Sermon

FOOTSTEPS TO FOLLOW (I): Great American Women. Eleanor Roosevelt: a beautiful life.[1]

INTRODUCTION: In these recessionary times, it may be helpful to compare now to that other most difficult period in American life – the Great Depression. As you know, it began with the crash of Wall Street in 1929 and lasted until the industrial mobilization in 1940 for WW II.

It helps as well to realize some of the similarities, as well as some of the striking differences between then and now. That will also give us an introduction to one of the persons who came to national prominence in those times, Eleanor Roosevelt.

In the depths of the Depression in the Spring and Summer of 1932 – some 17,000 World War I veterans, plus their families and friends, which swelled their numbers to almost 50,000 – marched on Washington to demand that their Bonus certificates for military service to the nation be immediately redeemable. President Hoover and a Republican Congress had mandated they would have to wait until 1945 to cash them in. Due to the Depression, the veterans insisted that they needed it now. After their March, they conducted a sit-in by building a tent and shack city near the Capitol. That was in March.

Then on July 28, 1932, Attorney General William Mitchell ordered the police to evacuate their temporary city. Some resisted; the police shot at them, and killed two. When told of the killings, President Hoover ordered the U.S. Army to physically remove every protester.

The 12th Infantry Regiment, led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and Maj. George Patton’s 3rd Cavalry Regiment, supported by six battle tanks, formed on Pennsylvania Avenue. Dwight Eisenhower was also part of the attack force. The cavalry charged the unarmed men and the veterans retreated across the Anacostia River.

President Hoover ordered the assault to stop; however, Gen. MacArthur, feeling the protest was a Communist attempt at overthrowing the U.S. Government, ignored the President and ordered a new attack. Infantry, with fixed bayonets and gas, entered the camps, evicting U.S. veterans, families, and camp followers. Hundreds of veterans were injured, several were killed.

The following year, only days after Franklin Roosevelt had been inaugurated as president, the protestors came back. Roosevelt took a radically different approach. He sent food, friendly greetings, and his wife, Eleanor. One of the classic New Deal lines to come out of that encounter was, "Hoover sent the Army; Roosevelt sent his wife.” She visited with the veterans, even pouring coffee for them. And she urged them to sign up for the Civilian Conservation Corps, which eventually built the Overseas Highway to the Florida Keys.

At that moment, the nation had its first glimpse of an extraordinary woman, whose achievements would result in her becoming one of the most admired women in the world.

Though born to great wealth and privilege, her mother died of diphtheria when Eleanor was only eight; tragically, her father, confined to a sanitarium because of alcoholism, died two years later. At age 15, she was sent overseas to Allenswood Academy, an English finishing school, where the headmistress was a noted feminist known for cultivating independent thinking. Eleanor learned to speak French fluently and was reported to have gained great self-confidence.

When she returned to the United States, she was later given a debutante party. And totally contradicting her position and privilege, she became a social worker in the East Side slums of New York in 1902. This being the early part of the 20th century, professional standards for social workers had not yet been set. But with this work, a lifetime of concern and advocacy for the oppressed and for human rights began.

It was also at this time that she met her father’s 20-year-old, 5th cousin, Franklin Roosevelt, who was attending Harvard University. Franklin's courtship of Eleanor began following a White House reception and dinner with her uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt, on New Year's Day, 1903. She later took Franklin along on her rounds of the squalid tenements in the slums of New York, a walking tour that was reported to have profoundly moved the heretofore sheltered young Franklin.

In November, 1903, they became engaged. The wedding date was fixed to accommodate her uncle, President Roosevelt, who had agreed to give her away. His presence in the wedding naturally focused national attention on it.

In the years that followed, the Roosevelts had six children, one of whom died in infancy. During this period, her husband was elected to the New York State Senate. Their marriage was severely tested when Eleanor’s secretary began having an affair with Franklin; nonetheless, though it required a very difficult and painful resolution, they kept their marriage together.

Then in 1921, while the family was vacationing at a resort on the Maine–Canada border, Franklin was stricken with high fever, which resulted in permanent paralysis of his legs. Although the disease was widely believed to be polio, some have since suggested a diagnosis of Guillain-Barré syndrome, which inhibits the synapses between nerve endings, resulting in varying degrees of immobility.

Eleanor was credited with contributing to his recovery. She also encouraged him to stay active in political life. She began to make public appearances on his behalf and became a familiar face among Democratic women, and a force in New York politics.

Then in 1928, she was urged by New York Governor Al Smith, who was the Democratic candidate for president, to press Franklin to run for New York Governor. After repeated urgings by Smith, she finally placed a telephone call to Franklin. Smith was standing nearby. She handed him the phone and the rest, as they say, is history. And her life became a paradigm of:

During Franklin's terms as President, Eleanor was vocal in her support of the African-American civil rights movement. The needs of African Americans had not been met since the Lincoln administration. Eleanor pushed to have a shadow cabinet of leading African Americans to advise him on the needs of the Black community. Some 45 Black leaders were chosen and helped to shape New Deal programs as well as to spearhead the struggle for civil rights during the 1930s.

Another example of Eleanor’s efforts took place in 1939, when contralto Marian Anderson was denied the use of Washington's Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Mrs. Roosevelt was instrumental in arranging for the concert to be held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. A crowd of more than 75,000 and a radio audience of millions listened in.

Mrs. Roosevelt also played a role in racial affairs when she secured the appointment of Mary Bethune as head of the Division of Negro Affairs. (Mrs. Bethune was the founder of a Black women’s college in Daytona Beach, Florida, that later joined with a Black men’s college and became Bethune-Cookman, which is to this day a respected, predominantly Black, private liberal arts institution, related to the United Methodist Church.)

With Wendell Willkie in 1941, she was part of founding Freedom House, which describes itself as "a clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world." Still functioning today, it conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights. It also publishes an annual assessment of the perceived degree of democratic freedoms in each country.

During her time at the UN, she chaired the committee that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. The Guinness Book of Records describes it as the "most translated document" in the world. It consists of 30 articles which have been used in subsequent international treaties, regional human rights instruments, national constitutions and laws.

The very first three articles describe the philosophy of the Declaration, with article one stating: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Articles 3—21 declare the right to life, liberty and security of the individual.

Articles 22—27 proclaim economic, social and cultural rights – the rights to which everyone is entitled "as a member of society."

And the concluding Articles 28 to 30 recognize that everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the human rights and fundamental freedoms set forth in the Declaration may be fully realized. It also stresses the duties and responsibilities which each individual owes to her or his community.

Roosevelt was injured in April 1960 when she was struck by a car in New York City. Thereafter, her health began a rapid decline. She died at a New York hospital on November 7, 1962 at the age of 78.

Despite the many controversial initiatives to which she was party, she was one of the most admired people of the 20th century, according to Gallup's List of Widely Admired People. President Truman called her the "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements.

So based on all of the above, here are some conclusions we can draw from the life of Eleanor Roosevelt:

1. Wealth and power do not necessarily mean a happy family. As a nation with a long capitalist tradition, it is part of the fabric of our society to admire the rich, especially the very rich. But as Mrs. Roosevelt’s life attests, money and power can also bring with it a total absence of family and affirmation.

2. But as her life also demonstrates, unhappiness in family upbringing and marriage does not have to limit successful involvement in causes greater than ourselves.

3. She also exemplifies that we can live counter to our upbringing. As a young 17-year-old, with every resource society could offer, she chose to go to work in the slums of New York City.

4. She kept anchored politically, but she also devoted herself to civil liberties for African Americans, year after year after year. She was also a tireless advocate for women’s rights.

5. And she struggled mightily against the chauvinism, the self-absorbed nationalism of America, which resisted our obligation to the rest of the world. If we could ever halt the gargantuan demands of our military-industrial-complex, our world might be able to restore some sense of balance to what we need and use.

There have been many “first ladies” before and since Eleanor Roosevelt. And while there have been some outstanding ones, none has come near her level of achievement, although Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is clearly on that track. And though it is far too early to make a prediction, Michelle Obama certainly seems promising.

Earlier in the week, I shared with my son, Brett, the topic I was working on for today. On Friday, he called to tell me of an encounter he had while in Los Angeles. He and his colleague had gone to a sushi bar in Beverly Hills. They were joined at their table by a woman and her husband. In the process of conversation, it turned out the woman was from Vienna. She had a practice in psycho-analysis in Beverly Hills.

What with the downturn affecting so many, Brett asked her what she was telling her clients. Here were three of her recommendations that have nothing to do with Mrs. Roosevelt, but everything to do with our recession. And she might affirm them as well:

1. Live in the now. What happened in the past is awful, and in many cases devastating. The only thing is: the past is passed. We cannot retrieve it. So be here. Be now.

2. Be grateful for love in everyday moments. She said that Brett and Jeff’s response to her and her husband was a loving response. She said she told her patients, be grateful for that kind of love in everyday moments, those unexpected gifts we regularly receive, but may not recognize actually as loving gifts.

3. Remember, it’s not how much we want that’s important, but how much we need. For a consumer society such as ours, that is hard to accept. We want so much, and we feel such identification with acquisition. But the analyst said, the important thing is to realize not how much we want…rather, how much we need.

[1] A sermon presented on March 01, 2009, as the first in a series focusing on women and “Footsteps to Follow,” at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1904 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, with the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.