April 4, 1968

04 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Memory, Those we remember, Woodrow Wilson

Ronald Reagan signed the bill creating the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in November 1983, fifteen years after King’s death.

I would be remiss if I did not pause and write a few words on this, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I was less than a year old when he was killed in Memphis. Oddly however, the older I get the more events like this seem less like “history” and more like current events. Here in full-blown middle-age, my entire concept of time has evolved. When my father was alive he lived within a few hour’s drive from Memphis. I visited each summer I would usually borrow his car and take an overnight side trip to somewhere or other. More than once that place was Memphis. I visited the Lorraine Hotel, site of the King assassination and home today to the National Civil Rights Museum, more than once. Walking in the vicinity one could see the empty lots that were the results of the riots and, later, urban renewal. I have not been there now in many years, but I believe that gentrification is at last moving things along.

I remember when MLK Jr. Day became a holiday in the early 1980s. Again, at the time I thought his death was part of some ancient past, and yet the creation of the holiday was only fifteen years after the shooting. The evolution of the holiday itself has a convoluted history, one mired in national and even international events. A search of the New York Times digital archive from 1983 pulls up all kinds of articles about the unresolved issues of the Civil Rights Movement as well as commentary from TASS, the Soviet news agency, offering their cynical take on the drama of the holiday hanging in the balance. When King was assassinated the Tet Offensive was in its fifth week. Bobby Kennedy gave the eulogy for King and would himself be assassinated two months later. All that spring and summer there were riots and political upheaval across the United States, in Paris, Czechoslovakia, and Mexico City just before the Summer Olympics.

Viewed a certain way, King’s activities can be seen in the context of the World Wars. His assassination came just fifty years after Woodrow Wilson issued his Fourteen Points, and twenty-seven years after FDR announced the Four Freedoms in his January 1941 State of the Union address. King knew these things. It is not an accident that the Civil Rights Movement here in the U.S., and Independence Movements around the world, developed how and when they did. One can’t help but think of things like Ho Chi Minh at Versailles after the Armistice pleading his case for an independent Vietnam. King was reluctant to speak publicly against Lyndon Johnson because of all the president had done for Civil Rights, but in the year before his assassination King’s denunciations of the war in Southeast Asia became increasingly strident. In the library where I work, over the past fifteen years, a colleague and I have been ordering the King Papers as they have incrementally released. The historiography on the release of someone’s correspondence is itself a fascinating genre. History is a humbling thing and the deeper one goes the more one sees the relationships between what are very complicated events.

(image/White House Photo Office)

FDR, 1882-1945

30 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Those we remember

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The desk Franklin Delano Roosevelt kept in the family’s East 65th Street townhouse

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on this date in 1882. On these winter days I sometimes think of the coming summer, when among other things I usually make a day trip to Hyde Park. When I was there last summer I asked the ranger if the site does something every January 30 to commemorate the occasion of the only four term president’s birth. She said the library & museum hold a brief ceremony every year, often with a contingent from the West Point Band just down the Hudson on hand to play. She emphasized the brevity of the ceremony. The winds blowing cold off the river in late January make a longer event untenable.

The photograph of the desk you see above was not taken in Hyde Park. I took the photo this past November at the Roosevelt House on East 65th Street. I sent the image to a friend of mine the night I took this. He was shocked at how modest and unadorned the desk was. I explained that, for all the wealth the Roosevelts had, they tended toward Dutch restraint. Roosevelt once famously said while president that he did not want a memorial in his honor after his death to be any larger than his desk. They honored that request in the mid 1960s. That it took twenty years to build even such a modest edifice is testimony to how long these things take.

When we think of the Hudson River Roosevelts we think of Hyde Park and Washington. Over course there were the twelve White House years. Thirty years before then, during the First World War when he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin and Eleanor rented a house from her Aunt Bamie just off Dupont Circle. Still the Manhattan home, with his mother Sara living next door in a detached townhouse, was very much the family domicile for large stretches throughout their lives. I kept the image above in my photo stream for the past 2 1/2 months waiting until this winter day to mark the 136th anniversary of FDR’s brith.

More “eyes” for the Navy

28 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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1917 poster produced by the Sackett & Wilhelms Corporation of New York for the Navy Department

In the final week of January 1918 the U.S. Navy Department sent out a request to all Americans to please send any binoculars, telescopes, spy glasses, sextants, and visual aids of similar nature to Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt care of the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue. This was the second such plea put out by the Navy in the past two months. Binoculars were the most desired item on the wish list. Strictly speaking any items sent were to be loans not gifts; the Navy offered $1 for the use of any item for the duration of the war. The dollar was actually a technicality; government agencies were prohibited from taking possession of any goods without payment. Thousands of packages flooded in to the Observatory over the last five weeks of 1917 and first several weeks of 1918. Still, the need was so great that the Navy issued the second plea.

Apparently word got around too that some people were holding back because they were unsure of if/how/when they would ever receive their items returned. There were enough letters to the editor of various newspapers complaining of packages sent but not acknowledged that Roosevelt felt the need to draft a communiqué explaining that the Navy was doing all it could to address the backlog. He made clear too that, while all items would be duly tagged before being sent to ships, submarines, and lookout points, the Navy could not realistically be expected to return every item to its proper owner. Equipment can be lost or destroyed in time of war.

Unpacking binoculars and other visual aids at the Naval Observatory, 1918

The return of items was no small thing. One citizen noted that his binocular set cost $50, which is more than $1000 in today’s currency. One of the reasons the visual equipment was so expensive, and for the shortage itself, was because many of the premier manufacturers of such items were Swiss, German, French, or other European concerns. These makers were either now on the other side in the Great War; or, if the country of origin were an American ally, it was just logistically impossible for companies to send such things. Also, it was not uncommon during the war for manufacturers to retrofit their factories to produce different goods for the war effort. Thus the call from Roosevelt in late 1917 and early 1918.

(images/Library of Congress)

Merry Christmas

25 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Eleanor Roosevelt, Film, Sound, & Photography, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Washington, D.C.

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Merry Christmas, everyone. I saw this 1942 Christmas card from Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and fell in love with it for so many reasons. Judging by his white suit and her white dress the image would have been taken in that summer of 1942, seventy-five years ago. Franklin and Eleanor spent the Great War years in Washington and now here they are back in the District of Columbia as President and First Lady with the world at war a second time. One can only imagine the burden. In this image they seem to be trying to project an air of calm and tranquility in a troubled world. The white card stock is perfect for the photograph of two solitary figures sitting in white clothes on a veranda of the White House. There is no clutter on the table. Visually the picture is in balance with the concise message in simple black lettering on the right. Note that the card wishes the beholder a “happier” New Year, a subtle but telling word choice. The Roosevelts’ Christmas card went out to about 400 individuals.

Enjoy your day, all.

(image/White House)

A small Christmas Eve detective story

24 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Eleanor Roosevelt, Film, Sound, & Photography, Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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Roosevelt family, Christmas 1939

I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays. I came across the image you see above, which appears to an official Roosevelt Family Christmas portrait. Here is the image as I found it on Wikimedia Commons. It is titled Christmas 1941. For a few minutes I could not put my finger on it, but I knew something was off. The caption at the bottom reads 25 December 2041, with someone adding an addendum noting that “This date is not correct.” That is obvious true but something was still off. At first I noticed the relaxed poses of everyone in the picture; remember, this would have been just a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Even at Christmas, they would not have been so casual. The poses are a tip, but still just circumstantial.

After another minute or so I got it: that is Sara Roosevelt, Franklin’s mother, sitting next to Eleanor on the left. Sara died in September 1941, so for this Christmas photograph to have been from 1941 is obviously incorrect. So when was it? I then looked at the baby, not quite yet a toddler, seated to FDR’s left. That’s John Roosevelt Boettiger, standing on the lap of his mother Anna. An internet search informs us that John is Franklin and Eleanor’s grandson and that he was born in March 1939. A retired professor, he is still alive today. Here he is the center of attention. Everyone is looking at the little tyke. With Sara in the picture we know definitively that this is not 1941. For this photo to be taken in 1940 little John would have been well over 21 months old. That seems unlikely. 1939, when he would have been nine months, is a far better bet. Sure enough, outtakes conclusively show that this Christmas family photograph was taken in 1939.

I found this image in several places where they get the date incorrect, which is inevitable but always a little dismaying. Were it not Christmas Eve, I would go into that more depth. The point in analyzing the image today is to have a little fun. Merry Christmas, all.

(image/National Archives)

December 8, 1941

08 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Florida, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Memory

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December 8, 1941: President Franklin Roosevelt appears relaxed after the pressure of having just signed the declaration of war on Japan. When he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Wilson Administration Roosevelt had overseen the construction of several of the ships sunk at Pearl Harbor. Note Sam Rayburn third from the right, who maintains a serious visage.

About a decade ago during a trip to Florida to visit friends and relatives, I brought with me some then-recent New York Times clippings about the recovery following the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was a complicated months-long operation similar in many ways to the cleanup at Ground Zero after 9/11. The reason I was carrying actual newspaper clippings, as opposed to sending links right after reading them online, was because I was bringing them for a friend’s father. This was an older fellow who like many of his generation was not plugged into the internet that much. I knew however that he would appreciate the articles. He was greatly interested in American history and was himself an Armed Service veteran who had served in the Air Force a few years after the Second World War. I gave them to him at a restaurant over dinner.

Longtime readers of the blog may remember when I used to post every year on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. As some may also remember, I said that I would stop doing that after last year’s 75th anniversary. Yesterday I waited all day for the moment when someone might finally mention Pearl Harbor. It eventually happened in a text message from my friend at about 5:00 pm. This quickly led to a back-and-forth of missives on memory and the meaning to be found in the past. As things go his father, the man for whom I had brought those clippings now a long time ago, died earlier this year. This is the first December since, well, the birth of my friend almost sixty years ago, that his father is not here for the two to commiserate on the significance of December 7, 1941. Needless to say, it made for an emotional and reflective Pearl Harbor anniversary for my friend.

(image/National Park Service)

The ETO turns 75

08 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George Marshall, George S. Patton (General), John J. Pershing (General), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), William McKinley

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Colonel N.A. Ryan, acting chief of transportation, U.S. Army European theater of operations, and Major General D.J. McMullen, D.S.O., C.B.E., director of transportation, British Army, Great Britain circa 1942

General Pershing’s arrival in first England and then France one hundred years ago this week is often understood to mark a turning point in American-European relations. The coming of the A.E.F. certainly signaled the arrival of the United States on the world stage, a process that had begun almost two decades earlier during the Spanish-American War. The evolving American relationship with Europe dates back to then too; it was John Hay, Secretary of State in the McKinley and Roosevelt Administration from 1898-1905 and, just prior to that, Ambassador to the Court of St. James, who had done so much to build the “special relationship” with Great Britain. Hay and Pershing laid the groundwork diplomatically and militarily for the Allied victory in the Second World War. Pershing’s protégés included George Marshall, George Patton, and Dwight Eisenhower. Today, 8 June 2017, marks another significant moment: the War Department created the European Theater of Operations on this date in 1942.

Dwight Eisenhower, at fifty-one now a major general, took over at director of the European Theater of Operations (ETO) in London on June 24. Joseph Stalin had been pressing for a second European front for some time, and now it appeared he would get that some time in 1942. That of course did not come to pass. Roosevelt and his planners decided to make North Africa the first Atlantic offensive. Two years later came the invasion of Normandy and V-E Day less than on year after that. Ike was now a hero and came home to assume the presidency of Columbia University. He was back in Europe as the head of NATO in 1950. For the past three quarters of a century we have taken the work of the U.S. Army in the European Theater of Operations granted. It was in Germany as part of the ETO where Elvis was stationed after getting drafted in the late 1950s.

We would do well to remember in our current moment that building alliances is much more arduous and time consuming than tearing them apart. Diplomacy is a funny thing: when done well one does not see it; when done poorly it is all one sees. I only saw one reference to the creation of the European Theater of Operations today. Here is to remembering the work that Roosevelt, Marshall, Eisenhower, and millions of anonymous American uniformed service persons have done over the past seventy-five years.

(image/Library of Congress)

Snow day redux

14 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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As the caption on the image suggests, Eleanor Roosevelt was still finding herself when this image was taken in her early middle-age

We had the second and presumably last snow day of the winter today. With April almost here I imagine we won’t be getting many more blasts like this one. New York City itself was spared the worst of it. That said, I did not leave the house all day. It looked pretty slick out there. I had grand visions of writing today but it did not come to pass. I don’t think I realized until getting up this morning how tired I was. I would rather be busy than not but with the semester in full swing there has been so much to get done. Now I’m charged up for tomorrow.

This morning I began part one of Blanche Wiesen Cook’s three-volume history of Eleanor Roosevelt. The first installment goes from 1884-1933. Part one came out in 1992, twenty-five years ago. It was interesting to read the introduction, in which Dr. Cook discusses what in the early 1990s were still fairly new trends in historiography that incorporated Women’s Studies and other aspects of social history into scholarship. The third installment came out late last year. I intend to read all three works over the late winter and early spring and am curious to see how if at all the author’s perspective changes over time.

I am only up to the wedding of her parents Anna and Elliott but apparently Dr. Cook’s thesis is that it was Eleanor’s 1918 discovery of Franklin’s relationship with Lucy Mercer after he came home from visiting the battlefields in Europe during the Great War that led to the new phase in her life. She was only 34. Any marriage is more complicated than it appears to outsiders but the Mercer discovery unquestionably changed Franklin and Eleanor’s relationship. It is reasonable to assume that it also sparked her increased confidence and willingness to reach out and build a wider social and political support network for herself.

(image/New York Public Library)

Living–and telling–history

31 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Memory, Museums

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Museum of Jewish Heritage, 29 January 2017

This past Sunday morning I was at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on the Battery to see my friend Sami Steigmann participate in a ceremony to remember the Holocaust and other crimes committed in Europe in the twentieth century. Sami Steigmann was born in 1939 in Bukovina, one of those regions whose nation status changed hands numerous times in that span during and after the World Wars. The other day I wrote about the 135th anniversary of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That may seem like ancient history, but it is incredibly humbling to meet people like Sami Steigmann, whose lives were changed through the decisions made by the leaders of the twentieth century. Sami and his parents were imprsoned in a concentration camp, where as a toddler he was the victim of medical experiments. Just typing these words is difficult.

We have known Mr. Steigmann for eight years now. I even wrote a book chapter about it that was published last year during the 100th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service. I am glad to see that Sami is becoming an increasingly prominent national figure. Even while we are still early in the new year, his 2017 calendar is already filling up with speaking engagements. And why not? Still a relatively young man in his mid-seventies, he is uniquely positioned to tell a personal narrative of the mid twentieth century in a way that few people today can. Sunday’s event had just the right balance of seriousness and levity. There was even a young all-male song and dance troupe of boys strongly reminiscent of what one might have seen at a borscht belt camp ground circa 1955, and that’s a compliment. When it was all over I didn’t stay long. The crowd to meet Sami was so deep that I said a quick goodbye and headed out the door into the January light.

The FDR 135th

30 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Memory, National Park Service, Those we remember, Woodrow Wilson

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World War II in Europe was reaching its climax in late winter 1945.

This past summer when I was at Hyde Park I had a conversation with one of the rangers in which we discussed that 2017 was the 135th anniversary of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s birth. He was born there at Springwood on 30 January 1882. I usually visit Hyde Park every summer and have spoken to different rangers in recent years about the dwindling number of visitors who have that emotional, visceral attachment to FDR when visiting the site. It is no wonder, with so many Americans having grown up hearing the four-term president on the radio regularly throughout the Depression and Second World War. Nowadays there are still a few such on the pilgrimage, but for the most part that cohort has aged out. I find this photograph intriguing on a number of levels. The image is of Sergeant George A. Kaufman of the 9th Army and was taken in Germany on 9 March 1945. The public did not know it at the time, but Roosevelt was failing quickly by this time. He would die in Warm Springs just over a month later.

Roosevelt’s life and times spanned much of the American moment, an era that sadly might be winding down before our eyes seven decades after his passing. Roosevelt attended Harvard at the turn of the century, served as Wilson’s Assistant Navy Secretary during the Great War, governed New York State in the late 1920s and 1930s, and was in the White House the last dozen years of his life. It is easy to forget that he was only sixty-three when he died. I see on the Hyde Park/NPS website that they are having a program today at 3:00 pm in the rose garden behind the library. The Hudson Valley is cold this time of year, but it looks like the weather will cooperate. I am curious to see if there is more to come over the course of the year.