The First Lady of Radio (6 page)

Example is always the greatest teacher, and if the child has grown up in a home where Mother and Father feel a responsibility for the community, that child will undoubtedly begin early to feel that he has a responsibility for the community. The mother can do a great deal toward bringing this about.

I remember going on a picnic with some young friends of mine one day last summer in one of the public parks of the state. And I was tremendously struck to find those girls and boys, at the end of our meal, picking up their papers and all the debris and putting it into the cans which were provided for it in every state camping ground, but which are placidly ignored by most people. I watched all this with care and then inquired if the youngsters belonged to a Boy or Girl Scout troop. I was told, no, that there were no troops near their home. So I asked them who had taught them to be so considerate of other people and such good campers, and they promptly responded, “Mother.”

“She says that if the state provides us with parks, it's up to us as good citizens to see that they are kept nicely for everybody who wants to use them.” It was a good example of a mother who was taking her responsibility as a citizen, and as a trainer of citizens, seriously. And making a very good job of it.

If the mother and father vote on Election Day—even though they have to give up some time and perhaps some money in order to do so—the children will be apt to ask what it means to vote and why it is important. And there is the first opportunity for our first lesson in democracy. Here is the chance to explain that, while in this country there may be many inequalities, this is one thing in which we are all equal. We all have but one vote, and we may all use that voting franchise to express our own opinions.

It is the mother's responsibility to see that questions which affect the public good in the community and in the state and in the country are discussed at the table and around the fire so that her children will really become interested in talking about something more than the small gossip about their friends and their own plans and immediate concerns.

Conversation and interchange of views is one of our great educations in general knowledge. And the mother can make out of the home
a forum where real public opinion is formed. No matter how busy she is, she can probably take some part in community life. And it seems to me that every citizen should do something to bring himself in touch with the rest of the world, and have an interest in and work for the common cause.

At first the mother, because of her children, may be interested in the school board and the affairs of the school. She should be certainly interested in the sanitation and in the way in which the rules and regulations and laws are enforced in her community. [There is] a good example at the present moment right here in New York City of what individual mothers can do for the good of the children in general. Some 100,000 children are hungry and are lacking the best food. A plan has been evolved whereby every individual will find slipped around the milk bottle delivered to the door a little pledge slip asking those who are able to contribute the price of a quart of milk a day for as long a period as possible, to keep someone else's child in good health. Here is a concrete example of where a mother, if her budget will permit, can give tangible proof to her child that she is a good citizen of her community and has the good of all children at heart.

A determined group of women can sometimes effect great reforms in their surroundings. I remember a small village on a little island off the coast of Maine where the women once decided that a speakeasy, about half a mile away along the shore, was making their lives unbearable. In a body they marched down one night and burned that speakeasy to the ground and drove the man who owned it off the island. He never returned. And, as far as I could see, there was no great resentment amongst the men, who continued to lead their lives quite happily without him.

As citizens, if mothers would just get together and agree on what they wanted, I think they would find that their influence and power was very much greater than they had ever dreamed. A mother has a twofold
responsibility: that of using her own influence as much as her duties will permit to bring about the end which she desires, and the power of her example on the future citizens.

These are great responsibilities, but [also] a great satisfaction because with them she can make her home and her country a safer and pleasanter place for her children. And from her interest in her own children, she will gradually realize that the well-being of all the children in the community must be of interest to her, for undoubtedly it affects her own home and her own children.

4.

“Concluding Broadcast”

The Pond's Program

Friday, March 3, 1933

ER: I am grateful for this last opportunity to speak to the many people who have been interested enough to listen to me during these past weeks. As I have talked to you I have tried to realize that way up in the high mountain farms of Tennessee, on lonely ranches on the Texas plains, in thousands and thousands of homes, there are women listening to what I say. Listening and weighing my words against their own experiences. It seems impossible, incredible that this is true. And yet I know it is true because from many of these same isolated homes will come in a few days letters, sometimes telling me I have helped them, sometimes disagreeing with my view of life.

We have covered many subjects, most of them homely subjects, subjects which touch the daily lives of most of us. They may seem unimportant, but if they are things with which we come in contact day by day it probably does no harm to exchange opinions about them. I
always find that the point of view of other people adds something to my own.

I wish to thank those of you who have written me many pleasant letters and for the encouragement which comes to all of us from the knowledge that we have been, even in minor things, helpful to others. Those who have been critical and objected to anything which I have said, I also wish to thank, because they have taught me some valuable lessons. Criticism is good for us all if it does not have the effect of discouraging us.

Criticism of the young is often of doubtful value. They haven't yet reached the point where they can recognize their own mistakes or deficiencies and use criticism to good advantage. But for those of us who have lived a little longer, it should serve to clarify our ideas, make us surer of our own judgment and on the whole be helpful to us.

I want to assure you all that I have enjoyed my contacts with you and that I shall always hope, in one way or another, to keep in touch with you, the American people. For I feel you are very close to me. Your interests are my interests and I hope that in many ways we see eye to eye as to many of the questions that come up in our daily lives. The one great danger for a man in public life, or for the woman who is that man's wife, is that they may be set apart from the stream of life affecting the rest of the country. It is easy in Washington to think that Washington is the country and forget that it is a very small place and only becomes important as the people who live there truly represent the other parts of the country. I hope that my friends will feel as much my friends as they have always felt and as free to talk to me and to tell me what they think as ever. And I want to know the whole country, not a little part of it.

I shall hope, at times, to talk again to my radio acquaintances, if it appears that there is any way in which I can be helpful to them or if a subject appeals to me as of interest nationally.

In closing I would like also to thank the Pond's Company, which has made it possible for me financially to help so many things in which I am
interested, and in addition has given me an opportunity to make a great many acquaintances throughout the United States.

The most important thing to me always are the human contacts which we make as we journey through life. People are different, and different things seem important to them. But to me the most important thing in the world is other people's lives. My friends and my family and my contacts with other human beings mean far more to me than anything else in life. So this is really au revoir and not good-bye. For in one way or another we are going to keep in close touch during these coming years.

5.

“Negro Education”

Speech to the National Conference on the Education of Negroes, Washington, DC

Friday, May 11, 1934, 11:30 a.m. (NBC Blue Network)

Civil rights for African Americans became one of ER's life missions. To campaign for change, she used her role as public figure and, especially, as an influential voice within FDR's administration. She believed that equal treatment and equal opportunity for all citizens were essential to a healthy democracy. ER's support for civil rights earned her the contempt of many white Americans and, beginning in the 1940s, the surveillance of her activities by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. In 1939, ER resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution when that organization refused to allow black opera singer Marian Anderson to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. With ER's backing and FDR's assent, Anderson gave a concert on Easter Sunday to a racially diverse crowd at the Lincoln Memorial.

In January 1934, ER convened a meeting of black leaders at the White House to discuss New Deal programs and how to extend more benefits to black communities. President Roosevelt dropped in to greet the visitors. It marked the first time a group of black leaders had been invited to the White House to discuss racial problems so deeply. ER promised them she would support their cause.

Civil rights was a politically perilous issue for the administration. Southern lawmakers controlled some of the most powerful committees in Congress. They could block or eviscerate the New Deal programs FDR thought essential to national economic recovery. Jim Crow laws in the South maintained a rigid doctrine of racial segregation. Racist attitudes and traditions perpetuated racial barriers in much of the rest of the country. Meanwhile, blacks continued to be lynched in the South, where the murders were either ignored by law enforcement or the white killers often went free. In 1934, ER joined a movement, which bridged racial lines, to pass a federal antilynching law. She worked closely with NAACP president Walter White to gain support for the legislation. She also pressed FDR to back the bill. He declined to speak publicly in favor of the proposed law.

Still, African Americans found the Roosevelt White House more welcoming than any administration in history. The forty-five-member Federal Council on Negro Affairs, a group of prominent African Americans, became known as FDR's Black Cabinet. Eleanor Roosevelt became especially close with black educator Mary McLeod Bethune, a member of the Black Cabinet and a New Deal administrator.

Historian Allida Black says that “there was no more ardent champion of the civil rights agenda,” nor anyone at the White House who had a closer working relationship with civil rights leaders during the 1930s and '40s than Eleanor Roosevelt.
¹
Still, ER held common stereotypes about African Americans as innately artistic and musical. This
1934 address to a convention of educators and officials in Washington was ER's first “forceful” speech against discrimination.
²
It was broadcast on national radio.

ER: It is a great pleasure for me to be with you this morning because I am following with interest all that you are doing in this conference. I noticed in the papers this morning the figures given of the cost in certain states per capita for the education of a colored child and of a white child, and I could not help but think as I read that item how stupid we are in some ways, for of course in any democracy the one important thing is to see, as far as possible, that every child receives at least the best education that that child is able to assimilate.

Now, that does not mean that education should not vary in different communities, because we all know that the needs of some communities are different from the needs of others, just as we know that some individuals (and this is not confined to any race) need a different type of education from others, and we should really bend our energies now, with our better knowledge of education, to giving to children the opportunity to develop their gifts, whatever they may be, to the best that is in them. We cannot all become geniuses, we cannot all reach the same level, but we can at least have the opportunity to do the best we can with what the Lord has given us.

I feel that while we have been fortunate in this country in having many fine men and women interested in the education of the Negro race, we have also been slow—many of us who are of the white race—in realizing how important not only to your race it is, but how important to our race that you should have the best educational advantages. The menace today to a democracy is unthinking action, action which comes from people who are illiterate, who are unable to understand what is happening in the world at large, what is happening in their own country, and who therefore act without really having any knowledge of the
meaning of their actions, and that is the thing that we, whatever our race is, should be guarding against today.

There are many people in this country, many white people, who have not had the opportunity for education that they should have, and there are also many Negro people who have not had the opportunity that they should have. Both these conditions should be remedied and the same opportunities should be accorded to every child regardless of race or creed.

Of course I feel this should be done because of our intelligent interest in children, but if we have to put it on a self-interest basis, then it should be done for the preservation of the best that is in the ideals of this country, because you can have no part of your population beaten down and expect the rest of the country not to feel the effects from the big groups that are underprivileged. That is so of our groups of white people and it is so of our underprivileged groups of Negro people. It lowers the standard of living. Wherever the standard of education is low, the standard of living is low, and it is for our own preservation in order that our whole country may live up to the ideals and to the intentions which brought our forefathers to this country, that we are interested today in seeing that education is really universal throughout the country.