Effects Of Eleanor's Letter To The Dr

In November of 1938, Negroes and whites attended her meeting of the Southern Conference on Human Welfare in Birmingham, Alabama. Bounded by the city’s segregation ordinance, they couldn’t sit together (Gerber 172). However, instead of sitting in the white side’s aisle upon her arrival, Eleanor moved her chair to sit in the blacks’ section. She refused to move until the police came and threatened to throw her in jail (Gerber 172). A few weeks later, Eleanor confronted another issue on racism. On January 1939, Marian Anderson received an invitation from Harvard University to perform in Washington, D.C. on Easter Sunday (“Minorities in Depression”). Yet, when the university asked to hold the event in the Constitutional Hall, the Daughters of American Revolution refused to cooperate, retorting that the performer was black (Gerber 173). On February 26, 1939 Eleanor wrote a letter to the DAR, stating that “You have set an example which seems to me unfortunate, and I

Forty-eight nations were for, none against, with eight abstentions ("Eleanor Roosevelt" fdrlibrary.org). Before the UN General Assembly debated and voted on the Declaration, Eleanor said, “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 greater enjoyment of freedom” ("Eleanor Roosevelt" fdrlibrary.org). Indeed, for the nations who voted to adopt the Declaration and the many newly dependent countries who adopted it as part of their constitutions in the 1950s and 1960s, its concepts had helped to recognize their citizens’ individual rights. Even in nations where it was not adopted, the Declaration continues to be commonly quoted by people of all positions and social classes ("Eleanor Roosevelt"