C-SPAN FIRST LADIES ELEANOR ROOSEVELT JUNE 9, 2014 11:33 a.m. ET

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: I'm speaking to you tonight at a very serious moment in our history. The cabinet is convening and the leaders in Congress are meeting with the president. The State Department and Army and Navy officials have been with the president all afternoon. In fact, the Japanese ambassador was talking to the president at the very time that Japan's airships were bombing our citizens in Hawaii and the Philippines and sinking one of our transports, loaded with lumber on its way to Hawaii. By tomorrow morning, the members of Congress will have a full report and be ready for action.

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PETER SLEN, HOST: And you've been listening to some of Eleanor Roosevelt's radio address hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. In fact, she gave that address before her husband, FDR, even spoke to the nation.

For the next two hours, we're going to get to know this transformational first lady. She's consistently ranked first in historians' polls on first ladies. And we're going to look at her life, her relationships, and her time in the White House from 1933 to 1945.

Well, good evening and welcome to C-SPAN's "First Ladies: Influence and Image" series. Joining us this evening to talk about Eleanor Roosevelt, Allida Black, who is the editor of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project at George Washington University and a historian, and another historian, Doug Brinkley, who is also an author from Rice University.

Thank you both for being here with us this evening. Doug Brinkley, it's March 1933. The Roosevelts are being inaugurated. They enter the White House. What are they walking into? What was the country like?

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, PROFESSOR, RICE UNIVERSITY: Well, FDR didn't even get to walk in. He came in on a wheelchair. And the very fact that somebody who was crippled from -- in the lower half said we have nothing to fear but fear itself, and that's perhaps the most famous phrase out of any inauguration.

And what people was fearing was unemployment, chaos, Hoovervilles, agricultural angst, top soil had blown all over, dust bowls, the October 1929 crash of the stock market. So our country was really in tatters. And there is Franklin Roosevelt, this man who's overcome such odds in his personal life, overcoming polio and being sidelined from politics, now ushering in a new progressive era and offering 100 days of the New Deal programs right off the bat, what people call the alphabet soup of the New Deal, trying to get banks to run properly, starting a Civilian Conservation Corps that would plant 2 billion trees, starting to create, you know, in a WPA and the like, workers progress, get employment back up, jobs, jobs, jobs.

SLEN: Allida Black, in that first 100 days, what was Eleanor Roosevelt doing? And how she define her role?

ALLIDA BLACK, ELEANOR ROOSEVELT PAPERS PROJECT: Well, Eleanor struggled to define here role because she was exceedingly active before she went into the White House. She was a party operative. He edited basically all of the national Democratic Party publications, as well as the New York tate publications covertly. She was on the board of labor unions. She was on the board of social reform organizations.

She taught civics, history, literature at a girls school. She was a major political force in her own right, so much so that, during the campaign, all of the major newspapers in the United States would run full-page stories on her own political career and her own ambitions.

But when she comes into the White House, FDR says you have to resign all your positions, you have to stay really and be the traditional first lady. She tells a friend that the thought of living in the White House fills her with the greatest sense of possible dread that, you know -- that the White House eats women, that she fears a lifetime of white glove tests, you know, where she's running her gloves down the banister to see if the dust has been taken off.

And so she says to FDR, let me help you with your mail. He says no. She says, well, let me help you with your calendar. He says no. She said, well, let me go out and be your eyes and ears. He says no. So she's in the White House, you know, desolate, just saying, you know, she loves her husband, she wants him to be happy, but what has happened to my life, what has happened to my hard-won independence?

And so literally, from the first day she's in the White House, she's trying to figure out how to resurrect her own of voice in a way that will give her the latitude she needs to be herself while at the same time not undercut her husband's agenda.

SLEN: Very quickly, Doug Brinkley, what were some of the issues that she got involved in?

BRINKLEY: Oh, well, she's the great first lady -- as Harry Truman said, the first lady of the world, but she's...

BLACK: A phrase she hated.

BRINKLEY: ... hated, yeah -- she -- civil rights. She got very involved with getting African- Americans more equal rights, working in West Virginia with coal miners and the working people of America, the forgotten people, the downtrodden, and also, which I'm sure we'll talk about a lot, women's issues, getting women into the forefront of American political life.

She had no role model as first lady. She created this role all on her own, which is -- there's really nobody quite like her.

SLEN: And here she is in 1933 on the radio talking to women about their need to volunteer.

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ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: If the women are willing to do things because it's going to help their neighbors, I think we'll win out, we'll win out not because of a government, not even because of our leaders, but because, as a people, we've had a vision and we've worked for it and we've seen it through.

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SLEN: Allida Black, she spent a lot of time on the radio.

BLACK: Absolutely she did. She was on the radio before FDR. She had her own radio show. She will have become her own syndicated columnist in 1935, beginning 1936. By the end of her life, she'll write over 8,000 columns, more than 500 articles, more than 27 books, give 75 speeches a year, and write an average of 150 letters a day, all without a ghostwriter.

But if I could go back and piggyback on Doug for a little bit, I mean, Eleanor hit the ground running on policy in ways that we don't really think about. I mean, Eleanor doesn't hit the ground on race. Eleanor doesn't hit the ground on education. Eleanor hits the ground on employment first. The second day of the Roosevelt administration, the day -- I mean, I'm sorry, the day after FDR closes the banks, he sends the Economy Act to Congress, which is going to cut by federal employment by 25 percent, right?

People are freaking out. The unemployment rate -- the official unemployment rate is 25 percent. Anybody with a brain over a squashed pea will know that it's really about 40, because it's the first time that we've really started taking the unemployment rate, and it doesn't take into account the 12 years the depression has hit the South and the West.

And so to take 25 percent of the federal payroll out in the middle of the depression and to say to federally employed women that you're going to lose your job if you're married to a federally employed man, Eleanor hits the roof. And she issues, in this first week of her husband's presidency, her own opinion piece saying this legislation is wrong. And so FDR and -- FDR and Eleanor have dueling editorials in the paper, dueling editorials in all of the Democratic Party press over the injustice of this act. And she does win out, which is why she's so intense about women in that speech.

BRINKLEY: True, but it's something that FDR and the White House staff doesn't like. And Eleanor Roosevelt is very, very cognizant that you just can't be on wrong message with your husband all the time, that you're going to have to find common ground. Otherwise, you're going to create just a shambles of things.

And she did a marvelous job of kind of holding her own, writing letters to Harold Ickes at Interior, Harry Hopkins she was close to, but phrasing it in a way that wasn't being commandeering, but trying to say, will you look into this one case for me? And so she handled, I think, very well, but she's mentioned the one time they caught a bit of a crossed wire early out of the gate, but she fell in line well.

BLACK: Well, I would strongly -- I think we could give the public, if we will, examples of way good friends who respect each other can disagree. I will argue that FDR knew that she was going to do this. The correspondence shows that. And so what they were trying to do is to bring this issue front-and-center, you know, and buy support and curtail some of the backlash.

I mean, that same day, FDR feeds her information about 3.2 percent beer being served in the White House right after prohibition, right there in the White House. And so he feeds this to Eleanor in her own press conferences to release this. So they coordinate. You know, and they -- and when they go at each other, they go at each other deliberately to get the country engaged, I think.

SLEN: So before we end this snapshot and go back and look at Eleanor Roosevelt's life, at what point did FDR and his inner circle learn to use her as his eyes and ears and as an asset?

BRINKLEY: Well, I don't think it's just one day or one particular point. It depends on who it was. I think smart people, like Harry Hopkins, knew that she was important and she had the president's ear and that what she said mattered, same with Ickes, who I mentioned before.

She represented the liberal wing of the New Deal. FDR had to win over Southern Democrat conservatives. FDR was very scared on issues of race during his presidency because he had to run for re-election, was worried about things Eleanor Roosevelt really pioneered in an ability to be able to be with African-Americans, talk to them, be in photo ops.

And in that way, you're right, she helped FDR a lot. And they're working in unity, but she was a force to be reckoned with. And wherever she went, I think of it in World War II, when she got to go to Europe and went to London and Britain, and everybody just loved seeing her. And then she went to the Pacific, and Bull Halsey just said we never had somebody that was so beloved by the troops quite like her before.

So she became a kind of ambassador for the president, and whenever she would -- she would just walk in. There is a New Yorker cartoon that was famous of -- showing a coal miner underground and saying, "What's Eleanor Roosevelt doing here?” Many ways a stalking-horse for some of his policies, putting up trial balloons and things of that nature.

BLACK: Well, I would disagree. I would say that the reason that Eleanor, for example, got to go to the Pacific, because she had been arguing to go to the Pacific for several years, because she wanted to cover the Pacific the way that -- that Ernie Pyle had covered all of the military that was fighting in the Atlantic. And they kept turning her down, because Halsey didn't want her to go. He will later say that his biggest mistake in the war...

BRINKLEY: Yeah, but...

BLACK: ... was not doing -- Henry Wallace in his diary writes...

BRINKLEY: They turned her down going to Europe. They turned her down in Europe because she -- she wanted to go with the Red Cross there. And if you kidnapped Eleanor Roosevelt, it's a disaster. So you don't -- we don't want to exaggerate Eleanor Roosevelt here.

BLACK: No, but I -- but I do -- I do want to say just the one thing, since Doug brought up the trip to the Pacific. It's very clear on this. Henry Wallace writes in his diary that Mrs. R finally gets to go to the Pacific, because the negro situation is too hot. She goes right after the race riots in Detroit where she's blamed for those race riots. But I think that for our audience to really understand the progression, you know, we need to look at Eleanor before she really starts race, because Eleanor really doesn't start race until '35 and '36.

SLEN: And that's what we're going to do. We're going to go back and we'll come back to the war as we go on this evening. We have two hours to talk about Eleanor Roosevelt and her influence and image. We're going to put the phone numbers on the screen. If you're a regular watcher of C-SPAN, you know that all of our programs -- or many of our programs are interactive programs. We want to hear from you, and we want your participation. 202 is the area code, 585-3380, if you live in the East and Central time zones, 585-3881 if you live in the Mountain and Pacific time zones.

You can also put a comment on Facebook at facebook.com/cspan. You'll see the first ladies section right there. Or you can send us a tweet @firstladies or #firstladies. And we'll get to as many of those as we can.

Professor Doug Brinkley, what kind of world was Eleanor Roosevelt born into in 1884? Who were her people?

BRINKLEY: Well, she was born in New York City, part of that social swirl, social society. The Roosevelt name is as good as a name as you're going to get. And, of course, her father is Elliott Roosevelt, who's the brother of Theodore Roosevelt.

And Elliott was quite a character in his own right. He ended up having problems with alcohol, opiates, and the like, but he was a great outdoors person, a great hunter, a great bon vivant, and somebody who Eleanor Roosevelt loved madly, her father, even though he was absentee quite a bit.

And her mother -- I think a key thing for Eleanor Roosevelt is they both die quite -- when she's quite young. She loses her mother and loses her father. And that's quite dramatic. But beyond that, as she moves up to Tivoli in the Hudson River Valley, the Hudson's a great story in America, from Tear of the Clouds in the Adirondacks to the Bay of New York and all that transpired along that river, you know, whether it's, you know, George Washington at Newburgh or the steamboat, it was this, you know, Currier and Ives world along the Hudson River. And she was born -- or grew up just down the road from Springwood, the home of Franklin Roosevelt, her distant cousin.

SLEN: Did she have a happy childhood?

BLACK: No. She writes that the only place that she ever felt safe in Tivoli was climbing to the top of a cherry tree pining for her father to come get her. There's significant evidence that some of her uncles who were alcoholics took pot shots at her out of the windows.

The thing that is very remarkable about Eleanor Roosevelt is the extent to which she's able to transcend that sadness. She writes a young boy in the '50s, when he's severely beaten in a school, a young boy, six or seven years old, and he goes up to a water fountain to get a little cone, you know, like one of those plastic cups, paper cups. And, I mean, he's really -- he's beaten so badly, he bleeds on the cup.

And he writes her. And he says, you know, basically, I'm in school, and now I'm terrified. You know, what do I do? Young African-American boy. And she writes him back, and he sends her the cup. I've held the cup in my hand. And she writes him this extraordinary letter that says that she can only imagine how violated he must feel, because school is supposed to be a safe place.

But she understands a painful childhood. She understands disappointment and she understands violence. And the only advice that she can offer him is what she's told herself, and that is, courage is more exhilarating than fear. And in the long run, it is easier. All we have to have is the courage to look ourselves in the mirror and take one step at a time.

And so in many ways, what Eleanor Roosevelt is doing, not in the sense of, you know, engaging in psychohistory, by any means, but she is expanding her circle of family and learns through a series of ups and downs that family is really what you construct for yourself.

SLEN: Who was Marie Souvestre in her education?

BLACK: Well, Marie Souvestre was the headmistress of Allenswood Academy, and Eleanor goes to London when she's 14.

SLEN: This is after her parents died.

BLACK: This is after her parents died. She's orphaned at 10. Her mother dies when she's 6. Her family dies when she's 10. And so she's living in -- she's dividing her time between Tivoli with her maternal grandmother, who loves her, but who's very strict and is -- you know, won't let her play a lot and really is -- doesn't see to her education, so much so that Eleanor becomes an embarrassment, her lack of education, to other members of the family.

And so her mother's sister says to her grandmother, well, we promised Anna, Eleanor's mother, that we would send her to Allenswood. And so she goes to Allenswood Academy, which is basically where Centre Court Wimbledon is today, where she -- it's a school of 33 girls. And she works with Mademoiselle Souvestre, who she later calls a closet Bolshevik.

And Mademoiselle Souvestre sees in Eleanor this spunk and this mind that nobody's seen. And she teaches her that the only way to really be sure about what you think is to be able to argue both sides of an issue with equal conviction. And so Eleanor writes in her diary -- she didn't keep a diary, but sometimes she would just write notes to herself -- she said I finally learned that I have a brain, I have argued the Boer War with Mademoiselle and I have won each time.

And so she doesn't want to go home. I mean, who would want to go home, you know, when you have this? And so she stays in the summer with Mademoiselle. And in 15 seconds, if you will, Mademoiselle says to her, you can stay with me, but you have to learn to be independent. We can travel, but you must set a budget. You have to learn to make reservations. And when you go to places, remember that you are a guest and you don't just do the opera, you don't just shop, you also work in the settlement houses, you volunteer in hospitals, and you try to learn the language of the community that you're in.

And so when Eleanor leave Allenswood at the age of 18, Mademoiselle Souvestre writes her a letter that Eleanor will carry with her for the rest of her life that says of course you must go home and make your debut. You, after all, are a Roosevelt. And Teddy is now president of the United States. But first and foremost, you are my Eleanor and I expect great things from you in your own right in this world.

SLEN: What was the relationship with President Teddy Roosevelt?

BRINKLEY: Well, he loved her. He would say that...

SLEN: Niece and uncle, right?

BRINKLEY: Yeah, and he loved her, and I think he was pretty -- he was very hard on her father, Elliott, when he started -- he had gotten a woman pregnant that was working in a house, and he was angry. He called him kind of a philandering swine. My own brother, he's embarrassed the family. And TR could be very hard if you broke propriety in the things.

So he beat up some on his brother. He loved his brother tremendously. In fact, Theodore Roosevelt's greatest time early in his life was going hunting in western Iowa with her -- you know, with the father. But when he commits suicide, I think TR felt a real special kinship to Eleanor, but also as just nicely said, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt had a great sparkle in her eye and a great intelligence. She developed her courage over a period of time, and I think Theodore Roosevelt admired that about her, so he was there to give them away when she married Franklin Roosevelt in New York City on St. Patrick's Day, and it was TR who was arranged to actually be part of two Roosevelts getting married.

SLEN: And it sounds like at this point in her life she had developed some sense of what social issues were important to her.

BLACK: Well, she had an exposure to them. She had an interest. But she's still very caught between two worlds. She's caught between the world in London that she loves and wants to stay in. She wants to teach. She wants to live there. She doesn't want to come home.

And so she's caught between the demands of being the daughter of the most beautiful debutante in New York, as the New York Times repeatedly called her mother, and the social expectations of the niece of the president. So she's trying to figure out that dance.

BRINKLEY: And Theodore Roosevelt became a bigger-than-life figure, and she's carrying the name and that relationship and the connection to it, so he's a big influence on her. And later, I always found it very interesting, when -- I think in like 1936 or something like that, she edited a volume of her father's big game hunting letters, where -- she kept at Val-Kill, her home, a tiger skin of her father.

The reason I find it interesting, she had every reason to be angry at her dad. He was a bit of a deadbeat father. But she never really had -- held any angst against him. And she had a forgiving nature in the end.

SLEN: And so we're talking very early 20th century here. And it was in 1905, though, that she met FDR or when they got married.

BLACK: They become reacquainted, yeah.

SLEN: Right, when they got married.

BRINKLEY: They met on -- they had met apparently when they were young, a little bit, at Springwood and so they were cognizant of each other, but they met on a train ride out to Tivoli, Rhinebeck area out there, and started a romantic interlude through letters and seeing each other. And it just snowballed.

SLEN: Well, from 1905 to the -- through the 1920s, it was a very busy time in the Roosevelts' life, but they went to live at Springwood at Hyde Park with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's mother. We visited Springwood. Here's a little video.

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VICTOR PENNES, PARK RANGER, ROOSEVELT-VANDERBILT NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE: When she fell in love with Franklin Roosevelt back in 1905 when they got married, they would move in with Franklin's mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt. Sara owned and operated this home and estate referred to as Springwood, since the year 1900 when Sara's elderly husband, Mr. James Roosevelt, who fathered Franklin, had passed away.

Because this was Sara's home, she made the decisions here. She also handled the finances of the family and was most definitely the matriarch of the family. This is where the family gathered for their daily meals. The activities in this room are important because it reflects the interaction of the family.

Sara Delano Roosevelt sat at the head of the table, Franklin Roosevelt at the other end. And Eleanor Roosevelt would find whichever seat was comfortable for her. She did not have an assigned seat at this table.

This is the bedroom that Franklin and Eleanor shared as adults, up until 1918, when infidelity was discovered within the marriage. From that point on, Mrs. Roosevelt insisted on not sharing the same bed with Franklin Roosevelt. At that time, Mrs. Roosevelt chose a bedroom right next to this room and has a doorway coming right in. This was an area where she could be by herself. It was a bit of a private space for her.

The furniture in this room was used by Mrs. Roosevelt, one of the few areas in this house where she could get some privacy. When Mrs. Roosevelt was in Hyde Park and Franklin Roosevelt was also here, it was a given that they would both sleep here in the big house.

If for some reason Franklin was not in Hyde Park, Mrs. Roosevelt here on her own would choose to spend her time at Val-Kill, which is only a couple short miles away from this site. In this direction, we have the entrance to Sara Delano Roosevelt's bedroom, and as you can see, Mrs. Roosevelt's bedroom is sandwiched between Sara and her husband, Franklin, the same as in her lifetime she herself was sandwiched between Franklin and his month, Sara.

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SLEN: A little bit of talk there about her mother-in-law. What was Sara Delano Roosevelt like?

BRINKLEY: Well, first of all, Franklin Roosevelt was her only child. Now, FDR had a half-brother, Rosy, and his father, James Roosevelt, was a fine, outstanding man. He died when he was a freshman at Harvard in 1900, so Sara was left meeting -- FDR lost his father in 1900 and he was born in 1892.

But Sara could be very domineering. She was very over-protective of Franklin in a good way. He used to go play and go bird-watching, which was a big avocation of his, joined the American Ornithological Union, used to climb trees and do a lot of things there on the grounds, and she kept a very tight eye on him. There are even photos of FDR wearing kind of a dress and having long hair, being mummified to a very large degree.

But I think she was a good mother in the sense of loving and taught him well and really kept her eye on her husband. I feel bad -- and historians often feel bad for Eleanor Roosevelt having to deal with her out of the gate, but as mothers go, she was, I think, very, very intensely loving and caring. And FDR cared the world about her. He was -- seemed sometimes to be happiest when she was around, and he kind of always had to operate the pieces behind her back.

In fact, he -- she was opposed to their marriage, Sara, very much so, and said, please, you're going to put the family in shame. Why are you doing this? And that was his coming out, really, saying, you know, Mother, I've got to marry Eleanor and I'm going to do this. And she came along to some degree with the wedding and things like that.

SLEN: Allida Black, the FDR-Eleanor Roosevelt story, is it a love story?

BLACK: Yes, but I'd like to go back just a little bit and talk about Eleanor and Sara, if I can for a minute, because I think so much of that is sort of -- as Doug has referenced -- put in like little cookie- cutter thing.

I mean, Eleanor's mother died when she was 6. Her mother called her granny, she was so embarrassed by her daughter. And so the relationship with Eleanor and Sara is very intricate and very intimate, and it changes over time. I mean, when they first -- when Eleanor falls in love with FDR, she very much hopes that Sara will be a surrogate mother to her, and so you'll see lots of overtures to this. And as Doug so aptly said, Sara created this cocoon of love around FDR, as Geoff Ward and others have, you know, memorably reconstructed, to say that Sara's love for FDR gave him the cushion to really take the risks that he needed to take to lead later on.

And so I think when they come together, we don't know a lot, because Eleanor burns their courting letters when she finds out about Lucy. And so we really can't reconstruct that. What we can do is suppose, based on the best evidence that we've got, and I think that the record is pretty clear that FDR confided in Eleanor his early ambitions. She didn't laugh at him. She saw him as this virile, handsome, charming hunk. You know, everybody saw him as a dapper pretty boy, you know?

I mean, you know, he was a hunk. I mean, you should see -- you know, I hope the viewers get to see him walking and swimming. And so what they are is, he made her laugh. He could see in those sparkling blue eyes something that was there that other people didn't see. And so the level of trust that's there, that they stay together for a year, despite Mama's best intentions to keep them apart, and then they have this very sort of teenage idyllic crush. I mean, they're too young to get married. You know, they have, you know, hormones.

SLEN: Well...

BLACK: And then they -- you know, but they learned to love each other in different ways.

SLEN: Married in 1905. And then the next 10 years, they had six children, five living to adulthood.

BRINKLEY: And that's important, I mean. She raised -- you know, one of the child -- Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., the first one died as an infant, but she ended up raising a lot of boys. And you're raising a lot of boys, it's a lot of work.

And I think sometimes we lose sight of that, because it's like -- we said at the outset it's this remarkable life, but she was also a remarkable, loving mother with her kids and only had one daughter, but was able -- FDR was an absentee father a lot, and Eleanor was the one that kept the unit together, I think kept the rhythm of it. In fact, when FDR would show up, you know, the kids went crazy for him, but it was only because he was gone so much and they -- she didn't have to be the disciplinarian. He could be a little bit of the fun playmate type of father.

BLACK: Exactly.

SLEN: Well, let's get our audience involved here. Our guests are Allida Black, who is the editor of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, George Washington University. And Doug Brinkley, author and historian, as well. Mary in West Grove, Pennsylvania, please go ahead with your question.

MARY (ph): Yes, thank you. I was wondering, why is Eleanor Roosevelt viewed as the most disliked and loved first lady of all time? And if she was here today, how would Eleanor deal with the 24/7 media?

BLACK: Oh, I got that one. OK. Well, Eleanor took profoundly controversial stands on the issues of civil rights, on women working, on women traveling unescorted. She spoke out on -- by the second term -- on legal and constitutional questions that made people a little nervous, and especially the Daughters of the American Revolution, who looked at her and called her an unfit woman and really did not want her in the White House.

But her poll numbers throughout, and the letters that she received, as well as the hate mail, and the largest FBI file that we've had in American history up until that time, shows the extent to which the American public really revered her.

But the people that disliked her disliked her intensely. She really was a Rorschach test for what you thought about democracy and the social upheaval of the time. If you thought it was good for the government to be engaged, if you thought it was good for people who disagreed with each other, who didn't look like each other to be at the table, if you thought women should have a strong voice, then you stood with Eleanor Roosevelt. If those things made you uncomfortable, you really didn't.

BRINKLEY: And I agree with all of that. And also, I think the fact that she did, as I mentioned earlier, so much with African-Americans and -- as we all know, there's Jim Crow in the South. There are bigots. And here's Eleanor Roosevelt constantly meeting with African-Americans. It angered the right of that period tremendously.

But I think she would have done very well on the modern circuit. I mean, after all, right, she wrote My Day columns from 1936 to 1962...

SLEN: Six days a week.

BRINKLEY: Six days a week. That's sort of what blogging is today, isn't it? So she almost was doing it daily, saying this is what I think, this is what I feel, and people liked her because she told people what she thought. And I think authenticity comes through in the end, and that is -- she had a genius for that.

BLACK: And she's clear. And the one other thing, if could piggyback on Doug, if the press got it wrong, Eleanor wrote that the press got it wrong in My Day, and she held her own press conference about it. So in a great way, Eleanor was her own press secretary and shaped her own image in the news media.

BRINKLEY: And brought women to...

BLACK: Absolutely.

BRINKLEY: ... women -- as first lady, said I want women journalists in there. They were all being excluded, short of one or two. And she started having regular press conferences for women and bringing journalists. I mean, if you're talking -- looking today at all the great women foreign correspondents we have, Eleanor Roosevelt in many ways is their patron saint, because she began saying they're doing just as great as work as the men are.

SLEN: We have a tweet here from Jeremy, and we're going to introduce another name that was very formative in the -- with the Roosevelts. Did Louis Howe have much influence in developing Eleanor's skills and persona? First of all, who was Louis Howe?

BRINKLEY: Well, Louis Howe became the in-house Roosevelt family political adviser, a wizard, an extended member of the family. My friend, Julie Fenster, recently wrote a book about him. But he was able to have -- Howe was able to coach Eleanor Roosevelt in some of the intricacies of American politics and was able to take her seriously. And basically, Howe said, look, you're an asset. Don't ever mistake that. She was an asset for President Roosevelt.

SLEN: Was this prior to the presidency?

BRINKLEY: Yes. Oh, became -- once the polio -- once he was struck with polio in 1921, Howe and Eleanor Roosevelt believed in FDR's political future, where Sara said let’s-- you have polio, retire, be a country gentleman, you have money, you love forestry, and you can run your property and all. So Eleanor and Howe kind of double-team FDR and say, let's go. And so it's a tripod, almost, in some ways on the political front.

SLEN: Allida Black, two very important years and events in Eleanor Roosevelt's life, 1918, Lucy Mercer, and then 1921, what Doug Brinkley was just mentioning about polio. Very quickly, walk us through those two incidents.

BLACK: Well, Eleanor, when Eleanor discovers that Franklin has fallen in love with Lucy Mercer, in the interest of historical accuracy, we don't know if or not it was an affair. What we do know without a doubt is that they are in love with each other.

SLEN: Emotionally.

BLACK: Emotionally in love with each other. And Eleanor reads the letters, which she finds when she's unpacking his trunk coming home, and she leaves. She offers him a divorce. She takes the children. And he considers it.

And Howe says to him that, A, there's never been a divorced president, B, that Lucy is Catholic, and that the pope will never bless a marriage where a man leaves his wife and five children to marry another one, and his mother says to him, son, if you do this, I will cut you off and you never have a penny.

And so the Roosevelts come back together and they learn to develop a new relationship which gives them space, space that goes beyond this sort of infatuated high school, you know, Julia Roberts crush love story, in two adults finding ways to love each other, learn to trust each other in different ways, but live two independent and somewhat overlapping lives. Polio changes that.

SLEN: 1921.

BLACK: In 1921, because when -- by that point, Eleanor has become exceedingly political. And this is really before Howe and Eleanor bond on the railroad car.

SLEN: And FDR, though, is in the State Senate at this point, correct?

BLACK: No. No, FDR has run for vice president of the United States, and that's when Eleanor and Howe spend the most time together. They're on a campaign train together. But Eleanor is very political before that. She's very much involved with unions. And so she's working with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. She's working with the National Women's Trade Union League. She's working with immigrant groups. She's already understanding how to lobby, how to petition, how to build coalitions.

What she doesn't know how to do is speak in public. And so Howe's big first tutelage of her is how to speak without that modulated voice going all over the place. But then, as Doug has said, they form an intractable team for FDR, who say to him -- and this man is so disabled, to talk about the intimacy in their marriage, polio so debilitates him that Eleanor has to give him enemas. She has to insert a glass catheter into his penis. She has to lift him up and turn him over, this man who was so incredibly virile.

And at the same time, in her mind, she is thinking, I love this man. What is happening to him? We have to keep his spirits up. And at the other half, she's thinking, oh, my god, I have finally gotten my life and now my life is gone and I'm -- and, you know, and I could be here doing this for the rest of my life. And they figure out how to navigate that. And that is a remarkable testament to both of them.

BRINKLEY: Can I just add to that? And maybe for our listeners, you know, he wins in 1910 the State Senate. I mean, so he's in Albany, promoting a lot of different issues, conservation and they're interested in the union movement. But then, of course, after being in Albany, he becomes assistant secretary of the Navy for the Wilson administration, is in D.C. At one point, he gets to do an inspection in Europe.

And then in 1920, as mentioned, he teams up with James Cox of Ohio -- Cox is a progressive, and FDR is -- FDR goes like a banshee across country promoting the League of Nations and Wilsonianism and they go down in hard defeat. And it ushers in to the 1920s the era of the three Republican presidents, you know, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. And FDR is sad. He lost in '20, and now in '21, he gets polio.

But I think, which was just intimated, out of the Campobello moment, when -- the day he -- you know, we think he contracted the polio from a Boy Scouts pool at Bear Mountain, New York, where he picked up the virus and was -- then went up to Maine and went out actually putting a forest fire with his sons and just had terrible chills and tamped out the light and went to bed with the shakes, and then woke up and couldn't feel his lower half.

Eleanor Roosevelt was there for him like nobody else. With that utter hell he was living, that anybody would feel, she showed her true colors of friendship, loyalty, love in a way that was just described. And I think that realigned their marriage. After that, it -- I mean, he adored her for more reasons. She became somebody who took care of him when he was beyond down.

SLEN: Well, before we move into the White House years, I want to introduce one more character, and this is a tweet from Trish. How important was Eleanor Roosevelt's friend, Lorena Hickok, in helping her to adjust to her new role as first lady? When did Lorena Hickok and Eleanor become friends?

BLACK: Sure. It's hard to overestimate the impact that Hick, as both Eleanor and Franklin, FDR, called Hickok. Hick was the leading political journalist of the era. She was the only woman who would write on the front page of newspapers and get her own byline. She had been assigned to cover Eleanor, fell in love with Eleanor during 1932, and there's an intimate trust that develops between the two and a love that develops between the two that...

SLEN: Emotional love or physical love?

BLACK: We don't know. And there's no doubt in my mind that Hick was in love with Eleanor. We know that Eleanor will help Hick later when she falls in love with Marion and they build a home together as -- when Marion dies, as Hick struggles with diabetes and other things, Eleanor will support her.

You can't put these in a box, but what we can say about Hick is that Hick taught Eleanor how to deal with the press in a way where Eleanor could define her own message. And when Hick -- when Eleanor becomes first lady, Hick resigns her position and moves into the White House and -- because she's fallen in love with Eleanor and she can't be objective.

And Eleanor then goes to FDR, who also liked Hick, to say, you know, I want to send you out and look to investigate what the New Deal is doing, what it's not doing. I want you to get the hopes and fears and put your journalist craft on paper in very private reports to us. And so what we get is the most incredibly honest and powerful assessment of how the depression is affecting individual people. And Hick is involved in that. And Eleanor will never make a major career decision without talking to Hick.

BRINKLEY: Let me just one -- one thing that we didn't mention that she was with the Associated Press, and so that's why she was able to get these front page stories, and she was very, very good, but she was a lesbian and Eleanor Roosevelt was married, and she had responsibility of all the children and all of -- and becoming first lady, so she had all these lives where -so I think the -- Hick, really, as she said, fell in love with Eleanor. I think Eleanor loved her, but Eleanor Roosevelt had a lot of other responsibilities.

BLACK: Eleanor really wasn't taking care of the kids then. I mean, the kids were away.

BRINKLEY: No, but mother, I mean, loving -- the love.

BLACK: Mama was really doing that. I mean, Eleanor very much has her own life. Eleanor and Hick vacation together. Eleanor and Hick travel together. Eleanor and Hick talk three and four times a day on the phone. They write voluminously. A lot of those letters are burned.

I mean, we don't know. What we do know is that Hick is in the White House, that she is a person that is respected by FDR, respected by Hopkins, respected and trusted by Eleanor. And so it's -- it's Hick's idea that Eleanor should have women-only press conferences, because the women would lose their jobs. It's Hick that suggests to Hopkins some of the components of what will become the WPA. So she's a force.

SLEN: Well, it was in 1932, of course, that FDR got elected. And you mentioned that Lorena Hickok moved into the White House at one point. We have a map of the second floor of the White House. And if you -- Doug Brinkley, if you could start, if you could walk us through this, you can see ER is Elizabeth -- Elizabeth -- Eleanor Roosevelt, of course. And you can see down in the far left Lorena Hickok has a room across from ER's room. And then ER seems to have a monopoly on a third of the White House down there at the end.

BRINKLEY: Well, yeah, and that's a nice map. And, of course, the Oval Office, that term starts getting used by Franklin Roosevelt, because of his wheelchair, and gets designed for getting himself easier access. We never want to forget that this is a man in his wheelchair and all that has to do with his life.

And then you could see how close the speechwriters are and how important I think they were to Franklin Roosevelt, because he was doing more speeches and traveling and, of course, his fireside addresses affecting the country so greatly, where he was communicating -- you know, radio was there when Calvin Coolidge was president, but it's FDR that kind of beams into people's home through the Great Depression and World War II.

SLEN: And Sara Roosevelt is FDR's mother, correct, on the far right?

BLACK: Yes.

SLEN: And is that where she would stay when she was there?

BLACK: Yes. But it's important for your viewers to know that this is not a static map.

BRINKLEY: Right.

BLACK: I mean, where the Roosevelt boys are and where Winston Churchill and Sara are, there would be filled with guests. The boys were only there when they were home from school or when they were visiting over the holidays.

Churchill only comes in -- you know, in '40, in '41, when they come. So -- and Hopkins moves into the White House in 1937. So it's not like everybody is in these rooms all the time.

BRINKLEY: More importantly than even that, and which is true, but he spent something like a quarter of his time at sea cruising all over, FDR, not just going to conferences, but going down to Florida or fishing in the gulf, so he was constantly around. And then he would had his home in Warm Springs, Georgia, where the therapeutic pools were, and he would go down and spend a lot of time in the little White House down there, and then he would get up to Springwood as much as he can, so it's not a president just sort of stuck in the White House. FDR moves around an awful lot.

SLEN: Well, we want to show you some inauguration video from the Roosevelts' inauguration, as we take this next call from Cathy in Aurora, Colorado. Hi, Cathy.

CATHY (ph): Hello, how are you?

SLEN: Good.

CATHY (ph): Thank you so much for your C-SPAN. I've enjoyed so many of the first ladies, and I wanted to say thank you. My question a little bit has been answered already regarding Lucy Mercer, but I did have a couple more other questions. Did Eleanor know about all of the other arrangements that was made for Lucy and Mr. Roosevelt to get together? Did Anna have involvement in this? And Lucy Mercer, was she married? I think she was. And did she have any children? And what year did she pass away? And did she have any books that Lucy Mercer ever wrote regarding being a private secretary for Mrs. Roosevelt or anything like that?

SLEN: All right, Cathy, thank you. More about Lucy Mercer. Who wants to start?

BLACK: Well, I'll just do it briefly so we can get onto -- no disrespect intended, but to an important part of the Eleanor story. Eleanor did not know about the arrangements that some of the staff had made for Lucy to return to FDR's life. She does marry a wealthy South Carolina businessman, Winthrop Rutherfurd. Eleanor -- Anna Roosevelt, the daughter, brings Lucy back into her father's life at her father's request during the war, and Lucy is with FDR in Warm Springs with another cousin the day that FDR dies of a cerebral hemorrhage.

BRINKLEY: And it created some embarrassment for Eleanor Roosevelt that Lucy Mercer is there.

SLEN: If we could, if we could go back to that map of the White House very quickly, how much of - - did the public know about the living arrangements in the Roosevelt White House?

BLACK: Oh, they knew people who were coming and going. Eleanor put it My Day. They knew...

SLEN: Did they know Lorena Hickok had a permanent room there?

BLACK: Oh, yeah, people -- yeah, I mean, it wasn't a permanent room. Remember that she's traveling. She's traveling all over the country. But when she's in Washington, she stays there. I mean, they knew Hopkins was in there.

I mean, the Roosevelts -- this is sort of an ahistorical analogy -- but with the Fords, okay, when you come into the White House after Watergate, Betty and Gerald Ford opened the White House up and it becomes the home of the American people again, you know? It's no longer the siege. It's no longer the Nixonian bunker.

Well, the same thing is true of the Roosevelt White House in the sense that it's not the Hoover bunker. And so it was very clear who was coming and going, especially when My Day starts getting published, because Eleanor says who's there, who's spending the night, what they talked about and what they had for dinner. So -- and you also would have her own press conferences where she would tell people who the guests were and who was living there. So, yes, people knew.

BRINKLEY: But, also, I mean, it was a different era with the press and the media. I mean, we don't - - people wouldn't even take photographs of FDR in his wheelchair. We only have a couple of him incapacitated because it was considered -- could you imagine in our YouTube era today? And people would -- didn't start covering people's affairs or dalliances in the way -- they would be rumored. Things would percolate, but it didn't take on a cast if somebody's watching like the Clintons had to deal with during their presidency, when the media was, you know, DNA and reading all of this in gossip columns. People left them somewhat alone.

SLEN: Dennis, here's a tweet from Dennis. How did her early years as wife of FDR prep her for the White House -- for being White House first lady?

BRINKLEY: Wow. I think being -- look, she came from a famous family. She had Theodore Roosevelt, you know, who was already in the White House. She had been governor of New York from -- she was first lady, or whatever you'd like to call of New York, from '28 to '32. And New York was a big deal back then, being governor. And so she had a lot of scrutiny, and also she shared in these New Deal type of programs that FDR started doing when he was as governor.

I've been looking at the conservation aspect, and there are models that's happening during the governorship that he immediately adopts when he becomes president. So she's very equipped policy- wise, I think, for, you know, the difficulties that you might find as being a first lady under all that kind of scrutiny.

BLACK: But they also learned to live separately. The Roosevelts are never together for more than six months out of the year, you know, from the time he gets polio until FDR dies. And so what she learns through the governorship years is specifically how to develop her own voice and her own alliances and support policies in ways that will get FDR to pay attention to them. So in many ways, you know, the '20s for Eleanor was her own political laboratory.

SLEN: And she used the media quite effectively, too, didn't she?

BLACK: Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.

SLEN: Well, just to give you a sense of some of the first of Eleanor Roosevelt, here are some of her firsts. She regularly held press conferences. She had that syndicated column, My Day, that we've talked about a couple of times. She had a radio show. She held an official government position, which we'll talk about a little bit later. She addressed a national political convention. Was that in 1940?

BLACK: '40.

SLEN: She earned money lecturing, and she chaired a White House conference. She traveled solo overseas, so she did -- had quite a few firsts. Here's a little bit of -- here's the radio address -- if you remember at the beginning of the show, we showed you a portion of the radio address right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Here it is in its entirety from 1941.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm speaking to you tonight at a very serious moment in our history. The cabinet is convening and the leaders in Congress are meeting with the president. The State Department and Army and Navy officials have been with the president all afternoon. In fact, the Japanese ambassador was talking to the president at the very time that Japan's airships were bombing our citizens in Hawaii and the Philippines and sinking one of our transports, loaded with lumber on its way to Hawaii.

By tomorrow morning, the members of Congress will have a full report and be ready for action. In the meantime, we the people are already prepared for action. For months now, the knowledge that something of this kind might happen has been hanging over our heads, and yet it seemed impossible to believe, impossible to drop the everyday things of life and feel that there was only one thing which was important: preparation to meet an enemy, no matter where he struck. That is all over now, and there is no more uncertainty. We know what we have to face, and we know that we are ready to face it.

I should like to say just a word to the women in the country tonight. I have a boy at sea on a destroyer. For all I know, he may be on his way to the Pacific. Two of my children are in coast cities on the Pacific. Many of you all over this country have boys in the services who will now be called upon to go into action. You have friends and families in what has suddenly become a danger zone. You cannot escape anxiety. You cannot escape a clutch of fear at your heart, and yet I hope that the certainty of what we have to meet will make you rise above these fears.

We must go about our daily business more determined than ever to do the ordinary things as well as we can, and when we find a way to do anything more in our communities to help others, to build morale, to give a feeling of security, we must do it. Whatever is asked of us, I am sure we can accomplish it. We are the free and unconquerable people of the United States of America.

To the young people of the nation, I must speak a word tonight. You are going to have a great opportunity. There will be high moments in which your strength and your ability will be tested. I have faith in you. I feel as though I was standing upon a rock and that rock is my faith in my fellow citizens.

Now we will go back to the program which we had arranged for tonight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SLEN: Allida Black, I want to ask you, first of all, before we get to the substance, her voice change from the 1933 radio address...

BLACK: Absolutely.

SLEN: ... that we heard to a much more modulated, lower tone.

BLACK: Well, she's in her own element. And she's now saying what she wants to say. And she very much appreciates the gravity of Pearl Harbor. I mean, she's got -- as she says -- boys in the Pacific. She had toured battlefronts in World War I. She had seen hundreds of soldiers piled up into piles with their stomachs exploding because they had not been buried yet. And she was very much involved in the effort for the League of Nations and the World Court. In fact, FDR sends her to the radio to debate Hoover over the World Court when the Senate begins to vote on the legislation.

So for her, this is a defining moment. And she is telling FDR and has told FDR for at least two years prior to that, because they both understood that war was inevitable. They were trying very hard to stay out of it. But she says to him that we must remember that the lesson of World War I is that we won the war, but we lost the peace.

And so what she's trying to do here is not only calm the nation, but to sort of set the stage for what she will begin to say the following day, which is this is no time for hyphenates. We are all Americans.

SLEN: Let's go back to your calls. And this is Renee in Los Angeles. Renee, this is our first lady series.

RENEE (ph): Yes, and it's very wonderful, and thank you for doing it. Completely educational, and I would like to know what role Eleanor played during the women's suffrage movement.

BLACK: OK. Eleanor was opposed -- well, she -- Eleanor really didn't get involved in the suffrage movement until FDR came out for suffrage. She was involved in the only progressive women's movement, in the sense of the living wage, maximum hours, minimum wages, sanitation, and to really get involved somewhat in temperance, but she was not a suffragist until FDR came out for it.

Ironically, by 1920, she is very much involved in organizing women to vote and she develops candidate training schools and canvassing clinics for women to become involved. And by 1921, she will begin to help build the women's division of the Democratic Party in New York state.

SLEN: Doug Brinkley, if I could, what about criticism of Eleanor Roosevelt and -- throughout her 12 years as first lady? I mean, were people critical of her? We've kind of had a little bit of a love affair so far tonight.

BRINKLEY: Well, of course they were. And because people didn't like FDR. They're-- a polarizing president, but he killed the opposition in '32 and '36 and '40 and '44, and I promise you, Eleanor Roosevelt was not an albatross, as I mentioned before. She was a huge asset.

With that said, I think some people thought her issue, pushing of labor unions and supporting of coal miners, if you were a coal owner, you would not have liked it. In the South, as I mentioned, African- American issue was very, very controversial. In fact, there's one letter she wrote to an African- American person, I believe, in Chicago that -- or that the person wrote her because one of her My Day columns, she called black people darkie. And that -- this African-American person rightly said, how could you, who's helping African-Americans, use the word darkie? And she said it was kind of a fond old word, you know, from my childhood.

But this was a period where she was pioneering on civil rights, in a way. I mean, the language of what it meant wasn't even really known yet. And with women's issues, I mean, this speech you gave, while she has -- we play the gravitas there, is that's a "We're all in this together" speech. This is no longer Democrats versus Republicans, liberals-conservatives speech, and not just that, on the women's issue in World War II, she does -- and African-American, she does a lot of things. She supports the Tuskegee airmen, even flies in a plane with one of them, and she promotes women working in factories and industrial places, including our first really daycare for women that are working in factories and have children.

So she's constantly pushing the envelope. And FDR kind of allows it, which is remarkable, and many people -- you know, some people, if you're a real liberal, you preferred Eleanor Roosevelt really to FDR, because as president, he had to modulate himself in a certain way for votes.

SLEN: Was there criticism in Congress of Eleanor Roosevelt or within the government itself?

BLACK: Well, let's just -- let's do politics and then we'll do Congress. The first campaign button that the Republicans made in 1936 was "We Don't Want Eleanor, Either.” So there's a long history of mocking Eleanor in political cartoons.

Also, there are lots of cartoons of Eleanor coming out of the mine with soot on her face, inferring that she had black blood. In fact, J. Edgar Hoover was convinced that she had, quote, unquote, "colored blood," tried to convene a secret meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee to have her declared colored, stripped of her citizenship, and sent to Liberia to live with her people, the coloreds. So the FBI component of Eleanor and race is -- you know, is...

SLEN: So the FBI kept a file on her?

BLACK: Oh, she had the largest FBI file in American history prior to the assassination of Malcolm X.

SLEN: When did it become public?

BLACK: In the late 1980s. A lot of it is still classified. If I win the lotto, we'll get the court suit and we'll get the rest of them declassified.

SLEN: Chris is in New Haven, Connecticut. Chris, Allida Black and Doug Brinkley are our guests.

CHRIS (ph): Well, thank you. I think that she's everything that Abigail Adams was to John Adams and to American history in her day and age, Eleanor Roosevelt was for the early 20th century. It's almost as if she's a reincarnation of her. And I'm wondering if Hillary Clinton is maybe a reincarnation of her, too. It's just -- there are these women who have a place in history, and Abigail Adams and Eleanor Roosevelt definitely strike me as ones.

SLEN: All right, thank you, Chris. Doug Brinkley, what's your response to that?

BRINKLEY: Well, nobody's a reincarnation of everybody else, but the caller's right. I mean, Abigail Adams was a great first lady, and also her correspondence with her husband is quite remarkable. And the fact that Abigail was an intellectual, and that's what you're seeing with Eleanor Roosevelt. This is somebody who's an intellectual, not just a political life or something of this, and she has deep and interesting ideas about America that she develops not just as first lady, but later.

She's thinking in civil rights in terms of human rights before most people are. And she's thinking about how we -- what democracy really means, and she's also -- you mentioned the FBI not liking her -- embracing of the union movement. You know, there -- the fear of strikes in this, and Eleanor Roosevelt often sided with the workers of America.

But -- and then Hillary Clinton, of course, is in a category of her own. Eleanor Roosevelt never ran for office, okay? She -- that's a big difference between Hillary Clinton, who was the senator from New York and is always being talked about as running for president. Some people wanted Eleanor Roosevelt to run for senator or governor of New York after her husband died in '45, but she, of course, said no to that.

SLEN: Well, we've discussed quite a few times the My Day column that Eleanor Roosevelt wrote. Up at Hyde Park, at the FDR National Historic Site, we talked with one of the park rangers about her column.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFFREY URBIN, SPECIALIST, ROOSEVELT PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM: This is Eleanor Roosevelt's typewriter. It was on this typewriter that Mrs. Roosevelt wrote her My Day columns. She wrote her first My Day column on December 31, 1935, and then continued six days a week for 26 years, amassing almost 8,000 columns.

She was a prolific writer, and she wrote books that focused on her interests. Some of her books were about international politics. Some were about her time in the White House. Others were of interest to children. Often Mrs. Roosevelt wrote alone, but sometimes she would write with other authors. This book, "Ladies of Courage," she wrote with her friend and colleague, Lorena Hickok.

I'd like to take you back to archives now and show you some of Mrs. Roosevelt's more significant My Day columns. What I have here are the original drafts of some of the My Day columns that I wanted to share. This first one is actually Eleanor Roosevelt's first My Day column, and it appeared in December 31, 1935. And it sets the tone for the My Day columns to follow.

"This is a day for taking up a more or less regular routine again. The house is filled in and off with guests of the children, and the president and I take up full schedules today. At 11 a.m., I met with the ladies of the press. I always enjoy this hour on Monday mornings.” So what she's talking about here are the comings and goings in the White House as they're getting back to the regular schedule after the holiday season.

The next one I wanted to share is from December 7, 1941. And this My Day column is written by Mrs. Roosevelt, and she's talking about what's going on in the White House as the attack at Pearl Harbor and the information that's coming into the White House. And so what this does is it gives sort of an eyewitness account from the inside of what was going on.

"As I stepped out of my room, I knew that something had happened. All the secretaries were there, two telephones were in use. The senior military aides were on their way with messages. I said nothing, because the words I overheard on the telephone were quite sufficient to tell me that finally the blow had fallen and we had been attacked."

The next column is from February 6, 1961, and here Mrs. Roosevelt is talking about how she's gotten back from a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King. And she says, "I've had the opportunity of hearing Dr. King speak. He's a very moving speaker because he is simple and direct and the spiritual quality which has made him the leader of nonviolence in this country touches every speech he makes."

So far, we've seen the drafts of Mrs. Roosevelt's My Day columns, but we thought it would be interesting to show you what they actually looked like when they appeared in the newspapers. This clipping is a My Day clipping from November 6, 1940, Election Day. And in here, Mrs. Roosevelt writes about how they had a quiet afternoon. "Some of us took a walk and returned to the big house for tea, where we found Johnny and Anne, and their little dachshund Persie had arrived from Boston."

Later on she talks about how at midnight a larger crowd that usual came in from Hyde Park with a band and torches and wonderful placards. The president went out to greet them. This was a tradition on Election Day. The Roosevelts would come to Hyde Park, gather family around, and await the election results. When they were announced, the folks from Hyde Park would march down and the president would come out and greet them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SLEN: Doug Brinkley, what was your comment while we were watching that?

BRINKLEY: Oh, well, it's just -- she's such an intellectual, Eleanor Roosevelt, and I think that differentiates her from a lot of other first ladies. She was a brilliant writer. And, you know, when you read Doris Kearns Goodwin's "No Ordinary Time," she deals with Franklin and Eleanor, and you could see her thinking through the Second World War and her strategy ideas.

She wanted to bring in, for example, in World War II many more European dislocated people, and she later regretted that she couldn't help more Jews immigrate into the United States during that period. But she was wide-ranging in her interest in anybody who wrote, you know, socially provocative books and literature magazines, but the sheer discipline of doing what she did -- and this is a gold mine -- and I'd like to tell some of the viewers, Blanche Wiesen Cook has -- you know, Blanche has done a marvelous job, two volumes on Eleanor Roosevelt's life that if anybody really is interested needs to read, and she's writing a third right now on the Second World War. It brings out this intellectual side of Eleanor quite well.

SLEN: Would you like to add anything to what Doug said about Blanche Wiesen Cook and her volumes?

BLACK: Well, I think Blanche is extraordinary, and she's given us a gift. And I think that one of the things that both Blanche and to a large extent Secretary Clinton have done has reintroduced Eleanor to a new generation. And I would also like to send viewers to the Eleanor Roosevelt papers website, where many of the articles and speeches and books that Geoff showed or transcribed -- I mean, she wrote a marvelous book in 1938 -- I'm sorry, 1939 called "The Moral Basis of Democracy," which Nelson Mandela had smuggled into Robben Island to read when he was imprisoned.

She wrote, "This Troubled World," which is a marvelous pre canon appeal for containment. So there - - you know, they're serious books. They didn't sell very well, because they were profoundly serious books. But Eleanor thought that her job was to really help the American people grasp the information that they needed to have to handle crises and to resurrect their own self-respect. And so that tone resonates through everything that she writes.

SLEN: Allida Black, what was Arthurdale, West Virginia?

BLACK: Well, Arthurdale was a homestead, a resettlement community out of Reedsville, West Virginia. And it was the poorest spot in the country. Coal miners had lived there. The mines had shut down. There was no electricity, no running water, very few latrines. The vegetation was so desolate that the kids stayed alive by eating dandelions or poke salad.

And so Eleanor -- Hick did an investigative story there. Eleanor read about it. She was so appalled by what she read that she drove out there -- it's about four hours then for her to drive outside of Washington -- to see it. She drove up unannounced without Secret Service protection, because we'll talk about that in a minute, and she became passionately committed to Arthurdale, in the sense of trying to get housing, develop a model community there, to get schools for the kids. She worked with a financier, Bernard Baruch, and Marshall Field, the great department store magnate from Chicago to try to get businesses there.

And so while she was able to really help restore this community and really promote it, she didn't succeed in attracting businesses to it. But the houses that are there with their indoor toilets, their schools, and their community centers are in use today.

SLEN: Was it a failure?

BLACK: No.

SLEN: It was not a failure?

BLACK: People will say it's a failure because she could not attract businesses there. But let's look at the literacy rates. Let's look at the disease rates. Let's look at the construction that's there. Let's look at the morale that's there, the suicide rate, the education rate. It was not a failure. It was not the success it could have been, but it was not a failure.

SLEN: Joel in Monroe, Michigan, this is the first ladies and Eleanor Roosevelt is our topic and you're on C-SPAN.

JOEL (ph): Yeah, thank you very much. I would like to ask you about, what was the relationship like between Eleanor and her cousin, Alice? And also another question there. Is it true that when Franklin was seeing Lucy, that Alice used to invite them to her home behind Eleanor's back?

BLACK: No, the second question. That is part of the folklore that surrounds the Franklin and Eleanor sort of carrying-on, so to speak. There was -- Alice did not like Eleanor. I mean, she just did not -- she spread wicked, barbed stories about her. She would say, well, you know, you can't help but feel sorry for Franklin because he was married to Eleanor. She would say that Franklin contracted polio because he had syphilis because he was married to Eleanor.

So Alice was -- as my mother would say, a piece of work. And the way to really conceptualize Alice is to imagine that you're walking in to her parlor and you're there for tea. And she will pat the sofa and say, "Please come sit to me," and there will be a needlepointed pillow on that sofa that says "If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say, Come Sit Next to Me."

SLEN: Dave Shea posts on our Facebook page, Doug Brinkley, what was Teddy Roosevelt's reaction to FDR's affair with Lucy Mercer? And how did Teddy Roosevelt feel about FDR?

BRINKLEY: Well, he loved FDR, admired him a great deal, wrote a very warm note to him that's right when the engagement with Eleanor took place, and saying that you've got many golden years ahead of you and this is -- even being president is nothing compared to making a marriage work. And, of course, we mentioned before he came there to preside over the marriage.

But Theodore Roosevelt dies in 1919, in January of 1919. And at that point, FDR had been in the Wilson administration, and they're on opposite side of the equations. I mean, Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican, and FDR was a Democrat. And so they didn't get along in that regard at the very end, because, you know, I read recently -- because I'm working on a book on Franklin Roosevelt, and I read a story where one of Theodore Roosevelt's sons would go wherever FDR went in 1920 around the West and speak right after him and dispute everything and say FDR's an embarrassment to my side, the Oyster Bay side of the family.

And if I could, just one other point, because I think we haven't made it clear. We never really have developed what Val-Kill is, and we're talking about, you know, that this is -- I think if anybody wants to learn about Eleanor Roosevelt, go to Val-Kill. It's right next to Springwood, or very close, and it's her home. And there you can really feel Eleanor Roosevelt.

SLEN: What do you mean it's her home?

BRINKLEY: FDR acquired property in -- Val-Kill is a creek there in Duchess County. And they built this lovely home, eventually developed -- there was a furniture factory for a while. It's a longer story, but this was Eleanor's place of peace of mind, a place she could get away. There's a swimming pool there where she would swim. And it's now part of our National Park Service as a standalone home. I mean, it's there with the Vanderbilt estate and FDR's home, but to go -- I encourage people that care about presidential history, don't just go to the FDR home and see Franklin and Eleanor's grave. Visit nearby Val-Kill, because it's huge insights into her personality there.

And she would have inner city kids come there, poor people to come and talk. Shed have world leaders and presidents would visit her there. It's quite a spot.

SLEN: What year was that built?

BLACK: Well, Val-Kill was built in 1925. And it was built along the Val-Kill Creek. And it was built because the Roosevelts loved to picnic, and they loved to picnic away from the main house, because that's where they could get away from Mama and just hang with their friends. And a lot of the political cronies that Mama did not like would come up for picnics.

And so Eleanor remarks to FDR in the winter that this was -- how sad it was that it was their last time that they could picnic this year. And they picnicked with -- at that point -- Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, two women with whom Eleanor had developed a close political working relationship with, both of whom were very involved in the Democratic Party, one of whom had run for office.

And so FDR offers to sell the land to them for a 99-year lease -- will give them a 99-year lease and the three women will each put in a third to build the cottage. And the cottage would be called Val- Kill. And that was an extraordinary place for Eleanor, but they -- it's also a political experiment, because the women build a furniture factory there during -- to help farmers in the Hudson Valley learn marketable skills in the winter. The women have a falling out in 1935.

SLEN: All three women?

BLACK: All three women. Well, Nan and Marion and Eleanor have a falling out. And in 1937, I think, Eleanor buys them out. And so she converts the furniture factory into her own home, and that's what she will -- that's her only home of her own and her most special place. And she will live there until she dies.

SLEN: And for this program, we visited Val-Kill. Here's a look inside.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VICTOR PENNES: Let's go upstairs to where the bedrooms are located, and we'll climb an historically creaky staircase. This room here is Eleanor Roosevelt's master bedroom. In this particular room, Franklin Roosevelt takes prime footage over the fireplace area with the largest portrait in the room.

Mrs. Roosevelt's bed is somewhat interesting in its depiction and it shows how Mrs. Roosevelt preferred her laundry to be delivered by the household staff, folded and placed upon her bed, and she would place it throughout the cottage. A close examination of the laundry reveals that it's all monogrammed. We have Mrs. Roosevelt's monogram on the main towels here. We also have Nancy's monogram on some of the linens. Some of the linens are jointly monogrammed with the initials EMN, Eleanor Marion Nancy, and that was pretty consistent throughout Val-Kill's operation.

When I look through this room, it just surprises me that a lady who was born into wealth, that married into wealth, and generated wealth in her lifetime, would live in such a simple fashion. The bed is surely not an elaborate bed for a lady who was five feet, 11 inches tall, but she had a simple lifestyle. And that stands out.

This is Eleanor Roosevelt's sleeping porch. It's a very important area here at Val-Kill Cottage. This is where Mrs. Roosevelt would come in the evening at approximately 11 o'clock, after saying good night to her guests, and it was private space for her.

The little Scottish terrier dog named Fala that is so famous within the Roosevelt story would accompany Mrs. Roosevelt to this area and spend the night here with her. This is where she would sit, do some last-minute letter writing, maybe some last-minute reading, and then retire for the evening.

She referred to this area as being like a treehouse. It's surrounded with glass, screened-in areas. She can overlook her property, the Fallkill Creek, the fireplace where the picnics were held, the tennis and badminton court, the cutting garden, the stone cottage, which was so important in the early years.

This is her private space where she could get away from the activities of Val-Kill cottage for a short while and be with herself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SLEN: And we are back live. There's a little quick look at Val-Kill and kind of her private life there. When she was there, did she have a simple lifestyle?

BRINKLEY: Well, she had people visiting her all the time, but she lived -- and can live so simply -- and I thought that was very eloquently said. I've been impressed about how Spartan both Franklin and Eleanor can live. Right next to Val-Kill was -- FDR was building his dream house Top Cottage that would have no electricity and be on kind of a rustic mountaintop.

And if you go to the little White House down in Georgia, and you're amazed that this man's willing to live in such stripped-down circumstances. It reminds me a lot of Jimmy Carter, Eleanor Roosevelt, in Plains, and Mrs. Lillian, Jimmy Carter's mother, was an Eleanor Roosevelt Democrat. She just loved Eleanor Roosevelt.

But the ability to kind of live with furniture that's made there, like Carter makes his own furniture in his home and they used to have a furniture factory, very Spartan, but yet very warm and pleasant, an emphasis on gardens and the outdoor life, but the bringing of the natural world. And we -- I can't emphasize enough to listeners what a special place that part of the mid-Hudson is in Duchess County.

And one of -- and the great love and friendship of Franklin and Eleanor, from shared neighbors, shared friends, shared topography, in knowing all the little back roads and things together, it was a big part of both of their happiness.

SLEN: Allida Black, did she use that while she was first lady to get away?

BLACK: Yes, but she also used it for her own space to conduct business. I mean, Val-Kill is Eleanor's home and her office. Eleanor was very rarely alone at Val-Kill. I mean, Victor did an extraordinary job in giving you a sense of the feel that Eleanor had and how much she loved it, but Eleanor was always surrounded by hordes of people at Val-Kill that she would invite. You know, there would be neighbors, there would be dignitaries, there would be friends, there'd be reporters, there'd be painters, there'd be performers, there would be Winston Churchill, there would be -- Steinbeck came to Val-Kill, Pauli Murray came to Val-Kill. You know, I mean, so Val-Kill was a hub, it was Eleanor Roosevelt's unrestricted space.

SLEN: You referred to this a little bit earlier. You intimated that she did not like the Secret Service.

BLACK: No. Well, see, this is the thing to me...

SLEN: Or having them around, I should say.

BLACK: ... that is the most extraordinary thing about Eleanor Roosevelt and to a great deal about Franklin. I want to go back a little bit to February 1932. FDR has just finished speaking in an open convertible in a park in Miami. You know, he's just unlocked his steel braces so that he could slide back down from sitting on the top of the car into the seat.

An assassin's bullet rings out. It kills the mayor of Chicago, who is literally closer to FDR than Doug is to me. And they have both been through the attempts on Teddy Roosevelt's life. They have a personal conversation -- we don't know what they said -- but they both reference the conversation in different correspondence with their children about the physical sacrifice that it takes to lead the country when they're in a war.

And they both saw the depression as a war on the American spirit and a war on the soul and the economic soul of the United States. And so Eleanor absolutely refused to have Secret Service protection in the White House, because she said, first of all, it would impede her ability to have a conversation with the American people, and she saw her number-one job responsibility as helping bring the government to the people so that people could understand the human face.

And so this woman traveled without Secret Service from 1933 until 1962. I can document 15 assassination attempts on her life, 17 that I don't have all the information on. We know the Ku Klux Klan placed the largest bounty in its history on her head. We know people shot at her. We know they dynamited trees outside Clapboard Churches where she spoke. We know that they wrapped dynamite around the axles of her tires. We know that they placed nitroglycerine in lecterns where she stood. And she said that it was her responsibility to be able to have a talk with the people of the United States. She wanted to meet her neighbors. And so anybody that interfered with that interfered with her ability to do her job, and she would have no part of it.

SLEN: How did protect herself?

BRINKLEY: Well, she had a friend, a New York policeman, that was with her sometimes as a little bit of -- one of her closest friends and security, but I think the important point is that the Roosevelts wanted to meet people. They didn't feel that they were better, that they were an elite family. And that's something that they shared.

I mean, I was reading FDR the other day taking a -- going bird watching and making the Secret Service have no lights on a road because he wanted it dark to go see a particular bird, and they -- and he would just blow them off, the Secret Service, to take country drives. And, you know, he loved going fast in his automobile, because he could shift it with that no lower half.

I might -- if I could just say one other thing...

SLEN: I apologize. We're getting a little heavy on time...

BRINKLEY: Oh, okay.

SLEN: ... a little light on time here. But when it came to protecting herself, she learned how to shoot a gun.

BLACK: Well, absolutely. Earl Miller did not travel with Eleanor when she was in the White House. The deal that she made was that he would -- she learned to shoot. But Eleanor would carry a gun in some circumstances. The bullets were not in it. The bullets were in a separate spot in the car. And for all of the people who are going to e-mail me about this, she had permits in every single space that she went to.

SLEN: And in speaking of which, that is our featured item this week on the first ladies series. If you've been to our website, cspan.org/firstladies, you'll see that it's quite comprehensive and a lot of added material is there.

And this week, we're featuring her gun permit, which they pulled out of her wallet in 1962 when she died. That's what's featured on our website, cspan.org/firstladies.

Tanya in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, you've been very patient. Please go ahead with your question.

TANYA (ph): Well, thank you so much, guests. My question is complicated. One of the things that -- I met Eleanor Roosevelt through her work with the Junior League. But my question is -- and, Douglas, you hit on it earlier -- could you please tell me or could you tell the listeners about the relationship she had with the Tuskegee airmen a little bit more, like why was that controversial? And also, her relationship with two other African-Americans, and that's Mary McLeod Bethune and then also A. Philip Randolph. Thanks.

BRINKLEY: Well, three big topics, in a way. But, you know, in World War II, we had 1 million African-Americans who served, and Eleanor Roosevelt was very concerned that they were being treated as second-class citizens. There are stories of her going into Georgia and seeing African- Americans in a hospital that had smaller rooms and worse medical condition and would kind of blow her top and say, "You're treating African-Americans the same."

Tuskegee in Alabama is a historic place where Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver made famous. And aviation was going to be a big part in the war effort, and she went down there and not just embraced the Tuskegee airmen, but gave them the publicity that they were part of we're in this together.

And she went up -- I forget the exact amount of time -- but like an hour flight flying over the airspace with an African-American pilot. Remember, Theodore Roosevelt got hammered for having Booker T. Washington in the White House. Now Eleanor Roosevelt, his niece, is flying with the Tuskegee airmen, you know, over southern, you know, airspace. I'll let you take on the NAACP and all that.

BLACK: Eleanor had worked very closely when the draft was being put into place to really encourage FDR to support the NAACP's effort to get African-Americans more involved in the war effort. FDR did not want to fund the Tuskegee -- I mean, he did not want the Tuskegee airmen to fly. The secretary of war, Henry Stimson, said leadership is not embedded in the Negro race. It was a felony to give plasma that was collected from a person of one race to the person of another race, even though plasma was perfected by an African-American physician.

Eleanor Roosevelt went down to Tuskegee to force FDR's hand. She gets in -- she goes to the air base. They do not know she's coming. She comes up. She has the movie camera. She gives the movie camera to -- and the still photographer -- I mean, the still camera to people on the ground to photograph this, and she takes them back to FDR and puts them on FDR's desk to say, when are you going to do this?

Eleanor is blamed for race riots in the United States because of her promotion of housing for some of the 6 million African-Americans who have relocated from the South to the North for the defense industry. In fact, the Detroit race riot in 1943, when she's blamed for that by the Mississippi press and the New York press, is why she finally gets to go to the Pacific.

To answer briefly your caller's -- the questions about Bethune and A. Philip Randolph, let's give Sara credit. Sara Delano Roosevelt is the person who takes Mary McLeod Bethune to meet Eleanor Roosevelt in the '20s when Bethune is founding Bethune-Cookman College. They will become devoted friends. They will both call each other their closest friends in their own age groups.

Eleanor will become good friends and colleagues with A. Philip Randolph, especially when they begin to work together in 1939 over the Marian Anderson concert which is not just about her resignation from the DAR so that Marian Anderson could perform in the district, but it's her ability to say, why curse Hitler and support Jim Crow? Why curse Mein Kampf and silence Marian Anderson?

So Marian Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, who was really one of the leaders of the march -- of the Marian Anderson event, as well as the first March on Washington, which is planned for -- to ban -- to force FDR to ban discrimination in federally -- I'm sorry, to ban discrimination in the defense industries, Eleanor's right in there with him, too. So she's very close.

SLEN: Well, we only have a half-hour left, and as you mentioned, Eleanor Roosevelt did travel to the Pacific. And here's a speech she made to some of the troops.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: An officer found a private feeling very sad, looking very depressed. And he said, "What's the matter with you?” And he said, "Oh, I just can't go home. I haven't shot a Jap."

And so the officer said, "Well, listen, I'll tell you what to do. You go up to that ridge over there and jump up, all of a sudden, and say, 'To hell with Hirohito,' and they'll jump up, other people all around, and if you shoot first, you'll get a Jap."

So he came by a little while later, and the Marine was still looking very gloomy, and he said, "Did you do what I told you to do?” And, "Yes, sir, yes, I ran up there and I did just what you told me to do, and I said to hell with Hirohito, and they jumped up just as you told me they would, but they all shouted, 'To hell with Roosevelt.'"

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SLEN: Doug Brinkley, how did -- did she serve as FDR's eyes and ears during the war, as well?

BRINKLEY: You know, some, but in these trips, it's a bit like the USO, right? It's about getting the morale up of troops. And the very fact that Eleanor Roosevelt -- and she writes beautifully about it in My Day of going over the Pacific -- but went all the way over there, and how much the soldiers loved her.

You know, early on, we were talking -- in 1933, you had the Bonus March of veterans here in Washington, right at the time of FDR's inaugural. And, you know, Hoover sent the Army on a previous Bonus March, of veterans wanting better rights. Eleanor Roosevelt went and talked to the Bonus March soldiers, and so she had a lot veterans and people that admired her in the military.

We're talking a lot about her as a left figure and a liberal, but she was very beloved by the admirals, in particularly Bull Halsey, as we mentioned earlier, in the Pacific. This was a very successful tour in '43 of the Pacific.

SLEN: Allida Black, you said during that video that you wanted to say the prayer that -- the wartime prayer.

BLACK: Well, you see Eleanor walking through here. You see her tell that joke. But what you don't understand is what happened to her in the flight going over there. She flew an uninsulated military aircraft. I'm talking there's a shell, there's no pressure. Her eardrum shatters. She goes deaf in one ear. She will walk 50 miles of hospital corridors in two days. The arches will fall on her feet. She will never be able to stand again without special shoes.

The war -- this trip changes Eleanor Roosevelt. She begins to carry a prayer in her wallet that says, "Dear lord, lest I continue in my complacent ways, help me to remember that somewhere someone died for me today. And if there be war, help me to remember to ask and to answer, am I worth dying for?"

What you see are the news reels. You don't see her in hospital rooms. You don't see her in foxholes. You don't see her tending to wounded, all she did on this trip.

SLEN: Doug Brinkley, April 1945, her final month as first lady. How did she find out about FDR's death?

BRINKLEY: Well, when it got reported. It was unfortunate. She didn't know -- she wasn't down there in Warm Springs with him. There's a wonderful half portrait of FDR when he died, and suddenly it was like everybody said, the moon and stars dropped on her.

Whatever their -- the wounds of having people down around her that she didn't know about, the beauty was that she ran the funeral service so wonderfully at Hyde Park, and FDR wanted a very simple headstone, his name and his years and Eleanor. And it tells you the love of him. He wanted to be -- rest in eternity. And when she finally dies in 1962, she gets buried there with him.

SLEN: Next call for our guests, Lynn in Daytona Beach, Florida, you're on C-SPAN.

LYNN (ph): I'm a professor at Daytona State College and did a book about a woman who became very close friends with Eleanor Roosevelt when she was 17 years old. She fixed her hair and put her clothes out and pressed her clothes, and Eleanor was so impressed with her that she had her do the research on the Dumbarton Oaks conference.

But what I wanted to say was that she would go out and work in the garden with the girls and attended some of the classes and would bake pies. And whatever they were doing, that she would be right there beside her. And when she found out that when May Walker (ph) was trying to get equal pay for black teachers and got her home fire-burned, that Eleanor Roosevelt then got her a scholarship at Bank Street College. And when she taught at the little red schoolhouse, would go over all the time to the third grade class and take her little dog, Fala, so that she kept on a very personal level and was willing, you know, to trust even a 17-year-old girl. And I find that very remarkable for someone who at the time was first lady of the United States.

SLEN: Thank you, Lynn, for that call. Allida Black, I wanted to ask you, she spent 17 years as ex- first lady. First of all, how quickly did she get out of the White House in April 1945?

BLACK: She was out within a week. I mean, it was -- Truman said that she could stay longer. She said, no, she wanted to get out. She famously said the story is over, but the story was not over, and she knew it would not be. People already lobbying her to run for the Senate, to be governor, to be secretary of labor, to be president of one of the major colleges, to run one of the major political action organizations in the country.

SLEN: What was her relationship with Harry and Bess Truman?

BLACK: Well, if I could have seen one thing in the Harry-Eleanor dance, it would have been when she told then-Vice President Truman that Roosevelt had died. Eleanor was three inches taller than Harry Truman, and with heels, she was seven inches taller than Harry Truman. And so when he is summoned back from drinking bourbon with Sam Rayburn into the White House, Eleanor stands up to meet him and she puts her hand on his shoulder and she says, "Harry, the president is dead."

And he said, "Mrs. Roosevelt, oh, I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do for you?” And she says, "That's the wrong question, because you're the one that's in trouble now."

SLEN: Did she move back to Val-Kill at that point?

BLACK: Yes, she moves back to Val-Kill to settle the family estate. Meanwhile, she keeps in constant contact with the first American delegation to the planning meeting of the U.N. in San Francisco, and by August, she is so frustrated with Truman that she begins a full court press on Truman's politics, so much so that Truman appoints her to the first American delegation to the United Nations to get her out of the country.

BRINKLEY: And she lives in New York City a lot. She stays at a place at Greenwich Village, right in the village, an apartment, and then lives out of a Sheraton Hotel there for a while, and then back to the village, back to the Sheraton, and then tried to get a house in Manhattan, but eventually retreats back to Val-Kill.

SLEN: Well, you both have talked about how she used Val-Kill as a political meeting ground. Here's a little bit of the public Eleanor Roosevelt at Val-Kill.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VICTOR PENNES: This is Val-Kill Cottage, the building that operated formally as a furniture factory. After the death of FDR, Mrs. Roosevelt turned this into her primary residence, and that's when it was actually named Val-Kill Cottage.

These are the steps in the entranceway that Mrs. Roosevelt and numerous world figures, such as John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, Winston Churchill, and many other notables would have entered the home with Mrs. Roosevelt.

The desk here is where she worked on her My Day column, some of her books, magazine articles, and tremendous correspondence with the American public. And of course, that's the desk with the misspelled nametag. The nametag was presented to Mrs. Roosevelt by a young man in Hyde Park. He crafted the item in his shop class, having no idea that he misspelled her name. She accepted it as a gift, gave her gracious thank you. It found a home on her desk and stayed for the duration.

Aside from her writing, this is the reception area, so when dinners went on here at the site, this would be where the cocktail hour was enjoyed. The dining room is an important room in the activities here at Val-Kill. The table setting here was derived from an early magazine article in the 1950s in McCall's magazine, which was titled how "How Eleanor Lives at Val-Kill."

It's set up as a buffet, and that's what Mrs. Roosevelt would prefer when she had numerous guests here at the site.

This is the living room here at Val-Kill Cottage. As we look through the room, we notice an alcove area, very significant in the story, because that's where John F. Kennedy would sit with Mrs. Roosevelt. He was seeking her support with his presidential bid, and that's because Mrs. Roosevelt was at one time the most powerful woman in America and, of course, the matriarch of the Democratic Party.

Eleanor described her varied chairs here in the cottage as being representative of her visitors at Val- Kill. What she was referring to is that they came in different shapes, sizes and colors, but when she grouped them together, they seemed to function well here.

We also see the walls decorated with many photographs that were important to Mrs. Roosevelt, such as several pictures of Louis Howe are incorporated in this room. There's always a good picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. We'll see a picture of Mrs. Roosevelt's mother-in-law, Sara Delano Roosevelt. We'll see Mrs. Roosevelt's uncle, Theodore Roosevelt, in this room.

We'll see interesting personalities, such as Amelia Earhart, who would have given Mrs. Roosevelt her first flying lesson back in 1933 over the skyline of Baltimore, Maryland.

Val-Kill was very important to Mrs. Roosevelt because it was her first and only home that she owned on her own, and this is where she would start to refer to, if feels so good to be home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SLEN: And Allida Black, while we were watching that, you mentioned something very quickly about the chairs.

BLACK: In the alcove that Victor showed us, you see the picture of Eleanor and Jack Kennedy. She switched the chairs so she would look up -- look down at him, and he would have to look up, as she -- as she argues him to take a specific stance on civil rights and labor unions, which he does take belatedly.

SLEN: You're watching C-SPAN's "First Ladies" series. Joey in Rayville, Louisiana, please go ahead with your question for Doug Brinkley and Allida Black.

JOEY (ph): Yes, I have a question for both. Where are the descendants of FDR and Eleanor nowadays? And if I may ask another one, what would Eleanor think about how the country's direction is going today?

SLEN: Well, why don't we stick with the kids instead of trying to channel Eleanor Roosevelt?

BLACK: All of the children are dead. The grandchildren are very much alive and active in the cousins committee. Some of them are involved in great public service efforts, in goodwill, in teaching in rural schools and running public health programs.

SLEN: Doug Brinkley, once Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1952, what did Eleanor Roosevelt do until the next Democratic administration?

BRINKLEY: She wasn't thrilled that Dwight Eisenhower was president of the United States. She was a Democrat, a liberal Democrat, an Adlai Stevenson Democrat. We were talking about Truman a little bit ago, but she represented the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Truman was more of the center, center even right in some ways, and so she was very disappointed Stevenson lost in '52. She got involved with the Stevenson campaign in '60. She was for him -- and '56, all three times. Even against Kennedy, she loved Adlai Stevenson.

But she -- we've probably underplayed this so far. We were talking about the death of FDR. His great legacy is the United Nations. And that's what Franklin Roosevelt, you know, was the -- kind of what his legacy was going to be. And Eleanor Roosevelt started working very closely with the U.N. and the postwar era, most famously authoring the United States Declaration of Human Rights. There's no figure more synonymous with human rights than Eleanor Roosevelt.

SLEN: And here she is at the U.N. talking about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: We stand today at the threshold of a great event, both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind. This universal declaration of human rights may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere. We hope it's proclamation by the General Assembly will be an event comparable to the proclamation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man by the French people in 1789, the adoption of the Bill of Rights by the people of the United States, and the adoption of comparable declarations at different times in other countries.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SLEN: And that was Eleanor Roosevelt in 1948. Allida Black?

BLACK: Eleanor was -- we would not have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights without Eleanor Roosevelt. She was not only chair of the Human Rights Commission, she was chair of the drafting commission. Now, I want to ask your viewers to imagine one thing. You have 18 people sitting around a table. You don't agree on God. You don't agree on whether there's a God. You don't agree on private property or whether private property exists, what marriage is, what labor is, what citizenship is, what the purpose of government is, and you have the governments constantly changing who the negotiators are in those 18 seats.

And you have a small window in which to come up with a vision that will stand up in opposition to the horrors of the Holocaust, the atomic bomb, and the fear that another world war may start in 10 years. Without Eleanor Roosevelt's negotiating skills, none of those people would have stayed at the table. Everybody would have dissolved into conflict and there would have been a great bloc opposing the declaration, rather than having the declaration passed unanimously. It took 300 meetings of more than 3,000 hours.

BRINKLEY: I just want to say one thing. It's interesting, also -- you said it marvelously -- but she also kind of -- the human declaration of human rights kind of outed the Soviet Union for not caring about -- the Soviet bloc countries didn't want anything to do with human rights. They didn't -- you know, and so in her own way, she was a Cold Warrior, in a sense, by exposing the Soviet Union for what they were, and also she was a great friend of Israel. And, you know, she's still beloved there today and had a great sympathy for the plight of the Jewish people, particularly after all the footage of the Holocaust came in.

SLEN: Someone who tweets is Sheldon Cooper. He's been watching the entire series. We've gotten several tweets from him, but he tweets in tonight, how did the nation react when Eleanor passed away November 7, 1962?

BRINKLEY: Oh, deep and incredible mourning. All the ex-presidents, President Kennedy came to the funeral, and Dwight Eisenhower came, and Harry Truman came, and everybody else you can think of. It was -- it's a little village there, the town of Hyde Park, and all the world kind of came to be there. She had become beloved and as a champion of the underdog and the underclass.

I mean, if there's anybody who should have won a Nobel Peace Prize who didn't, it was Eleanor Roosevelt for her work with human rights, because she had now an international following and world leaders descended to pay homage to her.

SLEN: Allida Black, did she have any relationship with Lou Hoover?

BLACK: Well, they met. They were not -- they certainly weren't friends. They didn't hang out together. They were cordial.

SLEN: But we have this picture of Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Truman, and Edith Roosevelt all standing together. What's the context of that picture? Are you familiar with that one?

BLACK: I've seen it, but I can't tell you what it was about. It's been labeled as being so many different events that whatever I say is going to be wrong.

SLEN: Nancy is in Edgewood, New Mexico. Nancy, please go ahead with your question.

NANCY (ph): Yeah, I don't have a question. I just wanted to make a point that my father had corresponded with Mrs. Roosevelt based on her My Day column, and she was very impressed with him, and she then invited our entire family -- I was 11 years old -- to come to her townhouse in Manhattan on Palm Sunday, and we had pheasant under glass. She insisted that we had to eat the pheasant with our fingers, because it was the only way to do it.

SLEN: Nancy, what year was this?

NANCY (ph): 1953.

SLEN: Thank you.

NANCY (ph): And that summer, she had us come up to Hyde Park and spend a weekend there with her grandkids, and there was a game room on the property where my father and I had to sleep and my mother slept in the house with Eleanor with my 2-year-old sister. From there, I went -- when I went off to college, Eleanor invited my roommate and I to come across the Hudson River and spend election eve with her in 1960, and she had numerous guests there while they were waiting to see whether Kennedy would get elected or not.

SLEN: And, Nancy, this was all because your father corresponded with her about My Day?

NANCY (ph): Yes.

SLEN: And no political connections on your part or anything?

NANCY (ph): Nope.

BLACK: Happened all the time.

BRINKLEY: Yeah, it doesn't surprise either of us.

SLEN: Happened all the time?

BLACK: All the time. All the time. All the time.

SLEN: Well, Bob in Brighton, Michigan, do you have an Eleanor Roosevelt story you want to share with us, as well?

BOB (ph): Yes, my cousin, Gertrude Wood, was in Moultrie, Georgia, with the DAR, and she had invited Eleanor Roosevelt to come down and talk to the women farmers in the area of Moultrie, Georgia. And they didn't expect that she would accept it, but she did accept it, and she came down, and when she was talking, instead of going up on the stage where they had a special seat for her, she just came down to the front row and sat between two African-American women farmers. And the DAR didn't know what to do about that.

BRINKLEY: Great story.

SLEN: Thank you for sharing that story, as well. Doug Brinkley, you mentioned that you're writing a new book on FDR.

BRINKLEY: I am.

SLEN: What's the focus?

BRINKLEY: It's called "Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Renewal of America," and I'm looking at his relationship -- it's really an environmental history of the conservation history of the 1930s and '40s, but how he saved -- worked to save the eastern forests, but also created and saved places like the Okefenokee, the Everglades. You know, he would tour out to Yellowstone, and the Olympic National Park is one of his -- Joshua Tree, the Channel Islands, on and on.

But more significantly, his love of birding. He created these bird flyways and created our migratory waterfowl and really founded U.S. Fish and Wildlife and was the -- spearheaded the animal protection, wildlife protection movement, Patuxent, here where Rachel Carson worked even and was an FDR idea.

He was intensely involved in soil conservation and the land and how to rehabilitate land, not just save wilderness, but how you take old burned-out properties and use modern agronomist journals and almanacs and make America better.

SLEN: Allida Black, did Eleanor Roosevelt ever function as what we would consider to be a traditional first lady?

BLACK: Sure. I mean, she entertained in the White House. She stood in receiving lines. She had the White House Easter egg. You had parties. You had all kinds of private dinner parties where Eleanor would bring people in that she thought the president should meet or -- you know, she served those functions quite well.

SLEN: Well, we have a final tweet, and this is -- this series is called "Influence and Image.” Gary asks, what would Eleanor describe as her most important contribution to society?

BLACK: Well, I think that she would say it was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But I would say something else. And I've worked on this woman for 30 years. I've been to 263 archives in 50 states and nine nations.

She has seen everything that is horrible to see about democracy and slaughter and violence and poverty and discrimination. And she never gave up. She kept going when people tried to kill her, when they disparaged her husband, when they mocked her children, and when it hit her income. And she believed in democracy and the promise of America and the promise of human rights so profoundly that she risked everything she had to try to make us get there. And I think that showed undaunting and fierce courage.

SLEN: Doug Brinkley?

BRINKLEY: That and civil rights. I mean, we had a wonderful call a minute ago of her going down to Georgia and then sitting next to African-Americans in that kind of setting. And how backwards we were on race relations in America in the '30s and '40s. And it was her voice on a national level that started bursting through. She has a place of honor in the civil rights movement, and she's in the same pantheon as Martin Luther King and the like for her caring about equality.

SLEN: And, finally, on our website, cspan.org/firstladies, we have a companion book available for this series. And our friend, Allida Black, worked very hard on that book. And it's available to you, as well, at cost. We're not making any money off it. But if you'd like to see it, it profiles all the first ladies up through Michelle Obama, and Allida Black worked on that.

We'd like to thank our partners in this series, the White House Historical Association, for their work with us in getting everything together for our programs. Next week, it's Bess Truman. But we're going to leave you this week with a little bit of Eleanor Roosevelt from 1953 talking about what it means in her view to be a liberal. We thank Doug Brinkley and Allida Black.

BLACK: Thank you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL DOWNS: Well, Mrs. Roosevelt, this is -- you have become known as the leader of what is loosely called the liberal movement in this country, or what used to be called the liberal movement in this country, and some people call them do-gooders and the rest of it. Could you define a liberal for us? I mean, in your own words.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: It's very hard to put in a few words what a liberal is, but I would feel that a liberal was a person who kept an open mind, was willing to meet new questions with new solutions, and felt that you could move forward. You didn't have to always look backwards and be afraid of moving forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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