Anna Eleanor Roosevelt and the Tuskegee Airmen

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living:

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the longest-serving First Lady throughout her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four terms in office (1933-1945). She was an American politician, diplomat, and activist who later served as a United Nations spokeswoman.

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Tuskegee Airmen

On April 3, 1939, President Roosevelt approved Public Law 18, that provided for an expansion of the Army Air Corps. One section of the law offered hope for those African Americans who wanted to advance their military careers beyond the kitchen or the motor pool. It called for the creation of training programs to be located at black colleges which would prepare blacks for service in a variety of areas in the Air Corps support services.

On January 16th, 1941, the War Department announced the creation of the 99th Pursuit Squadron. This was to be an all black flying unit trained at the Tuskegee Institute founded in Tuskegee, Alabama, by Booker T. Washington in 1881. Charles A. Anderson, a self-taught African American pilot had established a civilian pilot training program at the Institute in 1939.        

Since there were no black officers, eleven white officers were assigned to train and prepare a total of 429 enlisted men and 47 officers who would become the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black military personnel in the flying school. From 1941 to 1946 over 2,000 African Americans completed training at the Tuskegee Institute, nearly three quarters of them qualified as pilots.

The rest went on to become navigators or support personnel. Together they were known as the Tuskegee airmen. During the war the 99th Pursuit Squadron, which was later renamed the 99th Fighter Squadron, flew in the skies over the Mediterranean and Europe. The missions were primarily as bomber escorts.

The 99th Fighter Squadron had the distinguished record of never losing a bomber to enemy fighters. In addition to shooting down enemy attack aircraft, they also shot down the belief that African Americans were not suited to responsible military service. In 1948 President Truman ordered the desegregation of the United States Military.

Chief Civilian Flight Instructor Charles Alfred Anderson took Eleanor Roosevelt on an hour-long flight during her 1941 visit to the Tuskegee Institute. Here they are pictured aboard the aircraft shortly after landing. Airforce Historical Research Agency photo.

Support From a First Lady

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was very interested in the work at the Tuskegee Institute, particularly in the aeronautical school. During a highly publicized 1941 visit to the Tuskegee Army Air Field, she asked to take a flight with one of the Tuskegee pilots.

Although the Secret Service was anxious about the ride, Chief Civilian Flight Instructor Charles Alfred Anderson, known today as “The Father of Black Aviation,” piloted Mrs. Roosevelt over the skies of Alabama for over an hour.

Flying with Anderson demonstrated the depth of Eleanor Roosevelt’s support for black pilots and the Institute’s training program. Press coverage of her adventure in flight helped advocate for the competency of these pilots and boosted the Institute’s visibility. Roosevelt was so impressed with the program that she established and maintained a long-term correspondence with some of the airmen.                

Eleanor Roosevelt had met Cecil Peterson before he became a Tuskegee Airman. Here Roosevelt accepts a plaque offered by Peterson, then representing the Student Government at an NYA-supported program at Quoddy Village, Maine, July, 1941. Peterson wrote on the front of this print: “Remember this occasion? 21 July 41 Quoddy Village.” FDR Library Photo: NPx 79-258.

A shy, awkward child, starved for recognition and love, Eleanor Roosevelt grew into a woman with great sensitivity to the underprivileged of all creeds, races, and nations. Her constant work to improve their lot made her one of the most loved–and for some years one of the most revered–women of her generation.

She was born in New York City on October 11, 1884, daughter of lovely Anna Hall and Elliott Roosevelt, younger brother of Theodore. When her mother died in 1892, the children went to live with Grandmother Hall; her adored father died only two years later. Attending a distinguished school in England gave her, at 15, her first chance to develop self-confidence among other girls.

Tall, slender, graceful of figure but apprehensive at the thought of being a wallflower, she returned for a debut that she dreaded. In her circle of friends was a distant cousin, handsome young Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They became engaged in 1903 and were married in 1905, with her uncle the President giving the bride away. Within eleven years Eleanor bore six children; one son died in infancy. “I suppose I was fitting pretty well into the pattern of a fairly conventional, quiet, young society matron,” she wrote later in her autobiography.

In Albany, where Franklin served in the state Senate from 1910 to 1913, Eleanor started her long career as political helpmate. She gained a knowledge of Washington and its ways while he served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. When he was stricken with poliomyelitis in 1921, she tended him devotedly. She became active in the women’s division of the State Democratic Committee to keep his interest in politics alive. From his successful campaign for governor in 1928 to the day of his death, she dedicated her life to his purposes. She became eyes and ears for him, a trusted and tireless reporter.

When Mrs. Roosevelt came to the White House in 1933, she understood social conditions better than any of her predecessors and she transformed the role of First Lady accordingly. She never shirked official entertaining; she greeted thousands with charming friendliness. She also broke precedent to hold press conferences, travel to all parts of the country, give lectures and radio broadcasts, and express her opinions candidly in a daily syndicated newspaper column, “My Day.”

This made her a tempting target for political enemies but her integrity, her graciousness, and her sincerity of purpose endeared her personally to many–from heads of state to servicemen she visited abroad during World War II. As she had written wistfully at 14: “…no matter how plain a woman may be if truth & loyalty are stamped upon her face all will be attracted to her….”

After the President’s death in 1945 she returned to a cottage at his Hyde Park estate; she told reporters: “the story is over.” Within a year, however, she began her service as American spokesman in the United Nations. She continued a vigorous career until her strength began to wane in 1962. She died in New York City that November, and was buried at Hyde Park beside her husband.

After Franklin Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt famously told reporters that the story was over. 

But the new American president Harry Truman had different ideas. In December 1945, Truman sent her a message asking her to be a member of the United States delegation to the first United Nations General Assembly to be held in London in January 1946. At first, she demurred, fearing she was too inexperienced in international meetings. But as she thought more about it, she became determined to join the delegation. She accepted the President’s offer, and became the first woman to represent the United States as a delegate to the United Nations.

The men who made up the rest of the American delegation weren’t quite sure what to do with Roosevelt. They assigned her to Committee 3 concerned with humanitarian, economic, and cultural questions rather than to one of the other committees dealing with what they considered to be more important political, financial, and legal matters. Eleanor Roosevelt believed that she was assigned to Committee 3 because the men in the delegation assumed she would sit by and do the least harm there.

But those men underestimated Eleanor Roosevelt. On Committee 3, she did what she always did — she made herself useful. She used considerable diplomatic and rhetorical skills to win the right of self-determination for war refugees who faced the danger of forced repatriation to their home countries.  And her reputation for hard work and skillful debate earned her appointment as the United States representative on the newly created UN Human Rights Commission. She would later say that it was her work on the Human Rights Commission that she considered to be “her most important task.”

The other members of the Human Rights Commission elected Roosevelt chairperson, and she worked hard to push the committee’s work along as quickly as possible. The committee decided to focus on drafting an international bill of rights, which the General Assembly could adopt in the form of a declaration.

Eleanor Roosevelt worked her committee hard, presiding over divisive debates on the nature and extent of human rights and often clashing with the Soviet representative. At the heart of the Commission’s debate was the definition of exactly what kind of human rights and liberties should be guaranteed to the citizens of the world in the second half of the twentieth century. 

Roosevelt wanted the declaration to include basic principles of individual liberty on the order of the United States Bill of Rights, but she believed the new declaration must be written in such a way so as to be sensitive and acceptable to all religions, cultures, and ideologies. She also insisted that the language of the declaration be brief and simple so that all people could understand it.

The result was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that sets the standard required of all nations for the treatment of their citizens. It is the yardstick by which our modern concept of human rights and human dignity are measured, and the language applies to men, women, and children alike.

The Declaration is an expansion on the principles of the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter. It declares the right to opinion and expression; the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; and the rights to life, liberty, and security.

But perhaps the most startling and progressive aspect of the Declaration is the number of economic rights it proclaims—the very foundation of our concept of human security: the right to work and free choice of employment; the right to equal pay for equal work; the right to a decent standard of living sufficient to provide adequate food, clothing, housing, and medical care for you and your family; the right to social security when you’re unemployed, disabled, or in old-age; the right to an education; and the right to participate in and enjoy the cultural arts and sciences.

In a speech before the General Assembly just before that body was scheduled to debate and vote on the adoption of the Declaration, Eleanor Roosevelt asserted that:

“We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind…This Declaration may well become the international Magna Carta” that will raise human beings around the world “to a higher standard of life and to greater enjoyment of freedom.”

On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly voted to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Forty-eight nations voted yes. There were no votes against, and only eight nations abstained. And at the conclusion of the vote, all the assembled delegates rose to their feet to give Eleanor Roosevelt a standing ovation.

In March 1953, Eleanor Roosevelt returned to the United Nations and delivered some extemporaneous remarks in answer to what has become known as The Great Question: 

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?” she asked. “In small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they ARE the world of the individual person: The neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger word.”

Exhibit created by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum — http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/

The biographies of the First Ladies on WhiteHouse.gov are from “The First Ladies of the United States of America,” by Allida Black. Copyright 2009 by the White House Historical Association.