THIS BOOK WAS IN PART MADE POSSIBLE BY A MOVEment—led and informed by women and men who have in the past twenty years transformed the craft of biography and enlarged the contours of our learning traditions. I am proud to be part of this movement that removed women from the margins of our culture and placed them at the center of their own lives, and our field of vision. However embattled we remain, the new poetry, literature, and scholarship have enabled us to ask bolder questions about the nature of identity, relationships, and power—as they concern individuals and society.
Eleanor Roosevelt is one of the most admired and controversial women in world history, but her life was for many years obscured by closed archives and court biography. She seemed then a mythic character, larger than life and not quite human. There seemed actually to be no story beyond her dutiful marriage and her valiant precepts, both already well detailed.
Between 1958 and 1962, I met Eleanor Roosevelt several times in my capacity as president of the student government of Hunter College and then as vice-president for student affairs of the National Student Association. Each time the experience felt charged: The room simply changed when she walked into it—one felt the air fill with her vibrancy. After each meeting, there was conversation and tea. Eleanor Roosevelt was still, as she had been for so many decades, an adviser to students—an optimistic galvanizing force for activism and political commitment. She might have been one of the first heroes of the new feminist movement as it emerged during the 1970s on that account alone. But her papers were closed, and we were actually discouraged from considering Eleanor Roosevelt as a woman with independent power.
Then, in 1978, everything changed. When the Lorena Hickok papers were opened, we all learned that there were many more dimensions to Eleanor Roosevelt’s life. Although her friendship with Lorena Hickok was at first taken out of context and treated meanly, the fact of a world of relationships long denied, of a hard-won struggle to live life fully, and with a flair for adventure, created for me the challenge that became this biography: Who in fact was Eleanor Roosevelt? What were the sources of her strength? What did she really think? What of the great range of her own writings? How did she actually spend her days?
To some extent this book is “a life and times” of Eleanor Roosevelt and her generation: an historical reconsideration of the events that served to define a life, a life that served to define events. To appreciate the struggles that Eleanor Roosevelt faced enables us to understand the struggles we continue to face, the political alternatives available, and the fact that on the road to political decency and personal dignity there have been no final victories.
In 1984, during a centennial celebration of ER’s life, Joseph P. Lash said that Eleanor Roosevelt is infinite and timeless. Because I also believe successive generations will find additional questions to ask, different issues to explore, new interpretations to forge, I have made every effort to avoid historiographical quibbles and biographical arguments. Where I have given in to temptation, I have relegated the issue to the endnotes, along with sources and tangential historical detail.
During the decade that I researched Eleanor Roosevelt, new documents appeared and previously closed or “lost” archival sources were opened, and my gratitude to various archivists and librarians is profound. At the Library of Congress, I am as always grateful to David Wigdor. At Columbia University, I want to thank Ron Grele, director of Columbia’s Oral History Project, and the ever-helpful archivists of Columbia’s special collections. At the United States Archives, I am especially grateful to Milton Gustafson and the Diplomatic archivists who, along with Bill Slany, historian of the United States Department of State, helped me locate ER’s entire human-rights record; indeed, the entire U.S. humanrights record for 1946–53—long closed, classified, and forgotten. At the FBI, I am thankful for historian Susan Rosenfeld Falb’s many courtesies during the various Freedom of Information requests I have made over the years. At John Jay College I want especially to thank Eileen Rowland and Marilyn Lutzker.
At Oyster Bay, I want to thank John Gable, director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association; and Wallace Dailey, the curator of the Theodore Roosevelt Collection at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, which includes a vast treasure of new materials concerning ER’s paternal family. Indeed, during the 1980s, the size of that collection has almost doubled. Most of my work on this project was done at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, a most congenial research facility. I appreciate particularly the knowledgeable and generous assistance of Frances Seeber, Susan Elter, Mark Renovitch, and Paul McLaughlin.
For the use of Eleanor Roosevelt’s correspondence with Isabella Selmes Ferguson Greenway King, at the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson, her son John Greenway and archivist Adelaide Elm offered most cordial assistance.
For the Esther Lape Papers in their private collection, and for their hospitality in Phoenix, I am grateful to Lape’s friends Harold Clarke and Bert Drucker. For other Lape papers and many memories, I appreciate the contributions of medical historian Patricia Spain Ward, whose work on and friendship with Esther Lape is so important to our understanding of this long-ignored pioneer for health care in America.
Regarding Esther Lape, I am also grateful to Michael Sonino, Olga Bendix, and especially Margaret (Peggy) Bok Kiskadden, whose candor and political acumen enabled me to appreciate the manifold textures of the extended Lape-Roosevelt circle.
Above all, I want to thank Maureen Corr, ER’s last secretary and Esther Lape’s friend, for all her valuable memories, her sage advice, and an incomparable tour of Lape’s estate, Saltmeadow, and home and office in Westbrook, Connecticut. Also for their hospitality during that visit, I want to thank my friends Jay and Jane Gould.
Countless people agreed to interviews, and a full bibliography will appear at the end of Volume Two of this biography. But I particularly want to thank ER’s friends and family members who took significant time to meet with me.
Joseph Lash, Trude Lash, and Edna Gurewitsch were unfailingly gracious, and their insights concerning a wide range of still-controversial issues and relationships greatly enhanced my understanding. Edna Gurewitsch, for example, told me that she had it harder than many women: They might have Marilyn Monroe for a rival, she had Eleanor Roosevelt. The insights and memories of ER’s granddaughter, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Dall Seagraves (“Sisty”), were particularly helpful and I am very grateful for the hours she took out of her very busy schedule. ER’s sons cordially took time during several centennial celebrations we all attended in 1984 to share with me additional memories, and I am grateful to Elliott, James, and FDR, Jr. To Franklin III (Frank Roosevelt), my deep gratitude for his support for this project, and his memories.
I am grateful to Henry Morgenthau III and Daniel O’Day for their memories of their mothers, Elinor Morgenthau and Caroline O’Day; to Ralph Disbrow Burghardt, regarding his mother, Alice Disbrow; and to Richard Disbrow and William Disbrow for their assistance and memorabilia of their aunt and sister, Alice Disbrow; to Patricia Schepps Vaill and Annis Eastman Fuller Young for their memories of Todhunter; to Vivian Cadden, Estelle Linzer, Carol Lubin, Dorothy Height, Virginia Durr, Alger Hiss, Justine Wise Polier, Ruth Gruber, and Pauli Murray for their various recollections of Eleanor Roosevelt over time.
During the course of my research I was assisted by several graduate students and friends who photocopied articles and documents, and found obscure or out-of-print books and journals in Washington, New York, Hyde Park, and Cambridge. I am profoundly grateful to Melanie Gustafson, Phyllis Lewis, Deborah Aguayo-Delgado, Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins, Susan Heske, Scott Sandage, Mindy Chateauvert, and Betty Maset. I also want to thank my friends Lisa Breskin Rudikoff and Ben and Judy Kohl for those convivial evenings in the Hyde Park area.
Over the years there were many conversations with FDR’s biographers who generously shared with me their insights or research. I want to thank: Ted Morgan, Geoffrey Ward, Alfred B. Rollins, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and especially James MacGregor Burns, who said emphatically: “Be Bold. Above all: Be Bold.”
During ER’s centennial year, the conveners of the conference at San Diego, Jess Flemion and Colleen O’Connor, enabled many of us to meet together, and contribute to Eleanor Roosevelt: An American Journey. Also, the effort to create Without Precedent, an anthology of new work on Eleanor Roosevelt, edited by Joan Hoff-Wilson and Marjorie Lightman, led to many meetings, discussions, panels, and shared insights; I am very grateful to each of the participants, all of them at work on different aspects of ER and the issues that faced her generation, and ours. For their work, and our stimulating and provocative conversations I want specifically to thank Susan Ware, Lois Scharf, Bill Youngs, Maureen Beasley and Elizabeth Israels Perry.
Personally I am indebted to my family, friends, and colleagues who have lived with me and this book for over ten years.
On the East End I want to thank Phyllis Wright, who helped me make the transition from fountain pen to word processor; Deborah Ann Light for the many kindnesses of her office facilities; and Sandy Ferguson, her assistant, for her accessibility and computer knowledge. I also want to thank Lyla Hoffman for asking those most difficult questions.
My agent, Charlotte Sheedy, always more than an agent, a friend and adviser, has been forceful and encouraging from the beginning.
My original editor at Viking, Amanda Vaill, was for a decade a great help as this project unfolded and changed shape. I appreciate her wit and large vision, her encouragement and support over time. My new editor, Nan Graham, and her staff, notably Gillian Silverman, have carried through with valuable insights, and I am very grateful to them. I also appreciate Viking’s astute and precise copy editors, Terry Zaroff and Kate Griggs; and the enthusiasm of Scott Edward Anderson.
My colleagues and friends at John Jay College, CUNY, have been an unfailing source of support and collegiality. I want especially to thank President Gerald Lynch, former vice-president John Collins, former dean and history chair John Cammett, and my students—both at John Jay and the Graduate Center. In particular, I want to thank William P. T. Preston, whose many feats of friendship included a tour of ER’s childhood environs—the North Shore estate area around Meadowbrook, Hempstead, and Roslyn—and an informative visit with his cousin Betty Babcock, whose mother was one of ER’s rivals in New York State politics.
Over the years, Gerald Markowitz and Alice Kessler-Harris have been unfailing sources of historical vision and knowledge. I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to them for reading the entire manuscript of the once combined volumes with diligence and discernment.
Daily, my life has been enhanced by that community of scholars and biographers, poets, activists, and writers, without whom this book would not be possible. Their work has informed my own, their friendship has sustained me and emboldened my quest. In addition to those named above, I appreciate those friends and colleagues who read parts of this manuscript and enhanced in various ways this project over time: Clare Coss, Audre Lorde, Berenice Carroll, Frances Clayton, Michelle Cliff, Sandi Cooper, Judith Friedlander, Alvia Golden, Sharon Good, Lucille Field Goodman, Gloria I. Joseph, Phyllis Kriegel, Susan Koppelman, Frederica Leser, Deborah Ann Light, Jane Marcus, Midge Mackenzie, Jean Millar, Connie Murray, Adrienne Rich, Patsy Rogers, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Amy Swerdlow, Leslie Weisman; members of the Biography Seminar at the New York Institute of the Humanities, especially: Deidre Bair, Louise Bernikow, Louise DeSalvo, Richard Goldstone, Elizabeth Harlan, Carolyn Heilbrun, Fred Karl, Eunice Lipton, Honor Moore, Sue Schapiro, Aileen Ward, and Elizabeth Wood; and the women of Gay Women’s Alternative, especially Marge Barton.
In particular for their unfailing support, I am profoundly grateful to my family, Sadonia Ecker Wiesen, Marjorie Doris Lessem, Daniel Wayne, Douglas Jed, and Clare M. Coss, who—in addition to everything else—read each draft and informed this book with her clarity, style, and vigor. Their support made this work possible when there were so many other battles to wage, so many waves to ride, so much else to do.
—Blanche Wiesen Cook
The Springs, October 1991