards as far as the volume of public activity that we expect from future spouses and widen the range of possibilities of how they spend their time.

I'll just quickly say, the flip side of that and I'm very familiar with this argument as well is while it's perhaps one of the best ways to do good, it's one of the most visible roles in government in the world. Of course, you should sacrifice and help along the agenda. If you believe that your husband is trying to correct the course of the country or strengthen the future for our kids, you should drop everything and contribute. Yes, you should. I understand that, too. Melania Trump really guarded her time and opted out of a lot of those traditional duties.

Melissa: What about our current first lady, Dr. Jill Biden?

Lauren: The difficult tightrope that Jill Biden walks is she has a full-time job that makes her perhaps most relatable than any first lady that's come before to the average working American woman. At the same time, she has less time to spend on the campaign trail behind the scenes on her own initiatives. That's a very material reality. Perhaps the White House misses out on some opportunities because she's not a full-time advocate for the administration. Perhaps what they gain is this is someone who's working in the real world and actually understands what things are like outside the Washington bubble. That can be very valuable, too.

Melissa: The title of your book is about presidential spouses. At this point in American history that has been exclusively first ladies, there is the possibility that we will elect a woman who's married to a man or elect a gay man who's married to a man and that our presidential spouse will be a guy, a first gentleman rather than a first lady. I'm wondering about your just hypotheses at this point about the ways that the influence and power of a first gentleman might operate differently than that of a first lady.

Lauren: There's a lot of similarities too, Melissa. We've seen that with examples of male spouses on the 2016 and 2020 campaign trails at the presidential level. Part of what I was paying such close attention to when Bill Clinton was campaigning for Hillary Clinton in 2016, for instance, or we saw Doug Emhoff and Chasten Buttigieg on the campaign trail was what did they spend their time talking about when they stumped for their spouses and a lot of it was the same character building and advocacy work that female spouses have done before.

They talk about this is a trustworthy person. This is a person who's had the same friends since grade school. It's a person that I've seen personally develop and this is why I know from my time with them that they're the best choice for the country. All of that humanizing and softening is still work that the male spouses are doing. Some parts of it would continue into a presidential administration with a woman president or if, for example, Pete Buttigieg is elected in the future but some of it, of course, we just don't know what it'll look like until we see it firsthand.

It's heartening that some of those responsibilities appear to be similar and it's the responsibility of a spouse to support your partner.

Melissa: Lauren Wright is associate research scholar and lecturer in Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. On August 9th, 1974, Betty Ford became the first lady of the United States. Her husband, Gerald Ford had spent 25 years as a Republican congressman from Michigan, but he'd never run for nationwide office. Now, he was the 38th President of the United States. See, the Fords were catapulted into the White House after the resignations of Vice President Spiro Agnew and President Richard Nixon. Both men had abused public office, lied to the American people, and undermined the public's faith in national leadership.

Lisa McCubbin: Within nine months, she went from thinking she and her husband were retiring to all of a sudden being thrust into the White House as first lady, something she had never dreamed of, hoped for or wanted. Hello, my name is Lisa McCubbin, and I'm the author of Betty Ford: First Lady, Women's Advocate, Survivor, Trailblazer.

Melissa: McCubbin's biography of Betty Ford tells a story of a woman committed to matter-of-fact honesty, which proved radical in the role of first lady. Take this stunning moment during a 1975 interview with 60 Minutes.

Speaker 6: Among the things you have spoken about abortion, which is a taboo subject for the wife of the president. It's one of those things that--

Betty Ford: If you ask a question, you have to be honest exactly how you feel. I feel very strongly that it was the best thing in the world when the Supreme Court voted to legalize abortion and, in my words, bring it out of the backwoods and put it in the hospitals where it belongs.

Melissa: McCubbin's book is a revelation of the importance of first lady Ford's approach to the job.

Lisa McCubbin: Outspoken and surprisingly candid, Betty Ford was refreshingly relatable, and as it turned out, she was exactly what America needed. She had been divorced, which was scandalous back then. She said she wasn't going to change who she was just because her husband had become president. She said, "I'm not the president, I can say what I want to say." The American people weren't really used to this, to a first lady being so open and outspoken. What I found was interesting were the questions the press would ask her were really kind of invasive at times.

There are questions I don't know that anyone would have the nerve to ask the first lady today and Betty Ford just answered every question. Things about smoking marijuana. Have your kids done it? Yes, I think they might have. That was shocking. What do you think about couples that are living together before marriage? That was shocking at the time. She said, "They are, aren't they? It's happening. We can't just shut our eyes and pretend it's not happening. It is." She was just so candid. It was really refreshing to a lot of people, but also startling to more the establishment.

Melissa: I love this possibility that her radical honesty, radical, but also just kind, forthright, and matter of fact, "Yes, this is what I think. Yes, sometimes I disagree with my husband politically, but nonetheless, here I am." That might have actually been a bandage for the wound of dishonesty that the country was experiencing.

Lisa McCubbin: Yes, I think you're absolutely right. It also gave a lot of women a sense of empowerment that they didn't have to always agree with their husband because in the '50s and '60s, the woman stayed at home, was the housewife typically, and the man went to work, and you were supposed to do what your husband said. Betty Ford being out there saying, "Well, she had worked, she had earned her own living. She had her own mind and she was going to speak it." I really think it empowered people, especially women, to realize that they could do that as well.

Melissa: There's another moment of openness and honesty very early in her time as first lady, which has a extraordinary impact on women and particularly women's health in this country. Talk to us about how Mrs. Ford and President Ford addressed the breast cancer diagnosis that she received early on.

Lisa McCubbin: Yes. It was about six or eight weeks after she had suddenly been thrust into the public eye as first lady. She went for a routine breast exam and the doctor found a lump. At that time, and this is 1974, you couldn't say the word breast on television. People didn't talk about breast cancer, and so it was a taboo subject. Well, she came home, it was very startling to the family, and the doctor said, "Well, we need to do a biopsy and we'll go in there. We'll put you under general anesthesia, and if we find that it's malignant, we're going to remove your breast while you're under anesthesia."

It turned out it was malignant. They did a radical mastectomy while she was under anesthesia, and the family talked about it and they said, "We had agreed with the American people, we're going to be open about everything, so we're going to tell them about your breast cancer." Normally, First Ladies, if they had any health issues, it was all kept very private. It was considered none of the public's business. Betty was still in the hospital when the very next day after they made this announcement that she had had her breast removed, people were lined up outside of women's clinics to get breast exams.

It had an impact overnight on women's health. It was amazing how women finally started talking about it, and men were talking about it. Because Betty Ford was so open about it, suddenly, this national conversation grew. That's when all the research money started pouring into women's health and breast cancer in particular.

Melissa: It is just such a stunning and clear emblematic moment of the potential power of First Ladies.

Lisa McCubbin: Absolutely. She had no idea that she was going to have this kind of impact. Once it happened, once she saw that, she realized she had this platform, and then she decided to make the most of it. Another thing that was really important to her was ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment. She lobbied to have that passed, and it was not popular with her husband's party, but she did it anyway because she felt it was so important and it did not pass. The Equal Rights Amendment did not pass. By the way, we still to this day do not have an Equal Rights Amendment.

Melissa: Now, wait, we have a special connection to First Lady Betty Ford because her eldest son, Mike Ford, is a 1972 alumn of our university. He recently retired after 36 years serving students through the offices of the Dean and Provost there. Yes, Betty Ford is a class favorite.

Lauren Goldston: Hi, this is Lauren Goldston, Wake Forest class of 2023. I respect Betty Ford for forging her own path and also for widening the lane of first lady can exist in.

Lizzie: Hi. This is Lizzie, Wake Forest class of 2023. Before learning about Betty Ford in class, I really didn't know much about her and never would've expected her to have such progressive views. She was also a fierce advocate for addiction treatment and mental health.

Melissa: Let's get back to my conversation with Betty Ford biographer, Lisa McCubbin, who reminds us that Betty's influence continued after the White House.

Lisa McCubbin: They moved to Palm Springs, California where she really didn't have a lot of friends. They had been out there on vacation. Her husband liked to golf, and that he started going around on the speaking circuit. She was at home and it was incredibly lonely. It was at this time when her addiction to pills and increased drinking really spiraled out of control. Her family ultimately had to do an intervention in order to save her life.

Melissa: Talk to me about that intervention.

Lisa McCubbin: They all showed up at her door one morning and said, "Mother, we're doing this because we love you." Then they proceeded to go around the room and tell Betty things that she had done that had hurt them personally and how her drinking and more the addiction to pills. I think a lot of people don't realize that her bigger problem really was addiction to pills that started with a prescription to opioids when she had a neck injury. I think a lot of people can relate to that, especially now. It got out of control. Then when she was first lady, she could get anything she wanted.

It was like she had pills to sleep. She had pills to stay awake. She had pills to lose weight, and she became dependent on them. The family did this intervention and it was hard, and Betty was in denial, but they said, "Look, you need to go into treatment." At the time, there really wasn't alcoholism treatment centers. She had to go to a naval hospital, and she was there with a bunch of Navy sailors who were being treated for alcoholism. It was just this excruciating time. She was 60 years old. She had been first lady and now, there's this. It was devastating to the entire family, but Betty being who Betty was, she faced it.

Once again, she was candid with the American people. She came out and said, "Look, I have this problem and I know I'm not alone." People started talking about alcoholism and drug addiction. She took away the stigma and the shame, or at least she started the conversation around that. I don't think it's completely gone. Then, of course, eventually, as everyone knows, she founded the Betty Ford Center.

Melissa: Lisa McCubbin is a New York Times bestselling author and author of Betty Ford: First Lady, Women's Advocate, Survivor, Trailblazer. Lisa, thanks so much for joining us.

Lisa McCubbin: Thank you, Melissa. Enjoyed our conversation.

Melissa: Stay with us. More First Ladies coming up, it's The Takeaway. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all persons are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These extraordinary aspirational words were penned by Thomas Jefferson, a man who held more than 600 human beings in intergenerational chattel bondage.

Thousands of men, women, and children were bought, sold, traded, and exchanged by four of the first five men who served as president of the United States, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. As inheritors of the words and deeds of the founders and beneficiaries of the lives and laborers of those they enslaved, we are responsible for confronting these contradictions as we understand our history.

Professor Schwartz: Slavery, it's important to remember, was a relationship. My name is Marie Jenkins Schwartz, and I'm professor emeritus of History at the University of Rhode Island.

Melissa: Professor Schwartz is the author of the Ties that Bound: Founding First Ladies and Slaves. She argues, First Ladies should be part of our investigation into slavery and the American founding.

Professor Schwartz: We often think about slavery as an abstract institution, an economic institution, or a labor institution. Somehow people seem distant from it. I think by studying the First Ladies, we can see that slavery was very much a personal relationship that needed to be negotiated. It was ongoing, it was relentless. I think we get that from studying women who work very closely with enslaved people in their homes

Melissa: Under the laws of curvature, women could not own property, even these elite women. If First Ladies can't, for the most part, actually be the owners, is it fair to take account of and to ask for accountability from these women to slavery?

Professor Schwartz: We have to remember that certain women did own slaves. For example, in the case of Martha Washington, she had been married before to Daniel Parke Custis, one of the richest people in Virginia, or perhaps in the entire country. She inherited when he died, the use of his slaves. When she and George Washington married, he was the one moving up. He actually didn't have a lot of enslaved people at Mount Vernon at that time, but Martha had access to hundreds of enslaved people. A lot of women, especially elite women, the type of women who became first lady did have access to their own slaves.

She was very much in charge of people who were held captive by the legal terms of the times. I think it's important to say that she had a lot of control over her property. In fact, during the presidency, George Washington once told his aid to make sure that Martha had all the funds she needed to run the household. There were spheres that she particularly was in charge of as opposed to him. I think he recognized that. He was the most important man in the United States, probably the most wealthy, and he deferred to her in the household.

Melissa: George Washington is credited with liberating the enslaved people he controlled upon his death, but the truth is more complicated. After he died, only 123 of the 326 enslaved people who lived and worked on President Washington's farms were given legal freedom. The remaining people, most of whom were inherited from Martha's first husband remained in bondage. When Martha Washington died in 1802, these human beings passed to her grandchildren. She freed no one.

Professor Schwartz: Martha expected her grandchildren to inherit enslaved people and live much as she had done.

Melissa: In my course at Wake Forest, students encounter a provocative inclusion on our syllabus.

Ansley: This is Ansley, Wake Forest class of 2023. The first lady that I have become more interested in after our studies is Sally Hemings, because I'd never before understood that someone of enslaved status and who is not living in the White House could be considered a first lady. From our readings and class discussions, I came to learn the importance that Sally Hemings played in the lives of the Jeffersons.

Melissa: Not everyone agrees Sally Hemings should be considered among America's first ladies, but her inclusion on the syllabus encourages us to be aware of the role of first ladies in maintaining and perpetuating slavery. Dolley Madison, the country's fourth first lady, is a particularly interesting example because she was raised as a Quaker. We continue now with Marie Jenkins Schwartz, professor emeritus of history at the University of Rhode Island.

Professor Schwartz: Her father and mother freed their slaves and relocated to Philadelphia when she was 15. They said they wanted to live in a free city, in a free state. Pennsylvania was well on its way to abolishing slavery at the time. Quakers were advocating emancipation. Dolley was living in this Quaker community in Philadelphia, but she met James Madison from Virginia. He was a large slaveholder, had over 100 slaves, and in the end, she embraced the slaveholding life.

She was renounced by her Quaker meeting house because she married an Episcopalian whose livelihood was dependent on slavery. Now, later in life, her relatives maintained that she adhered to some of her Quaker face, but it's hard to see that, especially toward the end of her life when she began selling slaves in order to maintain a lifestyle that she had enjoyed in Washington DC.

Melissa: Indeed, as you talk about how different from the plain Quaker lifestyle Dolley Madison came as a first lady, she was a renowned hostess, who was not only playing this role in Madison's White House, but had also operated in this role in certain ways for President Jefferson as well, who was a widower and did not have a first lady in the White House with him. She's got basically two decades almost of doing these enormous parties that really are also political tools. How did enslave people make, in this area, Dolley Madison's social acumen possible?

Professor Schwartz: In a variety of ways. One, were the agricultural laborers that was very important to them maintaining of the Montpelier plantation, but their domestic slaves were very front and center. At one time, Dolley Madison was criticized for using enslaved people as lanterns because she had them at a party holding torches to light up the place. There wasn't any limit to how Dolley would benefit from the presence of laborers in her household to do whatever needed to be done, from the making of jams to the fashioning of clothing, enslaved people were everywhere.

A lot of the stylish clothes that Dolley had, and she spent a lot of money on clothing imported from Europe, didn't arrive in a way that fit her exactly right. Enslaved people, they were restyling the dresses that she got from Europe in order to fit her. Later on, it became harder as money ran out for her to maintain her stylish and lavish wardrobe, so she had her enslaved workers adding trims to dresses that were older. Eventually, she even ran out of money to think of this.

You think of how much time she spent had to spend with enslaved people. She knew them quite well, and yet when times got tough, a lot of them had to go and they went on the slave market.

Melissa: Perhaps the most famous story about Dolley Madison is that she's credited with saving the portrait of George Washington when British troops burned the White House during the war of 1812.

Professor Schwartz: During the war of 1812, Washington was invaded by the British. The White House was burned, the city was sacked, and Dolley state, and yet that story about the saving of the Washington portrait is a bit distorted. For one thing, she wasn't there alone. She had other workers with her, both enslaved and free, and they were the ones that broke the frame and carried it out of the White House to save it. There was a lot of worry about this portrait on her part because they feared that the British would take the White House and if they took that portrait, they might parade it around the city to the humiliation of Americans.

That was the concern, so she wanted to get it out of the White House. There were lots of other things that she took, including important papers, and sometimes she's not given credit for that, or the enslaved people who were there and the other workers are not given credit for that. This was a very important. They waited into the last minute. There was a risk to them, but there was also a risk to the enslaved people who were remaining there. They didn't not know what would happen.

Some of them may have hoped that the British would come in and declare freedom for enslaved people but they didn't know who was going to win that war, and they had to go along with the regular jobs because they didn't know that the Americans wouldn't be victorious and that if they cooperated with the British, they would have to answer for it at some time. I think a lot of times, the story that goes around about Dolley Madison is she bravely stood there in the White House and saw to it that this portrait was taken out of the White House, but in fact, I think she was afraid. I suspect those enslaved people felt much the same.

Melissa: Marie Jenkins Schwartz, thank you so much for joining us here on The Takeaway.

Professor Schwartz: Thank you for having me.

Melissa: Over the decades, America's first ladies have expanded their roles and responsibilities. Abigail Adams was the first to live in the White House. Eleanor Roosevelt was the first to expand beyond social roles. Jackie Kennedy was the first to employ a press secretary. Lady Bird Johnson secured passage of federal legislation. Rosalynn Carter, the first to keep her own office in the East Wing, and Hillary Clinton went on to be elected to the US Senate to serve as Secretary of State and to secure the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

Hillary Clinton: I accept your nomination for President of the United States.

Melissa: But at least one woman truly tested the boundaries of the role of first lady by assuming an exercising authority typically reserved for the West Wing, Edith Wilson. After the 28th, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919. Edith functionally ran the Executive Branch until the end of his second term in 1921. Edith Wilson is the subject of a new biography, untold power, the fascinating rise and complex legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson, the author, Rebecca Boggs Roberts joins me now. Welcome to The Takeaway, Rebecca.

Rebecca Boggs Roberts: Thanks so much for having me, Melissa.

Melissa: Now, Edith met and married Wilson while he was president. Can you tell us that story a little bit?

Rebecca: She had no on-ramp to first lady whatsoever. He was elected in 1912. His first wife died in 1914. In 1915, Butcher Wilson and Edith Bolling Galt were sort of fixed up on a date by Wilson's doctor, Carrie Grayson, who was a good friend of Edith. The president was just gone from the first minute, I mean love at first sight, gushy, fervent love letters. Edith took a little while longer. She was an independent widow about town here in Washington DC. She had a lot to give up, she was hesitant to jump into any marriage, but certainly, a marriage that would give up all privacy and independence the way first lady does.

Melissa: In fact, go back and tell us a bit about who she was long before meeting Woodrow Wilson.

Rebecca: This is what was so fascinating about writing her biography, is that if you're surprised by her taking the reins of the executive branch in 1919, you really weren't paying attention. Edith proved herself to be someone who trusted her own judgment and found a confident way into unfamiliar situations throughout her life. She was born in 1872 in Wytheville, Virginia. Reconstruction era of Virginia. Her family had come down in the world. They had been tobacco planters, they had been in slavers after the Civil War. When they couldn't sustain that lifestyle, they ended up in this funny little warren of rooms above storefronts.

She was the sixth of nine children. There were a whole lot of relatives living in that funny little house. She easily could have been lost in the shuffle. She did have a mother and one grandmother bringing her up in the ideals of Victorian true womanhood, that she should be pious, pure, submissive, and domestic. She had another grandmother telling her to be fierce and strong and confident. That was her natural inclination anyway, but throughout her life, she was fierce and strong and confident but pretended she was submissive, pure, and pious.

Without doing too much psychoanalysis, I really do think it goes back to those first two grandmothers. She as a teenager came to Washington. She had an older sister who lived here and discovered what the world held for her in Gilded Age Washington, got married to a man who ran a high-end jewelry store here in Washington. He died after 12 years of marriage. They didn't have children. She was able to enjoy this status that very few women did in 1908. She had her own money because she inherited the store.

She had control over her own life because she was a widow. She didn't need a chaperone, she didn't have kids. There wasn't a man in her life trying to dictate what she did with her time and money. She enjoyed a self-control that was very rare for women of the era.

Melissa: I'm wondering, once she became first lady, how the Washington elite received her.

Rebecca: There was a little snippet about her being "in trade" because she owned the Jewelry store, but for the most part, she was actually surprisingly well-received. There had been some concern among Woodrow Wilson's advisors that because he had moved on from his first wife so quickly that he'd be condemned for not honoring her memory properly, but the truth is, everyone really loved Edith. The society columns were delighted with the idea that the White House might be back, that there might actually be parties, and that somebody who understood the social role of first lady was going to be in the job.

Edith never gave interviews and she didn't champion a cause the way contemporary first ladies do, but just by showing up and making Wilson show up, she made him much more approachable. He had this reputation, which he cultivated himself as being a superior intellectual snob type, and she humanized him.

Melissa: Should we consider Edith Wilson to be the first woman president?

Rebecca: I think as long as you use that word, acting-- first acting woman President, I think that's fair. There will be a first elected woman president and I do not want to take anything away from that woman's achievement. However, in 1919 when the president was much sicker than his inside circle was willing to admit to anyone, Edith really did control the executive branch. It was Edith who decided, who saw him, Edith who returned answers to any questions that were submitted to the White House. She met with the cabinet, she drafted public statements, she made the decisions about what the presidency did.

Now, she said she always consulted him and maybe she did. She certainly knew his priorities well enough to anticipate what he would have done, but at some point, even if she was consulting his judgment, his judgment wasn't great because he was kept in this echo chamber of only good news. He didn't even know how sick he was, and so he was part of the problem. For a staggeringly long amount of time, really, the end of 1919, the majority of 1920, until the election of 1920, Edith was the one making the decisions on behalf of the Executive Branch. Yes, I think it's fair to say, first acting female president.

Melissa: We've spent this entire hour making the claim that without understanding first ladies, we have an incomplete understanding of American history and politics. Based on your writing of this biography of this fascinating woman, do you think that Edith Wilson fits into and supports that claim we've been making?

Rebecca: I do. It's made trickier by the fact that she obscured her own role. You have to plow through some smoke and mirrors of her own making. I think that that actually illuminates the point you're trying to make that first ladies because they don't hold the office themselves and because so much is expected of them, that's overlaid with gender, they often downplay their own roles. It actually requires a pretty wholesale rethink of the Hall of Fame model. That's not the only way that social change happens.

It's certainly not the way social change happens in the hands of the women who were not allowed to hold the power in an out front way. Edith is an extreme example of that.

Melissa: Rebecca Boggs Roberts is a leading historian of American women's suffrage and civic participation educator, author, and her newest book, Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson. Rebecca, thanks so much for being here.

Rebecca: Thank you for having me.

Melissa: That's the show, y'all. Before we take off, I want to leave you with some words from First Lady Betty Ford.

Betty Ford: I'm sure they will remember me in recovery and perhaps with the Equal Rights Amendment and certainly the breast cancer. Those were all big things for me. If I hadn't been married to my husband, I never would have had the voice that I did when those things arose. Being married to him was probably the biggest decision I made and the best decision I made.

Melissa: Yes, we remember her for all those things and so much more. Has Betty Ford or any other first lady inspired you? If they have, give us a call and let us know. You can reach us at 877-869-8253. Thanks so much for spending a part of your day with us. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and this is The Takeaway.

 

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