[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart, and welcome back to our Eleanor Roosevelt hour, which is our way to mark President's Day, because to adapt an old saying, "Behind every great president, there's a great First Lady." To close out our conversation about Eleanor Roosevelt, we'll take a look at Eleanor's achievements after leaving the White House.

As a delegate in the newly formed United Nations, where she helped settle disputes about the relocation of wartime refugees, and was instrumental in the creation and passage of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Now we dive back into the story with Eleanor's appointment to the UN by President Harry Truman in 1945. After the death of her husband, Eleanor is left wondering what her role will be when she leaves the White House. Here's author David Michaelis sharing the questions on Eleanor's mind as she transitioned out of the role of First Lady.

David Michaelis: What could she do for the world of peace? What could she do to make the peace this time become a peace that was lasting? It's what we forget now because our collective memory only lasts about 30 years, but we forget that the trauma of that war, of the Second World War, was so extreme. That really what the UN was about and her first initial work as Harry Truman turned to her and said, "Would you be the first US Representative," to the first meeting of the new United Nations, founded in San Francisco the previous year.

Now meeting for the first time in London, "Will you go and be the first US representative?" Of course, she would be. What was she trying to do? She was trying to create a world that would never have another war. She was part of a group of people who were coming from all the different countries of the world and all their different experiences of the trauma of this war, and create something that would be a community that could never allow that to happen again. Yet suddenly the US was the only one with the atomic bomb.

Suddenly the Soviets wanted it too. Eleanor had a role to play. This was something, I think, that surprised her. She wasn't just going to be-- she was so much more-- she was so much less a president's widow immediately than she was an autonomous presence for which there was no president. She could go to England and be well received and viewed as a great figure, as the widow of Franklin Roosevelt. As soon as they began listening to her speak, and as soon as they began to see what she was doing, they realized there was no one like her. That was-

Alison: What do you think her chief skills as a diplomat were?

David: Listening and not seeking to overpower or to gain advantage, and not seeking out of a sense of being taken advantage of immediate gamesmanship. The men of the world, the Churchills, the Stalins, the men at Yalta, including FDR, they were all desperately afraid that they were going to be taken advantage of by the others. Eleanor did not have that burden. First of all, she was not the leader of the country. So she could understand people for what they wanted, hear them, and immediately give them a sense that she was already on their side. In the sense that she was hearing them, she was knowing what they wanted.

She could bring back to the councils of power and the councils of influence, the understanding and recognition. I think in a world in which the soviets immediately wanted control and wanted to be secretive about it. This was incredibly-- her skill with the soviets had a lot to do with defeating their paranoia almost immediately by saying, "I see you, I know you, I know what's going on, and you can trust me to know that this is going to be a fair conversation." I think she always felt she could understand somebody and get them on her side if she could hear what they really wanted and get them to really be honest with her.

Alison: Eleanor was also instrumental in drafting and passing The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Why was this project so important to her?

David: So that war would never happen again, and so that people would be recognized as human beings first, and not as pawns in wars and games of worldwide domination. That was to say, what is a human being? What rights are all of our rights? What do men, and women, and children deserve from every government of the world? This was a document that no one had ever attempted to do this before, to define these rights, these individual rights of human beings all over the world.

Eleanor was uniquely qualified by her entire life, really. She was made for it. It's odd to even think that her Livingstone relatives were those that signed-- she had declaration signers among her. This was a Magna Carta. This was a document that the world had never seen before and it was going to be shaped by 18 countries finally sitting down. With all their differences, cultural, religious, social, in every way different, coming together and hearing each other, and being able to agree on completely, a never before agreed upon terms.

She made it happen and she made it work. She had a great delegate. There were a lot of people who were like minded and she had a great delegation to work with. What she did was she kept it moving. She kept this moving forward. She did not let despair or disagreement or the things that you would fall into in world today division and doubt and despair take over it. She kept it moving and it was what made it work finally her own optimism.

Alison: One of the things I found fascinating in the book is her role as King Maker, and how she wasn't all that fond of John Kennedy initially. She wasn't that impressed with him. She came around, he came calling, and their relationship changed over the time. I don't want to talk specifically about him. I'm just curious, what did it take to impress Eleanor Roosevelt? If John Kennedy couldn't impress her initially, what did it take?

David: It took being your own person. It took demonstrating that you thought for yourself, that you were an independent thinker, and that you understood yourself and trusted yourself well enough to be able to have that independence of mind and of action. I think what she did see in JFK finally was someone who had begun to think for himself. Her great suspicion, it came out of his father, the ambassador to the Court of St. James under FDR, but we don't need to go back to that.

What she saw in Senator Kennedy that made her doubt him was that he had failed to show up and vote against and censure Senator Joseph McCarthy who had brought the chaos, and paranoia, and distrust, and fascism to our politics that we've just very similar to the period we've just gone through. She looked upon this lack of spine on his part as a real flaw because she felt that he was covering up for his own family's relationship to McCarthy, a personal relationship to Senator McCarthy.

In fact, that wasn't really true, but she was right in thinking that he had not yet evolved into becoming the man he became. It was actually in the time that she finally did throw in with him in the summer of 1960, during the presidential campaign of 1960, and in the growth of his own life. Very similar to FDR in terms of the personal pain of illness and of loss of becoming a real person, and seeing people in different terms and also being a man of peace.

I think she really saw John Kennedy a man of peace, and it really mattered to her that a leader was going to seek peace first and find every possible way. If you jump forward to the weeks before her death, strangely, were the moment of her entire life in Eleanor Roosevelt's entire time of when the United States came closest to nuclear annihilation during the Cuban missile crisis. Which would have had a different outcome had the leaders and the leader of the country not been first seeking peace at the time.

I think Eleanor knew this instinctively, but she also looked on John Kennedy and saw a handsome young man and famously said, "If only the Senator had a little less profile and a little more courage." She was talking about his lack of courage in censuring McCarthy. She got over that and it was typical of her to embrace somebody that she had initially thought not the best of, and then become his complete champion, which is what she did.

Alison: We'll leave it there with Eleanor Roosevelt biographer David Michaelis. Before we wrap up the hour, we wanted to bring you a little bit of Eleanor Roosevelt herself. We didn't have to look far at all because in 1957, the then former first lady was invited to this very radio station to be a guest DJ in order to raise money for March of Dimes, an organization that her husband founded to help fight polio. We'll hear Eleanor Roosevelt taking music requests from school kids recovering from-- polio. We'll start with the voice of WNYC's Martin Bush.

Martin Bush: I'd like to introduce them to you as each makes a request. Now, first, this is Joyce Alexander and she's from the Bronx.

Mrs. Roosevelt: Hello, Joyce.

Joyce Alexander: Hello.

Mrs. Roosevelt: I'd like to ask you just where you go to school in New York.

Joyce: PS 90 in the Bronx.

Mrs. Roosevelt: When were you taken with polio?

Joyce: Two years ago.

Mrs. Roosevelt: Two years ago. Have you had good care since?

Joyce: Yes.

Mrs. Roosevelt: You're getting better?

Joyce: Yes.

Mrs. Roosevelt: That's fine. Now, Joyce, what would you like me to play at your request?

Joyce: Would you please play Love me?

Mrs. Roosevelt: Who do you want to have sing it?

Joyce: Elvis Presley.

Mrs. Roosevelt: All right.

[music]

Treat me like a fool,

Treat me mean and cruel,

But love me.

Martin: Yes, this is radio station WNYC at 830 kilocycles or 93.9 megacycles on FM, believe it or not, and it's Elvis Presley on WNYC. As well as Elvis Presley, a very special personality, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt is acting as disc jockey. Mrs. Roosevelt?

Mrs. Roosevelt: Yes, I'm doing something unusual just as WNYC is doing something unusual. A little while back, I paid tribute to those who have already participated in talent shows, or will later this month in their home communities. I would also like to encourage more people to participate, and even to organize more local talent shows for the benefit of the March of Dimes. I'm sure there are hundreds of people, like myself, who would get up in public and show hidden talents. Far more entertaining than anything I can do for such an inspiring cause.

Martin: I doubt that very much. Here now with us, Mrs. Roosevelt, is Florence Krieger. Florence, will you tell our celebrated disc jockey what record you would like her to play, although I'm sure Mrs. Roosevelt has a few questions for you before we do that.

Florence Krieger: I would like to have Harry Belafonte's Calypso record, especially Man Smart.

Mrs. Roosevelt: All right, I'm sure they play it in just a minute. I wanted to ask you, how long have you been ill, my dear?

Florence: Three years.

Mrs. Roosevelt: Three years. Are you getting along and improving?

Florence: Yes, ma'am.

Mrs. Roosevelt: Are you able to go to school?

Florence: Yes.

Mrs. Roosevelt: I see you can get around in a wheelchair, but are they beginning to teach you to walk at all?

Florence: Yes, ma'am, I walk.

Mrs. Roosevelt: They are? Oh, that's good. I'm glad at that. Now, we have your record.

[music]

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-hey

Hey

Alison: That is all of it for this hour. Stick around because next hour we'll talk about Lady Bird Johnson. That's coming up right after the news.

[music]

I say let us put man and a woman together

To find out which one is smarter

Some say man, but I say no

The women got the men beat, they should know

And not me, but the people they say

That the man are leading the women astray

But I say that the women of today

Smarter than the man in every way

That's right, the woman is, uh, smarter

That's right, the woman is, uh, smarter

That's right, the woman is, uh, smarter

That's right, that's right

Ah, ever since the world began

Woman was always teaching man

And if you listen to my bid attentively

I goin' tell you how she smarter than me

And not me, but the people they say

That the man are leading the women astray

But I say that the women of today

Smarter than the man in every way

Samson was the strongest man long ago

No one could a-beat him, as we all know

Until he clash with Deliah on top of the bed

She told him all the strength was in the hair of his head

And not me, but the people they say

That the man are leading the women astray

But I say that the women of today

Smarter than the man in every way

That's right, the woman is, uh, smarter

That's right, the woman is, uh, smarter

That's right, the woman is, uh, smarter

That's right, that's right

Hey, you meet a girl at a pretty dance

Thinkin' that you would stand a chance

Take her home, thinkin' she's alone

Open de door you find her husband home

Not me, but the people they say

That the man are leading the women astray

 

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