EXHIBITS

Edward Wallowitch (1933-1981) came to New York at a young age to work as a photographer and gained  recognition when his photos were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art . In the early 1950s he was hired to document the African American neighborhoods of Philadelphia, his home town, with a keen eye for the children and teenagers he encountered in the destitute landscape.  A decade later he captured the poverty of rural Kentucky and published these photos with co-author Rebecca Caudill in My Appalachia (1966). He was best known for his projects with Andy Warhol and also as his companion. Wallowitch  photographed celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, President Kennedy, and Eleanor Roosevelt. This beautiful study of Eleanor shows her at a quiet moment working at her desk.

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Eleanor Roosevelt made a rapid transition from First Lady to First Citizen.  Less than a month after FDR’s death on April 12, 1945, Eleanor wrote to Basil O’Connor, known as “Doc” to his close friends. She asks him to consider who might best serve on a Roosevelt Memorial Finance Committee. O’Connor had been FDR’s friend, law partner, and political advisor. He helped set up Warm Springs as a polio treatment center in the late 1920s and then created the March of Dimes in 1938 to raise funds to find a cure for polio and remained its leader for many years; he was also head of the American Red Cross during World War II at FDR’s request and was now head of the FDR Presidential Library.  The official FDR Memorial, set on Washington’s Tidal Basin, would not be dedicated until 1997.  The Four Freedoms Memorial to FDR on Roosevelt Island was dedicated in 2012.

Eleanor Roosevelt lent her name to a $100,000,000 fundraising effort by the United Jewish Appeal for displaced persons in post war Europe in this letter to Mrs. Rosencrans.  In two world wars Eleanor had seen at first hand the terrible impact on civilian populations.  Not long after this appeal she would promote the work of UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) for the same purpose and remain its lifelong advocate to help children around the world.

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From the very earliest days of FDR’s polio recovery in 1921, Eleanor Roosevelt had been his collaborator in masking the extent of his disability. A 1929 New Yorker article noted how she walked slowly by his side out of a meeting, so the pace seemed natural and not unduly slowed by his movement on crutches. This 1946 letter to a Miss Ray is a rare statement by her about the personal impact of his disability.

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Frances Perkins started in public life as an investigator of the causes of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. She then worked in state government under Governors Al Smith and Franklin Delano Roosevelt who made her his Commissioner of Labor. When FDR was elected president, and being pressured by women’s groups to appoint a woman to the cabinet, Perkins was the ideal choice and he made her Secretary of Labor. Among her many achievements in that post was the creation of Social Security in August 1935.  She served during his entire presidency and then left on good terms under Truman. He appointed her to the Civil Service Commission and she thanks him for waiving the compulsory retirement rule.

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FDR was one of the founders of the United Nations hoping that such an organization would prevent more wars. After his death, President Truman appointed Eleanor Roosevelt to the U.S. Delegation in late 1945.  According to Curtis Roosevelt, her grandson, when he spoke at Roosevelt House in 2012, not much was expected of her. But she, of all the American delegates, would have the greatest influence.  She led her 12-nation committee to the successful writing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHC), adopted unanimously on December 10, 1948.  When Curtis accompanied her as an aide in 1948, he observed how all of her skills from her political and civic organizations came to the fore in bring about this outcome, her capacity to work through a committee, with people of diverse views who were not of her opinion.  She overcame those who didn’t see women as equals and she led with a fair but firm hand. She thwarted at every turn the efforts of the Soviets, in the early years of the Cold War, to derail or modify the discussions, right down to the final consideration by the UN General Assembly.  Curtis concluded we would not have a Universal Declaration of Human Rights if a new Eleanor Roosevelt [had not] emerged, … of a dynamic person who could – I believe the proper word is bully – that resolution through the General Assembly. Eleanor’s remarks on the occasion of the UDHR vote (wall panel) eloquently place the Declaration in the context of world history. It has become the basis for every discussion of human rights over the last 67 years and the basis for Hunter’s undergraduate program in Human Rights.  Eleanor was not reappointed to the UN post by President Eisenhower but remained the staunchest advocate for the UN during the rest of her life.

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During this presidential year, an intriguing article by Senator John F. Kennedy appeared. The answer to the title question, “Would You Want Your Daughter to Be President?” was that he approved of the idea.

A NEW GENERATION

A new generation of women leaders emerged in the 1960s galvanized by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique of 1963. The women’s movement encompassed everything from conscious-raising groups to mass activism for civil rights and anti-war rallies, and lobbying for equal opportunity in every dimension of personal and professional life. The movement led to increasing numbers of women running for election. From 19 women in Congress in 1960 the number grew to 124 in 2015.

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Bella Savitsky Abzug started her political career as head of the student government at Hunter College where she met Eleanor Roosevelt. After graduating in 1942, she went to Columbia Law School, and finally ran successfully for Congress to represent a West Side district in 1970. She was defeated in the Senate race of 1976 by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, losing by 1% of the vote.  Her Press Secretary at the time was Harold Holzer, now Jonathan F. Fanton Director of Roosevelt House.  Bella was an early supporter for gay rights, and known as a feisty advocate for advancing equal rights and opportunities for women both in the US and worldwide. She was instantly recognizable by her hats.

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Rachel Carson’s book The Silent Spring (1962) gave vitality to the nascent environmental movement. After its publication she was vilified by manufacturers of pesticides but testified in Congress to the horrific impact that DDT was having on the natural world.  The momentum from her led President Richard Nixon to create the Environmental Protection Administration in December 1970.

 

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Women emerged as leaders in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s alongside Rev. Martin Luther King and John Lewis. Rosa Parks’ training and careful planning with NAACP activists in Birmingham, Alabama led to her arrest when she defied the segregated seating on a city bus. She met Eleanor on numerous occasions.

Two Hunter graduates who became civil rights activists were Pauli Murray (1933), and Ruby Dee (1945). Murray was a respectful sparring partner with Eleanor for many years on civil rights. Ruby Dee combined a career as a leading actress on stage and screen with civil rights work.

 

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Most recently, in the latest wave of protest, three young women – Opal Tomei, Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors – created Black Lives Matter, a chapter-based national organization working for the validity of Black life.

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The women’s movement also inspired many women to enroll in law school in the 1970s. They were appointed to federal courts increasingly in the 1980s. Finally, in 1981, President Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor as the first women to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Today, three serve: Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1993), Sonia Sotomayor (2009), and Elena Kagan (2010), all New Yorkers. Ginsburg is a noted defender of women’s rights and has recently been memorialized in a blog, and then a book, entitled The Notorious R.B.G.

 

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