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

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NEW YORK, Thursday—A group of very good actors in a little second-floor theater, with homemade costumes and no scenery, are doing a play called "Sojourner Truth," written by Katherine Garrison Chapin—in private life, Mrs. Francis Biddle. Last night I went to Harlem to see a special performance in this theater, and I came away with the feeling that I had heard some really fine writing spoken in the way it should be spoken. In this play, things are said that need to be said, and they have a bearing on the world of today though they were written about a woman who lived many years ago and who did much to arouse the conscience of New York against slavery.

Muriel Smith, who plays the part of Sojourner Truth, has a beautiful voice both in speaking and in singing, and I think she is a really fine actress. Many of the men impressed me also. I wish that someone able to produce this play as it should be produced could take hold of it and put it on Broadway. Maybe few people would go to see it but maybe many would go, and I think they would come away feeling that, in spite of all the discouragement some of us feel at times, we really are a little nearer to the day "when men can look at each other as brothers."

* * *

Yesterday I did a short recording for the United Nations Appeal for Children. Some countries have finished their drives and raised their quotas. Iceland reports proudly that every person on the island has sent in a contribution.

Our goal in this country is a big one, and the fund is being raised in collaboration with other overseas relief agencies—which I think makes it a little more difficult for people to concentrate on the fact that this is the means by which we can keep millions of children from starving to death all over the world.

It is not a question of big subscriptions. It is a question of everybody in every community sending at least something to the local or national committee. I think you will find that there is hardly a community in the country that does not have a committee raising funds in this drive for the benefit of needy children everywhere. Forty nations have national committees and there is a hope that, before the drive closes, fifty nations will have conducted campaigns.

The measure of what we can do for children in food and medical supplies is dependent on how many people give—it is the volume of giving that will count more than the large, individual gifts. If every adult in the country gave a dollar and if every child gave ten cents, we would be many times over our quota. The slogan, of course, is "Give a day's pay," but the important thing is to organize your entire neighborhood and see that everyone knows of this need to help the children of the world, so that everyone participates.

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1948, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Persons
  • Biddle, Francis, 1886-1968 [ index ]
         American lawyer; US attorney general
         [ LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | ANB ]
  • Chapin, Katherine Garrison, 1890-1977 [ index ]
         American writer, wife of lawyer and judge Francis Biddle
         [ LC | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC ]
  • Smith, Miriel [ index ]
         American singer and actress
Organizations
Geographic
  • New York (N.Y., United States) [ index ]
Other Terms and Topics


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 21, 1948

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
[ ERPP bio | LC | VIAF | WorldCat | DPLA | Wikidata | SNAC ]

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

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
    [ ISNI ]
  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ISNI ]
  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]

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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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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