Former Research Professor of history and International Affairs at george, washington university. Professor black is recognized as a leading expert on Eleanor Roosevelt and the universal declaration of human rights and is ridden and edited to 10 books as well as a variety of articles on women politics in human rights policy. She has also curated exhibits on human rights for president ial libraries and other renowned repositories and has received awards from three universities for her commitment to students and her teaching she currently also serves as a Senior Advisor to former secretary of state Hillary Rodham clinton. The spark for this evenings forum is a new biography of David Nicholas titled simply eleanor, which is now out in paperback. This is the perfect biography for our times rights walter isaacson, the story of a determined woman who willed herself to become the voice for the voiceless a fighter for freedom and a tribute to the nobility of americas true values this comprehensive biography of Eleanor Roosevelt filled with new information portrays her in all of her glorious complexity. Its a wonderful read with valuable lessons about Leadership Partnership and love David Nicholas is the bestselling author of schultz and peanuts and nc wyeth which won the ambassador book award for biography since we are partnering with the concord museum. Let me know that this is a bit of a homecoming of sort as david is a proud graduate of Concord Academy and its traverse the shores of walden pond in the trails in which british regulars marched on april 19th 17. A5 it is a pleasure to welcome tonights moderator back to the National Archives. Tom putnam is the former director of the Kennedy Library and served as acting director of the office of president ial libraries before he chose to abandon the 20th century having been wooed by the siren song of concords reformers transcendentalists and revolutionaries. Hes a close friend and we are pleased that he is spearheaded this partnership with the National Archives and the fdr library. As you may know the National Archives administers the network of president ial libraries from Herbert Hoover to donald j. Trump Franklin D Roosevelt library was our first we now have 15 libraries in total more than 660 million pages of textual records. 640,000 museum objects. Electric express my appreciation to our colleagues at fdr and throughout the president ial Library System who worked tirelessly to provide access to the documents that define us as a people. I was pleased that in david. Miklass acknowledgment. He calls out and i quote the Roosevelt Library supervisory archivist Christian Carter and her superb Team IncludingMatthew Hanson sarah and evans and patrick faye. He notes that in the stacks at hyde park mrs. Roosevelts papers. Rise 889 cubic feet more than a million documents their content traversing. No fewer than nine ages of World History from the victorian age to the space age. Let me close with these words from the new biography. Luckily Eleanor Roosevelt believed in protecting and guaranteeing individual freedom. Nothing could have forged a Greater Trust with her future biographers scholars and historians then the counterintuitive measure of making her personal and professional papers available for all to study. I thank you all for joining us this evening as we explore the life and legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt with historian or leader black and biographer David Nicholas. And im so pleased to be sharing this virtual space with an old friend alita and a new acquaintance david who until this moment. I had only know through written words of first via our recent emails and more importantly this wonderful new biography, which i really enjoyed reading over the past few days. I should note that. Its just out in paperback and truly no gift would better say merry christmas. Happy hanukkah kwanza or new year to your loved ones. Then this wonderful new biography. And meeting it. I realized ive actually organized a number of forums an attended them with alita and others on mrs. Roosevelt, but i had never had the time to read a cradle to grave biography. So i thank david for that opportunity and i thought for the next 60 minutes. We try to do the same which of course means were going to have to skip over large swath of her life and parts of the book including including some of the most really interesting personal stories, which i feel we couldnt do justice to in this short conversation, but i hope that it peaks your interest and leave you wanting more so youll go out and buy the book. Theres also possibility that our discussion will be aired on seat and im hoping that we will appeal to both those of you who know a lot about theres also theres also the possibility that our special be aired on cspan and for those people who know a lot about mrs. Rugs roosevelt and for those of you who this may be your first introduction. We will pry china to assume too much of information. And i hope to fill in some of the blanks here and there with books from the biography which is superbly written. David is an artist who paints with words and i wanted to share a few of his turns of phrase here and there is part of my questions. And weve selected a few photos from our colleagues at the Franklin Roosevelt president ial library museum. But since that conversation is going to be organic, forgive us as we go through some of those images if they dont immediately match the moment in which we are talking. There is a span of roosevelts life. So it is a cradle to grave biography talking about her childhood. I think we will see a few images. You quote are in the book as saying quote, i was brought up in a rather peculiar way. And just in terms of your own turns of phrase, i thought it would. You describe her father as someone who lived, and his brothers Teddy Roosevelts shadow and quote, took a pleasure in victimized under filament. And eleanor became her fathers caregiver and quote, showed yourself uncannily gifted that responding to each. And so tell us a little bit briefly if you can about her childhood and relationship with her mother and her father. Well the childhood that we known its a shouted from that would be in a victorian novel or adventure story about a lost girl. Eleanor was an oddly adult child because her parents were oddly childlike adults. The economists who are of unfulfilled notion in teddy rods roosevelt is not just that he was trying to live up to his brother, but they both had a father who is a great philanthropist. He would be hard to live up to for anybody but elliott was falling down very quickly having no real purpose in life. There was no place for him. He was in finding a way to prove himself. He didnt go into politics, there was no war. He was a very uncertain guy. I personally think he was suffering from all kinds of self medication problems. But those turned into alcoholism quickly. When he married anna rebecca hole. It was a lastditch effort to get himself right and he was determined when he married her to do right by very quickly they both discovered, both of eleanors parents discovered that they werent very good parents. Partly because i dont know anything about it, and they were also very concerned in their individual ways, anna. The whole family, once powerful and rich in new york, had fallen down. They were marginalized by. She wanted to be an intermediary between the asker s in the old family. So she was kind of the original model of a diplomat. She was a society lady who is bringing together the old 400 with the new 4000. And she was smart but absolutely dysfunctional mother. And she put eleanor under a severe pressure of never living up to her expectations. Her father on the other hand, eleanors father, adored her. However he was falling down drunk almost from her earlier earliest days. She never stopped trying to impress and fulfill his wishes for her as a horse woman, as a hunter, as a woman who was in charge of herself. I think he gave her sense of roosevelt confidence, but that he himself was just losing fast. It all fell apart very early in her life. She lost in 19 months for mother to diphtheria, her older brother, and older younger brother and then her father toggleism. And off begins story of her life. So lets turn to happier time. Again we have to do this so quickly. This is kind of this moment where she becomes kind of it perhaps, she attends the allen wood school in london and comes under the influence of the headmistress their murray sues that. Who david quotes, out welcomed eves new pupil with a question, what was your mind given to you but to think out for yourself. Tell us more about her time there. Allen would schools outside of london. Oh im sorry thats a question for. Thats okay. If there is one person in her life that i wish i could have meant it would be maries true vests. She was a force of nature, a bolsheviks, a self proclaimed bought a book that eleanor decree scribe visible chauvin. But she challenged eleanor to do one thing, then as a historian and as a teacher, i have tried to emulate which i think is the defining thing that eleanor learned in her life. And that is you can never know what you think until you can argue the opinion of your fiercest predict with equal integrity. When eleanor went to islands would, she was delighted to be out of a home that she found lonely and scary, as our great friend blanche cooking notes, she had locks but on the inside of her bedroom doors. We know that her uncles also had alcoholism problems and left to take potshots out at the family home. And she only really felt safe when she called up any cherry tree. So allens went to her with the place where she could be eleanor. And she blossomed there in a way that was truly remarkable. She became the most popular girl in the school. She was elected captain of the field hockey team. And eleanor says the happiest day of my life was when i was elected captain of that team. So she is finally seeing that she has got a brain, that she is free to move, that she can have friends in her own right. And mademoiselle sure vest sees in eleanor this spark of greatness, if you will. She moves eleanor to her dining room table, they have dinner together every night, they argue the great issues of the war and the world. They argue the boer war, and eleanor writes a friend when night, you know i finally learned that i have a brain. I have argued the boer war with mademoiselle and i have one each time. So how does this help eleanor become eleanor . Eleanor doesnt want to go home. She is elated to be at allens would. And so she asks to stay during the summers. And mademoiselle says to her basically, of course you can stay, but you must learn to be independent. You must learn to live on a budget, you must learn to make your own reservations, you must learn to speak the language of the communities that you visit, and most of all, you must remember that you are a guest in these communities. So, while you go to the opera, and the museums, and the stores, and the fine restaurants, you have a duty. You must volunteer in hospitals, you must volunteer in settlement communities, you must learn to see the cities in all that of their complexity and told us. And eleanor revels. She is there so much, to get the short story short, she wants to stay and teach their. She wants to teach history and civics and English Literature at allens were. Teddy becomes president , she has got to go home and make her debut which she does not to do. Mademoiselle says to her, of course she must go home, you ari roosevelt. But she writes eleanor a letter that eleanor carries with her. Basically for the next 50 years. Which is why mademoiselle should best picture is in eleanors bedroom in every residence that she has. And the letter basically says, of course you must go home and be a roosevelt. Your uncle is in the white house and your family responsibilities. But also remember, first and foremost, you are milan where. And you can make your own way in this world. David you have this lovely image of when she is living leaving new york she is with her aunt. The aunt wants to go to her so eleanor isnt able to see the statue of liberty when they leave new york harbor and you have that lovely quote. Eleanor roosevelt was seem to discover more of herself from erratic cool frenchwoman images of freedom. Can you say more about sylvester and then bring her back to the United States which would happens when you comes back . I think a leader really just did it beautifully. The whole memory so vast, i would just add that i think marie opened up a part of eleanor that women. We have to remember womens education at the time was thought to be potentially hazardous to womens health. The idea that you must think for yourself, that you must figure out how to argue, even a continental point of view. All absolutely true. I think she also, there is a scene on a train when they are going on one of the holidays where eleanor cant go home, and marie serviced suddenly realizes that her great friend, a novelist, is living in that town. Despite decides on the spur or has incited that they are going to get off the train. But eleanor doesnt know. This she thinks that their bags are booked through to two stations down. And suddenly millie murrays arrest has things going out the window. She says were off the train. Eleanor sense of spontaneity, which was so crushed by the expectations of edward e. And women who had suddenly opened up. And i think that going home, she took him to america and aunt thing that i noticed in her settlement work which is, eleanor was so exposed by madam so vest to italy, to seeing italy with their own eyes. She was sent out by her into towns walking the streets alone. This was unheard of to be walking the streets alone at the age of 19 1819. Eleanor saw things with their own eyes, experience things at one point there living in the home of an artist. That was unheard of. She was talking with the artist about his representation of the christ figure. She was doing analysis, critical, thinking she was thinking herself. When she got back to the United States, one of the bonuses of being her age, doing which she was doing which was this horrible process of coming out the debut of a young woman it is society. Fortunately the Junior League just that had begun its own participation in the settlement movement. This is a movement that had become in england through chicago, through the whole house, there jane adams, coming to new york in which the idea is essentially make yourself a friend of the community. You live in the community. It was essentially college kids, really. Eleanor in the Junior League girls were pretty advanced. These were college kids who are embedding themselves in communities, in eleanors case it was down to livingston street, down to Lower East Side manhattan twice a week sylvest on the subway. And unheard of liberty. It was scary, it was bold and one of the things that she noticed as i saw it in her own writing, was that as she taught young italian children how to move in calisthenics class, how to be american citizens, she knew that what she had to do is get them away from their italian mothers long enough to listen to another voice, to an american voice. Italian mothers were incredibly protective. She knew this from italy, they were incredibly protective of their young daughters, especially. Eleanor watch children home, she brought young cousin Franklin Roosevelt down to the Lower East Side to see what it looked like when you watch somebody back to their door, back into their tenement building, whats the conditions there were. Franklin roosevelt had never seen anything like, it how people lived like this he said to her . She was absolutely crucial to his understanding that there was another world. This wasnt just Club Philanthropy or club activity. This was real stuff, this was the real thing. And she took to it in a way that you dont see among the others in her group in her peer group at the time. But she had to do these other things. This however was her first glimpse of whats multiracial pluralist democracy look like in a world where only corrupt politicians of tammy hall and others like it were in charge. Atlanta, explain a little in congruity for me again. In the biography, that she wasnt a supporter of womens suffrage. We are doing this in connection with an exhibit that we have up on the 19th amendment. Explain what was going on there. Well i would like to piggyback on what david side as a segue to answer that, if i could, tom. One of the things that eleanor learn in the settlement world is to not act like her friends who thought that if they put a picture on the wall life would be better. And the reason that she thought this was that she becomes involved with immigrant union organizers. And they take her under their wing, both covertly during this time, and overtly later. To really show her the horrors of the tribal short wait factory fire, the horrors of the tenants where theyre feces on stairwells, where you have just up over buckets of urine in order to enter peoples rooms. And whos rotting food and human waste were thrown outside their windows on the street. And so she sees disease, she sees famine, she sees women literally chained to sewing machines. And so her whole focus is on protective worker legislation. And so, her energy will begin in ribbing tons street, for her lifelong commitment to the living wage. Her life and commitment to what we will call the fair labor standards act. Her lifelong commitment to welcoming immigrants and ways that value their own cultures, while trying to expose them to democracy. Against that backdrop, suffrage is not a priority. Her priority is sanitation. Her priority is a livi