to bear the distant idleness of a debutante’s life, her conviction for improving the situations of those less fortunate sought fulfillment among New York’s burgeoning political left organizations. Ultimately, she would find herself perfectly situated to affect radical change in the lives of American workers as the wife of Franklin D.Roosevelt, President of the United States, and perhaps even more so as his widow. Eleanor Roosevelt was a dutiful wife and mother, but her early restlessness endured within. Franklin’s career as a member of the New York State Senate, unleashed her political usefulness as the family moved from Hyde Park to the state seat in Albany. There, Eleanor’s leave from social service expired with her husband’s active reform campaign against Tammany Hall, a powerful political machine long associated with corruption. Eleanor lost her naivety about government at this point, and Franklin would note her “political sagacity and cooperation.” Their teamwork flourished as she fulfilled any tasks familial or political to facilitate Franklin’s course. In return, these responsibilities sharpened a managerial and political savviness, thinly veiled beneath an active social presence. Eleanor’s first term as First Lady of the United States began in 1932, but in spite of regularly topping the “best dressed” list she could not play the fashionable figurehead. In fact, a needlewoman herself, one of Eleanor’s first acts was to refuse the inaugural gown crafted for her as long as the female garment workers who had stitched it were prohibited from unionizing. She wore the dress. Her influence in other areas was also enhanced by the newWhite House role. She regularly sought the placement of women within the Roosevelt administration, such as Frances Perkins, FDR’s Labor Secretary and a first-hand witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist disaster. She travelled across the country to see every inch of destruction wrought by the Great Depression collecting detailed observations of her trip. These notes, written frankly and with wisdom, helped to form FDR’s New Deal policies. Following her husband’s death in 1945, Eleanor’s next moves were unclear; clouded by the constant speculation of reporters, friends, and family. To them, she stated, “The story is over.” But no one, likely not even she, believed it. President Truman appointed Eleanor to the American Delegation of the United Nations in 1945, during WWII’s global aftermath. Finally, more than 30 years since the shock of the Triangle Fire, a list of fundamental human rights would be drafted and Eleanor would oversee it. Article by article, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights evolved under Eleanor’s political discipline and personal, lifelong study of the human condition. Though a collaboration with other members of the UN Commission, the bill was a true summation of Eleanor’s deeply held beliefs regarding the infinite potential and inherent dignity of humankind. The Cold War and the tumult of the Civil Rights Movement brought Eleanor’s focus back to the home front. She did not shy from criticizing those in power and she never diluted her opinions. Her relationship with President John F. Kennedy was as rocky as the times they lived in. The Democratic nominee and young favorite failed to capture Eleanor’s support due to his lack of conviction against racial and social injustices. Their public conversation through his office, her “My Day” column, his press releases, and her speeches, only reached resolution and her ultimate support in the final days before his nomination. Even after his election, she pressured him to diversify his administration, sending a three-page list of qualified women for
him to “consider.” He did even better by creating a Commission on the Status of Women to examine policies related to women workers and appointed Eleanor as chair of the committee. At 8:55 AM, on April 24th, 2013, the factory located at Rana Plaza in Dhaka, Bangladesh, was full of people, and their humming machines. By 8:57 AM, after the collapse of its unstable foundation, it was full of bodies. One thousand one hundred-thirty workers would perish. Eighty percent of them were female, most of them young. This tragedy shines a light back onto our interpretations of progress. One view is that we must move forward for the sake of forward motion, no matter the cost; that if it isn’t a factor of GDP, it isn’t worth measuring. A less brutal version, Eleanor’s version, is that progress happens all around us in small places and with small actions. A better world, a better garment industry, is only possible through the sustained well-being of all persons, no matter the cost. “Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home—so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps 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 concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.” —ER
small places fashion, eleanor and human rights By Shelby Wilson
With exit doors locked, waves of red flame crashed across the floors, catching the ceiling, shooting through the windows and consuming those inside. The angels refusing to burn flew for only moments before they met the cold Manhattan sidewalk, between the broken nets of an unprepared fire brigade. One hundred forty-five workers—teenage, foreign, and female—never came home from their factory shifts that Saturday. The year was 1911. Progress takes many forms, and often many lives, as it pulses forward. The western world found itself engaged in this forward haul at the end of the nineteenth century, and saw casualties by the thousands as the fever to industrialize possessed various nations. Young women, in particular, saw promise arise from the smokestacks of factory towns
and expanding cities. Independence gained through earned income offered prospects unknown to them only a decade earlier. Textile and garment manufacturing laid the foundation for the early American economy, enabling some to amass great wealth. Regulation of the industry came only after serious breeches of the social contract. In the meantime, those toiling amid the hum of the machines were silent and largely invisible. It took the deaths of the one hundred forty-five girls during the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire for the public to realize the human cost of mass production. One deeply affected citizen was a wealthy, well-traveled, and sharply intelligent woman who, from a young age, brought mild embarrassment to her family by disavowing her birthright. Unable
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