Individuals had as dramatic effect on 20th century history both in this country and abroad than mrs roosevelt and we were proud to partner with the Franklin Roosevelt president ial library and the Concord Museum on this evenings discussion. No scholar knows more about our subject tonight and has spent more time examining her papers, then elita black the editor emeritus of the Eleanor Roosevelt papers project and 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 mrs. Roosevelt and to those of you who this may be your first introduction that will promise to try not to assume too much information, and i also hope to fill in some of the blanks here and there with direct quotes from the autography which is superbly written. David is a artist who paints with words and i wanted to share a few of his turns of phrase this evening here and there is part of my questions and lastly weve selected a few photos. From our colleagues at the Franklin Roosevelt president ial library in museum, but since our conversation is going to be organic forgive us. If as we go through some of those images they dont always immediately match the moment to which were talking but youll see the span of Eleanor Roosevelts life before you so david, lets its a cradle the grade biography. Lets begin talking about her childhood. I think well see a few images you quote her in the book is saying quote. I was brought up in a rather peculiar way and just in terms of your fun in terms of phrases. I thought i would you describe her father is someone who lived in his brother kenny roosevelt shadow and quote took a connoisseurs pleasure in victimized unfulfillment and then eleanor became her fathers caregiver and quote showed herself uncannily gifted at responding to each fresh hurt. So anyway, tell us a little bit about a briefly as you can about her childhood, especially a relationship to her mother and her father. Or the the childhood we know that eleanor lived through is the childhood from hell, that would be in a victorian novel or in a venture story about a a lost girl the girl, you know, the girl the limber lost eleanor was a oddly adult child because her parents were oddly childlike adults and one of the the connoisseur of unfulfillment notion in Eliot Roosevelt is really that not just that hes failing to live up to his Brother Theodore roosevelt, but they both had a father who was a great philanthropist known as great heart to the family. He would be pretty hard to live up to by anybody but elliot was falling down very quickly having no real purpose in life. There was no place for him. He wasnt 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 selfmedication problems, but those turned into alcoholism quickly when he married ana rebecca hall. It was a pretty it was a last ditch effort to get himself, right . And he was determined when he married her to to do right but very quickly they both discovered. Both of eleanors parents discovered that they werent very good at being parents and partly they didnt know anything about it and they also were very concerned in their both in their individual ways anna with she the whole family her family once powerful and and rich in new york had fallen down. They were marginalized by the great new fortunes. She wanted to be a kind of intermediary between the asters and between the old knickerbocker families and she was in some ways actually a kind of original model of a diplomat. She was a society lady who was bringing together the the old 400 with the new 4000 and she was a smart but but absolutely dysfunctional mother and she put eleanor under a a severe pressure of never living up to her expectations her father on the other hand. Eleanors father a daughter. However, he was falling down drunk almost from her early days. She never stopped trying to impress and fulfill his wishes for her as a as a horse woman as a as a hunter as a as a woman who was in of herself. I think he gave her a sense of roosevelt confidence, but he himself that he himself was was losing fast it all fell apart very early in her life. She lost in 19 months her mother did diphtheria an older brother an older younger brother and then her father to alcoholism. She will later lets and off and off against the story of her of her life isnt working. So lets turn to happier Times Leading them we have to do this so quickly. This is kind of chrysalis moment where she becomes kind of perhaps she attends the allens wood school and london and comes under the influence of headmistress there maurice who david quote welcomed each new pupil with the question. Why was your mind given to you . But to think things out for yourself . Hello more about her time at talent allenswood school was outside of london. Okay, david thats gonna be for elena. Im sorry. Thats okay. Wonderful. Sorry. Um, if theres one person in her life that i wish i could have met. It would be maurice rivest. She was a force of nature. A bolshevik a selfproclaimed devotionic that eleanor described as a bolshevik. But she challenged eleanor to do one thing that as an historian and as a teacher, ive tried to emulate and which i think was the defining thing that eleanor learned in her life. And that is you can never know what you think. And so you can argue the opinion of your fiercest critic with equal integrity. When eleanor went to allenwood she was delighted to be out a home that she found lonely and scary as our great friend blanche cook notes. She had locked put on the inside of her bedroom doors. We know that her uncles also had alcoholism problems and love to take pot shots out out of the family home, and she only really felt safe when she crawled up in a cherry tree. So alans wood to her was the place where she could be eleanor and she blossom there in a way that was truly remarkable. I mean 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 shes finally seeing that shes got a brain that she is free to move then she can have friends in her own right and mademoiselle srivast 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 one night. You know, i finally learned that i have a brain i have argued the boer war with magnel and i have one each time, you know, so, how does this help eleanor become Eleanor Eleanor doesnt want to go home. I mean she is elated to be an alex wood. And so she asked to stay during the summers. And man was health says to her basically, of course, you can stay but now 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. She must volunteer in settlement communities. You must learn to see the cities in all of their complexity and wholeness and eleanor revels. I mean shes there so much to cut the story short stories story short is that she wants to stay and teach there she wants to teach history in civics and English Literature alans wood. And teddy becomes president. Shes got to go home and make her debut, which she does not want to do. The man was el says to her. Of course. She must go home. You are roosevelt. But she writes eleanor a letter that eleanor carries with her basically. For the next 50 years engine which is why that was else who best picture is in eleanors bedroom in every residence that she has and the base the letter basically says, of course she must go home and be a roosevelt, you know, your uncles in the white house and you have family responsibilities, but also remember first and foremost. You are my eleanor. And you can make your own way in this world. David yo, this lovely image when shes leaving new york. Shes with her aunt her aunt wants theyre in a ship. They arent wants to go to her birth. So eleanor isnt able to see the statue of liberty when they leave new york harbor and you have a lovely quote Eleanor Roosevelt was soon to discover more of herself than she had ever known under the torch of a mighty french woman with radical visions of liberty and justice. So maybe you say a word too about marie suvest and then finish elitist point and bring her back to the United States and what happens when she comes back. I think elite i really did it beautifully did the whole of mary service. I would just add that. I think marie opened up an ellen 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 he went must think for yourself that you must figure out how to argue even a contrapuntal point of view all absolutely true. I think she also theres a scene on a train where they are going on one of the holidays where eleanor cant go home and and maurice suddenly realizes that her great friend and novelist is living in that town decides on the spur or has decided that theyre gonna get off the train but ellen does know this she thinks that their bags are booked through to you know to to stations down and suddenly maurice has things going out the window. Shes were off the train owners sense of spontaneity, which was so crushed by the expectations of of edwardian womanhood was suddenly opened up and i think that going boom she took home to america an odd thing that i noticed in her settlement work, which is eleanor was so exposed by madam suvez marie survest to italy to see italy with her own eyes. She was sent out by madam suvest into florence into towns walking the streets alone. This was unheard of to be walking the streets alone at the age of 19 that 18 19 eleanor saw things with her own eyes experiencing. She one point was even living in the they were living in the home of an artist that was unheard of she was talking with with the artist about his representation of the christ figure. She was she was doing analysis. She was doing Critical Thinking she was thinking when she got back to the United States one of the bonuses of being her age doing what she was doing, which was this horrible process of coming out the debut of a young woman into society. Fortunately the Junior League just then had begun its own participation in the settlement movement. This is a movement that had begun in england through chicago through the hull house through jane addams coming to new york in which the idea is essentially you make yourself a friend of the community you are you live in the community. It was essentially college kids really eleanor and the Junior League girls were pretty advanced. These were College Students who were who were embedding themselves in communities and in eleanors case it was down to rivington street down to Lower East Side manhattan twice a week on the subway an unheard of liberty and unheard of it scary. It was scary. It was bold and one of the things she noticed as she i as as i so 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 was get them away from their italian mothers. Enough to listen to another voice to an american voice italian mothers were incredibly protective. She knew this from from italy they were incredibly protective of their young daughters. Especially eleanor walked children home. She brought Franklin Young franklin cousin Franklin Roosevelt down to the Lower East Side to see what it looked like when you walked somebody back to their door back into their into their tenement building what the conditions there were how and Franklin Roosevelt had never seen like it. How could people live like this . He said to her. She was absolutely crucial to his understanding that there was another world. This wasnt just club, you know philanthropy or club, you know activity. This was real stuff. Th