The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
JANUARY 27, 1936
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I went to a meeting of the Youth Congress this afternoon. I refused to speak, but agreed to answer any questions I could. The questions raised were interesting. One young man seemed to feel that because in four counties in Indiana, martial law had been declared and there had been horrible shootings and murders in other places that our whole form of democratic government was menaced.
I had to point out that we had lived through a great variety of changes in the past, and our conception of social justice had evolved year by year, and that in all probability we would live through this situation and still remain a democracy.
I was deeply impressed, however, with the earnestness of these young people, their real desire to contribute to the solution of their own problems, and to try to think through the questions before them and to consider themselves as a part of the whole situation and not as a special group.
I came home to have tea for a group of National Park Officials. These superintendents and their wives were here from all over the country and I was particularly delighted to see a few old friends, notably Colonel Thompson from Yosemite Park who had so kindly arranged for me a pack trip and three days camping in the High Sierras the summer before last. It was an unforgetable experience and evidently I made my deepest impression on the rangers by going in swimming every morning in the Lake! Snow lay on the ground nearby and the water was cold so no one joined me. By such idiosyncrasies are we remembered!
E.R.
About this document
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, January 27, 1936
Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007
Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project
Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.
Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.
MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.
TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.
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TMsd, 26 January 1936, AERP, FDRL