Short History Of... - Eleanor Roosevelt

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Eleanor Roosevelt was a woman who redefined the role of the First Lady of the United States. By refusing to be merely a passive companion and wife, and choosing instead to pursue a life of activism, she was seen as an equal to her powerful husband. But what made Eleanor Roosevelt - a woman who was born an aristocrat - fight so hard for the underdog? How did she balance her commitment to social justice with family life? And what was the truth about her unconventional marriage to one of America’s most renowned presidents? This is a Short History Of Eleanor Roosevelt. Written by Jo Furniss. With thanks to Allida Black, founder of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, and a distinguished fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. Get every episode of Short History Of a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material, and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is June 1958 in upstate New York. A woman sits at a writing desk with the window open to hear the birds singing in the woods outside. Eleanor Roosevelt is 73, a widow, and busier than ever. When the telephone rings she pushes aside a pile of letters to take the call. She lifts the receiver and has a short conversation with a man who speaks in a hushed voice. When she hangs up, she goes to the piano, taps a few keys, but is too preoccupied to find a tune. Behind her, a door opens and a member of staff enters the room. He asks if it is a good time to brief her about her trip to Tennessee tomorrow. He asks if it is a good time to brief her about her trip to Tennessee tomorrow.

When Eleanor distractedly fails to respond, he asks if there is a problem. If she is feeling unwell, he can make arrangements to cancel the flight. But she closes the lid of the piano and tells him there is no problem. She doesn't mention the man on the telephone. He was from the FBI, warning her about a death threat. The Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group that dominates parts of the American South, has put a $25,000 price on her head, the largest in its history. The KKK despises Eleanor Roosevelt.

They hate her support for civil liberties, her stand against the segregation policy that discriminates against African Americans, and her highly publicized friendships with many people of color. It wants her to cancel her planned visit to a school in Tennessee that is one of the only places in the South where black and white students are integrated. According to the FBI, the chief of police down there is a KKK sympathizer, who will look the other way if anyone attacks her. But Eleanor has never given in to fear. When she sets off to the airport, her only concession to the FBI's warning

is that she packs a handgun. Eleanor lands in Nashville, Tennessee, late at night. She steps off the plane into hot, sticky air that screams with cicadas. On her way to the parking lot, she is approached by a familiar figure. But despite the perilous journey into the dark heart of Ku Klux Klan territory that lies ahead, this is no brawny security detail, but a friend, another white woman in her 70s. As they head across the parking lot to the car, Eleanor mentions the gun. She warns her companion that no one is there to protect them, not the FBI nor local law enforcement. So when they put the luggage in the trunk, the other woman suggests that they place the pistol on the car seat between them.

The pair set off into the darkness of unlit mountain roads. The headlights swing from side to side on switchback bends. Trees throw shapes that look like hooded men. Eleanor's hand goes to the gun, but she stands down when a looming shadow turns out to be a road sign. Dark miles slide by. Eventually, the women see the lights of the town of Montego and the hand-painted sign of the Highlander Folk School, their destination. The driver swerves in through the entrance, then brakes heavily on the dirt parking lot. As the engine dies, the women get out, relieved, and embrace heavily on the dirt parking lot. As the engine dies,

the women get out, relieved, and embrace in the glare of the headlights. Eleanor thanks her companion for her bravery. Two septuagenarians against the KKK. Her friend laughs it off and reminds Eleanor of her famous mantra You have to do one thing every day that scares you The trip to Tennessee wasn't the first time Eleanor Roosevelt received death threats Far from simply being the wife of a president She spent her long career campaigning on some of the most controversial issues of the day Though her outspokenness made her an icon of the civil rights movement, it also made her plenty of enemies. She redefined the role of First Lady of the United States, refusing to be merely a passive

companion and hostess, and choosing instead a life of activism. Eleanor Roosevelt was the first First Lady to be considered an equal to a powerful husband and built her own distinct public profile that made her recognizable around the world. So what made this woman, born an aristocrat, fight so hard for the underdog? How did she balance her commitment to social justice with her family life and break the mold to become an influencer and media star? And what was the truth about her unconventional marriage to one of the USA's most renowned presidents? I'm John Hopkins from Noisa. This is a short history of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Around the year 1640, a Dutch man named Claes Martens van Roos, sails from Europe to what is known as the New World, across the Atlantic in America. He lands at New Amsterdam, present-day New York, and settles by purchasing a parcel of land on an island called Manhattan. The site of his 50-acre farm is well chosen. It is now some of the most valuable real estate in the world, home to the Empire State Building, among other famous landmarks. Decades later, his child, Nicholas, changes the family name to Roosevelt. He, in turn, has two sons who found separate branches of the Roosevelt family tree. Though both sides are politically active, one becomes associated with the Democratic Party,

while the other favors the opposition Republicans. On the Republican branch of the family, in 1858, Theodore Roosevelt is born, and a few years later, his brother, Eliot, arrives. Though Theodore is destined for greatness, Eliot is less successful, and as an adult, he suffers from depression and alcoholism. He has a tempestuous relationship with his wife, Anna, but nonetheless, their first child is born in October 1884. The new arrival is a girl, whom they call Eleanor.

Thanks to their ancestors' canny purchase of land in Manhattan, baby Eleanor's family are rich. With no need to work, they live in luxury in a brownstone townhouse in the fashionable east side of New York. Her mother, Anna, a celebrated beauty and socialite, dedicates herself to high society glamour and parties, but has little time for her daughter. Dr. Alida Black is the founder of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project and a distinguished fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford.

Her mother really defined herself by her social status and her beauty and her ability to be a leading debutante in New York. She looked at her daughter, who she immediately defined as ugly, as sad. So she tells a young Eleanor, and by a young Eleanor, I mean a three, four, five-year-old Eleanor, that she is her greatest disappointment. She's never going to find a man. And so when Eleanor's mother dies, Eleanor really is desperate, a word I use with precision for her father's affection, because she adores her father, who treats her in the exact opposite way that her mother did. But then the alcohol and the narcotics take over, and he dies by the time that she's 10. Her father's dying wish is for Eleanor to look

after her younger brother, Gracie. It's a task she takes seriously. They go to live with their maternal grandmother in upstate New York, where they enjoy a rural childhood with the freedom to roam. While her brother goes to school, Eleanor isn't given a formal education, instead learning from private tutors. But her sharp intelligence is noted by another influential Roosevelt, her late father's older brother, Uncle Teddy. Theodore Roosevelt is sensitive to the girl's grief after suffering his own losses. In 1884, the year of Eleanor's birth, Teddy's wife

and mother both died on the same day. He takes the time to nurture Eleanor, despite the demands of his own rise through the Republican Party. In 1901, when President William McKinley is assassinated, Uncle Teddy Roosevelt finds himself in the White House. He's just 42. To this day, he's the youngest person to take the presidency. Eleanor was born into a family that had every type of personality you can imagine. They both lived in the shadow, if you will, of Theodore Roosevelt, who was one of the most larger-than-life personalities in America of that time. There was this great line about Teddy that said, of that time. There was this great line about Teddy that said, in every wedding, he wanted to be the bride, and in every funeral, he wanted to be the corpse. He is Eleanor's nearest living

male relative. He loved Eleanor. Eleanor was clearly his favorite niece. I mean, he taught her to swim. He taught her to do all kinds of things. Ride horses. Just dare. Despite the fact that her uncle holds the highest office in the land, the expectations for Eleanor are modest. The Roosevelts are known as politicians,

but also socialites. As she reaches the age of 15, Eleanor is sent to England to attend a fashionable finishing school in London called Allenswood Academy. It caters to the daughters of European aristocrats and wealthy Americans. But the move to leafy Wimbledon

proves to be a formative moment in Eleanor's life. The person that gave Eleanor the initial courage that it takes to be Eleanor was her extraordinary teacher and the headmistress of Allenswood Academy in London, which was Mademoiselle Marie Suvest saw in Eleanor this intense intellectual curiosity, a vulnerability that allowed her to really explore and identify with how other people feel, and a young girl who reveled in being in school. And so Eleanor learns to think. She learns to interrogate pressing issues like the Boer War, where she had to argue both sides. And most importantly, she learns to have friends. In 1902, at the age of 17, Eleanor is recalled to America by her grandmother. In 1902, at the age of 17, Eleanor is recalled to America by her grandmother.

She has had just three years of formal schooling. But it is time for her debut in the high society circles of New York, where she is now eligible for marriage and old enough to attend parties. On December 14, a lavish event is thrown at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. For the celebration, what is known as her coming out, Eleanor wears a white dress with tightly buttoned high neck and a pearl brooch at the throat. As the niece of President Teddy Roosevelt, Eleanor is the belle of the debutante ball, one of the most eligible of the dozens of young women being shown off by their wealthy families tonight. But as the party rages around her, Eleanor finds she doesn't know any other girls.

Years later, she will describe the experience as awful. For a young woman with a social conscience, perhaps it's hard to enjoy champagne when there is such poverty on the streets outside. Beyond the sparkling lights of the Waldorf Astoria lies a different New York. Long gone are the days of her Dutch ancestors, when an ambitious migrant could step off the boat and buy up a parcel of land. Now, in the early 20th century, new arrivals are more likely to end up in overcrowded and unsanitary housing alongside the growing city's poorest residents. alongside the growing city's poorest residents.

Unlike many other people of her class who donate money to charity, but prefer not to see the suffering with their own eyes, Eleanor starts volunteering and visiting social projects. She becomes committed to figuring out how to help address poverty and illness, and especially the plight of women. I mean, she is walking up steps where she has to step over buckets filled with excrement. There are no toilets. There's erratic hot water. So you have stench and dirt and disease. And women, many of whom are working in the garment industry, are struggling to support their families. realizes her cluelessness in how to address this, and then is almost reined in by her family. And she struggles yet again to figure out how to bring her voice

and her interests and her skills to bear. And so when she begins to date her cousin Franklin, it is Eleanor who exposes Franklin to poverty. Eleanor's grandmother has been trying to secure her a husband on the debutante market. But unbeknownst to her, there's already a suitor on the scene, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He is a distant relative whom Eleanor first met at a family party when she was two and he was four. Now grown up, the pair meet again on a train ride, and the attraction is immediate. Though they share a surname, they descend from opposite branches of the Roosevelt line. Eleanor's ancestors are

associated with the Republicans, including her uncle Teddy, while Franklin D. Roosevelt hails from the Democratic branch. Their closest shared grandparent is Nicholas, six generations back, the Dutch-born ancestor who first changed the family name. And now, over two centuries later, Eleanor and Franklin start a courtship in secret. This is Eleanor's first real courtship. She is smitten and somewhat daunted by this this and understands Sarah Roosevelt's, Franklin's mother's, opposition to their relationship. Sarah thinks that Eleanor is not worthy of FDR. She tries Eleanor, Sarah takes him on a year global vacation to try to cool his affection for Eleanor. That does not work.

And then to top it all off, when they get married, Sarah, as a wedding present, builds them a townhouse in New York, but builds herself one next door with adjoining doors that do not lock. So it's an awkward marriage. And you have Sarah, who is larger than life on one side, and Teddy, who is larger than life on the other. So it is always a complicated, crowded relationship. Married life begins when they're both in their early 20s. Despite the difficulties, over the next decade, they welcome six children to their family,

although tragically one dies in infancy. When he now enters public office, Franklin becomes known by his initials, F.D.R. He stands as a member of the New York State Senate and, as the world is drawn into World War I, serves as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. Eleanor continues her charitable work, but mainly focuses on her growing family. That is, until a shocking discovery in 1918. She is unpacking Franklin's luggage when he returns quite ill from a visit to Europe to investigate the condition of the American fleet. And she finds love letters.

And so she's so distraught that she leaves FDR. The letters confirm what Eleanor already suspects. Her husband is having an affair with a woman who works in their own household. Her social status mandated that she have a social secretary who helped her juggle her calendars, arrange her lunches, help host the dinners that were essential to her husband's advancement. That was Lucy Mercer. So Lucy Mercer comes into the family in some ways as a liaison between Eleanor and Franklin. Lucy stays to continue the work while Eleanor is away with her children. And that's when the relationship between FDR and Lucy blossoms. And it was not secret.

It was secret from Eleanor. And she says, you want a divorce? You can have it. And Franklin is seriously considering this. But the two most influential people in FDR's life, Louis Howe, his political guru, and his mother come in with a one-two punch. And that is, Louis says, Frank, there has never been a divorced president of the United States.

Are you crazy? And Sarah comes in and says, we have never had a divorce in this family. If you do this, I will cut you off. And FDR, who has never had a job with an income sufficient enough to support himself, realizes that he has to make a fateful decision. And so they reunite. What is extraordinary about their reunion is that they learn to love each other in new ways. They learn to love each other as adults. The couple remain married and share homes, but the union is now a partnership rather than a romance,

and they spend around six months of each year apart. Eleanor enjoys a circle of influential friends. Together, they take up social campaigns, advocating against child labor and in favor of housing reform. By the 1920s, Eleanor is convinced that women should have the right to vote. She is also concerned about the racial discrimination that is rife in the United States, especially in the South. Her thinking becomes increasingly radical as her belief deepens that there is a need for widespread social reform. But it is now that her life takes another dramatic turn.

It is August 1921, a warm sunny day. It is August 1921, a warm sunny day. After a fun afternoon of sailing, Franklin is climbing off a dinghy at the harbor of Campobello Island off the coast of Canada. His teenage children leap onto the jetty while he helps the younger ones ashore. Franklin loves to spend his summer vacation on the water with his five kids. After securing the boat, he makes his way back to their Dutch barn-style house on a slope overlooking the Bay of Fundy.

The children run ahead. But although he's a fit man in his late 30s, Franklin cannot keep up with them. Suddenly, he feels shivery and weak. The previous day, he fell overboard. And though the day was warm, the sea always retains its chilly bite. He did get really cold. Perhaps he has some delayed effect of hypothermia.

Inside the house, he tells his wife that he wants to lie down. His back hurts, and he feels nauseous. Eleanor accompanies him to their room, noting how his teeth are chattering. She orders warm broth, but he has no appetite, so she leaves him to their room, noting how his teeth are chattering. She orders warm broth, but he has no appetite, so she leaves him to sleep. Downstairs, she consults his political aide, Louis Howe, who is on holiday with them along with his family. They conclude that FDR overdid it on the boat and needs to rest. The next morning, Eleanor pulls back the curtain to another beautiful summer sky and wakes her husband But when she touches his shoulder, she gasps, he's burning up

Though he tries to get out of bed, pains shoot through his limbs and back One of his legs can barely move at all She snatches up the telephone and calls a physician who races to the house The doctor diagnoses a summer cold, a fever making the patient delirious. So Eleanor closes up the shutters and leaves Franklin to recover. But by the next morning, she finds that he cannot move at all. This is no delirium. His skin is so sensitive that any touch is agony.

She struggles to help him to the bathroom, where he finds he has lost control of his bodily functions. By the time a neurosurgeon arrives, Eleanor's husband is paralyzed from the chest down. He doesn't know it yet, but that walk from the jetty up to the house was the last time he would ever have full use of his legs. In the days that come, Eleanor and Louis Howe arrange for Franklin to be transported in secret to New York for tests. They don't want his condition to be made public yet

but soon their worst fears are confirmed. Franklin is diagnosed with infantile paralysis, known more commonly now as polio. There is still no cure for the infectious disease, and in 1921, a vaccine is still a long way off. Polio, then called infantile paralysis, called infantile paralysis, was a horrific disease to contact. I mean, not only in terms of what it did to the body, but in terms of all the stigma that was attached to it. Just think about the early stigma attached to AIDS. With polio, it's like all these irrational, oh my God, if you breathe the same air, you're going to die. So nobody really understands what it is. And so what happens briefly during those few days that they are in Campobello,

an FDR is totally and completely bedridden. There is a new level of intimacy and fear and courage that comes out of that. Eleanor takes the lead in his recovery. His mother, Sarah, assumes that he will give up work and come to live at the family's lavish country home in a town called Hyde Park. But Eleanor knows that retirement at the age of 39 would be worse for her husband's mental health than the illness itself. Along with Louis Howe, she helps Franklin into rehabilitation and then back into public life. Despite the hurt caused by her husband's affair, the couple's relationship now blossoms into

a partnership of mutual respect. It's an extraordinary partnership. It's a partnership that will redefine the world. The tipping point is their battle with polio. They are both, as a team, battling the disease in a way that allows them to keep their own spirits and be devoted to each other. Trying to keep his spirits up at the same time while you are desperately afraid now that your life will be over and that you will be confined to Hyde Park and Mama just as much as FDR will.

And so the big battle, the real tipping point in Eleanor's life is that when she and Louis Howe and FDR say no to Sarah. He can still lead. He will not become a gentleman squire. And so that collaboration and that determination gives Eleanor massive responsibilities in ways that also liberates her at the same time. that also liberates her at the same time. As FDR slowly recovers the use of his upper body,

the family settled back into political life in New York. And Eleanor is more radical and motivated than ever. In 1924, she campaigns for the Democratic candidate for governor of New York. But in doing so, she's in direct opposition to her Republican cousin, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the son of her beloved uncle and former president, Teddy Roosevelt. Her cousin might have considered himself a frontrunner in the race to be governor, thanks to his illustrious connections. But Eleanor disagrees, and she knows exactly what weakness is to exploit. Some years earlier, Theodore Jr. had been implicated in a bribery scandal involving

an oil company based in a town called Teapot Dome. It was the most notorious corruption case of its time, and Eleanor cannot forgive her cousin's involvement. Nor can she excuse his public mockery of FDR, who stands on the opposite side of the political divide. So when Theodore Jr. goes on the campaign trail in New York, Eleanor follows him around with a huge papier-mâché teapot installed in her open-top car. As it pumps out steam like a real teapot, it serves as a constant reminder to the press and public of his connection to what has become known as the Teapot Dome Scandal. It contributes to her cousin's defeat, and he never forgives her. Later, though, she will write of her shame at having pulled such a sensationalist stunt. right of her shame at having pulled such a sensationalist stunt.

Soon, FDR is on the campaign trail too. He becomes governor of New York in 1929, the year that ends with the Wall Street crash, a seismic financial failure that plunges the US and the world into economic crisis. But while the depression bites, a few years later he wins a landslide national election in 1932, defeating the incumbent, Herbert Hoover, to become President of the United States. He has realized his life's ambition. But as the family prepare to move into the White House, Eleanor is worried about the impact that her new role as First Lady will have on her working life. Eleanor said living in the White House filled her with the greatest sense of possible dread, that it ate women. She was helping run a school.

She was on the board of major labor unions. She analyzed legislation for the New York chapter of the League of Women Voters. She was beginning to write. She went on the radio some. She had nationwide lecture tours. And now FDR has said to her, you've got to resign. her, you've got to resign. And so all of the work that Eleanor had taken to support FDR and to reinvigorate her spirit gets thrown out of the window. Once again, Eleanor turns to her close-knit circle of friends. They include a woman called Lorena Hickok, the most famous female news reporter in America,

and the first woman to be published in the New York Times under her own byline. Hickok, known as Hick, first met Eleanor Roosevelt in 1928 for an interview. Later, during a long train ride, they spent hours talking and became firm friends. By the time of FDR's election to president, Hick is a frequent visitor to the Roosevelt family home in Hyde Park. And so she is driving back election night from Hyde Park to New York City because she's got to teach. Because she's got to teach. And Lorena Hickok,'s so distraught about moving in the White House that she's considering divorcing FDR. I mean, she's just venting. And when Hick decides not to publish that, she realizes that she has compromised her journalistic ethics and she has to resign.

Feeling that personal loyalty cost Hick her precious job, Eleanor devises a solution. She moves the writer into the administration to take up an exclusive new role. Hick will work as a chief investigator, traveling the country to report on the government's new social development programs. When she's in Washington, she stays in a servant's room at the White House, close to Eleanor's own quarters. When she's on the road, the two women write every day, sometimes twice a day. There is an archive of 3,000 letters, revealing their close and affectionate relationship. With sexuality still a taboo at the time, historians cannot be sure if their connection was a romantic one.

But many feel the letters offer an insight into their private feelings. There is no doubt in my mind that Eleanor Roosevelt loved Lorena Hickok. And there is no doubt in my mind that Lorena Hickok fell head over heels with Eleanor. And I don't care if they were lovers or not. What I care about is when they met each other in 1932. They needed each other. They needed each other. In 1932, the White House needs Hick, too. FDR takes office in the midst of the Great Depression,

the worst economic crisis of global history. In his inaugural address, he reassures the reeling nation with his famous phrase, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And then, straight away, he gets to work implementing his New Deal, a series of measures designed to support workers and families who lost everything in the crash. As New Deal programs roll out across the country, Hick is the president's eyes and ears.

People are terrified. 40%, 40% of Americans are out of work. I mean, we've never had anything like that. Two thirds of the property that people own in the United States, the real estate, is either in foreclosure or one mortgage payment away from foreclosure. The charities are bankrupt. Catholic charities, the Red Cross, the Community

Trust, there's no money. Eleanor is also popular with the public, but within her husband's administration there is fear that she may even outshine him. She's asked to step back, to give FDR the spotlight he needs to lead at this time of crisis. So it is an incredibly volatile time, and everybody understands that one of FDR's greatest assets is his fierce personality and his temperament not to harangue or to preach doom and gloom, but to be honest, but inspire. Without a strong role, Eleanor becomes frustrated. So, political advisor and family friend Louis Howe now spots an opportunity for her. It's a problem inherited from the

previous administration, and it's right there on their doorstep in Washington, D.C. Earlier in 1932, while President Hoover was still in power, a group of angry war veterans converged on the Capitol. They came to protest about the government's failure to pay them a bonus, and by then eight years overdue, that had been promised to those who served in the First World War. The veterans, known as the Bonus Army, called the money they were owed the Tombstone Bonus, because they feared they'd be dead before it got paid. Thousands of people converged on Washington, not just veterans, but also families left homeless by the Great Depression. Soon, tens of thousands were living in camps, shantytowns around the capital. Settling in for the long haul in unsanitary conditions, some even

set up schools for their children. Fearing the demonstrators would turn violent and maybe even storm the capital, Hoover decided to have them evicted and sent the army to carry out the task. For the first time in American history, tanks rolled through the streets of the capital. American history, tanks rolled through the streets of the Capitol. The violence that followed, the army against its own veterans, involved cavalry, tear gas, and armed infantry. It was a PR disaster, a death knell for the presidency of Herbert Hoover. But now, a few months into FDR's new administration, the dispersed Bonus Army starts drifting back to the Capitol.

By May 1933, there is a new tent city on the outskirts of Washington. FDR's advisor, Louis Howe, knows better than to send tanks. Instead, he deploys Eleanor. They go to the camp that's the remaining veterans, the World War I veterans, who have lost everything. Who are sleeping in tents in Washington, trying to lobby Congress to get their pension early. They've lost their jobs. They've lost their homes. They've lost their cars. They've lost their food. They've lost their clothes. They've lost everything. And so Eleanor, being Eleanor, ends up walking around, stays there for several hours. There's no press corps with her. There's no cameras, no boom mics. And the next day, Washington being a very small town, the word gets out. And so the press goes to interview the veterans and the veterans say this,

Hoover sent the troops, FDR sent his wife. And that shows FDR the value that Eleanor can bring and FDR's understanding of Eleanor's contribution and their affection for each other sets her loose to redefine the role. It takes several more years for the tombstone payments to be made to the Bonus Army. But finally, in 1936, the first veterans are awarded around $500 per man. Eleanor also uses her public platform to elevate other cases of injustice and prejudice,

especially for people of color. In 1939, she resigns from the Daughters of the American Revolution organization when an African-American singer called Marian Anderson is denied the chance to perform at their Washington headquarters. As a result, the group amends its rules to allow Anderson to sing. But other bodies are more resistant to change, not least the US military. For decades, the country's forces have imposed

segregation rules that mean African Americans can only serve in support roles, often as cooks and porters. Throughout the First World War, the hundreds of thousands of black soldiers who signed up were segregated to separate units, usually overseen by white officers. So, in 1941, as the Second World War is raging across Europe, Eleanor raises her voice against the might of the US military. It is June 1941, an airfield in Tuskegee, Alabama. Eleanor Roosevelt is here to carry out an inspection. Flanked by security service bodyguards and press photographers,

she walks onto the tarmac where a pair of two-seater Piper light aircraft sit waiting. A line of pilots in full flight gear snap to attention and salute her arrival. As planes buzz overhead, Eleanor is introduced to the commander, a pilot called Alfred Anderson, whom everyone calls Chief. He is the leader of a special squadron comprising some of the most highly trained pilots in the Air Force. And yet, not a man here is allowed to fly in combat. That is because all these pilots are black.

Even as America expects to be drawn into a second global conflict, segregation is still in place. Alfred, Chief Anderson, wants to change all that, and so does Eleanor. She knows that the prevalent racist doctrine of the day says that people of color don't have the right skills to pilot an aircraft. But looking across the airfield, she sees fighter planes with black men at the controls taking off and landing and expertly holding formation in the skies above them. If only other people could see what she could see. Chief leads her to his aircraft, a Piper J3 Cub. He opens its little door right above the wing and offers the First Lady a chance to have a look inside.

its little door right above the wing and offers the First Lady a chance to have a look inside. But instead, she jumps right in to the passenger seat. The two share a look of understanding, and Chief gets into the cockpit. Outside, the men of her security detail are calling her name, telling her to get out of the plane. But Eleanor loves to fly. She once made a pleasure trip over Washington with none other than Amelia Earhart, the most famous female pilot in the world. In Chief Anderson, she recognizes another aerial pioneer. Chief slams the cockpit door, ignoring the protests of the security service.

As he taxes onto the runway, Eleanor waves to the cameramen, making sure they get a good shot. Then Chief guns the engine, roars down the tarmac, and the pair take to the skies. The achievements of the Tuskegee Airmen and the small but influential role played by Eleanor Roosevelt to bring their story to a wider audience will go down in the history of aviation and civil rights. The African American pilots must go through such a rigorous selection process to prove themselves and overcome the prejudices of the day that they will later be hailed as super-better pilots.

Super-Better Pilots. By now, it's looking increasingly likely that America may soon need to rally all its military resources. And in the dying days of 1941, America is suddenly provoked into joining the fight. On December 7, the Japanese carry out an audacious stealth attack, sneaking dozens of warships and aircraft carriers across the Pacific to strike the U.S. naval fleet in the so-called safe haven of Pearl Harbor. The bombing brings a conflict that many Americans thought was too far away to bother them right to their doorstep. FDR has long known that the U.S. would go to war. He's been planning for it behind the scenes. But the timing and the place of its arrival in Hawaii takes everyone by surprise. By the evening of December 7, as fires

still rage in Pearl Harbor and news of the destruction reaches the US mainland, people are scared. On the Pacific coast, residents fear that the Japanese are on their way, that warships could strike from the sea at any moment, bombarding seaside towns. Millions of households across the nation turn on their radio sets for updates and reassurance. That day, Eleanor is due to address the nation for her regular broadcast. Aimed primarily at women, her show is called Over Our Coffee Cups. Despite a news event of global significance, the radio schedule goes ahead unchanged. Eleanor addresses the nation that afternoon from Blair House. FDR is not going to

go on the radio. He's meeting with the War Cabinet. It is Eleanor's voice that the nation hears. We know what we have to face, and we know that we are ready to face it. I should like to say just a word to the women in the country tonight. I have a boy at sea on a destroyer. For all I know, he may be on his way to the Pacific. Two of my children are in coast cities on the Pacific. Many of you all over this country have boys in the services who will now be called upon to go into action. You have friends and families in what has suddenly become a danger zone.

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. 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. As Eleanor predicts, thousands of young Americans go to war over the coming years. The first Tuskegee Airmen to see combat are from the 99th Pursuit Squadron,

who served with distinction in North Africa from 1943 until the end of the Second World War. Two years later, FDR is at home in the Warm Springs Polio Rehabilitation Center that he founded in Georgia. It is just after midday, and he is posing for a painter working on a portrait, when he feels a searing pain in his head and collapses. It is a stroke. He never regains consciousness, and by 3.30 pm Franklin D. Roosevelt is dead. He was 63, exhausted by serious illness and a record four terms in office where he steered the nation through the Great Depression and most of World War II. Eleanor is in Washington when she receives the news of her husband's death. She is distraught and also shocked to learn that his mistress, Lucy Mercer, had been by his side

when he passed. Unbeknownst to Eleanor, their relationship had continued over the years. Nevertheless, she traveled straight to Georgia to accompany his body on the train back to the capital for a state funeral. A month after his death, Germany surrenders, and three months after that, FDR's successor, President Harold Truman, drops an atomic bomb on Japan. Remarkably, Truman didn't even know that the nuclear weapon existed until FDR's death, so secret was the project. Finally, the war ends and, in its aftermath, a new organization is formed in an attempt to bring peace.

Around the globe, many nations are in ruins and determined to work together. Some 50 countries draft and sign an agreement to recognize each other's sovereign status, the Charter of the United Nations. In 1946, President Truman asks Eleanor Roosevelt to represent the United States as its first delegate to the UN. Her task will be to negotiate the next stage of the UN's founding documents, a universal declaration of human rights. There would have been no declaration without Eleanor Roosevelt, period. Now, I'm not saying Eleanor wrote it or it was all her ideas.

I'm saying her negotiation skills, her fierce tenacity, her ability to use all of the different media skills at her disposal, her confidence to push the American government, to say to Truman,

if you do not include economic, social, and cultural rights in this, I will resign and tell the world why. Her ability to negotiate with the Soviets, to abstain rather than to object, allowed this document to be adopted unanimously by the UN. this document to be adopted unanimously by the UN. 1946, it is the most violent, horrific experience the world has ever seen. We have the atomic bomb and we have the Holocaust. And so what Eleanor uses the Declaration to do is to say, okay, you can succumb to this and say that war is inevitable, that we're going to have this third world war, 20 years after the second world war, with more violence and more horror and more ethnic, racial, and religious bigotry and persecution than you can imagine, or we can say, I am not going to live my life in fear. What she does most importantly of all is to not let America in the world off the hook. And she does it in a way that keeps people engaged. It's genius.

As the decades pass, Ellen returns to her activist roots and tours the most deprived areas of the country, sometimes defying threats to her life, including a bounty put on her head by the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee, she visits communities who need the support of someone with a public profile. She writes warmly about her trip to the racially integrated Highlander folk school in her daily newspaper diary called My Day, a syndicated column that runs for 30 years.

It tirelessly promotes the causes that will mark her legacy, civil rights, education, housing, employment for all. She also writes 27 books, and when television comes along, hosts a news show. Eleanor has mastered every media available. She will master television, but she is using her voice in every arena possible to inspire, goad, and instruct Americans on their responsibilities in peace and in wartime. on their responsibilities in peace and in wartime.

Outside of work, she's kept busy by five children and 22 grandchildren. But although her drive never wanes, she has grown physically weaker. A bone marrow biopsy shows that she has tuberculosis, and in November 1962, at her home in New York, Eleanor dies aged 78. Her funeral is attended by the then head of state, John F. Kennedy, along with two former presidents. She is buried alongside FDR on the family estate at Hyde Park, which is today preserved as the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site. historic site. Even now, thousands visit her grave each year to honor a woman who

changed the role of First Lady. Eleanor Roosevelt left a legacy that raised the bar for those who followed in her footsteps, proving that an outspoken, controversial, empathetic woman can be exactly what a nation needs. I think the most important thing that Eleanor did as First Lady was to get Americans to think about what it means to live in a democracy. To think beyond themselves and to foster their own sense of independence while promoting a sense of interdependence among us all. And that means she fought for civil rights legislation. She supported women at work. She would lobby so much

that some of the members of the White House thought she was a royal pain in the ass. But at the same time, she showed Americans what an approachable, responsible, compassionate government can do. And so to look at the arc of her life and how she struggled to find her own voice, how she listened as well as she spoke. The coalitions that she built and her fierce determination not to give in to fear and to at the same time have a hope that was built on rational expectations, was of unforeseeable importance. Next time on Short History, I will bring you a short history of the founding fathers. A Short History of the Founding Fathers. That is actually a much more inspirational story because it suggests that flawed people doing the very best that they can

can create something extraordinary, can inspire future generations both in the United States and in nations across the world to create extraordinary things. It is much less impressive to me if we think of them as these demigod figures, because then of course you expect extraordinary heroics from godlike figures, but if it's flawed men,

that's really very inspirational and suggests that we can have future generations of flawed men that also do extraordinary things. That's next time.