if you're interested in eleanor roosevelt, read the trilogy on eleanor roosevelt. you can dive into specific subjects because there's such a large amount of history to cover here. really from the early 1920s all the way through 1962. >> okay. i want to talk a little bit about relationships. it's been said that truman didn't know anything about the manhattan project until he took over. so before we jump into that, what was fdr's relationship with hoover? because we did have the hoover presidential library on earlier in our series. and then what about -- is the fact that truman didn't know about the project, is that a reflection of their relationship? can you talk about his relationships there? >> sure. so he had a very bad relationship with hoover. and in the period -- back then, remember, he was inaugurated on march 4th but elected in early november. there was a long period in which the country was experiencing zero economic crisis. 25% unemployment. millions of people living on the street homeless, farms closing, banks being foreclosing, homes being foreclosed on

it's not follow and eleanor roosevelt's steps or in lady bird johnson steps. but to be themselves i'll still add one thing to that. that's actually sort of funny, but if you think about it at the time it would could have been considered insulting but this was in 2000 and you know, george bush was the just the election was finally decided and one of the early interviews that laura bush gave she was asked by reporter which shall remain nameless. are you going to be more like hillary clinton or barbara bush and as if she couldn't be herself and and her response was very astute. she said well, i know laura bush pretty well. so i'm going to be her. and it just again, you know, they they don't they want to be authentic and what they do and they are conscious of those that have come before them, of course, but this is their opportunity now to to make a difference. very iconic and early quote in in their tenure that was terrific. so you mentioned along the way concerns about their their well-being as they start to step out on issues. so we've had a couple of questions

i mean before then it was just sort of even eleanor roosevelt people worked for her. she had secretaries and all but it wasn't listed as an official government employee. our question from geraldine from connecticut. were you surprised about anything in your research for this book? oh, yes, there were surprises all the time in what can i think of as an example? you're reading along and you find something that probably can't go into the book but you it surprises you. what can i say? what's the most surprising thing? i was surprised that how influential. ladybird was you know in her case she left a very full record. she left a diary that her printed diaries something like 800 pages white house diary. she was the first one by the way to do that. i shouldn't say that. she was the first modern first lady to do that helen taft had written a book about the white house and even julia grant back in the in the 1870s had written a book about being first lady, but it was not published for a hundred years. so after lady bird johnson every first lady except pat nixon who had her dau

so that i'm not gonna turn it over to nancy to discuss eleanor roosevelt.done to make hello, i'm pleased to be here today. i would like to thank patrick man, the head of the foundation, and mr. mcdonald, senior director for special events for all they have done to make this program possible. and the support of the national archives foundation. i would also like to thank the octave archivist of the united states, whose agencies polls, records, have provided papers from loop every hoover to michelle obama in the presidential -- today, i am very pleased to be talking to very special first ladies, eleanor roosevelt and ladybird johnson. and the incredibly effective advances that they tried to make for civil rights issues in spite of the fact that they both encountered death threats. eleanor roosevelt consistently fought racial discrimination and prejudice, and in fact was a strong advocate then her husband. just a few examples of what she did included joining and addressing the 1936 annual and a acp, national urban league conferences. advocating for lynching le

>> i would have to say eleanor roosevelt. the reason that i, she experimented with so many things. the investigations, the traveling abroad. taking a stand opposed to her husband. i would think that she's most ahead of her time and we haven't really match that sense. >> from eugene yeah in arizona, she asks has any first lady actually really relished the job? >> oh dear, a lot of them heated it. a lot of them hated it. that's the first thing that comes to mind. jane peers you know prayed her husband would lose. even eleanor roosevelt didn't love it at all. i mean she was extremely unhappy to move into the white house. so who was happiest about it? who relished, i can think of a single warned, many of them say when they leave what they missed. they missed the perks of the white house, and the opportunity to meet people and to be part of what's going on in the world. so many of them talk about missing when they leave, but i can't, oh yes. >> julia grant like to be first lady. >> julia grant and helen taft. well intact, everyone

she's my favorite first lady eleanor roosevelt, but i talk about eleanor roosevelt very often and she is a first lady that many people know a lot about so when patrick asked me to do this presentation, we thought about maybe talking about first ladies who aren't as well known as eleanor roosevelt and i would start to complicate these four categories. and begin to discuss how it's really not terribly historically accurate to place any one first lady in one category the celebrity the controversial the reluctant or the political that most first ladies were a combination of several of these characteristics. so i want to look specifically at three first ladies who lived in very different periods in us history and talk about the quality of their years as first lady and discuss ways in which they crossed these categorical boundaries. so the first of these first ladies is an early republic first lady that i would like to talk about a little bit and that's darling madison here. she is in a photograph taken very late in her life. she's one of our first first ladies to be photographed although s

was eleanor roosevelt because she said eventually eleanor roosevelt intervened and they were able to have their band but martha used the gi bill when she got out of the army to get her phd she taught at howard. she was a, you know a senior fellow at howard and as well as various schools here on the east coast. she's the author of four books just an extraordinary woman and i can i can see her she's passed away now, but i can see her when when we after we had dedicated and had programs here walking up from the from the metro and i would always say dr. putney. let me come get you no i can walk she'd say but her little crooked legs walking up to be part of the ceremonies here at the women's memorial. i know i made a contribution. so women's army call. but both in the short run in the long run are all also realize that i learned a lot. he was a tremendous learning experience. community and i profit if they profit for my service. i really profited. i'm having served. family members can register a family member a friends and you can do it online at www.womensmemorial.org. click on register

i discovered my research that eleanor roosevelt could have worn her against this because eleanor roosevelt also bought an expensive set of china during the great depression and unlike nancy's which was privately funded eleanor roosevelt paid for it with taxpayer money and ended up having to have a big news conference to explain that her new china was actually putting people to work in the great depression. so, so the other thing nancy reagan does is she. does something that's very common in hollywood but forbidden in politics, which is that? she borrows designer clothes very expensive clothes jewelry and doesn't always return them and also doesn't report them as gifts and ultimately this would create a gigantic tax headache for the reagan's who the irs launches an investigation at the end of his presidency and and tells them they've got three million dollars worth. unreported gifts here. so you report that at the end of 1981 their first year in the widest and the white house say the she had the lowest approval rating of any modern first lady. what did she do to turn that around? um one one

all my god we found a credible cargoes and went to every step of this incredible journey with eleanor roosevelt and our and our community who and our nice albert einstein said this is the guy he said it very grasped he knew the way that humanity would die by its own hands or continue to exist and einstein said he was going to vote the rest of his life at that period in trying to build a way that we can love and i was talking about and the areas i write this down were a lot of that you know the new and not the world order and he said the u.s. didn't do the hordes of powered by. or a wise. but he really is and that is. where our great people power but just a backup for a minute for people to don't know the story in the 1940 s. and fifty's after being a bomber in world war 2 gary davis renounces american citizenship declared he was a citizen of the world and it then created a lot of problems for him such as the kind of incredible to mind when he was trapped on the line between germany and france neither country letting him in but it also starts in international kind of movement of to follow his le

we've found a credible cargoes and we're going to every step of this incredible journey with eleanor roosevelt and our and our hearts to move and our nice albert einstein said this is the guy he said it grasped he knew the way that humanity would die by its own hands when you do exist and einstein said he was going to vote the rest of his life at that period in trying to build a way that we can build a lot like i was talking about and the areas not right not this down a lot that you know the new i cannot do world order and he said to. me do the words of power and trying to control your life. well he really is going to be a great people power but just a backup for a minute for people to don't know the story in the 1940 s. and fifty's after being a bomber in world war 2 gary davis renounced his american citizenship declared he was a citizen of the world and it then created a lot of problems for him such as the kind of incredible to mind when he was trapped on the line between germany and france neither country letting him in but it also starred in the international kind of movement of to follow

god we've found credible cargoes and we're going to every step of this incredible journey with eleanor roosevelt and our and our commercial and our nice albert einstein said this is the guy he said to carry brass he knew the way that humanity would die by its own hands or continue to exist and einstein said he was going to vote the rest of his life at that period trying to build a way that we can build a lot like i was talking about and the areas are right not this. lot that you know the new i cannot do world order and he's going to ask you are you scared me to do the work of power and money or a life on the iron. doors but he really isn't that this whole better idea that people power the planet but just to back up for a minute for people who don't know the story in the 19 forty's and fifty's and. being a bomber in world war 2 gary davis renounced his american citizenship declared he was a citizen of the world and it then created a lot of problems for him such as the kind of incredible to mind when he was trapped on the line between germany and france neither country letting him in but it also s

i see her as the bridge between eleanor roosevelt and hillary clinton. she has the the commitment to developing a policy agenda that reinforces and elevates her husband's that eleanor had she has the public role not quite as broad because she didn't have a radio program. she didn't have a column that eleanor did but this was a woman who was out campaigning for her husband then working really hand in glove to elevate his presidency. er was in the white house obviously much longer than lady bird was but i see lady bird then coming in and modernizing the office of the first lady really the first person to do that since after world war ii in my view with a policy staff in the east wing with the communication strategy and staff in the east wing and really becoming part of the political operation of the west wing which of course brings to mind the office the way that hillary clinton operated when she was first lady as far as rank order. that's a tougher one for me to to answer but i do think she's one of the most significant certainly of the twentieth century f

there's a wonderful photograph of her father with eleanor roosevelt and you talk about the relationship with her father and her father just as an extraordinary powerbroker, streetfighter, mayor of baltimore, former congressman, but then there is a quote in the book i would like to share to get your perspective. after she became the most powerful woman in the history of the country, she said her children have been more influential in shaping the leader that she became that her parents, quote, i was forced by my children having five children in six years and understanding the difference in personalities from one to the next is a real lesson. >> i know parents that have school age kids now during covid understand the skills obtained by running a household. she says it requires the same skills as being speaker of the house in washington in that you try to impose order in chaos. you are dealing with grievances both real and imagined and try to convince sometimes unreasonable people to stop doing what they are doing and do whatever it is you want to do. you have these shifting alliances and w

left you can see too early box camera microphones positioned on stands in front of first lady eleanor roosevelt as she gives a speech in los angeles that was being broadcast on radio. now let's examine why this microphone in our collection is so important. to do that we need to begin by talking a little about presidential communication. communication skills are a vital element in presidential leadership. a big part of any president's job is explaining complicated economic and political issues to the public. most presidents come into office with an ambitious agenda but to achieve it they must be able to explain their goals in programs in a clear and compelling way show americans how it will benefit the nation and convince them to lend their support. the communication tools available to america's presidents have expanded dramatically during the past 200 years. modern presidents have been able to use newspapers magazines radio broadcast and cable television and in recent decades the internet and social media to reach out to the public and lobby for their agenda. of course nearly all of these tools

it also helped that eleanor roosevelt became a member. and she became friends with a chickasaw interpretive dancer and storyteller and she invited her to the white house to perform for british dignitaries to show them what american culture was about. francis oldham kelsey, this is kind of strange, they almost look like sisters, don't they? caroline: a little bit. [laughter] jayne: when roosevelt became president, blair pressured eleanor to convince fdr to hire the first female cabinet member, and he hired frances perkins with the department of labor. and then francis oldham kelsey was also a member who worked for the fda, and she was a person who refused to approve the drug. those are some of the trivia that i found out while i was doing the research. caroline: do you think the society of women geographers is still relevant today since the explorers club now accepts women? jayne: yes, absolutely. there is a place for women, there needs to be a place where women can network with other women explorers, scientists, and artists, outside the p

was, she was equally effective, not as effective as eleanor roosevelt but not very effective.was wonderful over the years, i remember when i was starting on my first book, the 76 campaign, i was having trouble at the reagan library and she caught wind of it through a mutual friend of mine who has since passed away, one of the president's speech writers whose a friend of mine and no book had been written on the campaign, throwing campaigns overhead, 76 was the most meaningful and exciting, she directed them, what was catalogued was a priority like the presidential files, told them to open up the exclusive use, you are will be forever indebted to mrs. reagan and honor her memory. >> booktv has covered karen to multi-on her new biography of nancy reagan. we covered her at an event at the ronald reagan library. sandy in montgomery, alabama. >> i'm celebrating my sixteenth birthday today, i remember my dad saying in regard to fdr the day of infamy, he had 2 other brothers and four sisters and i remember him saying he and one of his siblings, were driving on their way to see my gran

roosevelt became president blair pressured eleanor to convince fdr to hire the first female cabinet member and he hired francis perkins for the department of labor. um, and then francis oldham kelsey was also a member who was worked for the fda and she is the person who refused to approve the drug thalidomide. so those some of the trivia that i found out while i was doing the research. okay, so do you think the society women geographers is still relevant today since the explorers club now accepts women. yes, absolutely. there's a place for women. there's a place there there needs to be a place where women can network with other women explorers and scientists and artists outside the presidency of men. i think that the society allows gives women a place to support each other and that's very important. the you know, the our picture is it's kind of covering that that photo that newspaper article, but it says don't take a woman with you when you go exploring, which was what the president of the explorers club roy chapman and andrews who's pictured there said when he was the president and in 193

here is the eleanor roosevelt was a was a great advocate of women serving in the military. so these are the women in the four components who stepped up to be the leaders of the of each of the women's components and i think about them, you know, they came on board. there was no there were no uniforms specific to military women. there was no training base. what do you do with them? how do you sign them? what do we do? but these women made it possible for women to serve and contribute in ways that had never been done before and when we have be forever grateful for service and commitment to women's to women serving and certainly to the nation. the women's army corps is an integral part of the army of the united states and its members who are soldiers in every sense of the word the form of full military part in this war. they're hundreds of important army jobs, which women can perform as effectively as men. in fact, we find that they can do some of these jobs much better than the man. and we moved to one more of the image panels which brings us to today a world war ii ends. and

and it appeared in columns next to roosevelt two to eleanor roosevelt, and you know the punditry of the day. the television pundits of today and those if they wrote columns and he was one of them. before he became a columnist he he worked in the state department that starting in the 1920s. he had a side life, he wrote books. he wrote novels. and he wrote them under suited him. some of them were written under the pseudonym he called himself a diplomat. and the novels were about a fictional intelligence agency. and it was headed by suave debonair diplomat. obviously his alter ego. who reported directly to the president, and between cocktails solved difficult mysteries and novels. one of the novels is called murder in the state department or something like that. so when his superior, at the state department he found out he was writing novels, they gave him a choice. cadet or quit. so he quit. and in the course of writing his novels, and some nonfiction books, he came to know franklin roosevelt. after he quit, first to get a job working -- and then he came to this building and set himself u

portrait to hang in the white house and to accompany the recently completed portrait of first lady eleanor roosevelt. johnson later commissioned schumachov to paint his official white house portrait and first lady lady bird johnson's next slide, please. so you can see here all three of those portraits completed by schumatof the portrait of roosevelt seen on the left was painted from her memory, which is incredibly impressive and the paintings of the johnsons were completed through in-person sittings at the white house and at their ranch in texas next slide. now greta kempton whose photograph you saw earlier was born in austria in 1903 and she began painting at a young age as so many women painters that i'll talk about today did. after she moved to the united states in the 1920s kempton became an art student in new york. and soon after she made a name for herself by painting the portraits of several prominent individuals including the trumans. so in 1947 president harry s truman commissioned his presidential portrait from kempton and for the rest of her career, she served as sort of a court painter c

so a five year old would donate five pennies and so on this effort was sponsored by eleanor roosevelt and it ran from april 23rd to april 30th 1940 as many as 250,000 schools throughout the united states participated and as part of the effort. it wasn't just fundraising they were hosting patriotic pageants and learning about other countries and writing to pen pals and other countries and creating poems and art about these so-called refugee war stricken refugee children, so it's partly a fundraising campaign in his partly a patriotic week to teach american children how lucky they were to be americans unlike the refugee children who are suffering so it's about patriotism but also service and sacrifice. became really as you said a mass movement and showed that even the youngest americas even the littlest among us could inspire other people to act and could act themselves. and we actually have an audience comment along those lines shelley wrights that every good deed and every act of kindness no matter how small shifts the world onto a better path. and i thank you for that shelley. i thin

although, her influence was much more subtle than salem-- eleanor roosevelt was. she was equally effective as a first lady, not as effective as eleanor roosevelt or maybe others, but behind the scenes that she was effective. mrs. reagan was wonderful to me over the years. i remember when i was starting on my first book on the 76 campaign. i was having trouble with the reagan library and she caught wind of it through a mutual friend of mine who has sense passed away who is one of the presidents speechwriters and notebook had been written on the 76 campaign. it was one of the most thrilling campaigns he ever had. they were involved with all the gubernatorial presidential campaigns and 76 was the most meaningful and exciting and she directed them, these files that the library had had been sealed and not catalogued yet because they weren't a priority like the presidential files were but she personally told them to open up the files and make them available to me or my exclusive use for my book on the 76 campaign, so i will be ever-- forever indebted to mrs. reagan and

then i am also reading a new biography of eleanor roosevelt.s excellent there's all sorts of things going on a shouldn't mentioned that he really gets into her head. shouldn't a woman be writing about her? he makes you feel he is behind her eyes. i have read a couple actually have a thing about her for some reason it's not just fdr. that she standing next to him doing things but not her. that's what i'm reading when a sitdown tire but i will also get through this 1200 page gotham. host: it's been an absolute pleasure to speak with you so for more information on nine nasty words please support your local bookseller or final program of the season will be held on and friday april 14 and we will be in conversation. with more information about programs and membership visit our website. thank you for joining us. >> thank you very much. it was a pleasure. . . . .

social rights as well as a civil and political rights and the architect of that document was eleanor roosevelt. her husband spoke of the full freedoms freedom from want alongside freedom from need. and freedom from fear freedom from fear and freedom from want went hand in hand in his conceptualization of freedom. and that was because in 1948, i think the memory was very fresh in the minds of the us administration. and so i think it's interesting to see whether the economic recession today will again revive interest in recognizing economic and social rights in this country as rights. the third reason why i think poverty is not seen as a human rights issue. and human rights are not injected into poverty eradication strategies is because there is a belief that the market will solve everything if we simply have economic growth, we will all be pulled up out of poverty. well as we all know it isn't quite how economic growth takes place. economic growth actually creates inequalities at the same time and even as it pushes some people out it leaves many others. behind and as human rights activists the

she wouldn't have been the -- she probably would have had -- i see her as the bridge between eleanor rooseveltand the first ladies of today. she's really the first modern first lady. so if we transplant her into 2021, i think she would have been able to be as modernist. she was then but not have to conceal it quite well so much. >> yes. i agree completely. there's another related question about that, have any of the first ladies of 1968 to the present day publicly recognized lady bird johnson as an spin airation for how they conducted themselves and their roles? >> yes, i think almost all of them have in one way or the other. most of them don't have knowledge of how much before that and they can get how deeply involved she was in the johnson administration. other first ladies had been given a hard time about that and doing in 1960's, empower those today and those in the future as well. >> completely agree. here is another, are there any public monuments to lady bird johnson, if not, where would you envision the type of monument and what would it look like? >> the construction of monuments is s