Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 2 by Blanche Wiesen Cook

on events in Europe – particularly on influencing Nazi Germany (like the above statement). The author over-emphasizes the importance of the U.S.

There are two flaws in this second volume.Īmerica’s commitment to segregation and its ghastly habit of public lynching, unpunished and unopposed, emboldened Nazis in Europe.

Eleanor Roosevelt was a crusader for “Human Rights” before the term was invented (after the Second World War she was instrumental, along with others, in making, for the newly created United Nations “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”). This did not faze her and she did have millions of admirers who encouraged her actions for the rights of all Americans. She also encouraged the growth of unions which were instrumental in outlawing child labour, lowering the hours of work, and making a minimum wage.įor all these activities she was labelled a communist, a Red, a threat to democratic America, a threat to Anglo-Saxon values. She often disagreed publicly with some of her husbands’ weak-kneed efforts at reform – particularly his lack of legislation to make the U.S. The enormity and significance of Eleanor Roosevelt’s actions cannot be over-emphasized. Very sadly she was unsuccessful in this, which shows the strength and ignorance of the conservative faction in U.S.

She campaigned, along with many others, to make lynching a crime. Pictures of her with African Americans, even with small black children, caused a tremendous uproar, for which she was vilified. When she toured the South she was told that audiences had to be segregated, so when she was not the featured speaker she would place her chair in between the black and white audiences. Eleanor brought several African Americans to the White House including women who were in prison prison reform being another cause that Eleanor was involved in. This was at a time when Washington DC itself was still under Jim Crow. – most particularly in the Southern States. Her most fervent cause was that of the plight of African Americans through-out the U.S. She inserted herself into a multitude of causes that she was passionate about. She was progressive and left-leaning – espousing a multitude of causes – from women’s rights to the growing plight of refugees (mostly Jewish people fleeing from the reprehensible rule of Hitler’s Germany). As described in this book she is constantly on the move – giving speeches, writing articles and books, and meeting with diverse groups of people. These are definitely key years in the history of the United States with Franklin Roosevelt attempting to overcome the effects of the Depression – and, throughout the world, with Nazism and Fascism on the rise in Germany, Italy and Japan.Įleanor Roosevelt was at the forefront of it all.

This second volume covers a much shorter time period – from 1933 to 1938.

Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 2 by Blanche Wiesen Cook