And now we come to the special feature
of our program, the appearance of our mystery celebrity.
I would tell you that our guest's voice
is I think so well-known
that I'm going to answer the first few questions...
[woman] Would I be likely to recognize this person's voice
if it was heard on the radio?
Would you be likely to recognize this person's voice
if it was heard on the radio? I would think you might, yes.
Is our guest famous for travelling?
[host] I'm now going to ask,
is our guest famous for travelling?
Yes.
Is she also a newspaper columnist?
Yes.
[chuckles] Did she ever occupy the White House?
-[chuckles] Yes. -[laughter]
Is it Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt?
[host] Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
[audience applause]
[Susan Quinn] It is extraordinary.
She was like no other first lady.
[crowd cheering]
[Blanche Weisen Cook] Her first love,
her abiding love, is for the people,
people in want, in need, in trouble.
[Anya Luscombe] She was driven by this enormous belief
in human dignity and equality for all people.
[Chris Brick] She's going to reinvent
the role of First Lady of the United States
to suit her own needs.
What she was interested in was, um, changing the world.
[theme music plays]
[FDR] I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
will faithfully execute the office
of President of the United States.
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] Of the thousands cheering
for their new president,
few could have imagined the icon and leader
the president's wife would become
over the next 12 years.
[Anna Eleanor Roosevelt] I think you can describe her as a person
who didn't do what was expected of her.
I guess that's the way heroes are made.
[Eleanor Roosevelt] I was rather a rebellious first lady.
I'm afraid I did some things which were not usual
for a lady in the White House.
The role of the first lady, traditionally,
had been so constricted.
It was about socializing and being a hostess,
and that was it.
And that was not Eleanor's life.
[Allida Black] At that point, she was on the board
of 17 major reform organizations in New York state.
Had her own career as a journalist,
and as a social activist.
[Robin Gerber] She is an absolute powerhouse.
She is writing for the Women's Democratic News
and working for the Democratic Party.
So, leaving all of that to come to the White House and do what?
Hold teas? Pick new china?
This is a privilege,
not to live in the White House and have fancy dinners;
the privilege is, you have
a megaphone to speak to the world,
if you can figure out how to use it.
And that's what she did.
[narrator] Two days after her husband's inauguration,
Eleanor makes her first move.
-[cameras clicking] -[reporters clamoring]
[Allida Black] One of the first actions
Eleanor took as first lady
was to have her own press conferences.
[Eleanor] The calling of journalism is one...
[Robin Gerber] So, she's a little bit nervous.
No first lady had ever held a press conference,
and she plans it for two days
before Franklin's first press conference, by the way.
-[Eleanor] Questions, ladies? -[reporter] Here, in the back.
[Paul Sparrow] Women were not allowed
to cover the president's press conferences.
So, she said, "I will have press conferences
to which only women can come."
Therefore, newspapers had to hire women reporters
to cover her.
[Robin Gerber] To just invite women reporters,
you can imagine this was not going to be taken very well.
Well, the men are watching from the door.
And they say, "Oh, look at them,
they're just a bunch of docile news hens.
This isn't gonna last a month."
[narrator] Almost immediately, the first lady's activities
and opinions fill newspapers across the country.
[Chris Brick] Those press conferences
did not just deal with,
"I had tea with the ambassador's wife."
Uh... [laughs]
They were focused on the work of the new administration:
gender prejudice,
the poor, and her vision for social justice.
[Allida Black] FDR's speech writer
and former law partner joke with one another
that the first thing they have to do
is get the pants off of Eleanor and on to Frank.
[crowd cheering]
[Anna Eleanor Roosevelt] You know, some people say
that Grand-mère wouldn't have been the first lady she was
without the childhood that she had.
[narrator] Eleanor was born in 1884,
into a prominent and wealthy family.
The first child of Anna Hall and Elliot Roosevelt,
the younger brother of President Theodore Roosevelt.
[Eleanor] Oh, my mother was very beautiful
and she would occasionally say that in the Hall family,
there were really no ugly ducklings
and I was the exception.
[Susan Quinn] Eleanor disappointed her.
She was plain. Her mother called her "Granny,"
which was deeply humiliating for her.
Uh... And, of course, her mother then died when she was eight.
[Allida Black] Her childhood is nothing but disappointment.
Her father who adores her is a drunk and a junkie,
and gets so drunk inside a men's club,
he forgets that she's sitting on the steps outside.
[Blanche Weisen Cook] Her father,
who she loved above all,
dies at the age of 34 of alcoholism.
And one really needs to pause.
How much do you have to drink to die at 34 of alcoholism?
[woman] Eleanor. [speaking in French]
[narrator] Orphaned at ten years old,
Eleanor was sent to live with her maternal grandmother.
[speaking in French]
[Susan Quinn] It was a very lonely childhood.
She had a French governess she detested,
who was quite sadistic, I think.
Used to braid her hair and pull it at the same time.
She was raised, really, by servants, mostly,
some of whom were very kind to her.
They would bring her dinner if she was exiled to her room.
And then, when she's 14,
we know that three locks suddenly appeared on her door.
A friend comes to visit and she says to her,
"Why are those locks on your door?"
And Eleanor says, "To keep my uncles out."
Was she abused? We can't know for sure,
but she was the classic target for abuse.
She was scared of everything. She writes in her diary,
"I'm scared of the dark, of mice, of other people...
of being alone."
[bells ringing]
[narrator] Her grandmother's decision
to send her to boarding school in England
was Eleanor's salvation.
Allenswood was no ordinary ladies' finishing school.
Allenswood school is being run...
by an absolutely remarkable woman,
Marie Souvestre.
She was progressive politically,
and she was running a school that was going to turn out girls
who would be leaders.
Not just turning out girls
who would be good for men to marry...
[teacher] Let us pause here...
...but she wanted her girls to actually go out
and make change in the world.
[narrator] Eleanor became
Marie Souvestre's favorite student,
the daughter she never had.
[Blanche Weisen Cook] Marie Souvestre emboldens her.
Inspires her.
It was just three of the happiest years of her life.
[giggling]
[narrator] But it wasn't only her teacher who admired Eleanor.
[Robin Gerber] When the girls appreciated another girl
for doing something for them,
they would buy them violets and little books.
Eleanor would come back on Saturdays when they did this
and her bed would just be covered.
Eleanor learns that she can make friends
who can help others, and this feels very good to her
after the kind of childhood that she had.
[Robin Gerber] After she leaves Allenswood,
Mademoiselle writes her letters,
and she says, "Don't be too seduced by the teas
and the balls and the social events.
Remember who you are and what's truly important."
[Blanche Weisen Cook] Marie Souvestre
changes Eleanor Roosevelt's life.
After Allenswood, the shy, damaged child is gone.
There's somebody else.
[Nina Gibson Roosevelt] She began to believe in herself,
as a woman with convictions and with self-confidence,
to go forward and make her mark in the world.
[birds chirping]
[narrator] Twelve years before becoming president,
Franklin Roosevelt, aged 39, contracted polio,
paralyzing him from the waist down.
[interviewer] After the polio attack,
was he actually able to walk?
He could stand with me and a cane, and his braces,
but to walk, he would have had to have
a sturdier arm than mine.
[narrator] Once in the White House,
Eleanor will often stand in for the president.
It's a role that will give her more influence
than any other first lady in history.
[reporter] She is sent on a tour of the country by FDR.
He wants her to serve as his eyes and legs.
"Talk to the people and tell me what they're thinking."
[Eleanor] Franklin often used me
to get the reflection of other people's thinking
because he knew I made it a point
to see and talk with a variety of people.
People describe such a sense of connection with her.
Over and over again, you hear people talking about meeting her
and in a very few moments
feeling that she was truly listening
and truly connected.
[Eleanor] I'm very glad to have this opportunity
of greeting the people of Southern California.
Franklin comes to realize that she's really good at this.
She is the voice that he trusts most.
He would go into cabinet meetings
and say, "My missus says
there isn't enough money in the budget for that.
My missus says that these resources
aren't getting to the places
they're supposed to be getting to."
[Susan Quinn] The men in the Roosevelt administration
came to feel they had to take her seriously,
so, it was a different kind of partnership
than people were used to.
[narrator] By the time they reached the White House,
they had been together over 30 years.
Distant cousins,
the couple started courting when Eleanor was only 18.
They fall in love
over a series of meetings and events and balls.
[Blanche Weisen Cook] She was really attracted to FDR,
who was extremely charming and handsome.
[Robin Gerber] I think there was certainly an incredulity
on Eleanor's part that this man could love her.
Probably that anyone could love her like this.
[Anya Luscombe] One of the reasons
Franklin was so intrigued by Eleanor
was because of her work for the settlement movement.
And this was very different than other girls.
[Robin Gerber] She says to him, "I want you to come
and meet one of the girls who I'm helping,
and come to her house, which is a tenement."
Tenements are unsanitary, overcrowded, airless, smelly,
and she takes him there.
FDR just-- he knew there was poverty and that kind of stuff.
But he hadn't really seen it. She showed it to him.
Very famously, Franklin turns to her and says,
"My God, I didn't know people live like that."
And to me, this is the moment
when the greatest political partnership
in American history happened.
[narrator] Decades later, FDR launches emergency measures
to ease poverty and hardship caused by the Great Depression.
[inaudible]
[narrator] Eleanor, already an established columnist,
makes a personal appeal to the public.
[Eleanor] I want you to write to me.
I love this. "I want you to write to me."
"I want you to write to me
and tell me what your problems are."
[Eleanor] Your confident...
[Robin Gerber] "But also,
I want you to give me your ideas,
because we don't know everything in Washington."
Well, people so responded to this.
[Paul Sparrow] There were thousands,
tens of thousands of letters that came to the White House
addressed to her every month.
She had such a rapport with the American people
that they felt that they could write to her.
It's a different relationship
than any first lady had ever had.
Here's a letter from a young girl.
"Dear Mrs. Roosevelt, I'm a very poor girl.
I'm not able to work.
I haven't got any father.
Would you please send me an overcoat for the winter?"
"Dear Mrs. President." "Dear Mrs. Roosevelt."
"Dear Mrs. President, would you help my daddy
get a good house to live in,
'cause right now, we are living in an old shack."
And of course, Eleanor Roosevelt would often write responses.
She would occasionally put a check in
or try to help people.
The people of America really believed
that the Roosevelts were really going to try help them.
But particularly that Eleanor Roosevelt
was going to help them.
[squawking]
[narrator] Eleanor's country retreat
provides refuge from Washington, but not from work.
[Nina Gibson Roosevelt] It's just such a wonderful room.
This room has so many wonderful memories.
In here, we'd play games,
have pillow fights with the pillows from the couches,
and Grandma would be working away at her desk,
and it was lovely. She'd turn her hearing aids off
so she couldn't hear us,
so we could make all the noise we wanted.
She did have a lot of work to do
and she'd answer all her correspondence from this desk.
Where she got the energy or the time from
to answer all these letters, to go on all these travels,
-to give all these speeches... -[speaking indistinctly]
...how there were enough hours in a day
to do what she did is just phenomenal.
[reporter] She seems to be perpetually on the move.
Writes the weary reporter travelling with her,
"Please make Eleanor tired, just for one day."
[narrator] In the first four months as first lady,
Eleanor receives 300,000 letters.
She is especially outraged by the suffering
in a mining town in West Virginia.
[Allida Black] The miners had been unemployed
for 20 years.
There's malnourishment like you have never seen.
It is poverty that is unimaginable
in the United States.
She realizes that she's someone
who has access to the most elite,
most powerful policy-making circles there are,
and that she has the ability to mold public policy.
[narrator] Eleanor pushes Franklin
to put federal funds
into an experimental rehousing project called Arthurdale.
[Allida Black] She throws everything she has
into helping rebuild this community.
[Eleanor] ...already built homes...
She devotes all her political capital to this.
She gets federal funds located there.
Nobody expected a first lady
to have the kind of influence she had, politically.
[Allida Black] Harold Ickes,
who is Secretary of the Interior,
is ballistic.
"Do you know what your wife is doing down there?
She is spending money like a drunken sailor."
[Allida Black] "Why are we giving people refrigerators?"
[Blanche Weisen Cook] "How are we going
to tell the rich from the poor?"
And when FDR repeats that to Eleanor Roosevelt,
she says, “Well, in matters
of such simple dignity and decency,
like indoor plumbing,
we should not have to tell the rich from the poor.”
People look at her failure
to bring industry to Arthurdale
and say, "Oh, my God, this is the perfect example
of a liberal imagination run amok."
And I... That is so shortsighted.
The community that comes out of this...
has houses, schools,
medical clinics that are still in use today.
[Susan Quinn] Arthurdale was the first
of hundreds and hundreds of communities
that were built all over the country.
It was lifesaving and life-transforming.
[narrator] Eleanor is beginning to appreciate
how much she can achieve as first lady.
[Anya Luscombe] Eleanor cared about the world
and that was her driving force.
And if she wasn't going to do it, then who would?
[reporter] Election night was an evening of triumph.
In Times Square, the celebration went on through the night
as tens of thousands screamed themselves hoarse.
They were crowded around...
[narrator] On the arm of his son,
with Eleanor by his side,
FDR wins a second term by a landslide.
[Paul Sparrow] Many people think of Eleanor Roosevelt
as the conscience of the Roosevelt administration.
She was the idealist, he was the pragmatist.
As a political team, they were unstoppable.
[narrator] Married in 1905,
the couple have one daughter and five sons,
one of whom tragically died in infancy.
But the Roosevelt partnership almost fell apart.
[narrator] In 1918, Franklin returned
from a European trip gravely ill.
[Robin Gerber] He has double pneumonia,
he is really close to death.
They whisk him off to the house
and Eleanor is left to unpack his trunk.
And when she opens his trunk, there is a packet of letters,
and of course, she recognizes the handwriting.
[narrator] The letters reveal a longstanding affair
between Franklin and Eleanor's own secretary, Lucy Mercer.
[Robin Gerber] When we think about this girl
who has had so little love in her life...
and thought she had finally found love and security,
and here she sees that he is loving
and he is in love with Lucy.
[Anna Roosevelt] I mean, the whole thing
reads like a play.
I mean, how shocking that must have been.
My grandmother was totally taken by surprise.
Of course, that's going to hurt.
He promises that he will never see Lucy again...
and they stay married.
But she was terribly depressed.
As she said, the bottom had fallen out of her world.
[Nina Gibson Roosevelt] After the affair, I do believe
they were always in separate bedrooms.
I can remember her saying,
"You know, you forgive.
You don't necessarily forget, but you can forgive."
From then on,
their marriage became a partnership,
in a way that freed her up...
to become the woman she became.
So, through adversity sometimes we rise
and become things that we never thought we might become.
[indistinct chatter]
[narrator] Over the decades,
Eleanor turned to her friends for support.
Closest among them is Lorena Hickok.
[giggling]
[Allida Black] Hick was a wicked smart journalist,
wicked smart.
She was the only woman reporter in the country
who had her own by-line on the front page,
and she did politics, for Pete's sake!
[narrator] FDR hires Hick
to report on progress of the New Deal.
She is moved into a small room
near Eleanor's quarters in the White House.
[Chris Brick] She was a very provocative personality.
She wore men's clothing.
She smoked cigars.
She played cards.
She drank bourbon.
Everybody knew that Hick was gay.
[narrator] The women's friendship
grew over the years they spent touring the country
as FDR's eyes and ears.
Hick gave her a lot of ideas and support
in terms of finding a way to be a new kind of first lady.
[Blanche Weisen Cook] It's Hick who says,
"Look at all these daily activities
you're telling me about.
The whole country wants to know how you spend your day."
And it's Hick's suggestion that results
in Eleanor Roosevelt's "My Day" column.
[Paul Sparrow] She had a style of writing
that was very personal and very informal,
and she could talk about anything,
from a meeting with the king and queen of England,
to literally what she had for breakfast that day.
So, she was the original blogger.
[narrator] By 1938, Eleanor's daily column is wildly popular,
with a readership of over four million Americans.
If Eleanor Roosevelt was alive right now
she'd be tweeting, Facebooking, YouTubing,
because every single medium that existed at the time,
she mobilized,
and her public life comes to prominence
at the very beginning of the radio age.
[presenter] For the shave you've always wanted,
reach for the Remington.
...this is Leon Pearson...
[presenter] ...millions listening throughout...
[Anya Luscombe] There were very few women on the radio.
Women were allowed to do
programs about housekeeping or education,
or they would be allowed to sing.
[singing]
But Eleanor is broadcasting in the early 1930s.
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt.
[Eleanor] Good Day, Ladies and Gentlemen.
[clears throat] I attended last night...
[Paul Sparrow] People would sit around their living room
and it was like the first lady was talking to you.
[Eleanor Roosevelt] I want to talk to you
about the general question of housing.
[Paul Sparrow] It was like she was sitting with you
in your living room
with your little Victrola in the corner.
And her voice was there.
[Susan Quinn] Eleanor Roosevelt connected
with ordinary Americans, and it was a remarkable thing
and that really grew out of her relationship with Hick.
[women giggling]
Hick falls deeply,
deeply in love with Eleanor.
[narrator] Over their lifetime,
they write almost 3,000 letters to one another.
[Susan Quinn] They write about missing each other.
You get the feeling of this deep caring between them,
and then there will be specific things
like, you know, "I looked at your photograph
and I kissed you
in the lower right corner of your mouth.
There is some debate about whether it was physical or not,
but I don't think anyone can deny
that it was a deep love.
[Allida Black] As a lesbian,
nothing would make my little political soul happier...
than to think that Eleanor and Hick had this great,
passionate affair.
As a historian, I don't care.
I am grateful for Lorena Hickok.
Eleanor loved and was loved in return,
and she was empowered by that relationship.
[reporter] Mrs. Roosevelt
is greeted by microphones, reporters...
[Patricia Bell Scott] Even though Eleanor
frequently said that she was really not a politician,
she had good political instincts,
and at the top of that agenda was civil rights.
[narrator] In the late 1930s, to Eleanor's shame,
African American citizens are still segregated by law,
often denied basic rights
such as jobs, housing and the vote.
[Patricia Bell Scott] She was very much involved
in the struggle to get congress and the president
to move for passing anti-lynching legislation.
Eleanor comes to truly understand
how undermining of our democracy is this idea
that everyone is not being treated equally.
[Chris Brick] So, Eleanor Roosevelt
goes to great lengths
to open the doors of the Roosevelt White House
very wide to people of color.
I mean, you see Eleanor bounding
down the White House driveway, very much in public view...
to greet female civil rights advocate,
Mary McLeod Bethune,
in a way that Eleanor Roosevelt doesn't greet royalty.
[Patricia Bell Scott] Eleanor Roosevelt was a leader
willing to take a stand,
and she did something that really caught
the attention of the nation.
[narrator] In 1938, defying the Secret Service,
she travels to a civil rights meeting
in Birmingham, Alabama
with her friend, Mary McLeod Bethune.
[Allida Black] Eleanor goes into this meeting,
which is segregated.
Whites on this side, blacks on this side.
[Allida Black] She just trucks down that aisle
and boop! Right by Bethune.
She can't sit there!
[Allida Black] Almost immediately,
a young police officer comes over...
[officer] Ms. Roosevelt...
...and asks her to move.
The legend is true.
Eleanor does get a chair,
sits in the middle of the aisle...
and straddles segregation.
[applause]
One foot in black, one foot in white.
[Patricia Bell Scott] Local papers picked it up.
Black print press was just delighted.
White press and southern press was really upset.
[Allida Black] Other first ladies had been criticized
but nobody faced the intense venom
in such a consistent, persistent way as Eleanor.
[Robin Gerber] The Ku Klux Klan,
they eventually put a price on her head.
25,000 dollars if you could kill Eleanor Roosevelt.
So, this was criticism on steroids.
[J. Edgar Hoover] We ask every citizen to immediately report
any information regarding espionage...
[narrator] But Eleanor's most powerful opponent
is the head of the FBI.
[Blanche Weisen Cook] The first entry into her FBI file
by J Edgar Hoover, who hated her guts,
is her support for civil rights.
That for him is the most un-American.
[Chris Brick] The file is about 3,500 pages long,
it could fill a whole file cabinet top to bottom.
The earliest document in it is from 1924.
Every word on behalf of justice
for black people was considered communist.
[Chris Brick] J. Edgar Hoover sees Eleanor Roosevelt
the way a lot of people
in conservative white America see Eleanor Roosevelt.
Why can't she just shut up?
Why can't she just not rock the boat?
[typewriter clicking]
[Eleanor] You had an opportunity to lead...
[narrator] But the first lady refuses to toe the line on race.
When African American opera-singer Marian Anderson
is banned from performing at a concert-hall
owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution,
Eleanor once again springs into action.
Eleanor is quite upset about this.
First of all, she's a member of the DAR.
So, she writes a letter.
It is a-- a classic Eleanor Roosevelt letter.
"I'm afraid I have never been a very useful member
of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
I know it will make very little difference to you
whether I resign or whether I continue..."
[Eleanor] I'm in complete disagreement
with the attitude taken...
[Robin Gerber] She sends it to newspapers
all over the country.
Soon, there's international recognition about this.
[Paul Sparrow] "...and I feel obliged
to send into you my resignation.
You had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way,
and it seems to me that your organization has failed."
Her resignation was huge news, it was very important,
and it put enormous pressure
on not just the Daughters of the Revolution
but all organizations
to confront their racist policies.
[narrator] The world is watching,
and Eleanor helps organize a new venue for the concert...
in the place that most symbolizes freedom.
[cheering]
In this great auditorium under the sky,
all of us are free.
[Robin Gerber] Marian Anderson is standing there,
and in front of her are 75,000 people,
black and white together.
[Blanche Weisen Cook] This was the first public event
that was de-segregated.
[Patricia Bell Scott] Everybody there could freely mingle
and sit next to each other without regard to race,
creed or color.
It was just simply awe-inspiring.
[reporter] Spectators include Supreme Court Justice Black,
New York Senator Robert Wagner,
and a host of notables, here to listen the voice of...
[Robin Gerber] Eleanor didn't go to the concert.
She wanted that moment in history
to belong to Marian Anderson.
[sings "America: My Country, 'Tis of Thee"]
[Patricia Bell Scott] People in the audience silently wept...
as a wave of emotion washed over the throng.
[Robin Gerber] "My country tis of thee,
sweet land of liberty,
to thee we sing."
[Patricia Bell Scott] Eleanor Roosevelt defied
the conventions of her role as first lady,
a woman in arms with African Americans.
[cheering and applause]
[Blanche Weisen Cook] This was the first step
in the great journey to freedom.
[reporter] We have witnessed this morning
severe bombing of Pearl Harbor by enemy planes.
[narrator] With World War II raging across Europe,
American neutrality is shattered
when the Japanese launch a surprise attack
on the Pacific Fleet.
[newscaster] We interrupt this program
to bring you a special news bulletin.
The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by air,
President Roosevelt has just announced.
Americans would have been listening to the news
probably all day, waiting for an update.
Franklin is busy with his cabinet,
determining what action the United States should take.
[newscaster] Secretary Early informed all correspondents
and then rushed to the White House
to be with President Roosevelt.
[Anya Luscombe] Eleanor is scheduled
to go on air that evening
as part of one of her regular broadcasts,
so, she sets about rewriting the script.
[reporter] ...that the 50 planes attacked the island...
[narrator] Speaking on behalf of the administration,
the first voice the nation will hear is Eleanor's.
It's an unprecedented moment for a first lady.
[Eleanor] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
[clears throat] I am speaking to you tonight
at a very serious moment in our history.
Many of you all over this country
have boys in the services
who will now be called upon to go into action.
You cannot escape anxiety.
You cannot escape the clutch of fear at your heart.
I have a boy at sea on a destroyer.
For all I know he may be on his way to the Pacific.
Two of my children are in coast cities on the Pacific.
Whatever is asked of us, I am sure we can accomplish it.
I have faith in you.
[Anya Luscombe] It's as if she is the president speaking
when she tries to unite the country,
tries to put people's minds at rest,
and at the same time make sure that they are ready for action.
[Eleanor] We are the free
and unconquerable people of the United States of America.
If that isn't presidential, then I don't know what is.
[narrator] The next day,
President Roosevelt declares war.
[Robin Gerber] All four of her sons
were fighting in the war.
You can imagine like any mother, any military mother,
how she felt.
She was not one who thought war was glorious.
But her duty to her country
and to her husband really came first.
[narrator] So, when Franklin asks Eleanor
to make a perilous trip to the South Pacific,
she puts personal feelings aside.
[reporter] Travelling under the code name "Rover,"
she visits combat areas
and makes it a point to stop at every hospital.
Naval commanders were opposed to this idea
MacArthur and Nimitz,
they thought this was a terrible idea.
"We do not want the first lady traipsing through our war zone,
what a disaster this is gonna be."
You know, she could have been killed
and shot down at any point.
[reporter] Watching the faces of those kids light up
when she talked to them made you know
that she was the best medicine they could have had.
[Paul Sparrow] But at the end,
Admiral Halsey said she had a greater impact on the people
in the field than any person who ever visited
throughout the entire war.
[Blanche Weisen Cook] She visited every single hospital
and spoke to every single GI Joe
who was wounded...
and took their family names
and when she got back,
she called their parents and their loved ones.
[Allida Black] The war haunts Eleanor.
Her anger over the slaughter that she saw
was the single motivating factor for the rest of her life.
[reporter] Over the White House at Washington,
the flag flies at half-mast
as a grief-stricken nation mourns the death
of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the United States.
[narrator] Three months into Roosevelt's fourth term,
the longest presidency in American history is over.
[Patricia Bell Scott] Franklin Roosevelt's death
really shocked the nation.
It was a double loss
because Eleanor Roosevelt was leaving as first lady,
and for many African Americans,
she was the unofficial president.
[Anya Luscombe] I think that she was very concerned
that under President Truman,
everything that she and Franklin together had fought for,
domestically and globally, would now somehow be forgotten.
And she wanted to secure that legacy.
[narrator] So, when President Truman asks Eleanor
to join the first American delegation
to the newly formed United Nations,
she jumps at the chance.
[reporter] By far the most interesting the arrival
was that of Mrs. Roosevelt, widow of the late president.
[Blanche Weisen Cook] The UN is created
to make a forum for discussion
so we never have to go to war again.
[Robin Gerber] Now, this was the great dream
of the Roosevelts. A United Nations
that would ensure peace in the world.
[reporter] 2,000 delegates are attending the meeting.
From all the corners of the earth they came.
Secretary of State Marshall greets a fellow delegate,
Mrs. Roosevelt.
[narrator] Eleanor is unanimously elected
chair of the subcommittee charged with drafting
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
[Allida Black] She has to negotiate
with 18 countries.
They don't agree on anything.
They don't agree whether God exists!
It took almost two years.
It was absolutely grueling.
[reporter] The Soviet Union insists...
[Allida Black] Her ability to navigate
the hundreds of meetings that it took...
to craft the declaration.
It was brilliant negotiation strategy.
Her whole public life
and her life in the White House had helped her
to exceed in that role,
because she's figured out decades ago
that you can get a tremendous amount done
if you don't care about taking credit for it.
This Universal Declaration of Human Rights...
may well become the international Magna Carta
of all men everywhere.
[narrator] Eleanor's presentation
caps a lifetime of championing human rights.
[Eleanor] The proclamation of the Declaration...
[Allida Black] It's the most important document
of the last 100 years.
All human beings are born free and equal,
in dignity and in rights.
All human beings.
It's the first time in the history
of the flipping world that we say that.
[delegate] And I must congratulate the person...
who has been the leader in this movement.
The person who has raised to even greater honor,
so great a name, and I refer, of course, to Mrs. Roosevelt,
the delegate of the United States.
[applause]
[narrator] The longest serving first lady in American history,
Eleanor Roosevelt exemplifies greatness,
and her achievements still resonate today.
This a better day for What's My Line?
We will always remember very fondly
that you honored us by being our mystery guest,
and I'm sure that the panel would love very much
to shake your hand.
-Thank you very much. -Thank you, Mrs. Roosevelt.
[applause]
She's just not a first lady.
She's a first woman,
a first activist,
way beyond first ladyhood.
Eleanor Roosevelt was Lady Big Heart.