Eleanor Roosevelt walked out of the White House more than the president’s widow. As a nationally syndicated columnist, popular lecturer, author, party leader, and social activist, Roosevelt assured her friends that ‘my voice will not be silent’. Vowing not to be a ‘workless worker in a world of work’, Roosevelt dedicated her unstinting energy to ‘winning the peace’. The 410 documents in
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Volume 1: The Human Rights Years, 1945-1948 , collected from 263 archives in 50 states and 9 nations, chronicle not only Roosevelt’s impact on American politics and the United Nations, but also the serious treatment she received from those in power. They disclose the inner workings of Truman’s first administration, the United Nations, and the major social and political movements of the postwar world. They also reveal the intense struggles Roosevelt’s correspondents and advisors had confronting a war-scarred world, the conflicting advice they gave her, and the material Roosevelt reviewed and the people she consulted while determining her own course of action. Using a wide variety of material - letters, speeches, columns, debates, committee transcripts, telegrams, and diary entries - this first of five volumes presents a representative selection of the actions Eleanor Roosevelt took to define, implement, and promote human rights and the impact her work had at home and abroad. Readers may disagree over various decisions she made, language that she used, or the priorities she established. Yet her influence is unquestioned.