Eleanor Roosevelt

The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers makes Eleanor Roosevelt's written and audio-visual record accessible to all.

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1947: "A strike is still the one weapon of last resort to correct injustices when injustices cannot be corrected or are not corrected in any other way."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1947: "Back in the days of Abraham Lincoln, the right not to work, as a weapon against unfair practices, was considered an inalienable right."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1960: "What happens is that one group abuses its power and, finally, the citizens are sufficiently outraged that they exercise their rights as citizens to clean house."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1956: "No democracy can afford to overlook the safeguarding of its freedoms."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1956: "The Justice Department, if it really wanted to, probably could do a great deal more than it has in investigating abuses of civil rights."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1961: "That news photograph of the police with the dogs attacking the Negro who was peacefully demonstrating will take a long time to fade from people's memories."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1961: "It is good to know that the Justice Department is seriously investigating violence in Mississippi."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1945: "If we do not see that equal opportunity, equal justice, and equal treatment are meted out to every citizen, the very basis on which this country can hope to survive with liberty and justice for all will be wiped away."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1941: "Happiness is hard to achieve in a world where war and famine and poverty and injustice still hold sway."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1946: "Difficulties between people or nations that are not talked out create a potential bitter feeling of injustice on all sides."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1956: "There is a point beyond which human beings will not continue to bear injustice."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1948: "Anyone who has worked in the international field knows well that our failure in race relations in this country, and our open discrimination against various groups, injures our leadership in the world."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1960: "They will know clearly what has happened to Dr. King. The prestige of the U.S. will suffer."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1960: "I am appalled to find that a Georgia court has sentenced the Rev. Martin Luther King to serve four months in prison—a sentence that obviously stems from his participation in a sit-in demonstration."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1961: "In the South, as far as I can discern, both white and Negro young people want to follow Martin Luther King's Gandhian action and protest peacefully when they must."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1957: "Dr. Martin Luther King, in his insistence that there be no hatred in this struggle, is asking almost more than human beings can achieve. Yet there has not been one single word of praise from any member of the Administration."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1961: "Dr. King recounted the stories of ten CORE members who were arrested at a lunch counter in Rock Hill, S.C... Two of the members have written...to say that 'jail is not pleasant, but for us it is a haven of freedom and preferable to the segregated society outside.'"

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1957: "Citizens in Montgomery, Ala. ...under the leadership of the Rev. Martin Luther King have adhered to non-violence. But human beings have a breaking point if denied an outlet for their emotions and convictions."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1962: "Martin Luther King presses forward but he presses forward without the use of violence and with the constant hope that there will be love and understanding growing out of each new gain."

[Eleanor Roosevelt @ERPapers]

1937: "I wish for those whom I love...opportunity in the coming year to earn sufficient, to have that which they need for their own, and to give that which they desire to others... to end the year a little wiser, a little kinder and therefore a little happier."