When Eleanor Roosevelt Visited 539 East 9 Street

It should be remembered and recorded that in October of 1960, Eleanor Roosevelt herself visited the home of my parents --my childhood home (539 East 9 Street in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn).

I myself missed the occasion, alas. I was then living in Massachusetts, undergoing the first disorienting days of graduate school. But I know the story. 

During the 1960 presidential campaign (John F. Kennedy versus "Tricky Dick" Nixon), JFK's Catholicism emerged as a divisive issue. It's hard to believe what a fuss was made about his religion, especially nowadays, when no one bothers themselves that Joseph Biden is not only a Roman Catholic, but a serious one at that (JFK's personal commitment to his religion was, let's say, nominal).

Among Jewish voters, some of whom had grown up in Brownsville or Williamsburg or the Lower East side where Jewish-Irish conflict was a fact of life, there was a great deal of resistance to voting for JFK. And other Jewish voters, harking back to the old country, remembered Catholics as their antagonists and were hard put to vote for a candidate of that persuasion.

It fell to the task of Mrs. Roosevelt to persuade these reluctant voters that they could and should cast a ballot for Kennedy. At the time, there was no one in America who had more credibility with Jewish populations than she. It was well known that Mrs. Roosevelt had lobbied her hesitant husband for more lenient policies toward "displaced" Jews

I don't know how it came about that our living room was chosen as a site for Mrs. Roosevelt to meet with voters. I suspect that it was through my mother's extensive contacts with members of the League of Women Voters, an organization of which she was a stalwart volunteer. I know that my mother assembled 50 or so voters, almost all Jewish women, and seated or stood them in our very crowded second floor living room. Mrs. Roosevelt arrived, and as my father said to me later, she "dragged her ass" up two flights of stairs, spoke for 20 minutes, presumably in that upper-class nasal twang for which she was famous, answered a couple of respectful questions, and then limped back down to her car. And went on to the next venue. And the next. (She was 76 at the time, and not in great health.) Apparently she followed this same arduous routine for months.

That's how elections are won.

Eleanor Roosevelt died two years later, in 1962. 

 

I'm proud that our home hosted Mrs. Roosevelt. It's too bad that 539 East 9 was demolished in 1988. It deserved a better fate, especially since there was a day when it was graced by one of the previous century's finest human beings.

 

For more on 539, click here.