The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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WASHINGTON, Wednesday—We arrived in Greensboro, N. C., on time yesterday. A plane sent over by the Charlotte News Publishing Co., which was sponsoring my lecture, was waiting on the field. The College for Women at Greensboro had sent a few representatives to greet me with a box of flowers, and the local radio man was also there with a microphone so I could say a few words of greeting before starting on the other plane for Charlotte.

All this was done very rapidly, and then we climbed into the smaller plane with a delightful young pilot and reporter from the News, who acted as one of our hostesses during the day. We were soon looking down on the fields and woods of North Carolina.

It seemed more like summer than spring. The flowers were all out and the dogwood was in full bloom. Somehow or other, this "little" trip to southern California and then to North Carolina, seems to have robbed me of that first feeling of spring creeping over the landscape.

There was no sign of spring the last time I was in Hyde Park and suddenly, when I was back in Washington, everything was out—magnolias, forsythias, daffodils; everything seemed in full bloom overnight! Perhaps, when I get back to Hyde Park in early May, I shall get that first sense of life awakening again in the trees, fields and marshes.

As we came through Virginia this morning, one hillside seemed to me particularly beautiful. The leaves on the trees were pale green and a soft reddish brown. In between, some kind of white blossom glistened and the purple of the Judas tree was everywhere in sight.

Yesterday afternoon, we visited two housing projects on the outskirts of Charlotte; one for colored people and one for white people in the low income group. They were nice houses and very much appreciated by the tenants, who are already in them. The rents are reasonable and everyone seems very happy.

There is a big playground for the children near both projects and a good deal of equipment had already been placed in the one near the project for white people. The playground in the project for Negroes had very little equipment, but I hope that this is only temporary and that it is going to be possible to give the colored children a similar opportunity for recreation. It seemed to me that in both projects there were a great many children and anything that can be done to make life pleasanter for them is valuable in making the projects a success.

I stopped in the Red Cross workrooms for a few minutes, and was told that they have 2,000 volunteers enrolled. I shall tell you about the rest of my day in Charlotte, N. C. in tomorrow's column.

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT, 1941, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, April 17, 1941

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
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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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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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