What Matters More Than Roosevelt's Deepest Thoughts

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To lea, you can still get an argument about who roosevelt was a traitor to his class. There's not a lot of insight into his inmost self. What matters more than roosevelt's deepest thinking is the pressure he faced from all sides. Corporate leaders and pro business politicians on the right organized labor and masses of suffering poor people. His agriculture secretary, henry wallace and his wife, eleanor,. travelled the country visiting needy people and championing housing programmes. She met with african american leaders, wrote a daily syndicated newspaper column and broadcast her own radio show. Our guest to day has been described as one of the 50 greatest women in America

The Great Depression presented a crisis not only for the U.S. economy, but for American democracy. President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to save the nation’s system of government, and its economic system, while reforming both. What did the New Deal achieve, and not achieve?

Reported and produced by John Biewen, with series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Eric Rauchway and Cybelle Fox. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

Music by Algiers, John Erik Kaada, Eric Neveux, and Lucas Biewen. Music consulting and production help from Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.

Photo: Men fighting during a strike at the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, 1937. Image courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

As mentioned in the episode, an article by public historian Larry DeWitt examining the widespread assertion that the exclusion of some occupations from the original Social Security old-age pension program was insisted on by southern segregationists: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html