good afternoon everyone thank you for joining us today we're just going to give it about 30 seconds here for our participants to hop in we appreciate all of you joining us this afternoon and we're excited to get started with today's presentation so just about 30 more seconds and we will hit go all right wonderful okay thank you everyone again for joining us today welcome to today's presentation a new look at FDR my name is Kelly Palmer I am a white woman with shoulder length blonde hair and am w
earing a blue blazer and gray shirt my pronouns are she and her I will serve as today's facilitator before we get started we have a few housekeeping tips we do have two ASL interpreters on today's call vernice in Kenya we are presenting in gallery view so The Interpreter should always be visible you do not need to pin them if you pin the current interpreter you could prevent yourself from seeing the active interpreter um when they change captions are also available in Zoom click show subtitle in
your Zoom menu bar to turn them on you do not need to be on Zoom to access this call we will read all questions out loud so that the content will be available to individuals calling in on the phone who cannot see the visual content the call is being recorded and will be posted to our website for future use we will have a short q a at the end of the session you can submit your questions through the Q a tab located at the bottom of your menu bar you can also email me at admin at fdrmemoriallegacy
.com and I will compile a list of those questions for us to review at the end of the session you um we would also like to invite you to join our mailing list so that we can keep um website scroll all the way to the bottom and type your email address into that white box now that we have covered those important points we can get started with our program it is my pleasure to introduce Mary E Dolan co-founder and executive director director of the FDR Memorial Legacy committee good afternoon everyon
e I'm Mary Dolan and as Kelly said I'm co-founder and executive director of the FDR Memorial Legacy committee I'm a white woman I'm wearing a blue shirt today I have grayish blondish hair uh and I use she and her and the image in my background is of our of our organization logo and the wheelchair statue at the FDR Memorial the FDR committee was founded in 2019 and is the citizen-led organization focused on education inclusion and accessibility and preservation at the FDR Memorial in Washington D
.C we are born out of the successful disability-led campaign in the 1990s for disability representation at the memorial and we're committed to sharing the diverse perspectives of the Roosevelt era and that era's Legacy today I have the honor of introducing one of our Advisory board members who will share opening remarks Dr I King Jordan for those of us in the disability Community Dr Jordan is a long time hero friend and leader he is the president emeritus of gallaudet University Dr Jordan became
the first deaf president of gallaudet after an epic campaign in 1988 by students who demanded a deaf president they wanted authentic representation Dr Jordan served as president for 18 years I first got to know Dr Jordan during another epic campaign for representation the fight for the wheelchair statue at the FDR Memorial uh and actually I'm going to ask Kelly if she can share her screen and we're going to show a picture of Dr Jordan at one of the protests that uh were LED and organized by Jim
Dixon many hopefully you know Jim um uh who organized these protests for the FDR wheelchair statue and you can see Dr Jordan standing in a dark suit at a microphone clearly ready to give a speech to rally the troops and around him are a number of individuals um it's a beautiful day and uh another and one person is holding a very large sign that said don't hide FDR's source of strength um you can and thank you Kelly and you can find or listen or read about um Dr Jordan and his uh involvement in
the campaign for the wheelchair statue in our archives uh Kelly will post that on in the chat but before you hear from Dr Jordan we want to first show you a promotional clip from the documentary uh FDR to set the stage for our discussion so I'm gonna turn it over to Kelly to put up the cold video uh cold open clip for the for the documentary he was ambitious and active incredibly privileged but he suffered you contracted into town paralysis and he's had setbacks but through pain can come wisdom
the country's on the edge of a cliff but we're not gonna let it fall what do you plan to do with this problem he's his vision who changed the very soul of America I pledge myself to a new deal for the American Vision American democracy was literally resting on his shoulders this was Zero Hour [Applause] get everybody in here he knew that he needed to project real strength he is the dealer and hope for the entire free world an invasion of France is courting disaster he took risks again and again
you see these moments of great daring so success may not come with rushing speed but we shall return again and again Roosevelt led the Grand Alliance to victory over fascism this was a tumultuous complicated period of time it's a mistake to think that he somehow got everything right but there was something about that voice there was something about that smile that empathy that humility that resilience it's all those qualities that FDR just had triumphantly built into his character [Music] he was
ambitious so now I'd like to introduce Dr I King Jordan okay trying to get my videos started I'm King Jordan I'm white man with glasses white hair a blue shirt red tie and a brown jacket and I'm delighted to be here tonight I also am very impressed with the background on Mary's friend because that's the FDR statue there when the FDR Memorial was dedicated in 1996 there was no statue and no real example of FDR's disability or after the dedication President Clinton was cornered and disability act
ivists told him we need some representation of FDR in a wheelchair and President Clinton said there I agree and I'll help and he did help and the next January Congress passed a resolution saying that there should be a depiction of FDR that shows his disability then I start photographed Mary showed you indicated and February of 97 there was protest at the FDR Memorial and some very important disability rights leaders were there to advocate for a depiction of FDR in a wheelchair Jim Dixon was ther
e the uh the other people whose names I want to mention were Mike the land Justin dog and Adam Camp there were many people there but I think it's really important to name those key disabled leaders it's really important to show that FDR who was one of the most important presidents in the history of the United States was disabled for the entire life of his presidency so it was Statue is in an entry fossil on the FDR Memorial it's the first thing people see and I'm a runner I live in Washington DC
I go down there frequently and I always see people around the stops you rubbing it and talking about the importance of it so the disability issue is really key and that's where my emphasize now I'd like to introduce two speakers who will follow me one false barrel all was former director of the FDR library and museums and he's also a member of the FDR Legacy committee Advisory Group he he will talk about the issues related to the filming of the story God documentary and also doctor of Alina blo
od whose distinguished visiting professor at the middle Center for public affairs at the University of Virginia and she brings a great deal of expertise and knowledge about Eleanor both of them so I'm looking forward to your comments and I hope you have good stories about the making of this documentary thank you thank you Dr Jordan um Elena always a pleasure to sit with you um so I was initially contacted by Doris Kearns Goodwin who was the executive producer who worked with the History Channel
and the production company Radical Media when I was at the FDR library and I was just about to retire and they were looking for someone to come in as a historical consultant to help them uh maintain a high level of accuracy and it was very interesting everyone was very committed to making this show as as accurate and as compelling as possible an enormous amount of time was spent for the scenes that are recreated in terms of how you represent his disability how do you represent putting on braces
and being in wheelchairs and moving from site to site and it's it's very important uh that it be done correctly uh but I think analita can speak to this you can't talk about FDR his legacy uh or how he dealt with uh his definitely abled body without talking about Eleanor because they were a partnership and then of course Eleanor was thrown into uh becoming his primary caregiver right after he first suffered polio Elita you want to talk a little bit about the role Eleanor played in all of this su
re hello everybody um I'm a chunky white woman with short hair big glasses a green jacket and I'm wearing a black basketball t-shirt under uh my spiffy jacket to uh rev up my combative juices today um Eleanor is essential to this story not only for the role that she plays in um advancing FDR's courage and keeping his career going at his request but also for the impact that his disability had on her as I would argue the most significant woman of the 20th century so when you tell this disability s
tory there are two co-equal participants here there's FDR and his struggle to not let his Spirit become incapacitated by a physical disability and Eleanor struggle not to silence her own voice while elevating his Paul yeah so um I apologize I'm a 69 year old white male I'm wearing a pink shirt and a tie with a light blue jacket um and I go by he him but we do have a short clip that features Elita uh and about Eleanor if we could go ahead uh and roll that clip during the war Eleanor was instrumen
tal in encouraging women to work to 24 7 shifts Eleanor met with them became pen pals with them secured better working conditions for them got them raises and and made sure there was daycare available at federal employment facilities for her there had been ceremonial first ladies but she was the first first lady to speak at a National Convention the first to speak at a congressional investigation the first to hold weekly press conferences the first have radio shows of her own the price FDR paid
for Eleanor's Independence however was that she was gone almost 200 days a year but as Eleanor emerged into the first lady she became FDR's admiration for our only increased she becomes absolutely Central to his leadership now Alida can give you some more details on this but one of my favorite stories about Eleanor is in 1943 the summer of 1943 the height of World War II she travels to the Pacific into an active war zone and visits um it's an estimated 400 000 servicemen and women saw her either
give speeches or at their faces and camps in New Zealand Australia and all the islands even Guadalupe now um and she made a specific effort to visit the wounded and the um recovering in the hospitals do you want to talk about her courage in doing that and the impact it had on the wounded sailors and soldiers that she met with well first I want to talk about the impact that it had on Eleanor because she flew in unpressurized military aircraft and she shattered one of her eardrums and became deaf
in one ear on that flight also the first day that she was there the first two days that she was there she walked approximately 50 miles of Hospital corridors I want you to think about that 50 miles in two days it destroyed her feet her arches fell she had to wear special shoes for the rest of her life um one of the things that America did during the war was classify plasma by race it was a federal crime it was a felony which meant you lost your voting rights your basic um ability to move around
you would have a demerit every time you tried to get a job and you would be automatically discharged from the service if you gave a person of One race who was wounded plasma that was taken from another race even though the scientists who perfected plasma was black we now know from a variety of sources in military archives how strongly Eleanor objected to that practice and we can document now at least one instance where Eleanor went into an operating room to keep a Matic from being indicted for
giving a patient plasma from a person from a different race in order to save the patient's life that had a huge impact not only on Eleanor but on the men and women who were wounded in these military hospitals because Eleanor traveled so much she was able to go to people and say you know what's your name where are you from and they would say oh well I'm from Arlington Virginia where I live you know and they would say oh and she'd say oh I've been to the Caroline from there or I've been to wh Wood
lawn High School to really make them feel like she cared about them and was uh really concerned about them the other thing that she did was she carried a black book with her and she took messages from each of the Wounded with whom she conversed and she spent weeks when she came back reaching out to their families and sharing messages that the soldiers imparted to her but the real impact of this I think is on Eleanor and Eleanor's understanding of her role in the world because she begins to carry
a prayer in her wallet during that trip that she will carry with her until her death you know folklore has it that it's the Saint Francis of Assisi prayer which she also carried but this was much more important to her and the prayer she prayed every night which is dear Lord lest I continue in my complacent ways help me to remember that somewhere someone died for me today and if there be War help me to remember to ask and to answer am I worth dying for so to recap briefly her travel to the Pacif
ic disabled her in the sense that it um made one of her ears um unable to hear it certainly impacted her ability to walk without pain but at the same time it emboldened her to speak out for the issues upon which all of these men and women risked their lives yes and I think her career the mini series The History Channel miniseries sort of ends at the end of World War II when FDR dies and it it doesn't deal with the uh Legacy that Eleanor left in the post-war era when she was one of the most impor
tant women in the world with her work with the United Nations uh the universal Declaration of Human Rights Etc but we're gonna flash back now a little bit to 1921 FDR contracts polio when they're um on vacation at their home up in campobella and goes into a period of extraordinary um decline he's depressed Eleanor is desperately trying to help him Eleanor uh actually sort of becomes the face of the Roosevelt brand FDR literally goes down to Florida and lives on a houseboat for months at a time a
nd just to try to recover thinking that maybe water therapy would help uh and he really disappears from the public eye from 1921 to about 1924. Elena talk a little bit about the role Eleanor emerged as the spokesperson for them and why it was so transformational both her and for her role as the future first laid well Eleanor act together really in a way where trust was beginning to um be restored after Eleanor discovers that FDR had fallen in love with her secretary Lucy Mercer and they separate
they come back together um Louis Howe who was FDR's great political Mentor um thought Eleanor was just fantastic and in fact um there's significant evidence that's um where Hal wanted to try to run Eleanor for president after FDR but he dies in 36. so when FDR is strickened with polio it's a crucial time in both of their lives because Eleanor has just gotten her own life back she has just gotten her own confidence back World War one had a big impact on her she um um became exceedingly political
then she worked with labor organizations she worked with immigrant organizations she challenged the government for its treatment of shell-shocked sailors so when FDR is stricken Eleanor is stricken twice not just out of love and fear and grit for her husband but also oh my God now that I've found my voice am I going to be confined to Hyde Park as um a caretaker of an invalid rather than a partner of a dynamic man who is finally beginning to see me for who I am and giving me the room to become a
nd so what Eleanor does is she um walks this tightrope between suppressing her own great needs but immediately understanding that the number one thing that FDR needed to beat this was to keep his Spirit his Spirit intact and rebellious and um curious and free to admit pain and despair but not free to succumb to fear and so what they do together is um it's a whole new form of intimacy she has to learn to insert a catheter she has to turn him over when he um has to have a bowel movement she reads
the papers to him she helps him exercise and most importantly of all she and Louis Howe stand up to Sarah Delano Roosevelt Franklin's mother who very much wanted to bring him home to Hyde Park and to confine him not in a wheelchair but confine him to the life of a gentleman farmer and FDR and Eleanor basically say that's going to happen when hell freezes over so from then on they're only together for the rest of their lives less than six months a year because FDR is trying to get well and Eleano
r is on the road advocating for policies that both she and her husband um believe in and also acting as his great intelligence agent to come back and bring um all this uh political gossip and political needs that she is introduced to and observes throughout her travels across New York State so in 1924 summer of 1924 Al Smith was the governor of New York Al Smith and FDR had worked together when FDR was uh in the state New York State Legislature and Al Smith was a very powerful uh Catholic politi
cian uh and he wanted FDR to submit his name in nomination at the 1924 Democratic National Convention for president uh and now FDR had not appeared in public since 1921 uh and this this was a big uh transitional moment it was just coming out moment we're going to show you another video clip from the film and there is it's been an enormous amount of time trying to get this uh correct because it's a very complicated scene we don't have terrific you know first person documentation on it but it's ab
out FDR says okay if I'm going to do this if I'm going to submit Al Smith's name into nomination I need to be able to walk or appear to walk from backstage out to the podium and so this is a a recreation that sort of captures that moment FDR was giving the acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention and he had to be helped by his son Jimmy holding on to his arm oh there were all these fears that if people saw a weakness in him they might discredit everything that he could do that any challeng
e to his physical strength means the country was not strong [Applause] I lovely to see you guys pick me up see me up um sorry that was a different clip than I I thought we were going to play um the is there is there another clip um we can talk about that one that's actually his uh experience before the 1936 um National Convention um and what's amazing about that clip uh is that he he falls he's caught they bring him back up they put his speech together there's 50 000 people in the stadium in Pen
nsylvania um and they sort of hide from the audience what has happened and he goes up on the stage he's organizing his speech as he's walking up onto the stage and then delivers one of the greatest acceptance speeches in American history where he coins the phrase this generation has a rendezvous with Destiny um and it's an amazing example of his ability to um confront his own differently abled situation how he presents himself to the public he's always operating on two levels there's one level w
hich is smiling and confident and exuberant and then there's a darker inner level or he's constantly confronted with his fear that something's going to happen to expose his true physical condition which they had spent a great deal of time and effort trying to hide from the public but Eleanor um you know was part of the team that presented a somewhat False Image which was that he could sort of walk with using these crutches he was actually completely paralyzed from the waist down um but he would
sort of bounce on these crutches he would hold on to his son's arm or his AIDS arm and and cover these short distances and then stand at the podium and hold on to the podium while he was giving his speeches it's really quite an extraordinary performance and I think the lady you know how Eleanor felt about this yeah well one of the things too I think that is a very visual image for our audience to think about is FDR wore braces and he painted his braces black and he wore black socks so you could
try to um you know obscure uh from the General Public uh you know how dependent he was on his braces and with Eleanor when they would be on a train and FDR would be on the the end of the train like at a caboose she would always have a hole to his belt on the back to keep him and so that he wouldn't um you know he wouldn't lose his balance when he was um addressing a crowd so in many ways you know they were they were very much a team on this but I do think and I've never really talked with Paul a
bout this so why not do it in front of a cast of millions right Paul absolutely yeah but um because Paul is is a very very very dear friend and a respected respected colleague but Paul I think it's really a myth that the country knew that the country thought that FDR was not paralyzed you know I think people knew it they were just so there were other things that took precedent over that and so when we when you do have an incident like the 1936 convention or when he comes back from yalja and addr
esses Congress and says you know I hope you will forgive me if I sit down but carrying these X pounds of steel around my legs so to me it's how he manage the disability in a way that obscured it but not erased it does that make sense yeah no Americans he was a very famous person when he contracted polio um when he first was diagnosed with front page news in the New York Times so everyone knew he had had polio and everyone knew that he had some form of physical limitations uh the the Nuance there
of how much did they know who do they know who knew what when and um that's somewhat debatable there's no question that people on the inner circle who saw his daily routines understood the extent to which he required someone to help him out of bed to help him go to the bathroom help him put his shoes on the public knew that he walked funny um but really did not understand both the level of uh paralysis in his lower legs although again that people for example in Warm Springs Georgia where he tra
nsformed a rundown um you know Resort into the world's Premier polio Rehabilitation Center when he was there he was he willingly showed his withered legs and rolled around a wheelchair and got in the pool with everybody they called him doc Roosevelt so in that sense there were people who saw his true condition but they were sort of part of an inner family most Americans really didn't and they went to Great Lake they had a deal with the Press because it everywhere he went he was surrounded by pho
tographers and reporters and they sort of had a deal that they would never take a picture of him being carried out of a car or having his braces locked in place before they stood him up or in a wheelchair you know the 130 000 photographs at the FDR Presidential Library Museum there's only four that show him either in a wheelchair or in any sort of um using his braces or any of that sort of Aid so I think they didn't know the full extent of it but they knew that he wasn't 100 absolutely I think o
ne of the uh I was just going to say I do have that video queued up now if you would like me to share it sure why don't you go ahead and share that okay perfect thank you [Applause] that's 15 feet it's the distance to the podium doesn't seem so far can we just a wheel part onto the platform I walk or I back out all together all right let's give it a shot all right ah [Music] [Music] all right again so that that scene that's 1924 preparing for his first public appearance and that in the in his to
wnhouse in New York he also did a lot of work up at the Home in Hyde Park and that's his son there holding that he's holding on to his owner's son James and James essentially becomes his living crutch whenever in the early days he goes out in public James is right next to him he's holding on to James's arm uh and sort of throwing his legs back and forth and you see Eleanor in the background The Other Woman there was Missy lahand was his close assistant and really this eventually his eventually h
is chief of staff um but it went in Hyde Park one of the things he wanted to try to do was he wanted to try to walk the length of the long driveway there using crutches and his leg still leg braces which you see them putting on the beginning there um because he really believes he was going to walk again um and it was incredibly difficult and incredibly painful and every day he would go out and he would work and he would try and he would do this and I think a lot of people a lot of historians say
this that the his experience in polio helped make him a better person a better leader certainly more empathic and I think it also in many ways helped his relationship with Eleanor because he became very dependent on her to be his arms and legs and eyes in the real world I think one thing too that that we should discuss here is the extraordinary courage that took um in 1932 he has won the election and he's not going to take the oath of office until March and he's in Miami um doing a campaign a p
arent in a park and he's in his car which is an open touring car and sitting next to him is the mayor of Chicago an assassin comes up now I want you to think about FDR with the steal on his legs he's trapped in the car he can't move he has mobility in his shoulders in his arms but really very little below the name below the nipples to be honest and an assassin comes up to kill him and a woman swings her purse hits the gun of the Assassin held and the bullet instead fatally wounds the mayor of Ch
icago whom FDR Cuddles in his arms all the way to the emergency room and there is not an eyewitness account of that event nor a record of his call with Eleanor that night that does not in US Struck it all in odd language say how courageous he was during that he was trapped and refused to be trapped and I think that has a lot to do with his political mindset too and if you go to the memorial and you read the Eleanor quote that's on the wall behind the wheelchair statue you will see that Eleanor s
ays that um that polio taught him um never ending patience and ever pursuing persistence and I think that's exactly what the country needed as it confronted the two greatest crises of the century the Great Depression World War II the rise of the atomic bomb um the ability to experiment I mean in 1932 FTR gives this extraordinary campaign speech in Atlanta and Oglethorpe University where it calls for bold persistent experimentation in policy well FDR is a master of bold persistent experimentation
and trying to combat polio so it's the you know it's it's um interwoven like a double helix into this man's uh political and personal persona yeah we're going to jump ahead now this will be our last little bit before we take questions um the end of his life so after the end of 1943 they have the conference between Churchill and Stalin and FDR the first of the big three conferences uh which takes place in Tehran uh in Iran and it's a brutally long journey for FDR under the circumstances um and h
e comes back from that uh with pneumonia among other things now polio has a lot of side effects besides the paralysis and he had health problems basically his entire life but starting in early 1944 in the lead up to D-Day his health deteriorates fairly significantly uh he's seen by doctors they diagnose him as having congestive heart failure his blood pressure we have medical records showing his blood pressure of 300 over 150 of course there was no real medications for these conditions back then
and yet he carries on big controversy is he going to run for a fourth term in 1944 many people around him knew that if he did he probably wouldn't survive it but as a man giving orders sending young men into battle every day um he felt that he couldn't walk away that he had to serve sacrifice was so important to him so he his serves he's re-elected in November 1944 there's another big three conference in Europe this time in Yalta it's been in the news a lot lately in Crimea and it's a 14 000 mi
le journey and and Elena you know described a little bit of it that when he comes back to address Congress um you know the the doors of Congress open and he's wheeled in on his wheelchair down to the the pit where the table is and despite the fact that many of these congressmen and Senators have been working with him for years most of them had never seen him in a wheelchair uh and it was a it was an audible gasp in the room when he comes in and then a standing ovation uh and when he comes down a
nd sits down in the chair and says you know please forgive me for this unusual posture um he was a very sick man he died six weeks later and yet at that moment he was holding the world together um he then goes to Warm Springs and tries to recover in time for the first meeting in the United Nations but dies in early April and this is the last point I want to make before I take questions because this is for you Elita talk about what Eleanor went through what happened when she found out FDR had die
d and her transition out of the White House into her personal life well it was the biggest gut punch imaginable not just because FDR had died because she certainly was aware of his illness but she realized when she went down to claim his body that while he was at Warm Springs he was kept Company by his cousin Daisy and Lucy Mercer the Paramore whom he had sworn never to see again who was brought down to Warm Springs by their daughter Anna and so it ripped Eleanor's heart um in a 360 degree way s
he also while she had her beloved home at Val Kil um you know she had lived in the White House for 13 years she had been the most famous woman in the world in 13 years she can't blow her nose in public without the Press writing about it and it ricocheting and so what Eleanor has to do is figure out how to um coordinate a state funeral how to keep her family together how to settle his estate and most importantly for Eleanor and the world what she will do next and although this is not part of the
documentary um Allen returns down offers to be in the cabinet to be Secretary of Labor she turns down offers to run unions she turns down offers to um become head of the most famous college in America and she tells Harold Dickey's you need not worry my voice will not be silent and so from then on what the mantle that Eleanor takes on is the Roosevelt mantle not the FDR mantle not the ER mantle not the TR mantle but to take all of their beliefs and to address the issues to which she was really ne
ver able to address while she was in the White House and in the process she is the instrumental factor in the Drafting and Adoption of the universal Declaration of Human Rights which gives us the model for how the world will operate in the post-war era so once again she has to find out how to use her voice in a way that is respectful to her family um respectful to her husband but in a way that addresses the issues uh uh in a way in a more blunt way than she was able to do before Dr Jordan I turn
it back over to you for the questions from the audience Dr Jordan um oh perfect there you are I've learned so much from the two of you it's just amazing to me how much you know about both FDR and Eleanor um I want to ask an unfair question can you both tell me what you think was the most important thing the most important accomplishment the most important factor of Eleanor or FDR I mean we all know that FDR took us out of depression on World War II on Social Security um but what do you as indiv
iduals think is the most important thing that I brought to the United States well I'll speak for Eleanor and Paul can speak for FDR how about that I am and I must say this came to me very late and it came to me after spending time in war zones in refugee camps in uh pandemic hospitals um in times of vicious Civil War Eleanor saw the worst in humanity every single day of her life and she never ever gave up the conviction that if you worked hard if you kept people at the table if you had a velcro
butt you can make democracy work and she refused to give up on that when people tried to shoot at her when people rap Dynamite around the axles of her car when the director of the FBI wanted to clear her colored and quote colored and stripper of her citizenship and send her to Liberia Eleanor always believed that we were on trial to show what democracy means and as somebody who has seen character assassination up close and personal scene child soldiers seemed rape camps seemed countries ripped a
part by War and bombs and political violence the fact that she held that in a very realistic way is the most daunting Act of defiance and patriotism I can imagine you know they said after Eleanor died that she would rather light a candle and curse the darkness um and I I think that was sums her up well for me there's no question what fdrs was lasting Legacy was that he fundamentally changed the relationship between the federal government and the American people um prior to his presidency particu
larly the 12 years when the Republicans were in power um laissez faire was the predominant political philosophy which was that government's job is to help big business and to help the wealthy to help corporations um and but the little person the individual the Working Class People the the elderly the poor that was not governments responsible and FDR came in first as governor of New York when the Depression hit and then as president of the United States with the fundamentally different view as he
called it a new deal for the American people which is that the government does have a responsibility to people the government is absolutely in a contract with the American people the American people are going to support the government that the government has to support the people in their time of need and it fundamentally changed it as you said Dr Jordan you know Social Security old age pensions um unemployment insurance uh 40-hour work would be child labor laws Environmental Protections uh ban
king regulations the Securities and Exchange Commission you know these were all things that said okay government has a responsibility to do that and you know many people today disagree with that and certainly there have been a faction and political world that has done everything in their power to overturn the legacy of the new deal feeling that it has caused increase in taxes and other things but I think it fundamentally shifted how the government saw the people but more importantly how the peop
le saw the government particularly when it was personified by Franklin Roosevelt um there's a Doris Kearns Goodwin tells a famous story that during FDR's funeral an old man was standing there crying um and one of the journalists asked him did you know Franklin Roosevelt you're obviously very personally upset here he says no I didn't know him but but he knew me and I think millions of Americans believe that not only did he know them but he cared about them just to give one example to underscore h
ow important Paul's Litany of legislation was before FDR becomes president the American people's major relationship with the federal government was the post office um uh what we have we're getting a number of thank yous so Paul and Alita the information that you are sharing um is is really exciting to a number of people Alita first question I'm going to ask is probably something you can answer pretty quickly someone is wondering how they can obtain a copy of the prayer you read earlier oh for su
re just go on the internet and Google Eleanor Roosevelt's wartime prayer it's on the Eleanor Roosevelt paper's website okay but if you just put Eleanor Roosevelt's wartime prayer boom it'll be the first thing that pops up awesome all right the next question um is uh can you speak about the relationship between FDR and vice president Wallace and what could FDR have done differently if anything to ensure Wallace's succession uh to ensure his success as his successor I'll take this one um so for FD
R's first two terms in office his vice president was Jack Garner from Texas a very conservative irascible some would say corrupt Texas politician who really disagreed with most of the new deal policies that FDR put in place but no question it made a deal at the 1932 convention to put make him the vice president that's why he was he won the nomination so in 1940 when he was running for a very controversial unprecedented third term in office um it was obvious that Garner was not going to be his vi
ce president and so he was looking for someone who he felt and that Eleanor felt shared their core beliefs about the New Deal and Wallace was very liberal he was more liberal than FDR maybe not quite as Progressive as Eleanor but he certainly represented a very very Progressive wing of the democratic party um and a lot of people within the party didn't like it and during his term as vice president he was a brilliant man who had changed the face of agriculture with some of his Innovations but dur
ing the course of his vice presidency it came out that you know he had these mystical beliefs he was then to theosophy um he was communicating with what we would today call you know a new age Guru so it became fairly controversial and so for the 1944 election there was enormous pressure to dump Wallace and put someone who was both more malleable and more uh acceptable to the mainstream Democratic party establishment um and who would be a good president because the people in the decision-making p
rocess all knew that it was very likely whoever the vice president was in 1944 was going to be president and I think interestingly as this debate was raging in Washington FDR literally sent Wallace to Siberia and Russia to meet with you know to help them with farming techniques and things that he was out of the country uh and when he came back he was told you know well FDR wants you to drop out and he said if the president wants me to drop out he's going to tell me to my face and FDR hated confr
ontations buddy eventually the other thing too I think is very interesting about this is how close the 44 election was I mean it was by no means a foregone conclusion that FDR would win a fourth term and you had a liberal Republican also from New York also a former governor who was really running against him and Truman had to you know be able to navigate that but the thing that is quite interesting um about this is that Truman was capped out of all of the major war decisions uh prior to his beco
ming president uh the perfect example of this is he had no idea about the atomic bomb he had no idea about the Manhattan Project you know Eleanor knew but he didn't know and also Truman's big experience quote unquote was doing uh chairing hearings investigating wartime corruption so you may have somebody who's malleable but the issue is you know even though he had experience as a soldier in World War one was he in fact able to be president and I would argue absolutely not until the end of 1947.
you do not see Harry Truman but come give them help Harry until he has made so many colossal mistakes it's like me trying to dance ballet you're muted Kelly oh well thank you I was actually just popping on to turn this back over to Mary um so she will be popping on here um if she has there we go right there thank you um great questions and I do want to just share one other comment that was shared by someone listening uh watching uh thank you for all the insight about how much FDR was required to
hide his disability because of the stigma in bias uh these these ideas still exist today um uh people are still working to remove the stigma and bias so uh that's really uh really great uh to see all these comments so um we thank you Paul thank you Dr Jordan thank you Dr Black how lucky we are all to have spent the last hour with you um on behalf of the FDR committee we thank everyone who tuned in today for joining in this discussion you will receive a short survey uh that's going to ask you um
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a great rest of the day everyone thank you take care
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