First Lady Eleanor
Roosevelt and Mayor Robert F. Wagner, 1956
Steven A. Levine
Coordinator for Educational Programs
In 1963, a year
after Eleanor Roosevelt’s death, Mayor Robert F. Wagner memorialized her at the
National Roosevelt Day Dinner of the Americans for Democratic Action, the
liberal organization she co-founded in the late 1940s. Click here to read Mayor Wagner's speech.
Wagner's relationship with President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor
Roosevelt was closer than the ones he had with most New York politicians. His father, Senator Robert F. Wagner was a
close confidant of the president, going back to their days in the New York State
Legislature and the young Wagner knew the future president and first lady from
his childhood. But in his years as mayor, Eleanor Roosevelt became both critic
and adviser to him. “She instructed me,
she criticized me, both publicly and privately. On more than one occasion, she censured me, to
my profit, I might add. . . . She was
more than a great lady, more than a great personality, more than a great
humanitarian. She was a great phenomenon
in a phenomenal age.”
If you want to
learn more about Eleanor Roosevelt or use other Roosevelt related materials in
your classroom, please contact me or Tara Jean Hickman thickman@lagcc.cuny.edu at the
Archives.
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