Fundamental Freedoms: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

2007).

Part I: Who was Eleanor Roosevelt?

It is essential, above all, that in making history we don’t forget to learn by history, to see our mistakes as well as our successes, our weaknesses as well as our strengths.

– Eleanor Roosevelt, 1962

Introduction

Eleanor Roosevelt had not planned to work for the United Nations, nor had she planned to devote her days to the challenges of writing legal documents and international treaties. By the time she left the White House, she was recognized as a powerful political actor in her own right, and as a leading advocate of the rights and well-being of ordinary people. As First Lady, she had labored ceaselessly to extend civil rights to all and traveled on diplomatic and humanitarian missions around the globe. But she had not expected to be involved in the daily work of the peace organization that she and her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had envisioned during World War II.

As the clouds of war began to disperse over Europe, and the German slaughter of millions of Jews, Roma (Gypsies), political dissenters, homosexuals, and other innocent civilians came to light, Eleanor understood for the first time how much power modern states had over the lives of vast numbers of people. Then, in August 1945, when the United States detonated atomic bombs over two Japanese cities, the picture became even grimmer, as hundreds of thousands of human beings were killed in an instant. At that time, putting a permanent end to war became Eleanor’s mission: the people of the world should set up mechanisms to resolve international conflicts peacefully, she said, or they would have to face the possibility that one day they would not wake up.

The opportunity to do something about this came before the war had ended. Just weeks before representatives from around the world first met to draft the United Nations (UN) charter, Harry Truman (who had succeeded Roosevelt to the presidency) asked Eleanor to join the United Nations delegation from the United States. Eleanor proved to be the perfect champion for this document, which many thought the United Nations could never approve.

This occurred in 1945. At the time, several prominent statesmen objected to Truman’s choice because of Eleanor’s well-known liberal positions, her popularity among African Americans and union members, and the fact that women were rarely considered for high-profile positions in the State Department. Nevertheless, three years later, on December 10, 1948, Eleanor presided over the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This document reflects the UN’s determination to stem international conflicts by overcoming differences between cultures and nations. It also reflects Eleanor’s worldview and lifelong interest in the needs and rights of ordinary people. Indeed, in many ways, the document reflects her journey as an advocate of individual freedoms and rights.

She did not write the Declaration on her own—no one could have. Canadian scholar and jurist John Humphrey wrote the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; French legal expert René Cassin wrote the second draft and later won the Nobel Prize for his contribution; Lebanese philosopher and diplomat Charles Malik served as secretary for the Human Rights Commission; and several Russian diplomats, including Alexei P. Pavlov, also helped shape the Declaration. The prominence of these men and other delegates has tended to overshadow the role of the woman who ran the commission’s meetings. And yet it is Eleanor, who skillfully directed their writing and kept their drafts simple and practical, to whom we owe the successful completion of the Declaration.

Eleanor possessed a combination of qualities, skills, and experiences that made her a better leader than the more formally educated members of the commission. It was her perseverance and fair-mindedness, coupled with charisma and authority, that kept things going when delegates stopped making sense or exchanges became heated. Secured by Eleanor’s influence, the backing of the United States ensured that the writing was completed, adopted by the UN, and later ratified by the Senate. Such an achievement cannot be underestimated, especially against the backdrop of the Cold War and the retreat from international cooperation that came with it in the late 1940s. For example, an equally important document, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), was buried in United States congressional committees for years; other international agreements never saw daylight, or, if they did, they lacked the international support needed to make them useful.

However, it is wrong to view Eleanor as a mouthpiece of the State Department. She fought hard for the principles and rights she valued, and she even threatened to resign from the United States delegation when the State Department resisted. How did she come to possess such qualities? What shaped her moral outlook? Who was Eleanor Roosevelt?

In this book, we will explore these questions as we investigate Eleanor Roosevelt’s role in the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Elizabeth Borgwardt, a historian, has written that from its inception, the United Nations was designed to expand to the whole world certain aspects of the New Deal—the ambitious combination of legislation and executive action initiated by the American government to combat the economic and social problems faced by millions of Americans during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The direct link between the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the New Deal can be traced to the Anglo-American Atlantic Conference of 1941. There, the United States and the United Kingdom, facing the threat of Nazi Germany, called for self-determination of peoples, freer trade, and several New Deal–style social welfare provisions. But the conference, Borgwardt wrote, was "best known for a resonant phrase about establishing a particular kind of post-war order—a peace ‘which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.’"1 Note the wording: the leaders of two of the world’s most powerful nations had spoken of individual rights, rather than states’ rights. A revolution was under way. It would take several decades to spell out what that revolution meant. For some, like Winston Churchill, it had little or no political implications and therefore would not serve to undermine the empire he fought hard to maintain under British rule. For others, including Eleanor, it had far-reaching implications, with the potential to empower oppressed groups around the world.

Indeed, the phrase all the men in all the lands established the principle of universality, which would inspire Eleanor Roosevelt and the other members of the Human Rights Commission to set aside considerations of nationality, sex, ethnicity, age, and religion, speaking instead of the rights of every human being on earth. The discussion of human rights that began during the 1920s and 1930s blossomed and bore fruit as a reaction to the horrifying events of World War II.

Self-Annihilation

Just two decades after World War I, a conflict that killed 18 million soldiers and civilians, Germany forced Europe into a new war. This war pitted Germany, Japan, and Italy—the main Axis powers—against the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union, the main Allies. Though World War II began when Germany invaded Poland, the conflict expanded into North Africa, China, the Soviet Union, and many of the other nations of Europe and Asia, bringing a whirlwind of death and destruction that far exceeded the unprecedented previous bloodbath of 1914–1918. This new war was nearly global in scope, and it was fought as a total war—each side committed all of its human and material resources to combat. After early Axis victories, the resolute defense mounted by the Soviet Union and the long-awaited entry of the United States on the side of the Allies changed everything.

Allied victory, however, would come only at the highest price: millions of human corpses and entire cities in ruins. Germany’s barbarism did not diminish with the Allied advances. Quite the opposite occurred: the more defeats and losses the Nazis suffered, the faster they gassed and shot innocent men, women, and children. Only when the war in Europe ended in May 1945 did the world begin to confront the largest genocide in human history—the systematic murder of close to six million Jews, over 220,000 Gypsies (Roma and Sinti), and thousands of homosexuals and other minorities, many of whom perished in the last year of the war.2 All told, the war had claimed the lives of 58 or 59 million civilians and combatants.3 Over 30 million people were displaced by the Germans and the Soviets alone, and many millions more began the uncertain life of homelessness, displacement, and exile (for example, an estimated 25 million people in the Soviet Union, and 20 million in Germany, became homeless by the end of the war).4

In Asia, the Allied war against Japan raged. On August 6, 1945, two months after the end of the fighting in Europe, the Allied powers’ systematic bombing of Japanese cities culminated in President Truman’s decision to drop an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The bomb incinerated the entire city of 300,000 people. In a matter of seconds, it obliterated one quarter of the population, and many more deaths followed from exposure to deadly levels of radioactive fallout. Three days later, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki. Shortly thereafter, Japan surrendered unconditionally.

Clearly, in the course of one generation, the destructive forces in the world had grown at an unprecedented rate, leaving little doubt in the minds of many that if a third world war were to erupt, human civilization was in serious peril. In a My Day essay published two days after the first bomb, Eleanor struggled to come to terms with the bomb’s awesome power:

If wisely used, it may serve the purposes of peace. But for the moment, we are chiefly concerned with its destructive power. That power can be multiplied indefinitely, so that not only whole cities but large areas may be destroyed at one fell swoop. If you face this possibility and realize that, having once discovered a principle, it is very easy to take further steps to magnify its power, you soon face the unpleasant fact that in the next war whole peoples may be destroyed.5

In this essay, Eleanor took a position that very few in Washington were able or willing to take. Her renewed focus was on prevention: We can no longer indulge in the slaughter of our young men, she declared. The price will be too high, and will be paid not just by young men, but by whole populations.6 In the weeks after Japan’s surrender, she did not publicly object to the use of atomic bombs; she assumed it had ended the war more quickly than any other course of action could have.7 But several months later, Eleanor somberly reminded a group of reporters that humankind now possessed the capacity to eradicate itself:

I think that if the atomic bomb did nothing more, it scared people to the point where they realized that either they must do something about preventing war, or there is a chance that there might be a morning when we would not wake up.8

Faced with the possibility of self-annihilation, many groups, politicians, lawyers, and intellectuals began to call for measures to ensure the safety of the human race. Eleanor was among them. Her response to the enormous challenges that arose in the wake of World War II grew out of her lifelong commitment to social and political justice and her work to advance international peace. Indeed, by the time she joined the United States delegation to the UN, she had already completed a long personal and political journey that put her at the forefront of the struggle for civil rights in America. By then she had already acquired plenty of experience in deliberating policies and was perhaps one of the most under-recognized advocates for peace and international cooperation in America (for example, she chaired the Edward Bok Peace Prize Committee, which reviewed plans for reintroducing the United States into peacekeeping efforts around the world after the country refused to join the League of Nations).9 Her new work would soon make her the face of the human rights campaign around the globe.

No Ordinary Life

My mother, Eleanor wrote in the first line of her autobiography, was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.10 Later passages revealed how Eleanor saw herself: as a plain, serious, awkward girl.11 I must have been a more wrinkled and less attractive baby than the average…. I was a shy, solemn child even at the age of two, and I am sure that even when I danced, I never smiled.12 Such impressions, Eleanor suggested, were driven into her by her mother, Anna Roosevelt, who often picked on her, mocking Eleanor’s clothing and shyness—one of Anna’s favorite nicknames for her daughter was Granny. Eleanor later recalled that at such moments, she wanted to sink through the floor in shame.13 Anna set the moral standards in the family so high that Eleanor felt it was utterly impossible for her to live up to her mother.14 In the world inhabited by the Roosevelts—New York’s elite Protestant society—where the ability to dress, speak, and dance elegantly meant a great deal, the mother’s critical assessments only added to the daughter’s feelings of inadequacy.

Eleanor (far right) at the age of six with her father and brothers in New York, New York, circa 1890. Eleanor saw herself as a plain, serious, awkward girl and a shy, solemn child.

© Bettmann/Corbis

Fifth cousins once removed, Eleanor and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were descendants of Nicholas Roosevelt, a New York City alderman whose Dutch father had immigrated to America in the 1640s. Other family members arrived even earlier, some aboard the Mayflower; among the Delano family were descendents of the Protestant Huguenots who escaped religious persecution in France and arrived in America in 1621 (their original French name was de Lannoy). Later generations, especially on Franklin’s side, prospered in commerce and industry and amassed great fortunes. If ever there was an American aristocracy, Franklin and Eleanor belonged to it.15 But in spite of its material advantages, her family endured a series of blows. First to fall ill was Anna Roosevelt, who died of diphtheria in 1892; she was not yet 30 years old. Her husband, Elliott Roosevelt, an alcoholic who had formerly spent long periods away from home, tried to rally and care for his three children, but before long he was on the road again.16 Eleanor and her two younger brothers, Elliott, Jr., and Gracie, were left in the care of their maternal grandmother, Mary Livingston Ludlow Hall. Despite Elliott’s shortcomings, he played a tremendously important role in Eleanor’s life: He provided me, she said, with some badly needed reassurance, for in my earliest days I knew that I could never hope to achieve my mother’s beauty, and I fell short in so many ways of what was expected of me. I needed my father’s warmth and devotion more perhaps than the average child.17

Her brother Elliott, Jr., then contracted scarlet fever, followed by diphtheria, and died six months after his mother, when he was not yet four years old. A little more than a year later, shortly before her tenth birthday, Eleanor learned that her father had died as a result of his alcohol and drug addictions.18 In two years’ time, Eleanor had lost a brother and both parents.

Eleanor at her school, Allenswood, in England in 1900. Eleanor was sent to boarding school to acquire a first-rate education. The school stressed intellectual courage, taught its students openness, and had them practice arguing their opponents’ views.

© Bettmann/Corbis

In 1899, Eleanor was sent to a boarding school in England named Allenswood, where she was to expand her education before taking her place in a society defined by great hereditary wealth. Under the sympathetic eyes of the headmistress, Marie Souvestre, Eleanor blossomed. Studying among the sons and daughters of the European elite inspired her, and she was able to cast off the memory of her mother’s disapproval and emerge from the darkness of her family tragedy.19 An early feminist, Souvestre took great interest in her American pupil, and in time they developed a warm mutual affection that lasted until Souvestre’s death in 1905. Academic discipline and the guidance of a devoted mentor gave Eleanor the skills and confidence that she later displayed. Souvestre, who stressed intellectual courage, taught her students openness and had them practice arguing their opponents’ views. She also made Eleanor her personal companion for her European summer travels. During these travels, Eleanor was exposed to new cultures, learned many new skills, and, at Souvestre’s insistence, visited the poor and underprivileged—along with the usual mix of tourist destinations. Later in life, Eleanor concluded that Souvestre had the biggest influence on her childhood. She noted her teacher’s legacy:

As I look back, I realize that Mlle. Souvestre was rather an extraordinary character. She often fought seemingly lost causes, but they were often won in the long run. . . . I think I came to feel that the underdog was always the one to be championed!20

After three years in England, Eleanor returned to the United States, where she spent the remainder of her adolescence among the Knickerbockers. These members of New York’s high society had abundant leisure time; they spent it visiting one another’s mansions, riding horses, playing polo and golf, and hunting—the traditional pursuits of the British aristocracy. Though they did not need to work, many of the men pursued higher education and careers in law, business, politics, or the military. The young women were trained in the skills needed for the life of upper-class wives; they were encouraged to socialize, read, paint, improve their writing skills, and help the poor.

The 17-year-old Eleanor could not manage to summon any excitement for the standard Knickerbocker existence. She was particularly unhappy about the formal balls she was obliged to attend: at 18, young women of the approved sort were formally presented to elite society at spectacular debutante balls that marked their readiness for marriage. Like other eligible young ladies, Eleanor was expected to make her debut in adult society (this is why they were called debutantes).

Instead of balls and tea parties, Eleanor developed a keen interest in politics and good works. She was especially drawn to the challenges faced by New York City’s newest arrivals—Italian, Jewish, and German immigrants who labored in the city’s most exploitative sweatshops and factories. Clearly, her interest in decent housing and living wages—two fundamental rights Eleanor would fight for all her life—predates the New Deal. In fact, she was the one who introduced her young lover, Franklin Roosevelt (then a law student at Columbia University), to the hardships of the poor on the Lower East Side. Franklin, who sometimes met Eleanor at Rivington Street Settlement House after class (see below), got firsthand experience of life in the poor neighborhood.21 Later in life, Eleanor argued that it was her father who steered her interests toward the suffering of the disadvantaged:

Very early, I became conscious of the fact that there were people around me who suffered in one way or another. I was five or six when my father took me to help serve Thanksgiving dinner in one of the newsboys’ clubhouses which my grandfather, Theodore Roosevelt, had started. . . . My father explained that many of these ragged little boys had no homes, and lived in little wooden shanties in empty lots, or slept in vestibules of houses or public buildings, or any place where they could be moderately warm. . . .22

In 1903, she joined the staff of the College Settlement on New York City’s Rivington Street, where young men and women just out of college lived among the poor, taught them calisthenics and dance, and attempted to facilitate their assimilation into American society. She also worked with the New York Consumers’ League to improve women’s deplorable working conditions, particularly in the textile industry. The more she saw of the living conditions in New York City’s tenements, the stronger her commitment grew to helping those in a part of society quite different from her own. Although rich Americans had long assisted the poor, the Knickerbockers preferred to help the poor from behind the physical and social barrier that set them apart. Eleanor refused to give charity from arm’s length; she preferred to give it firsthand. Indeed, Eleanor now began to challenge the old methods of dispensing charity, and she got to know the needy in person—a very different approach from the one favored by her parents’ generation.

Eleanor on December 1, 1932, serving food to unemployed women and their children. Eleanor challenged traditional upper-class forms of charity and sought firsthand knowledge of social problems.

© Bettmann/Corbis

During the nineteenth century, the rich were obligated by religion, honor, and tradition to serve their community, and they contributed both time and money. But this charity was given from above, in keeping with the values of a patriarchal social structure in which the father exercised all authority. Within the family, he was expected to protect and provide for his children, who were obligated to respect his authority and to obey his directions. Similarly, the rich and powerful dispensed charity in return for deference from the poor. Though this type of aid provided a rudimentary social safety net, it cast the poor as children of the rich and reinforced America’s class system.

Over the course of her lifelong social activism, Eleanor sought to break free from tradition. To the dismay of her family, she refused to simply sit on the boards of charitable organizations; she sought firsthand knowledge of social problems. Instead of charity—which she viewed as demeaning—she believed in reform, in institutions that promoted equal opportunities for everyone and that preserved the dignity of those who had