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♪ [Theme Music] ♪
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Hello, I'm Sheryl McCarthy
of the City University of New York.
Welcome to One-to-One.
Each week we address issues of timely and
timeless concern with newsmakers and the
journalists who report on them,
with artists, writers, scientists,
educators, social scientists,
government and non-profit leaders.
We meet each one-to-one.
How can I describe Blanche Wiesen Cook?
She's a distinguished Professor of History and
Women's Studies at CUNY's John Jay College of
Criminal Justice and at the university's graduate center.
She's the author of numerous scholarly
writings on history and on women's place in it.
She is a delegate to the United Nations Peace
History Society and has long been an advocate for
the dignity of all men and women.
But she is probably best known as the biographer of
Eleanor Roosevelt.
The first two volumes are considered the gold
standard for biography and we are eagerly awaiting
the third and final volume. Welcome.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: Thank you so much Sheryl and I'm
eagerly awaiting the third volume.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: You're eagerly awaiting it, too?
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: I am.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Blanche, a few months ago I visited
the newly renovated FDR Presidential Library and
Museum up in Hyde Park, New York.
What do you think of the renovation?
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: Well, it's fabulous.
I mean, first of all Eleanor Roosevelt really
gets significant space.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: She really does.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: For the first time.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: It's really half him and half her.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: It's really wonderful.
It's really wonderful and it's a center to visit and
a center to be inspired by.
What Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor
Roosevelt fought for is what we have to keep
fighting for, which is civil rights,
human rights, justice and peace.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: I assume you spent a lot of time
there in the course of your research?
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: I did.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: How does the library rate as a
resource on Eleanor?
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: Well, it is the primary.
It is the primary resource for Eleanor Roosevelt.
There are surprisingly countless documents that
are in the National Archives that have
recently, that were declassified in our lifetime.
When Eleanor Roosevelt worked for the United
Nations I was a member of the State Department's
Historical Advisory Committee when they were
trying to end the Freedom of Information Act and
reclassify many documents that we,
in the fund for open information and
accountability which is so timely now in this moment
of secrecy and leakers.
If we had freedom of information we wouldn't
need leakers.
Anyway, to make a long story short,
while I was on this committee,
the Chair of the committee would send me mountains of
correspondence -- this is what our meeting is going
to be, this is what you should think about -- and
one day I said to him look at all the material you
send to me, where are Eleanor Roosevelt's papers
and he said let's go look for them.
We found, in the National Archives,
about 93 boxes.
At the time I had top secret security clearance
and we sat down for about a week and we just
declassified all these papers.
They are still available.
The foreign relations of the U.S.
series, which should publish them,
has not yet gotten back to that project.
Although there was at one time some thought that
they would be published as a volume and it's very exciting.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Wow.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: So, as Joe Ash once said to
me, Eleanor Roosevelt is infinite and she is infinite.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Right. Now I remember when
Hillary Clinton was
First Lady and was probably
reviled for the work that
she did on healthcare reform -- the commission or
whatever it was, she was trying to put together
some kind of healthcare reform system -- and I just
at the time assumed it was because Americans like
their First Ladies to be wives and not to be
active in politics.
But then I think about Eleanor Roosevelt and how
active she was, so why was Hillary Clinton treated --
and Eleanor was, she's gone down in history,
people love her -- why do you think Hillary Clinton
was treated so differently?
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: Well, she wasn't.
Eleanor Roosevelt was reviled by the Dixiecrats,
by the Conservatives, by the members of Congress
and by the Press because she stood for justice and
she stood for civil rights at a time when -- even
during World War II the military is segregated,
blood plasma is segregated,
it's segregated Black and White,
Christian and Hebrew, during World War II.
This is the war for democracy.
This is the war against White Supremacy,
against the *** Nazis.
The U.S. military is entirely segregated and Eleanor
Roosevelt goes around the world,
literally the world.
She goes to the Pacific, she goes to the Caribbean,
she goes to Brazil, she travels widely and
everywhere she goes, everywhere she goes she is
demanding racial justice and she's calling for integration.
She is calling for integration and certainly
integration in the military,
justice in the military.
She is totally reviled, totally reviled.
So when Hillary Clinton --
and let me just say one other thing.
Eleanor Roosevelt is so much more progressive than FDR.
And if you look at even Social Security,
we take Social Security for granted and there are
all these right wing lunatics who want to end
Social Security and I think this week food
stamps has actually ended.
I mean, just things that we have taken for granted
-- old age security.
There are people who want to end Medicare,
Medicaid and Social Security.
They've already ended WIC, Women and Infant Care.
They've already ended things Eleanor Roosevelt
fought for.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: So it's just in retrospect that
she's a heroine.
At the time she was reviled.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: She was reviled.
But I want to say something about healthcare
because what Hillary Clinton -- Eleanor
Roosevelt wanted essentially something like
a single payor plan and everybody covered.
This came up again.
The AMA lobbies it to death.
It was supposed to be part of Social Security along
with housing security.
And Eleanor Roosevelt, who never had a home of her own,
is fighting for affordable housing for all
people, model housing for all people and she's
reviled for that.
Even members of FDR's Cabinet say to FDR do you
know what your wife is doing down there and where
she has this great homestead area in West Virginia?
She's spending money like a drunken sailor.
If she has her way, how are we going to tell the
rich from the poor?
Eleanor Roosevelt says "Well in matters of such
simple dignity and decency,
like indoor plumbing, we should not have to tell
the rich from the poor".
That's her position.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: How did she get to be -- she comes
from this really, as blue-blood American
families go hers was very blue-blood,
where the ladies they may have worked with charities
but they were not social and political activists.
She didn't even go to one of those women's colleges
that encouraged you to do that kind of thing.
So where did this come from,
this idea of I'm going to go out there and be
politically involved, a champion of the underdog,
take on so many causes?
Where did that come from?
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: Two places.
One, her father -- Eleanor Roosevelt wanted to make
it better for all people: people in want,
in need, in trouble.
Partly it's about she wanted to make it better
for people like her mother and father.
Her father was a drop dead alcoholic.
Who died at the age of 32.
Imagine how much you have to drink to die at the age
of 32 when Eleanor Roosevelt is only 10.
Her mother, miserable and unhappy,
essentially turns her face to the wall and dies when
Eleanor Roosevelt is 8.
So Eleanor Roosevelt is an orphan brought
up by her grandmother.
Then, very lucky, sent away to school at
Allenswood in England where she has this great
teacher, the Head Mistress of Allenswood,
Marie Souvestre -- and to this day there's no
biography of Marie Souvestre and I just long for one.
I tell all my graduate students think about Marie
Souvestre -- who said marvelous things,
who noticed that Eleanor Roosevelt was a leader and
who really believed that justice was possible,
who really infused Eleanor Roosevelt
with a spirit of activism.
Then when she comes back to the United States to
come out when she's 18 she gets all involved with
these radical women who found the Junior League.
She meets Lillian Wald and Jane Addams,
who are influenced by Toynbee Hall in England
and they found -- Lillian Wald founds the Henry
Street Settlement, Jane Addams Hull House.
Eleanor Roosevelt is part of this movement and she
teaches athletics and dancing at the Rivington
Settlement House and she wants to make it better
for all people, all people in need,
in want, in trouble.
Very early on she has a sense that we're all connected.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: You talk about her work and she
gets a lot of credit for her civil rights on behalf
of Blacks, the whole Marian Anderson and the
DAR, her friendship with
A. Phillip Randolph and Mary McLeod Bethune.
I read a couple of -- I teach my opinion writing
class, we read a couple of her columns.
One she calls for better housing for Blacks in
Washington and another for reforms at the Black
girls' reformatory in Washington.
But my sense is that there were Blacks who were very
frustrated with her because at times she
cautioned them to be patient and to sort of
time will heal some things and you're going to have
to prove -- in order to be totally accepted you're
going to have to prove to Whites that you're
deserving of certain rights.
I know that that there were some African
Americans who were frustrated with that.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: There are three things going on here.
One is her commitment to change is absolute.
This begins in May 1934.
She strides on to a stage after the National
Education Association -- and this is so timely now
as we're closing public schools all over America
and our own public schools are in a state of siege --
and they pass, NEA passes in 1934 a very simple
resolution saying segregation is bad,
segregation makes white children think they're
superior and children of color think they're
inferior and it destroys all hope of community.
And Eleanor Roosevelt, who has been a teacher in a
restricted school, her own school,
Todd Hunter, strides onto the stage and says --
I'm going to read it, if I may,
because I brought it to read it.
It's so perfect for this moment.
"I noticed in the papers this morning the figures
given of the cost per capita for the education
of a colored child and a white child and I could
not help but think how stupid we are.
Since democracy depends above all on an educated
citizenry, a literate, informed concerned people,
we should really bend our energies to giving to
children the opportunity to develop all their
gifts, the best that is in them".
She asks for universal excellent public education
as a matter of self-interest and
self-preservation of our democracy.
We must have equal opportunity for all
children, regardless of race and creed.
She goes on -- this is all in Volume 2,
so folks can read the whole thing.
But she ends it by saying "I think the day of
selfishness is over".
This is 1934.
This is 2013.
Does anybody think the day of selfishness -- the day
of selfishness is over?
"The day of really working together has come and we
must learn to work together,
all of us, regardless of race or creed or color.
We must wipe out wherever we find it any feeling of
intolerance, of belief that one group can go
ahead alone. We will go ahead together
or we will all go down together".
And that is her core belief.
At another time she says "I can give you 100% literacy
in this country and full employment,
a classroom of five students and one teacher".
SHERYL MCCARTHY: And you do an excellent imitation
of her, I might say.
We're going to take a short break and then we'll
be back with more, with Blanche Wiesen Cook,
after the following message.
♪ [Theme Music] ♪
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Welcome back to One-to-One.
I'm Sheryl McCarthy of the City University of New
York and I'm talking with Blanche Wiesen Cook,
distinguished Professor of History and Women's
Studies at John Jay College and at our
graduate center.
You have been working on your biography of Eleanor
Roosevelt for more than three decades.
Do you continue to find out things about her that
surprise you?
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: You know,
she really is miraculous and every day I find out
more that -- I no longer am surprised, I'm awed.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Right.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: She continues to change.
She continues to grow.
She continues to keep her eye on the prize.
There is a book that says Eyes Off the Prize which
criticizes Eleanor Roosevelt at the United
Nations for failing to take -- Dr. W.E.B.
Du Bois had a petition.
We charged genocide and Eleanor Roosevelt refused
to take that petition.
She didn't want it to be used as anti-American
propaganda by the Soviet Union.
On the other hand, one has to say -- since I don't
write a hagiography -- I mean,
I too am disappointed by -- and this is the period
when Eleanor Roosevelt says not go slow but do
your demonstrations, don't be impatient.
She never says go -- I've never seen her say go
slow, but be patient and organize and organize
carefully and this kind of thing.
I mean, she was delighted to say to the students of
America go south for freedom.
I was Student Government President when...
SHERYL MCCARTHY: At Hunter.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: At Hunter,
when Eleanor Roosevelt was in town and we invited her
to speak at Roosevelt House,
which she had given to Hunter as an interfaith
meeting house, and that was her message to us --
many changes are going on, go south for freedom -- and
we took three buses to North Carolina in 1961 and
that changed my life.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: It's interesting that no
American president up until maybe I guess Lyndon
Johnson when he pushed the civil rights bills through
would push for an anti-lynching bill.
But Eleanor did.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: She did.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: That's interesting.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: Yeah, she did.
She tried to get the anti-lynch bill passed.
It never did pass.
FDR wouldn't say a word about it.
Again -- and here's where -- when he dies - until he
dies, she's the agitator.
Their amazing relationship enables her to say really
critical things about his policies in Press,
in her column and on the radio and she does and in public.
So she pushes him and agitates for things that
she believes in.
When he dies, she becomes more of the politician.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Right.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: And she notices that's what
he's been putting up with, I can't say this if we
want to get it done.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Do you think if she had been
First Lady in the `90s that she would have at
some point sought public office or...?
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: She said,
when people asked her to run for the Senate,
people asked her to run for Governor,
people asked her to run for President,
she said "I would rather be chloroformed".
She wanted the freedom of being a journalist.
She wanted the freedom of being a journalist.
She did not want the constraints that come with
public office.
We all are seeing those constraints of public
office just vividly.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Yeah, it's a lot easier to
criticize and to agitate than it is to manage.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: Right, but that was...
SHERYL MCCARTHY: She was quite
lovely as a young woman but she didn't age
particularly well and people made fun of her
matronly figure and of that unmodulated high
pitched voice.
Did that affect her and Franklin?
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: Well, Eleanor Roosevelt actually
took lessons to modulate her voice but she just
couldn't do it.
It would just rise up.
I think that the criticisms of her as a
Communist, as un-American were much more upsetting
as we were creating a Gestapo.
She criticizes the red-baiters,
the McCarthyites for creating an American Gestapo.
Much more offensive to her than people's remarks
about her looks.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: People also,
she was accused of having Black blood too.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: Right, absolutely.
Who would care about Black people unless you were Black?
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Right.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: That's the Dixiecrat,
bigoted, clan mentality. The U.S.
really had a very close call with fascism.
I mean, there's a huge racist reality and I think
we see how racist the reality is today,
not just with stop-and-frisk and buying while
Black, walking while Black,
driving while Black,
but the kind of hysteria over Obamacare.
I just want to pause on that because among the
many people there is no biography of -- and there
really should be -- is Oveta Culp Hobby.
Oveta Culp Hobby was the head of the WACs and when
Eisenhower became President,
one thing he wanted to do -- first of all,
it's Eisenhower who integrates the military,
not Truman, who goes base to base and fires every
bird colonel who won't integrate the base.
It's Eisenhower who integrates blood plasma in
1956 -- it's that late -- and he says we're going to
integrate blood plasma.
The Head of the Red Cross, General Al Gruenther,
his buddy from World War II,
says you can't do that, the South doesn't want
integrated blood and Eisenhower says well then
the South won't get any blood.
Done, okay.
He says to Oveta Culp Hobby what I want to do is
a healthcare plan, very simple,
just the way we had it in the military,
everybody covered and their families,
is that okay with you?
And this Houston widow, wife of the Governor of
Texas, her own newspaper, head of the WACs,
people think she's just a Texas bigot,
she's a member of the NAACP,
a lifelong member of the NAACP,
she says absolutely okay with me.
And they fight for what would have been single payor.
Again, the AMA lobbies it to death and it becomes
the Health Reinsurance Act of 1957.
Eleanor Roosevelt with her pal Esther Lape,
L-A-P-E -- and again there's no biography of
Esther Lape.
I'm teaching in the spring semester a course with
Barbara Welter on writing women's lives and I'm
going to try to get some of my graduate students
who are looking for a dissertation to think
about some of these great women whose papers are available.
But so Esther Lape, who fought all her life -- she
died at the age of 100 in 1982 -- she fought all her
life for a medical plan that would be essentially
single payor, everybody covered,
just the way it is throughout the industrial world.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Right, right, right.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: Including now South Africa.
So the U.S. is the only country that has this insane situation
where you can lose your home and your car and your
farm and your ranch if you can't pay your medical bills.
Bottom line, they had the Health Reinsurance Act of
`57, Eisenhower gives the penny,
signs the bill with Esther Lape,
and she waves it to the journalists and she says
"Now this bill represents just a puny little bone in the
vertebra of what I had in mind".
Okay, fast forward to Hillary Rodham Clinton,
and she wants to have something closer to the
Health Reinsurance Act.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Right.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: But the lobbyists against
women, the lobbyists against everything public --
I mean, it's Clinton, let's remember.
He gets a pass but he ends welfare as we know it.
He ends Glass-Steagall.
Why does Clinton get such a pass I'll never know.
He ends Glass-Steagall, which gives the banksters
this race to the top and collapse for the rest of us.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: What makes good biography?
You're teaching a course in writing women's lives.
What makes good biography?
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: James MacGregor Burns told me
one night while we were having dinner "I have one
word of advice to you, be bold".
He wasn't bold, he said, in his first book and he
regretted it.
And his advice to me was be bold.
That's one thing.
Write from your heart.
Ruth Gruber, that marvelous journalist,
photo journalist, said she always -- Ed Stiften told
her to take pictures from her heart.
Write from your heart.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Okay.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: The second thing is do the research.
The answers are lurking, if you're lucky the
answers are lurking in the documents,
the letters, the diaries, the newspapers,
the columns.
It's there.
Then letters about -- so not just your subject,
but the circle your subject lives in, okay? So it's...
SHERYL MCCARTHY: It's those?
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: Yeah.
And then there are secrets.
What are the sources that lead you to the secrets?
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Okay.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: And we need freedom of
information and someday we could talk about ...
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Okay.
I think we're all looking forward to your third volume.
I'm not going to ask you when it's going to come
out but we're looking forward to it.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK: Thank you so much.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: We're out of time.
I want to thank Blanche Wiesen Cook for joining us today.
For the City University of New York and One-to-One,
I'm Sheryl McCarthy.
♪ [Theme Music] ♪
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