eleanor roosevelt on screen is her first book. please join me in welcoming ms. beacham to the roosevelt reading festival. [ applause ] this work that we do, thanks to the >> well, thanks for that introduction and ththanks, everybody for being here. thanks also to the archivists here who are so important to all this work that we do. thanks to the other researchers and scholars, and also, i have to thank franklin and eleanor roosevelt for the shiny example that they made for all of us. i'll be talking about "eleanor roosevelt on screen and i'll be talking about fdr and i'm a historian, and over the years i found myself recognizing that eleanor was not just a pioneer in print and radio, but she's the first woman in the united states to host major public affairs broadcast television and that's something nobody talks about, but is quite a big deal. today with mrs. roosevelt aired in 1950 and albert einstein made his first television appearance as guest on the e show. on the premiere that featured robert oppenheimer. after working in europe with the united nations she

eleanor roosevelt on-screen is her first book. please join me in welcoming her to the roosevelt reading festival.at >> well, thanks for that introduction and thanks, everybody, for being here. thanks also to the archivists who are so important to all this work we do. shining example that they made for all of us. i'll be talking about my book eleanor roosevelt on screen and i think i'm the only one here today talking about e.r. rather than fdr. also a film and television history and so my topics are different than anyone else here today. over the years i found myself recognizing that eleanor was not just a pioneer in print and radio but she's the first woman in the united states to host major public affairs broadcast television. that's something nobody talks about. but it is quite a big deal. today with mrs. roosevelt aired weekly on nbc in 1950, albert am einstein made his first television appearance as a guest on her show. on the perimeter that also featured robert oppenheimer after working in europe with united nations, she came

now no one understood fdr, his personality and moods better than eleanor roosevelt. during the 1950s, she recorded her impressions of him. when she saw him that fateful afternoon. and i'm going to play a short section of that interview for you. here is mrs. roosevelt describing her husband that afternoon. i saw him looking very strained and tired, but he was completely calm. his reaction to any great event was always to be calm. if it was something that was bad. he just became almost like an iceberg and there was never the slightest emotion that was allowed to show. while i was very conscious of his tremendous strain, the fish thing, i noticed was this deadly calm. and then almost the first thing he said to me was with great bitterness and anger, that actually he had hardly finished talking to the japanese envoys when this was being done in pearl harbor. beyond that, i had a sense that bad, though the news was and horrible as it was, to face that he was on the whole, almost relieved to know the with that had to be faced and that this country could eventually meet it a

let's talk about eleanor roosevelt, which to me is news. talk about your interest in human rights, given both your background in the segregated south and your international experience in the navy heading into your public career? well, i grew up in a little village called archer in georgia, which had about 50 families from farmers. my family was the only one that was white. all the rest of them were african american. and so i, i grew up completely immersed in an african american culture and a black culture. and i could see as a little child, even that there was a great distinction between white and black people. my mother, by the way, was a registered nurse and she never paid any attention to racial distinctions. she treated everybody the same in a very courageous way. but she was part of the medical establishment in plains, which was very powerful. so she was kind of impervious to condemnation or criticism. so i grew up in that and that environment, and then later i became chairman of the board of education and accounting, and i demanded th

his letter to eleanor roosevelt after ted roosevelt buys in his arms is one that is a tearjerker. all the way he ends up first on utah beach, fights in the -- from there he is leading divisions coming through at cobra. he and the rest of the fifth court liberate paris, not just the french. from there they break on up and crossed the german border. gets all the way across france fighting on the border. he's sick, horrible ulcer and spends two weeks in the hospital. two weeks in the hospital and he talks his way out. he is supposed to spend six weeks there and talks his way back to the line and of course he ends up not healthy. had he not gone back he probably would have retired as a corps commander. the hurricane forest is horrible. there is no other way to describe it. one of my follow projects will be a history of the fourth division into hurricane forest because it is a crime. the bold, at the end of the bulge, the germans, he was on the right flank and said there to rest after the hurricane forest and the germans upset the rest schedule and he decided around christmas day it wa

his letter to eleanor roosevelt after to roosevelt dies in his arms as a tear jerker. he ends up on utah beach. fights. from there, he leads divisions. he and the rest of the fifth corps liberate paris. it is not just the french. from there they break on up crossing the german border. all the way across france fighting on the border. he is sick. horrible ulcer. he ends up spending two weeks in the library -- two weeks in the hospital. and he talks his way out. he is supposed to spend six weeks there but talks his way back to the line. he ends up not healthy. and had he not gone back, he probably would have retired as a corps commander. just horrible. there's no other way to describe it. and one of my follow-up projects will be into the history. the bulge. at the end of the bulge, he was on the right flank. sent there to rest. then the germans upset the rest schedule. he decided around christmas day it was time and he asked his corps commander at middleton at the time and then patton, the army commander, his old friend, to be relieved. back in the states. then of course

his letter to to eleanor roosevelt after teddy roosevelt dies his arms is one is a tear jerker.it was i put part of it in a book all the way he ends up first on on utah beach clear cherbourg fights in the. bull cage down here can take to your from there he's one to lead divisions coming through cobra he and rest of the fifth corps liberate paris it's just the french from there they break on up cross to the german border gets all the way across france fighting on the border he's sick, horrible ulcer ends up spending two weeks in the in the library in the library, two weeks in a hospital. this what happens. you do it quick. two weeks in the hospital and he his way out. they're supposed to spend six weeks there talks his way back to the line. and of course, he ends up he's not healthy at haiti, not going back. he probably would have retired as a corps commander. the hurricane forest, the hurricane force is just horrible there's no other way to describe it. and one of my follow on projects will be a history two fourth division into hurricane force because it's it's a it's a the bulg

so i would like to eleanor roosevelt and rosalynn carter, your husband in 2010, published his white housediaries. did you keep a diary or a journal during the white house years? i kept them at different times. i didn't do very much in the beginning, but then i started having my secretary put spaces between events, and i had a desk in our bedroom and i left it then and i would go to the event had what was happening and who was going to be there now. and i would start writing notes about what happened at that event. and i did that pretty regularly for a while. i wrote really good, um, a diary about can't believe it. like i kept those notes all the time from the first day or those public no, when, if, if and when will they be public? i don't know. i don't know how long it took em. i just went through them and edited them. but i didn't edit anything. i struck out a few passages. why? well, why that were you? to know what i called some of them who were not who were not corporate with jimmy out of it. do you know? it was just just my personal thoughts. um, along with what was happening and i di

time and the army corps ended its ban on black pilots with strong public support of first lady eleanor roosevelt. nearly 1000 black pilots were trained at alabama's tuskegee institute. many of the tuskegee airmen eventually served in combat in europe and north africa in the 99th pursuit squadron and none of the bombers escorted. the unit was ever lost to enemy fire. here, for the first time, -- aviation cadets were being groomed to fly war planes of a unit, which was then unit and performing the 99th research struck americans of mexican, latino and asian descent as well. native americans were also given an unprecedented opportunities in the nation's military. by. his side. united states army had. their. training. long before america entered the conflict. fdr began to frame world war two in more universal terms as a struggle, defend freedom around the world. fdr, his most enduring expression of this concept, came in his january 6th, 1941 annual message to congress in the future days, which we seek to make secure, he declared. we look forward to a world founded on four essential human freedoms. th

eleanor roosevelt, the 10th of june petition, all i want. they chose to accept the medal for the millions of women that worked during world two. one of the proudest moments of my life when i was. 30, i so true. oh. seven so special when it was given to you're not allowed to touch the red. well, this the regiment given to me by the congressman. i mean, you're not allowed touch. it goes right into smithsonian museum. it's a print. and i my son to be able to show and feel proud of it as women. i mean, there's not many of us left anymore, like our men to work, too. but let's at my thing, i know a few things i'd like to say, but i wrote them down. because this week, with all the election and going on and all about my hands feeling so i'll just a few things i'd like to you. i said, you know, world war two was declared all the men, women and children just went to work. it wasn't my job or your it was our job. we just planned it together. there was never time and that our country together as well as we did during that to save our country. it was als

and that was that was a foundation of what eleanor roosevelt later done. then and evolving that helped to happen to all of the universal declaration of human rights. so the only time in human history when the united states had gone to all the basic the major religions that extracted the essence of what they are from our moral and ethical values are, and put them together. and then they kind of lay terms, but also some are some are legal terms was in the development of the universal declaration of human rights. and that has never happened before. sense and history. and now i'm afraid that they are being basically abandoned in many ways or many of them around the world because then it is fighting against that abandonment by the way, every day when you were running for president in 75 and 76, did you know that the human rights agenda would be as central to you once you if you got there? yes, i did. and i would say that when i became president and during my term, there was a general sigh of relief in america then. well, finally, we have resolved the race issue

here we have this is the douglas chandler portrait of eleanor roosevelt. she's probably the most i would say, the most famous most well known, most influential first lady. obviously, she was there for 12 years, so she had plenty of time to to to put more effort into it. but she was very much an advocate and activist as a first lady and really sort of mold it. that role more than has really defined it ever since. and this was the first portrait of a first lady that the association acquired and gave to the first permanent white house collection. the the whole background history of commissioning portraits for the white house collection was, really more of a government supported thing until the association came along. and now it's something that we've done with the last several administrations and administrations previous. where would this portrait be today? the actual portrait, this portrait today be downstairs in the ground floor in the vermeil room. and that was an idea that stretches back to first lady edith roosevelt. she had suggested putting first lady

headquarters of the labor department in a building named for frances perkins, the woman who frankland eleanor roosevelthose a secretary of labor to help him leave the country out of the great depression in the 1930s policies created by frances perkins and then approved by franklin roosevelt and given the new name the new deal. by president roosevelt on congress passing those bills. but frances perkins said the new deal was born 20 years before the roosevelt presidency, in a tragedy that happened 90 years before 9/11 and like 9/11, included the horrific spectacle of people jumping to their deaths from what was then one of the tallest buildings in new york city. that was engulfed in flames. >> saturday, march 25, 1911. frances sat down for afternoon tea at her home with a close friend from new york city. suddenly, they hear the sound of a distant screams and sirens that a building was in flames from her instinct was to run to the scene. as she approached the fire and smoke she recognized the triangle shirt factory, a company that employed hundreds of workers mostly immigrants and women who worked long ho

previous first lady ladies were not doing that other than eleanor roosevelt.t were not doing anything like this but eisenhower see something and pat and they come to have a very good relationship as well and he tells dick nixon, take pat with you. peter: they went on several worldwide trips. heath: yes. they would be gone for months and pat was always conflicted because she adored julie and trisha and hated being away from them but she loved to travel and that was her job. her job was to go in that position as the second lady and she was a working second lady. most second ladies before that really weren't, it was more ceremonial and they were certainly not traveling the world on diplomatic missions with their husbands. peter: 1958. heath: caracas and all of that. this is something i think a lot of people have forgotten. they were on a goodwill tour, there was a communist bob that threw rocks at the motorcade where nixon was in one car and pat was in another car and there was this entourage and a communist mob attacked them, there were shots fired, they were al

and she saw herself kind of like eleanor roosevelt in that way, that she could go out and bring him back. the news of how people were really feeling. >> and what do you think her impact on his presidency was? >> i mean, you have to think ruth bader ginsburg is, as a judge. um, that was a huge nomination for him. he i mean, obviously he didn't know at the time she would become a supreme court justice one day. but he did have a very diverse group of women, people of color, that he nominated. and you have to think that she had some role in that. they were both aghast at segregation. um, they were both socially liberal, which is really interesting because he was a born again. and i just come back to the fact, like, he's the first president. and i think one of the only who was inaugurated with his nickname, jimmy. it wasn't james. he wanted people to call him jimmy. and i think that says a lot about the kind of person he was. he didn't want to be put on this pedestal. this was the post-watergate era. this was, you know, the people's president, that famous scene of them walking down after the

travel around in a ford and ford who hates roosevelt, is jammed in the backseat of this car with eleanor roosevelt on one side of him. and franklin roosevelt on the other side and across from him in the jump seat. his son, edsel and edsel who knew how much his father hated the roosevelt said his dad was giving him the stink eye the whole time, so but for the most part, these corporate executives have been interested in being pro-business meaning their business. a great example of this is lee iacocca. he first shows up in character in the power of, the money as a kind of pro-free market anti guy who comes to the white house to argue against nader write regulations being on the auto industry and then as time goes on evolves and the auto industry gets these challenges. competition from japan and abroad and suddenly they want government intervention. and so he is buddies with jimmy carter in leading to the chrysler bailout of the 1970s and then in the 1980s, he's with ronald reagan for anti market regulatory actions that would help his company. now, ronald reagan, very little patience for it and has t

only eleanor roosevelt kind of carries those two words the way carter did. and in the state department, he opened up a human rights office. but what did that mean in a real way? >> it put pressure on the soviet union. jimmy carter helped win the cold war, not only because he increased defense spending, but he looked at the kremlin and said, why don't you have human rights? why aren't people allowed to go to church or synagogue? why are bibles banned? why is jazz albums not there? and looked at the abuses, starting with the helsinki accords of gerald ford and carter carrying it on? so wherever you go around the world and when you're dealing with carter's funeral, he's seen as a not only a humanitarian but a human rights advocate. and help put that term into our parlance. >> susan glasser is with us as well. susan, the camp david accords, as we all know, were a very significant achievement for president carter, indeed for the middle east and the world. how has carter's leadership during those 13 days at camp david shaped the region? in the decades since? >> we

it is eleanor roosevelt.orded her memories about pearl harbor and what happened that day in the white house. she recorded them in the 1950's. this is the audio recording. it is about a minute and a half long. [video] >> i started looking very strained and tired. but he was completely calm. his reaction to any great event was always to be calm. it was something that was bad, he just became almost like an iceberg. there was never the slightest the motion that was a -- the that was allowed to show -- emotion that was allowed to show. while i was conscious of his tremendous strain, the first thing i noticed was this deadly calm. then, almost the first thing he said to me was great bitterness and anger that actually he had hardly finished talking to the japanese envoys when this was being done in pearl harbor. beyond that, i had a sense, bad though the news was an horrible as it was to face, he was on the whole almost relieved to know the worst that had to be faced in this country could eventually meet it. this ki

it is eleanor roosevelt.her memories about pearl harbor and what happened that day in the white house. she recorded them in the 1950's. this is the audio recording. it is about a minute and a half long. [video] >> i started looking very strained and tired. but he was completely calm. his reaction to any great event was always to be calm. it was something that was bad, he just became almost like an iceberg. there was never the slightest the motion that was a -- the that was allowed to show -- emotion that was allowed to show. while i was conscious of his tremendous strain, the first thing i noticed was this deadly calm. then, almost the first thing he said to me was great bitterness and anger that actually he had hardly finished talking to the japanese envoys when this was being done in pearl harbor. beyond that, i had a sense, bad though the news was an horrible as it was to face, he was on the whole almost relieved to know the worst that had to be faced in this country could eventually meet it. this kind of

eleanor roosevelt was in the league of her own, but rosalynn carter was in on many key meetings, theould talk to, and then she found that she would campaign for people in prison that were falsely imprisoned, but also mental illness, the district —— getting rid of the stigma of that. she tried to educate people about that out of the white house, but they were just utterly inseparable. you cannot write about one without writing about the other. indeed, i have read them of those letters myself. they are truly remarkable. going back to his birthplace, georgia, growing up there, somebody who grew up in agricultural setting, famously a peanut farmer, tell us a little bit about his childhood and his upbringing and how you think that that may have influenced his political convictions. remember, he was born in — political convictions. remember, he was born in a _ political convictions. remember, he was born in a rural— political convictions. remember, he was born in a rural georgia, - political convictions. remember, he was born in a rural georgia, sumter| was born in a rural georgia, sumter