Eleanor Roosevelt: Best First Lady

Eleanor Roosevelt was something else. We can't get into it here, but just wait until you listen to this episode. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:34Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:44Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the Great Women in History Edition.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  That's right. One of the greatest.

• 1:58Josh Clark?

  Sure, she's up there. Frances Perkins still gets my vote, though.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah?

• 2:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Eleanor Roosevelt is amazing. It's just that learning about her makes your head spin. Like, you could do a 10-part series on her easy.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, at some point, you just gotta, you know, do the Stuff You Should Know thing.

• 2:18Josh Clark?

  Right, and condense 10 parts into 45 minutes.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:24Josh Clark?

  So I think I just let the cat out of the bag, Chuck. We're talking today about Eleanor Roosevelt. And she is the longest serving first lady. She was called the first lady of the world, as a matter of fact, by Harry Truman. Mayor LaGuardia in New York called her America's number one volunteer. And she was almost universally liked, even if you couldn't stand her politics. She was just so eloquent and graceful and kind and generous and all the great things that you like, you couldn't help but like her pretty much. It seems like only a few members of her family are the ones that she ever had a real beef with.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And, you know, family's gonna family.

• 3:07Josh Clark?

  Right, never trust family.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 3:10Josh Clark?

  So let's, let's talk about her family to start. She was born in 1884. I believe her full name was Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, but everybody calls her Eleanor. And her father was Elliot Roosevelt, who's Teddy Roosevelt's younger brother. And so, yes, she wasn't just married as a Roosevelt. She was born a Roosevelt too. Isn't that surprising?

• 3:32Speaker 02

  Uh, that she married her cousin? That is surprising to probably a lot of people.

• 3:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, fifth cousin, not a lot of genetic issues there. But yeah, I mean, I thought she was, she became a Roosevelt after marriage. She was born a Roosevelt, buddy. There's your trivia question for this one.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, she didn't have her parents around for long. And while she did, it was not the best scene. Apparently she, her mother was a pretty distant person. Uh, not the greatest mom and her dad was a pretty tough alcoholic. But, um, they died not to, you know, they died when she was a child, basically. Uh, her mom, Anna, died in 1892 of diphtheria. And her father Elliot, um, died after he jumped out of a window, uh, because of alcoholic tremors, basically, delirium tremors. So it was a pretty rough go for her, uh, until she went to live with her grandmother,

• 4:28Speaker 02

  uh, where she had lived with her brothers, Elliot Jr., who, uh, actually he didn't live that long either. Uh, but her brother Hall did, and apparently she doted on him quite a bit.

• 4:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, what a, what a great sister. Like, they're, they're both orphans and so she's gonna take on the role of like, being his mother figure essentially and taking good care of him. So I think that's pretty neat. And that shows a lot about who she was, because this is starting about age 10. And when she went and lived with her grandmother, she was educated at home, as very, very wealthy people did at the time. And, and when she was 15, she was sent to England. And that's where she, her first brush, maybe even really her only brush with education, went. She was there for like, three years before her grandmother called her back and said, that's enough, let's do some debutante stuff. Come back and get fitted for a big frilly dress.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  That's right. And that was in 1902. And she wasn't, you know, she didn't take to, even though she was born into, in wealth and kind of into that scene, obviously, as a Roosevelt. She didn't feel like she really fit in, in that elite sort of, sort of scene there. So, early on, she started volunteering and she thought, well, a good way to sort of rid myself, or at least distance myself a bit from that life, would be to kind of, you know, see what the, the common folks are up to, and help them out. And she started out, doing that at a pretty young age, initially at the Rivington Street Settlement House, there in the Lower East Side, where she, she was a dance teacher and she taught classes

• 6:05Speaker 02

  to young immigrants. And then also finally joining the National Consumers League, which was basically an organization that tried to improve, you know, down in the garment district, what the, what the workers were dealing with.

• 6:18Josh Clark?

  Right. Trying to get workers' death from 100% down to something like 80%, you know?

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:26Josh Clark?

  So she met her cousin, her fifth cousin, who she married, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when they were both very young. I think, they were at like, a family gathering or something like that, and he was giving her piggyback rides. Not teenage piggyback rides, like these were little kid piggyback rides. And then they, I guess, didn't keep in touch much, but then when she was 18 and got called back for the whole debutante thing, they met again, and they were just like, I like you, I like you too. Maybe we should get married. Maybe we should. We're fifth cousins. I think that's okay. Let's do it. That was the conversation.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  What's a teenage piggyback?

• 7:06Josh Clark?

  It's a piggyback ride given by teenagers. It's much different than like a little kid piggyback ride.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Can you explain the difference? I've never heard of this.

• 7:16Josh Clark?

  Um, I think the guy giving the girl usually is how it goes. Piggyback ride, the piggyback ride, um, is hoping that that will somehow turn into something much more than just a piggyback ride, even if it's just some day.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. All right. I never heard of this.

• 7:34Josh Clark?

  That's a teenage piggyback ride.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Wow, I missed out. I was, I grew up a Baptist kid though, so I wasn't aware.

• 7:39Josh Clark?

  Well, I mean, all of this was just completely me making this up as I went along. I don't think it's an actual thing.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  I got you. All right. So they decided to get married. Uh, that happened in 1905. Uh, they had kind of a longish engagement for, uh, the time and apparently, um, Sarah Roosevelt, uh, Franklin's mom kind of didn't insist on that, but she didn't love, uh, Eleanor. So I think it kind of dragged out a bit.

• 8:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  But they did get married and boy was Sarah a part of their life. Like talk about an intrusive mother-in-law. Um, Sarah and her son were very, very tight. Um, she did not want to, uh, kind of completely give him up. So she accomplished this by, uh, gifting them a brownstone, uh, that she had built for them and she had a matching brownstone built that were connected by sliding doors. So essentially, um, you know, it was kind of like one big place when she wanted it to be.

• 8:36Josh Clark?

  Right. And she kept this control, not just by adoring her son, which she genuinely did, or being adored by him, which he genuinely did. Um, she also kept everybody in the family on a pretty short leash by, um, controlling the, the family's finances. She was the one who was in charge of the family money. So she could threaten to cut you off if you didn't do what she wanted. She could reward you for doing what she wanted. Um, she, and then she- I just can't really wrap my head around how overbearing Sarah, FDR's mom, was. It's just mind boggling to me because not just controlling finances and building a brownstone, it gets worse, as a matter of fact. And yet Eleanor really wanted her approval.

• 9:22Josh Clark?

  She loved FDR. She wanted FDR to be happy. And at the same time, she's like, you have to be kidding me about this. Still, she managed to become pretty close with her mother-in-law against all odds.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:35Josh Clark?

  As Phil Collins said.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  That's right. So that was another pretty rough situation, not too long into their marriage. About nine years in, Eleanor found out that her husband had been having an affair, like a years-long affair, with her secretary, Lucy Mercer. And this all came out and, you know, there were love letters found and they thought about getting divorced. But, you know, depending on who you read, they stayed together, probably because he wanted to continue his career in politics and that would not look very good. Other people say that his mom, Sarah, had a threat to stop the flow of money, kind of Arthur-style. So that might be a reason

• 10:19Speaker 02

  too. But at any rate, they decided to stay together despite this infidelity, which I'm sure was a huge disappointment.

• 10:26Josh Clark?

  For sure. I think that hit her hard. And if FDR had any, you know, second thoughts about staying together, three years later, he was stricken with polio, which he probably contracted as a younger child, but it caught up with them at age 39. And he was partially paralyzed and had to be, had to recover. And he never fully recovered full range of motion and power. And he just happened to be married to the perfect person to help him through that. So I think that that really kind of helped reinforce the bonds that they had and also helped reinforce the character of the relationship where he had one mom,

• 11:07Josh Clark?

  he got another one. He also had a wife. He also had a very smart, savvy advisor. So he had like everything. Except maybe the love of his life in Eleanor and he was like, this is good. I can deal with this.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, she definitely stepped in and not only cared for him, but acted almost as a co-president, like certainly more so than any other first lady that we had ever seen. And we're going to go through, you know, a lot of her first lady first, but you know, when he couldn't get out there for any reason, she was out there for him and would report back to him. And I think everyone kind of understood and, you know, viewed her with a lot of respect, it seems like for the most part.

• 11:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think a lot of people were also like, especially when she was first lady, hey, overstep your bounds much, but she just plugged on. One thing that you'll see about her is that she was a very self-conscious person. She had kind of low self-esteem in a lot of ways, and yet she was willing to plow through it. And she was also willing to plow through the disapproval of her social peers, her friends sometimes, the general public, and just kind of follow her moral compass, essentially where it led her to great effect. I mean, when you put all of it together, she's one of the most revered women in American history.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. She had a lot of kids. She gave birth to six kids, but in a 10-year period between 1906 and 1916 with Anna Eleanor, James, Frank Jr. Sadly passed away, but she would, they would get another shot at another Frank Jr., as we'll see. She then had Elliot, then another Frank Jr., and then John. And, you know, she was a mom who wasn't like as close to her kids as she wanted to be or thought she wanted to be. Sarah, again, was sort of always there and always stepping in as grandmother plus, to the point where she would say things to the kids like, I'm your real mother.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  She just bore you, your mom Eleanor. So, you know, again, Sarah's kind of there throwing a wrench into things, including like, not separating, but at least creating some sort of a divide between Eleanor and her children.

• 13:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I think her children kind of didn't feel very close to her and maybe even disliked her for their childhood years. And it wasn't until they got older before they started to get close with their mother. And I'm imagining that that probably coincided with Sarah's death, when she was finally out of the picture.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a pretty good bet.

• 13:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  But it was during, I guess, sort of the beginning of the childbearing decade, when she became a political wife for the first time, when Franklin was elected to New York State Senate. And that's when she really kind of, you know, jumped in there. She got really active and acted as, you know, a host, you know, to dinners and of course, stuff like that. She would sit in on meetings when she was allowed to. When FDR, when they had to move to DC when she was appointed, or I guess he was appointed, Woodrow Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy. That's when she found herself in the middle of like, sort of the DC politics for the first time. And she really took to it, it seems like.

• 14:32Josh Clark?

  She did. At first, she was basically following like, the traditional political wife handbook, right? But then, as FDR's political career kind of rose and rose and rose, she started to become more and more involved in a much less traditional sense, like much more pioneering sense. For example, she helped him write speeches. She helped him strategize, especially when he ran for Vice President in 1920. And she became much more of a collaborator than the average political wife at the time. Like, this is when it became clear to FDR, if it wasn't already, that she was

• 15:13Josh Clark?

  invaluable. In the same way that inflammable still means flammable.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:19Josh Clark?

  This means that she was super valuable.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And they kind of lived all over, depending on what his job was politically, because he was governor of New York for a while in 1928. And so, you know, they certainly, their home was in New York. When in New York, I think they lived on the Upper East Side. And she also, as we'll see, would later have a place in, like, near Washington Square Park. But they also obviously lived in DC when they needed to, and Hyde Park, New York. But, you know, she liked, she liked New York City.

• 15:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, who doesn't? Especially now that the Knicks won.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 15:57Josh Clark?

  We're gonna, that just dated this episode, huh?

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 16:00Josh Clark?

  So something I didn't know about Eleanor that is at first tough to swallow until you stop and kind of think about how much that means she changed her views. Early on, again, she was just kind of following the standard handbook of her social class or social circle to the people around her, including her mother-in-law. So she, from her early letters, she was a prolific letter writer throughout her life. From her early letters, like she didn't know anything about politics. She wasn't paying attention to that kind of stuff. She didn't care about it. She was just doing the society thing. Apparently she adopted her mother-in-law, her mother-in-law's antisemitism. She didn't think very highly of her black servants.

• 16:46Josh Clark?

  Like, she was not a great person at that point. And a lot of it, from everything I've seen, people are like, she was a straight up a product of her culture.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, seems to be.

• 17:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And so the idea that she went from antisemitism to lobbying for America, opening its doors to Jewish people who were fleeing the Holocaust, from disparaging her black servants to tirelessly working for civil rights for black Americans. And also just kind of showing disdain for the suffrage movement, becoming a champion for women's rights. It really kind of shows, like, she didn't go from a neutral place to these amazing heights. She came from the bottom and then got to neutral and then got to those heights. And it's pretty impressive how much she changed. And I mean, just how willing she was to change her views, because a lot of people aren't.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Is that a good time for a break?

• 17:52Josh Clark?

  I think so, sure.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  All right, we're gonna come back and continue with, I bet you're never gonna guess, Eleanor Roosevelt.

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• 21:20Speaker 02

  All right, so we're back. We talked a little bit about her early volunteerism that kind of stopped for a while when she became a political wife. But she always had that volunteer Jones, I guess. So, once she had more opportunity, she turned that into more volunteerism. She was a volunteer for the Red Cross in DC during World War I. In 1918, when she went to Europe with her husband, she toured war hospitals in the battlefield. And it feels like all this sort of inspired her to really kind of get busy and put her time where her heart was. Because she volunteered as a translator. She spoke French as well as English.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  So, she volunteered as a translator at a lot of different events, one of which was the International Conference of Working Women at the Paris Peace Conference.

• 22:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, in addition to volunteering, she also became an activist. She was very, very active with organizations that promoted women's rights. She finally kind of got on board with the suffrage movement. She became a part of the League of Women Voters. And one of the things about her that you'll notice is she'll join an organization and then you like blink a couple of times and now she's like vice president of it or something like that. She was a really great asset to your organization if she showed up because that meant she really believed in what you were doing and she wanted to help.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, like my read from all of this is like, you know, certainly being a prominent political wife had something to do with it, but it wasn't just that because that didn't happen to everybody's wife at the time in politics. So she clearly just showed the stuff, you know, that people, you know, had clear leadership qualities.

• 23:09Josh Clark?

  For sure. Definitely. Oh, she was also asked to by the DNC, the Democratic National Convention, to basically chair a committee on women's issues to help them come up with whatever plank in their platform they were going to have for women's suffrage. And they were like, great, thanks, doll, and took her ideas and shut the door and the all male committee deliberated on it without her in the room.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So she definitely faced stuff like that, obviously, at the time, which really stinks because she had a lot of great ideas.

• 23:42Josh Clark?

  For sure. Another great idea, too. I thought this was super cool. She co-founded a furniture factory. That was a nonprofit furniture factory. I have the impression it was a collective, Chuck, which we've talked about before. It's called Val Kil Industries. And they made colonial furniture reproductions in Pewter.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's kind of nice.

• 24:05Josh Clark?

  Sure. What else did she do?

• 24:07Speaker 02

  She joined the Women's Trade Union League. This is kind of part of her advocating for labor. That's when that came into the picture, you know, working conditions for women and children at the time, of course, because kids were working in, you know, capacities that they don't work now, if at all. It's always fun to talk to kids who have teenagers about, you know, them getting jobs and stuff. I feel like that's happening a lot here and there, but not like when we were kids, which was basically still child labor.

• 24:38Josh Clark?

  For sure. It really was.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Whenever I tell like my teenage, uh, my friends teenage kids that I was like a busboy when I was 13, they're all just like, are you serious?

• 24:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  It's like, yeah, like every one of my friends worked as well. It was weird.

• 24:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it kind of is weird in retrospect. I had like a paper route when I was 10 or something like that.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Never had a paper route. I was always jealous of those.

• 25:00Josh Clark?

  Man, the smell of a stack of newspapers at like four in the morning.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:06Josh Clark?

  It is, it's a specific experience and it can be really great, or it can be like, what am I doing with my life?

• 25:12Speaker 02

  What, uh, do you get paid per paper? Is that the deal?

• 25:15Josh Clark?

  I don't remember. I was 10. I'm not even sure I was directly paid.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:20Josh Clark?

  I don't remember. I don't remember being 30 something.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Was your dad just funneling, uh, funneling money into his coffers?

• 25:27Josh Clark?

  I'm like, Dan, when did you start smoking cigars?

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Exactly. These look like good ones, too.

• 25:33Josh Clark?

  So, uh, all the stuff we've been talking about, this was just the 1920s. She hadn't even become first lady yet. And when FDR was elected in 1932, um, like we said, she became a first lady of a lot of different firsts, some of which have never been replicated since, you know?

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. I mean, she's definitely, uh, I think not many people would argue that she wasn't the most active first lady of all time, probably. Um, she was the first first lady to hold a press conference or multiple press conferences and apparently only allowed, uh, women reporters to attend her press conferences.

• 26:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  It's kind of cool. Uh, she is the first to write a daily newspaper column and to host a radio show. Uh, she's the first lady to travel to an active war zone and just really sort of, um, opened the door on what the whole title of first lady could be, not necessarily had to be, because as we've seen over the years, there's been, um, just to say lots of different kinds of first ladies.

• 26:34Josh Clark?

  For sure. Yeah, some were active than others, having different interests when they were active. She just basically did it all. And again, this was the kind of thing that made her a target. Like, what are you doing? You're a first lady. You're not supposed to be this active. I mean, one of the things that she did that really made her a target, Chuck, was she was, she became assistant director of civilian defense in World War II.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then later director even.

• 27:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, okay. And that's a public office, right? She's the first, first lady ever. She's the only first lady to have held public office while her husband was in office as president, right? And people were like, what is this? Like, I don't know how I feel about this. And some people were like, this is, they accused her of cronyism, they accused her of frivolous spending. And it actually was so bad that she stepped down after a year, because she didn't want to keep drawing like, negative attention to the work the civilian defense agency was doing.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  Totally. Man, I mean, that's the worst. She's trying to do good work, she's getting disparage, and she has to quit making a difference and doing the thing she loves to make that thing better.

• 27:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, just because her husband had political enemies, you know, I mean, that's, that's just politics, I guess, you know?

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. She, her code name for Secret Service was Rover. And, you know, everyone's best guess is because she was always all over the place. She was traveling. And I think there was another nickname that she had, which was Eleanor Everywhere. Because starting very early in her career, she would hit the road. She was very famous for driving a blue roadster, saying, Secret Service, I'll smell you later, and hit the road. And I think between 1923 and 1940, she traveled over 300,000 miles.

• 28:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  And visited in person every state except South Dakota, just traveling all over the place, like checking on projects that were going on, talking to everyday Americans, just, you know, kind of. Hitting the beat as someone checking on the health of America.

• 28:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and reporting back to FDR.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  She wouldn't keep it a secret.

• 28:49Josh Clark?

  No, it wasn't like a media blitz or like a charm charm offensive. That's what I'm thinking of.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:55Josh Clark?

  Definitely taking this information back to use for strategizing, for adjusting policy, all that stuff. Like, it was really important. The first year she was First Lady alone, she traveled 40,000 miles in her Buick. And she also, little known fact, was the first person to popularize those mudflaps with Yosemite Sam on them.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 29:17Josh Clark?

  Back off.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Back off.

• 29:18Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think she created Yosemite Sam, in fact.

• 29:22Josh Clark?

  Probably.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 29:22Josh Clark?

  I hadn't read that, but you're probably right.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  It was also in one of these road trips that she, well, we can't say with absolute 100% certainty, but it's pretty well known that she had a love affair with a woman. It was a road trip in 1933 to New England and Quebec shortly after FDR was inaugurated the first time. And there was an AP journalist named Lorena Hickok or Hick, who was a very, you know, just sort of a woman doing her own thing at the time. She would like chomp on cigars and she was kind of, kind of tough talking. And she wore bright scarves and loved like, like big dinners and rich foods. And it was a very kind of well-known, high-paid AP reporter.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  And they met when Hick was covering FDR's gubernatorial campaign in 1928. And then she was assigned to cover Eleanor, and it sounds like she covered Eleanor.

• 30:19Josh Clark?

  For sure. They, they, they went everywhere together, as a matter of fact. And historians at first were like, no, no. And then they're now kind of like, well, maybe. And most of them are like, yes, they probably did become lovers.

• 30:38Josh Clark?

  And that's just kind of supported by some of the stuff that they wrote to one another in letters. And again, like you said, they were never caught in flagrante delicato. And, you know, no one, Danny DeVito didn't snap a picture with one of those big flashbulbs or anything like that. But, you know, if you interpret some of this stuff, like any sensible person, it definitely does seem like their letters do suggest that, yes, they, they definitely had a romantic relationship.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, you know. I mean, should we read a selection?

• 31:13Josh Clark?

  I think that, that, yes, I think that will help everybody make up their own mind.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not salacious or anything. It's like,

• 31:19Josh Clark?

  No, no, no.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  They were, they were having an affair. Good for them. Uh, except for, you know, the, the cheating part, but, uh, you know, FDR did the same thing. So, uh, we're not going to hold her to a different standard than her husband, right?

• 31:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, well put. I was gonna say even Steven.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  Uh, here's a selection from Hick to Eleanor. I've been trying today to bring back your face and the feeling of that soft spot just northeast of the corner of your mouth against my lips. So, I mean, come on, they were having an affair.

• 31:49Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly. Um, even if they discovered, or Hick discovered that, that soft, um, spot on the northeast corner while they were both eating a shared piece of spaghetti.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:00Josh Clark?

  That still suggests that they had a romantic relationship.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we know what was going on in Lady and the Tramp, right?

• 32:06Josh Clark?

  Right. So it, none of this matters. This, if anything to me, this says like, oh, she's kind of open minded because she does not seem to have been a straight up lesbian. She is, as we'll see, um, considered to have probably had an affair with a very close male companion too at some point. So I think she was just like, I'm into you. I love you. I don't care who you are. Let's get it on.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like Marvin Kay said.

• 32:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I mean, you know, her husband had an affair kind of, what, seven, eight years after they got married for, for at least four years. And the only reason it stopped is because he got caught. So it

• 32:49Josh Clark?

  Cause his mother told him to stop.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, his mom told him to stop. So it seems like it may have been one of those marriages where they had a lot of, um, love for each other, but probably stayed together because of, uh, his role and, and all the good that she was able to do. So, you know, it was at a time where people just didn't get divorced over that stuff. They, they had affairs, you know?

• 33:08Josh Clark?

  Right, right. So back to those road trips, right? Remember she's like doing recon as well as, um, having trysts with Hick?

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:19Josh Clark?

  One of the places that she went was through Scott's Run, West Virginia on one of these trips. I think it was actually that New England trip, which it's news to me that West Virginia is New England, but hey, who's to judge? And she came across the, basically, these coal miners, the whole town of Scott's Run, West Virginia was coal miners and they were all out of work. This is the depression. And she was so moved by just how impoverished and how hard their life was, that she came up with this idea to basically have the federal government foot the bill for building towns that were out of the box, great. And you would move impoverished coal miners into them and basically give them a head start at a

• 34:01Josh Clark?

  really great, good life that they could take over and make for themselves in a close knit community that they built together.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was supposed to be like a hundred of these planned communities all across the United States, but the first one was that one in West Virginia, Arthurdale, about 25 miles south of Scott's Run. It was called Eleanor's Little Village at times, but she was really active in this building of the first one, like every home had to have, which was a big luxury at the time, like modern appliances and electricity, especially in rural West Virginia at the time.

• 34:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  And the rent was based on what people could afford, which was about 20 bucks a month. And like, people made fun of these projects sometimes that she was involved in, this one in particular. But, you know, it, it worked out pretty well. Like Arthurdale became a very like, kind of thriving community. And there are still people like from that first community that live there today.

• 35:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. And the US government was like, okay, we're not going to oversee Arthurdale anymore in 1947, but Eleanor kept visiting until 1960, I think was her last visit, two years before her death. And all told, she visited Arthurdale 33 different times, long after she was no longer First Lady. From 1935 to 1944, she attended every single high school graduation of Arthurdale's, well, high school.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think FDR. Went to one and is still the only president to actually give actually give a commencement speech at a high school graduation.

• 35:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 35:38Josh Clark?

  Pretty cool. Yeah. She helped those graduates like find jobs. Like she really took an interest. She apparently used to buy Christmas presents and bring them to the kids at Arthur Dale. Like it was a, she was really involved in this. It wasn't like a good idea. She helped to get going and then forgot about it, moved on to something else. Like she really cared.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 35:58Josh Clark?

  What do you say about a break?

• 36:01Speaker 02

  All right. I mean, we never need them. We just have to do it, but we're going to do it now because we're supposed to.

• 36:06Josh Clark?

  They make us.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:08Josh Clark?

  Okay. Well, we're going to do that then.

• 36:20Speaker 03

  Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know.

• 36:33Josh Clark?

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• 36:56Speaker 02

  Join host Andra Stratten as she guides listeners through honest conversations about life after diagnosis. You'll hear how each guest worked with her care team on their treatment plan, as well as their personal challenges, setbacks, progress, and moments of connection.

• 37:09Josh Clark?

  These stories reveal that life is bigger than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Listen to Voices of VivGart on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 37:25Josh Clark?

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• 37:48Josh Clark?

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• 38:04Speaker 02

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• 38:26Speaker 04

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• 39:08Josh Clark?

  Okay, Chuck, we're back. And one of the things that you may know about Eleanor Roosevelt, if you're somewhat familiar with her and her life's work, she became virulently anti-racist. She was a champion of the civil rights movement long before there was a civil rights movement, decades before it. She helped kind of get civil rights.

• 39:36Josh Clark?

  Recognized, I think, among white America. And in a lot of quarters, that meant that people started to hate her, especially in the South. And like I said before, like, she didn't let that slow her down. She just kind of kept at it.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, she joined the NAACP in 1934. She was a very, very much a lobbyist for anti-lynching legislation. She was a very early proponent, kind of sounding the horn against segregation. She quit in 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution, because they said, "We're not going to let this black performer, Marion Anderson, perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, DC." So she was like, "All right, so long, suckers, I'm out of here." And then later, helped organize a concert for her on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

• 40:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was a free public concert on Easter Sunday of 1939, and 75,000 people showed up. It's considered one of the key moments in the early civil rights struggle.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 40:40Josh Clark?

  She also, this is such a great anecdote about her. She attended a meeting, this Southern Conference for Human Welfare, in Birmingham, Alabama, with Mary McLeod Battoon, who was a famous black educator. And because this was in Birmingham, they weren't allowed to sit together. It was like, local law, that black people had to sit on one side of the main aisle, white people had to sit on the other side of the main aisle. This is not sit very well with Mrs. Roosevelt.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  No, so she is very much like, like, she probably could have insisted she sit on the other side, but I think it made even more of a statement, that she said, "You know what, then, put my chair right in the middle of the aisle, and that's where I'm gonna sit."

• 41:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, pretty cool. Oh, and then one other thing that she did in World War II, too, Chuck, was that she visited a Japanese-American internment camp. Remember, I think we did an episode on that alone.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, a long, long time ago.

• 41:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And she came out of this internment camp and was like, we should not be doing this. We need to shut these down, which is ironic or courageous or something because the internment camps existed by executive order that her husband had issued.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:53Josh Clark?

  You know?

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:54Josh Clark?

  And we did shut them down and some people credit her lobbying for it, for helping get that started sooner than later.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. She was like, but you know what? He cheated on me early on in our marriage. So I don't owe him anything.

• 42:06Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  I don't have to do everything he says.

• 42:08Josh Clark?

  He owes me. Right?

• 42:10Speaker 02

  She was a prolific writer. You said a prolific, a prolific letter writer, but kind of just writer, writer. She was writing a newspaper column beginning in 1935 called My Day and she did that five days a week. In 1941, she did a monthly advice column for Ladies Home Journal called If You Ask Me. And then she also just wrote all kinds of op-eds and she wrote memoirs. She wrote an autobiography. She wrote nonfiction books. Like she just wrote and wrote and wrote. It was one of her great passions and she was good at it.

• 42:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah. She also wrote a treatment for what eventually became the script for Pulp Fiction that Tarantino made in 1994.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  It's fantastic.

• 42:53Josh Clark?

  Isn't that something?

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:55Josh Clark?

  She was also not shy of going on to TV, appearing on the radio. I think, like you said, she hosted radio programs with one with her, one of her daughters, one with a son.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, so cute.

• 43:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it is super cute, especially considering that they weren't close when those, the kids were younger. I think that's just heartwarming. She had a couple of shows on NBC. These are like public information or public, what's the word I'm looking for?

• 43:25Speaker 02

  For the good of the public? Is that kind of?

• 43:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we'll just call it that. Yes. She had a couple of those shows on NBC. She had another one. I think it was on PBS, Prospects of Mankind, where she interviewed activists, intellectuals. She basically shone a light on these, you know, things that were going on in the US and around the world that people weren't really paying attention to. And again, just remind yourself, when she's doing all this stuff, she is pretty self-conscious. She didn't consider herself photogenic. She didn't like her own voice. And yet, she'll go on any media op that you can offer her with a big enough audience to, to basically tell people about the stuff that she feels passionate about. That's really, that's dedication.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Boy, could you imagine if she was around during the podcast era? She would have been on everything.

• 44:16Josh Clark?

  For sure. Look out. Who's number one right now? Look out, Kelsey Brothers. Eleanor Roosevelt's here.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  It's the Kelsey Brothers. Travis Kelsey? Oh, okay. Good for those guys.

• 44:30Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  I don't even know. I don't, I used to look at the podcast rankings a lot early on. And then I stopped at a certain point many, many, many years ago. And I don't think I've looked one time since then. So I have no idea who's out there and crushing it.

• 44:44Josh Clark?

  I used to look at them so much, Chuck, that I would go change countries for the iTunes thing and see where we were in other countries as well.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Hey, Australia's always been our guys. We were number one in Australia for a while.

• 44:59Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. And Canada's always loved us, too.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  That's why we toured Australia and Canada.

• 45:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Step it up, rest of the world.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  We don't go to where people don't like us. Why would you do that?

• 45:09Josh Clark?

  Why would everybody come just to boo?

• 45:12Speaker 02

  So while she was doing all this, you know, volunteerism and like lending her time to everybody under the sun, she also made some very good friends with women who were probably in the gay community, would be my guess. And I think this is where her sort of, her advocacy for, for gender rights and stuff like that would come into play. It's just her exposure to these people. So through the League of Women Voters, she met a co-founder, a woman named Esther Everett-Lait, and her partner, Elizabeth Fisher-Reed, who would be her financial advisor later on. But they were like a great trio and they

• 45:54Speaker 02

  were really, really close, really good friends. Eventually, they would rent, when I said she lived near Washington Square Park, they would rent apartments right on top of one another. And, you know, a lot of other women. She became partners with Marion Dickerman, Nancy Cook, and that's who she founded that Val Kil Industries with, the furniture business.

• 46:16Josh Clark?

  She became friends with them and they were partners.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:19Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. I guess she became partners with them, too.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:23Josh Clark?

  She became partners with those partners.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  That's right. And I think like after, like, one of the cottages that Val Kil built, that she, I think she ended up even moving into one of those as a residence?

• 46:36Josh Clark?

  Eventually, she did. But first Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook did. I think they lived there for like three decades, too.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:43Josh Clark?

  And then finally, she was like, I need the place. Beat it.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  Scram.

• 46:48Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, these, I mean, it's just a plain fact that another expression of how open her mind was, is that a lot of her friends were gay women. Again, this is the 30s, 40s, 50s.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:02Josh Clark?

  At most, the early 60s. People did not talk about this kind of stuff. And I'm sure a lot of people avoided gay people. And she just was, it was, again, I think she judged people on generally a case by case basis.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. You know, you mentioned early on, she probably had other affairs. I know that her bodyguard, Earl Miller, is someone that they, everyone is, like historians kind of suspect that she had an affair with, including her son, one of her sons, was pretty much like, yeah, I think Earl Miller had an affair with her. They were super tight. And I think he was the one that gave her the, I don't think we mentioned, insisted that she carry a pistol with her on these car road trips since she eschewed Secret Service.

• 47:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and she used it to great effect, too. Like, if you weren't doing what she wanted you to, you know, like, um, passing an anti-lynching law, she would just pull her gun out and just set it on the desk, just let it sit there and make its own statement.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  Well, she was not popular with racists because she received death threats a lot because of her promotion of racial equality. And in the 1950s, apparently, the Klan had a $25,000 bounty on her head.

• 48:14Josh Clark?

  For sure. One other thing, too, about Earl Miller is that he was actually credited as the one who gave her her self-esteem and her courage to face the media and just basically be a public figure despite how, you know, debilitating her fear of that stuff was.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty cool.

• 48:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So FDR passed away, let's see, 17 years before she did. He died in 1945. This is when she moved to Val Kilcote Cottage.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:47Josh Clark?

  And she was like, I'm not, I'm done with politics. And everybody's like, no, come back, be in politics. She said, no, I'm done. I'm just gonna go be a private citizen. And it turns out that President Harry Truman, a few months after FDR died and Eleanor said she was just becoming a civilian again, said, no, I need you to go to the UN. They're doing some pretty neat stuff there. Go see what's going on and just become part of the American delegation to the to the United Nations.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so she she answered the call. And from 1945 to 1952, she held that position at the UN. All of her colleagues were men, obviously, at the time, and they were dismissive of her. And they said, you know, let's put her on Committee Three, like, they don't do much. It's like humanitarian issues. But how wrong they were, because Committee Three turned out to be pretty important and somewhat controversial when they were tasked with determining whether post-war refugees had to go back home. They had to be, like, made to be go back home. And she said, no. She was like, I'm gonna take this up with the General Assembly. And she convinced them to vote against forced repatriation.

• 50:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, those male colleagues who forced her onto Committee Three because they thought it wasn't going to amount to much, they kept the Committee for Planning the Future for men wearing hats everywhere for themselves. They're like, this has got legs.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:19Josh Clark?

  Even more to the point, aside from getting repatriation off the table, she helped author the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:29Josh Clark?

  One of the most important documents, even though toothless, but still one of the most important documents humanity has ever come together and created, which is pretty great.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, you said toothless, that was the one thing that really upset her, was that they did this great thing, and then she was upset that there was, there were no teeth, and that they didn't do anything to really make sure it was enforced.

• 50:49Josh Clark?

  Right, and I'm not sure what they could do. I think now the International Criminal Court is capable of doing stuff, but I think even they're semi-toothless, depending on how big and tough the country is, you know?

• 51:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, good point.

• 51:05Josh Clark?

  So, yes, she passed away in 1962. She was in the hospital. She was not feeling very well, and she checked herself out and said, I want to die at home. And she went and died in, I think Greenwich Village, is that correct?

• 51:20Speaker 02

  Uh, Upper East Side by that point.

• 51:23Josh Clark?

  Same thing.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Uh, she was 78. She had, you know, it was heart failure, it was tuberculosis, it was aplastic anemia. She was in rough shape at that point. But, you know, she got to die in her home like she wished, and she left a legacy behind that, I mean, good luck, who came right after her? Like, good luck filling those shoes as a first lady.

• 51:44Josh Clark?

  Mamie Truman?

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:47Josh Clark?

  No, Mamie Eisenhower?

• 51:49Speaker 02

  Mamie Eisenhower?

• 51:51Josh Clark?

  I think-

• 51:52Speaker 02

  Some Mamie.

• 51:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah. One other thing, Chuck, that she was the first at, and technically she made FDR the first. She lobbied for him to include a woman in his cabinet, specifically our beloved Frances Perkins, who was made Secretary of Labor under FDR, the first woman cabinet member ever.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  That's right. And we talked about that in our Frances Perkins episode, and I highly recommend that, and that was a good one. That's Josh's, I think, favorite modern woman.

• 52:23Josh Clark?

  Well, I mean, Yumi's my favorite modern woman, but you, I get your point.

• 52:30Josh Clark?

  And Mary Tyler Moore, don't forget her.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Oh, sure. We need to do an episode on her. And let's do one on Yumi, too. Why not?

• 52:35Josh Clark?

  All right. I'm sure Yumi would love that. We'll sit down and interview her for 20, 30 hours.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Oh, that'd be fun.

• 52:42Josh Clark?

  Okay. Well, while we go interview Yumi for 20 to 30 hours, I think we should insert listener mail here first.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  That's right. This is from Alex. Hey, guys. This is from a Selects episode about the fairness doctrine. During the episode, you mentioned that the owner of WJIM TV built a TV studio with a pool in case he needed to convert it to a motel as a fallback business. And guys, that building is still a TV studio under the call signs WLNS, a local CBS affiliate, and they kept that pool. He sent a video, in fact, of meteorologist Katie Nicolau giving a weather report from the pool, I guess semi-recently, and he said, "I've passed this TV station countless times. Always wonder why it looks so swanky. And now it makes total sense that I know it was built like a 1950s motel. Thanks for the show, guys. Always fun when an episode hits close to home."

• 53:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Who is that?

• 53:37Speaker 02

  That's Alex.

• 53:38Josh Clark?

  Thanks a lot, Alex. That was a great one. I've always been fascinated by that TV station with the pool, too. So

• 53:43Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 53:44Josh Clark?

  Thanks for calling it out. If you want to be like Alex and say, "Hey, I know just what you guys are talking about because I live by this thing. Let me tell you about it." Well, you can tell us about it via email. Send it off to [email protected].

• 54:02Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 54:18Josh Clark?

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• 55:00Josh Clark?

  Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of Vivgard. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of Vivgard on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's play a quick game. When I say Carnival Cruise, what comes to mind? Maybe a buffet, maybe a lively Lido deck, or maybe you've already decided cruising isn't for you. But we can assure you, a Carnival Cruise isn't what you think. From casual bites to five-star dining, laugh-out-loud comedy, a relaxing spa, and unforgettable shore excursions, Carnival has everything you want in a vacation.

• 55:45Josh Clark?

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