Q: What does she learn from Arthurdale?
A: One of the things for me, as a biographer, that is so significant is for Eleanor Roosevelt -- the child who never had a home of her own, who lives in her grandmother's home and then goes to school and then gets married and lives in her mother-in-law's homes, and then in public housing (like the White House and the State House) -- housing becomes for Eleanor Roosevelt the most important issue. And she really does lead a kind of lifelong crusade for affordable, decent housing. And the chief experiment for her is a place called Arthurdale in West Virginia. And this is a very poor community where Eleanor Roosevelt envisions a really beautiful community, a self-sustaining community. And we talk a lot today about self-sustaining communities. And it's really nice houses on 2 to 5 acres, each one with indoor plumbing. This is at a time when 80 percent of U.S. housing, rural housing, does not have indoor plumbing. And Harold Ickes says, "Well, if Eleanor Roosevelt has her way, how will one be able to tell the rich from the poor?" And Eleanor Roosevelt says, "Well, in matters of such simple dignity and decency, we should not have to tell the rich from the poor." And it really is an incredible community that she nurtures. She gets all of her friends to support -- Bernard Baruch -- all of her friends with money and influence.
But it's a flawed community. It's lily white. ... There's a place in Logan County called Jew Hill. There's another place called Protestant Hill. And then there are all of these recent immigrants from East Europe. She really had expected that it would be integrated housing. Instead, it's limited to Protestants of native stock (by which they meant folks born here). And Eleanor Roosevelt asked them to vote on it. She didn't give up on this question of a racially mixed community. And they do vote on it, and they reject her idea that it's going to be racially mixed.
And nevertheless, she doesn't walk away from Arthurdale. What she insists on [is] that there will be model housing like Arthurdale for black Americans, and there will be affordable housing like Arthurdale in every state, for all ethnic groups. She really understands from her experiences at Arthurdale the depth of the racial problem in the United States.
Well, Arthurdale is viciously attacked on the right and on the left. Folks on the Left call it hole-house in the mountains. Folks on the Right want no part of it. And if you look at my book, in all due modesty, I have letters that make it very clear what it would take to make this kind of affordable housing. It was intended to become privately owned, but the land is bought by the government. It's not supposed to succeed. And there's a tremendous effort to destroy the public component of Arthurdale. And ultimately, it is destroyed as a publicly supported environment. And it's a great tragedy, because the commitment to have affordable housing ends, and the United States no longer has that commitment, no longer makes that commitment.
Q: In a nutshell, what does she learn from Arthurdale?
A: Well, I think that Eleanor Roosevelt really learned about the limits of power and influence from Arthurdale. She could not make some things happen. And she particularly learned that she could not, just because she was nominally in charge, she could not change people's hearts and minds; that a very long process of education would result before race was on the national agenda. And it really did move her into the racial justice arena with both feet. She came out fighting.
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