Introduction

excerpted from the book

Casting Her Own Shadow

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism

by Allida M. Black

Columbia University Press, 1996

Eleanor Roosevelt's political career did not end when her husband died Indeed, her influence within the Democratic party and civil rights and other liberal reform organizations expanded during the last seventeen years of her life. She described this period, which began with FDR's death on April I2, I945, and ended with her own death on November 7, I962, as the time when she was "on my own." But this was also a time when the horrors of war had ripped liberalism away from its idealistic mooring in a perfectible human nature. Stunned by the Holocaust and the rise of totalitarianism, liberals struggled to balance their commitment to a more humane world against their new awareness of the darkness of human spirit. In a postwar world defined by opposites, they scrambled to redefine their place in American politics. Seeking a "fighting faith," they sought a tame politics "in an age of anxiety." Rejecting the anti-business sentiment they had embraced for half a century, they now argued liberals had more in common with business than they had with radical reformers. Now fearing the left as much as the right, they strove to promote what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., has labeled "the vital center. "

ER, as she began to sign letters to FDR in I909, disagreed with this approach. She did not see the world so simply. Liberal domestic reform faced a much more difficult choice than simply promoting anti-communist or noncommunist coalitions. Liberal international policy should see beyond the superficial juxtaposition of international accommodation with the Soviets and containment. While she agreed with Schlesinger that freedom must be "a fighting faith," she also believed that freedom must take risks or it would cease to be of any realistic value. Rather than yielding to those Reinhold Niebuhr labeled "the children of darkness," she worked to make sure that "the children of light" controlled the agenda. Comfortable with her own power, she remained uncomfortable with both consensus liberals and communist-front sympathizers. Treasuring democratic values, she opposed the politics of fear. Relieved that FDR's death freed her to pursue her own goals, ER nevertheless worried that FDR's death deprived liberals of the leadership they needed to humanize reform, to make America a more just democracy. And she worried that perhaps she did not have the expertise necessary to hold both the Democratic party and sympathetic Americans to the promises underpinning her reading of FDR's legacy. Indeed ER spent part of her last night in the White House discussing her fears with her dear friend Lorena Hickok, wondering not only how "to start again under our [her] momentum" but also what she could "achieve."

Once freed from the constraints of the White House, ER eagerly expanded her career and unabashedly challenged both the Democratic party and American liberals to practice what they preached. Whether the issue was civil rights for African Americans, opposition to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee or Senator Joseph McCarthy, defending Alger Hiss, or questioning John Kennedy's character, E continually asserted that civil liberties and civil rights were the cornerstones of American democracy

Skillfully using a variety of forums, such as daily newspaper columns, monthly magazine articles, national lecture tours, and government and Democratic Party appointments, ER challenged America and its political leaders to recognize hypocrisy and accept their civic responsibilities O: this stance hurt ER financially. A few times it provoked assassination attempts. Other times, it angered American conservatives so intensely that the Ku Klux Klan placed a bounty on her head. More often it generated venomous press attacks against her character and her patriotism. Indeed, if some of the media objected to ER's activism while she was first lady, when she left the White House the attacks reached unforeseen proportions. Acutely aware of her public image, ER nevertheless continued to press for change-even if the change that she advocated offended friends, members of her own party, and high-ranking government officials-and, even if It placed her outside the vital center of American liberalism.

This book examines ER's efforts to push American liberalism to promote a more inclusive domestic policy agenda. It is not a comprehensive reconstruction of all the issues ER addressed during the Cold War. Rather, it analyzes her commitment to a society that might maximize employment at a fair wage, respect diversity, and tolerate dissent, and assesses her influence on Democratic leadership, party reformers, civil rights and civil liberties associations, and the American public.

While Blanche Cook brilliantly reconstructs ER's early life and Doris Kearns Goodwin explores ER's power within the wartime White House, no one depicts Eleanor Roosevelt as an accomplished political insider who developed a myriad of skills needed to articulate an increasing liberal anti-racist agenda to a diverse and skeptical post-World War II public. This work begins to fill that void.

It is impossible to reconstruct in one brief tome a life as full and as complex as Eleanor Roosevelt's. I have left to the scholars more versed in psycho-history and psychological theory the opportunity to examine the emotional imbroglios of ER's life. And I encourage scholars to follow Cook's lead and reconstruct the influence that ER had as a feminist within public and private associations and use ER as a prism through which to examine the issues of human rights, containment, and nuclear disarmament. Instead, I deliberately chose to use a very traditional form, political history, to describe ER's nontraditional activities. Simply put, I am concerned with liberal politics, civil rights, and power. And Eleanor Roosevelt-as previous books fail to recognize-was the consummate liberal power broker.

Eleanor Roosevelt grew into power. Hers was neither an easy nor painless development. Indeed, her life before I945 was marked by intensely private and public challenges. Some demands threatened ER's self-confidence, while others pushed her into unfamiliar arenas which demanded skills she never knew she possessed. The more she confronted the disappointments and set her own expectations, the more independent she became, the more she trusted her own abilities, and the more she wanted to achieve.

By mid-April I945, when ER questioned what she could do "on my own," she could ease these doubts by remembering that at a time when she was under equally intense scrutiny she conquered her own fears and transcended the traditional helpmate role politicians and citizens prescribed for her. Just as she struggled to pursue goals that sometimes threatened her husband's political coalition, as America's foremost postwar liberal Eleanor Roosevelt could apply the lessons from her past to set a new course free from domestic political constraints. When confronted with this huge change in her life, when she no longer had to defer to he. husband's office and priorities, she could rise to the challenge. She had now not only the opportunity "to start again," but the expertise necessary to build a legacy of her own.

ER's dissatisfaction with Harry Truman and Henry Wallace shaped her relentless efforts to shape their domestic economic policies. Convinced that he must have her support to hold the New Deal coalition together, Truman tried to appease ER by appointing her to the United Nations. Yet he soon learned that she was not so easily co-opted. And he entered the election of I948 without her endorsement. Wallace also underestimated ER Disappointed as she was with the Democratic party in I948, she refused to abandon the Democrats to promote a third party that was not sure of its membership or its principles. ER entered the era of Eisenhower committed to making the Democratic party less glued to the consensus agenda of price controls and fair deals and more supportive of racial justice and tolerant of political dissent.

ER gave unflinching support to the cause of civil rights for African Americans and her perception of racial justice grew as she aged. She was not a complacent supporter of civil rights. Her friendships with civil rights leaders and her experience chairing investigations of race riots, internment facilities, and violent segregationist backlashes continually exposed her to the brute fact of American racism. Her involvement with Democratic party leaders and liberal interest groups also revealed daily the superficial nature of liberal commitment to racial justice. Gradually she moved away from counseling patience and working within the system to supporting those activists who staged grand public events designed to force the political system to recognize the shallowness of its promises.

ER struggled simultaneously to support civil liberties. This proved a more difficult challenge. Plagued by her acquiescence to FDR's internment policies, ER spent the war years trying to balance her conscience against presidential dictates. By I943, she worried that if America continued along its present political and economic path, it would win the war only to lose the peace. Once again uncomfortable with the stringent dictates of vital center liberalism, ER frequently opposed Cold War liberals who argued that communism had no place in American politics. Not only was she the first nationally prominent liberal to oppose Joseph McCarthy, she was also the only liberal to oppose from inception the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Smith Act. Despite the rapidity with which Adlai Stevenson, Schlesinger, and other liberals deserted Alger Hiss after his conviction, ER refused to let her disappointment in Hiss's judgment dictate her reaction to it. Angry that Democrats had turned away from reform and embraced their own anti-communist rhetoric, she rebuked her party tersely, arguing that they could not "outconserve the Republicans."

The aging, impatient, and increasingly liberal ER confronted in the mid-1950s the young, pragmatic, and politically centrist John Kennedy. Discouraged by Stevenson's defeats in the I952 and I956 elections, ER approached the campaign of I960 with mixed emotions. Convinced that the party needed a new bold vision to win the election and implement reform, ER nevertheless could not convince herself that Kennedy was the answer to the liberals' dilemma. His moderation on civil rights, his family association with McCarthy, his reliance on machine politics, and his father's conduct during World War II, only reinforced ER's opposition to his election. Yet Kennedy realized that he needed her support. Their relationship and the political aspirations of the young senator provide a useful prism through which to assess the aging ER's political clout.

Ultimately Eleanor Roosevelt exerted great influence on both the Democratic party and on America's attitude toward liberal reform. By the end of her life, she emerged as a skilled political insider who, as she aged, struggled to cope with a changing political world in which her influence declined. Resolute in her commitment to civil rights and civil liberties, ER sought to expand her influence by appealing, over the heads of party leaders, to the American public and reform organizations. Ever the democrat, ER entered the final years of her life worried that the nation may have forgotten its purpose and determined to resurrect the principles she believed essential to expand American democracy.

Casting Her Own Shadow

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