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A review by kevin_shepherd
The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt by Eleanor Roosevelt
5.0
“My Grandfather Hall’s great interest was in the study of theology, and in his library were a number of books dealing with religion. Most of them were of little interest to me as a child but the Bible, illustrated by Dore, occupied many hours and gave me many nightmares.”
The more I read about Eleanor Roosevelt the more impressed I become—not because of what she accomplished courtesy of her affluent upbringing and upper crust advantages, but what she accomplished in spite of all those things.
A Mind of Her Own
For me, this book became exceptional in its second half. Sure Eleanor’s childhood and coming of age was interesting, but only in how it chronicled her evolution. For me this remarkable woman really came into her own after she, as America’s First Lady, came to realize that she was much more than just a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party and its mapped-out agendas. She supported the causes of her own choosing even when, quite often, those causes were extremely unpopular with certain southern legislators.
On Racism and Social Justice
“I had been hesitant about going anywhere in the south because my conviction that the colored people should have full civil rights had, over the years, aroused a good deal of feeling there. This hostility found an outlet particularly in election years…”
Eleanor Roosevelt pushed for the anti-lynching law and the elimination of the poll tax. She was attacked in the press for attending a meeting of the WPA workers in Indiana and was later fervently opposed in her position as a United Nations Delegate by none other than Mississippi Senator Theodore Gilmore Bilbo—himself a demagogue white supremest and a card carrying member of the KKK (see his published pro-segregation work, Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization, 1947).
When JFK’s Catholicism Became Fodder for His Political Opponents…
“One feature of the campaign that dismayed and shamed me was the injection of the religious issue . . . Nothing quite so vicious happened during the 1960 campaign, but the ugly feature was that it should arise at all. The question seems to me fairly simple; the constitution gives us all religious freedom and we are not to be questioned about our religious beliefs . . . we have a constitution which expressly provides for the separation of church and state.”
On Theocracy
“It is, I am afraid, true that frequently various religious groups endeavor to exert pressures and control over different legislative and educational fields. It is the job of all of us to be alert for such infringement of our prerogatives and prevent any such attempts from being successful. Like all our freedoms, this freedom from religious group pressure must be constantly defended [emphasis mine].” -Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, 1961
She deserves 5 stars for that quote alone.
The more I read about Eleanor Roosevelt the more impressed I become—not because of what she accomplished courtesy of her affluent upbringing and upper crust advantages, but what she accomplished in spite of all those things.
A Mind of Her Own
For me, this book became exceptional in its second half. Sure Eleanor’s childhood and coming of age was interesting, but only in how it chronicled her evolution. For me this remarkable woman really came into her own after she, as America’s First Lady, came to realize that she was much more than just a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party and its mapped-out agendas. She supported the causes of her own choosing even when, quite often, those causes were extremely unpopular with certain southern legislators.
On Racism and Social Justice
“I had been hesitant about going anywhere in the south because my conviction that the colored people should have full civil rights had, over the years, aroused a good deal of feeling there. This hostility found an outlet particularly in election years…”
Eleanor Roosevelt pushed for the anti-lynching law and the elimination of the poll tax. She was attacked in the press for attending a meeting of the WPA workers in Indiana and was later fervently opposed in her position as a United Nations Delegate by none other than Mississippi Senator Theodore Gilmore Bilbo—himself a demagogue white supremest and a card carrying member of the KKK (see his published pro-segregation work, Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization, 1947).
When JFK’s Catholicism Became Fodder for His Political Opponents…
“One feature of the campaign that dismayed and shamed me was the injection of the religious issue . . . Nothing quite so vicious happened during the 1960 campaign, but the ugly feature was that it should arise at all. The question seems to me fairly simple; the constitution gives us all religious freedom and we are not to be questioned about our religious beliefs . . . we have a constitution which expressly provides for the separation of church and state.”
On Theocracy
“It is, I am afraid, true that frequently various religious groups endeavor to exert pressures and control over different legislative and educational fields. It is the job of all of us to be alert for such infringement of our prerogatives and prevent any such attempts from being successful. Like all our freedoms, this freedom from religious group pressure must be constantly defended [emphasis mine].” -Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, 1961
She deserves 5 stars for that quote alone.