Chicago, Illinois, July 1952
Eleanor stood backstage, shaking hands and casting furtive glances down the long passage she had taken to get to the chaotic scene behind the convention curtains. David should have been here by now, she thought, worried that he might have been stopped by security. Perhaps she should go back and see. No, there wasn’t time. She was scheduled to speak any minute.
“Mrs. Roosevelt? Mrs. Roosevelt?” a young man whose pin read “usher” was holding a glass of water and looking nervous.
“Mr. Rayburn said I should see if you would like some water. It will be just a few minutes more,” he said. “Do you need anything?”
“Oh, thank you, I’m fine. But would you mind walking down to the stage entrance in back and being sure that a Dr. Gurewitsch is allowed in? Thank you so much.”
A moment later, the band began playing the theme from FDR’s presidency, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and Eleanor could hear the cheering and chanting from the other side of the grand drape, its royal blue velvet shivering as the cheers grew louder.
“It’s time, Mrs. Roosevelt,” another usher walked up and took her by the elbow, as if to escort her down the aisle, but as she stepped past the teaser curtain, he stayed behind. The hall seemed to levitate with joy as she walked to the podium. Frank McKinney stood at the microphone, ready to introduce her, but he made no attempt to gavel the crowd into silence. As she reached him, waving and smiling to the crowd that was mostly hidden from her by the intense glare of the lights, he shouted in her ear.
“Let’s let this go on a little. It’s good for them to feel united again after all we’ve been through the last few days.”
“Of course,” Eleanor cupped her hand next to her mouth and shouted back to him. Besides, she thought, it’s electrifying television, not like all those awfully boring speeches the Republicans gave. Eleanor beamed and waved, bending over so far when she recognized someone standing near the edge of the stage that the audience could see the top of her round, flowered hat pinned firmly to her hair. She wore a bright red patterned short-sleeve dress, with a giant cream-colored cattleya orchid corsage pinned at her left shoulder. Even in the hall with the mixing smells of smoke and food and more than two thousand people, she could catch the orchid’s strong sweet scent when her head bent the right way.
The International Amphitheatre walls might have cracked from the noise, but finally, banging his gavel, McKinney shouted, “Will the delegates please take their seats.” Bang! He slammed the gavel down like a giddy child smashing caps. “Please, please, take your seats, my friends. There are several million people waiting to hear the First Lady of the World speak at our convention.”
McKinney stepped aside, and Eleanor moved squarely in front of the jumble of microphones, adjusting the center one slightly as the room hushed.
“This demonstration is not for me,” she began. “This demonstration is for the memory of my husband.” Her voice, familiar from so many radio programs and years of speeches in every corner of the nation, reminded Democrats of their best days. These were her people and Franklin’s. She was their conscience, the reminder of all that had been great in America and the hope of greatness to come.
“Our president has asked me to speak of the United Nations, which as you know, was the great dream of my husband and me. United…Nations.” She paused between the two words, emphasizing each of them. “There is a small, articulate minority who want the United States to withdraw from the UN, but with the UN, we do not walk alone but instead are traveling in good company with men and women of goodwill in the free countries of the world. The UN is still the chief machinery in existence for the realization of man’s hope for peace. Its destructive critics offer nothing in its place. Perhaps the challenge of today is to recognize the historic truth that we can no longer live apart from the rest of the world…. We are the leading democratic nation of the world, a nation which all the world watches…. We have a difficult job because all of our failures are seen.”
She paused, deepening her voice and looking stern. “And, my friends, we may be facing a great failure if we continue to tolerate the intolerable tactics of Senator McCarthy. We would condemn ourselves to an endless struggle for survival in a jungle world.” At the mention of McCarthy, delegates began jumping to their feet, stamping and clapping at Eleanor’s rebuke.
“At the same time,” Eleanor went on, “our successes are seen as well. It is because of those successes, that, as chairman of the Human Rights Commission, I was able to find enough good sense and goodwill among the other delegates to draft and pass the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” At the mention of the document that had just been finalized that spring, another spontaneous round of cheering broke out.
“My friends, we have accomplished much since Franklin and I first came to the White House in 1933, but we have much more we can do working together at home and abroad. For that reason, I hope we are going to be strong enough, and imaginative enough, and take the future with enough spirit of adventure so that we will live it with joy,” her smile beamed into the cameras as she finished, “yes, live it with joy and never grow hopeless. Thank you.”
Eleanor raised both arms high above her head and waved her hands, as the frenzied cheering rose until there was no possibility of any one person being heard. Finally, she walked offstage, where a dense crowd of well-wishers greeted her. But as she looked around, David was nowhere in sight.
“Eleanor, can you stay for the first vote on the nominees?” Rayburn was at her elbow, his face pink from the heat and excitement.
“No, Sam, I’m sorry. I have to get to the airport.”
“Could you walk out through the hall then? The delegates can’t get enough of you.”
Eleanor walked down the stage steps and into the maelstrom of the convention floor, shaking hands, smiling, and trying to push thoughts of David from her mind. Suddenly, Agnes Myer grabbed her arm, forcing her to stop. Myers’s husband had owned the Washington Post newspaper. Agnes was a political force in the party and a formidable activist who hadn’t always been on the Roosevelts’ side. “You really saved the day for political women, Eleanor,” she said as if making a pronouncement. “You’ve let the women of the country know that it’s possible to be a woman and a lady and thoroughly political. They won’t forget.”
“Thank you, Agnes. I hope you’re right,” Eleanor replied.
“I know I’m right, Eleanor. If more women had your political talent, we would have a woman on the ticket.”
“India’s been mentioned for vice president,” Eleanor said over her shoulder as she moved from Agnes’s grasp toward the door.
Rayburn had retaken the rostrum and was calling for the first vote on the nominees even before Eleanor had made it out of the auditorium. “I’ll get the results once I’m back in New York,” she thought. She just wanted to get home. She just wanted to know what had happened to David.
Watching from the gallery, Joan caught glimpses of Eleanor as the delegates pressed around her, and then she scrambled to find a phone to call in her story. She had been the only reporter to interview the former First Lady before she addressed the convention. She would use what she’d gotten to lead into her report of Eleanor’s amazing speech. “The greatest ovation of any speaker at either convention,” Joan had jotted in her notebook as she watched the frenzied scene on the convention floor. She could just imagine the next day’s headline: “Mrs. FDR Stops the Show.”