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

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NEW YORK, Friday—I saw a most interesting man, Mr. Leon Sinder, who has been lecturing with films on the work of the United Nations, but also as an anthropologist he has shown films of his own making and lectured on them. He finds people respond to films and he feels that we have neglected painfully acquainting people with what is going on in Africa. He is anxious, therefore, to undertake a trip to study these areas and their people. I hope he is successful in carrying through his plans because I think we need to know a great deal more about the cultures of the people of the African continent.

After he left, Mr. C. M. Nelson, our Southern California chairman for the American Association for the U.N., came in and I was much elated to hear about the plans which were being carried out in that area for strengthening the U.N.. It looks as though all the chapters will work harmoniously to achieve their ends in spite of much open hostility to the U.N..

This week I went down to John Golden's office where the 10 winners of the annual John Golden U.N. Essay contest were assembled. Ever since John Golden has been chairman of U.N. Day in New York City he has offered 10 prizes of $10.00 and one of $100 for the best essays produced on the subject "Why I Like the UN." One hundred schools in the city participated this year.

This is a very good way, it seems to me, to stimulate interest in the young people and get them to feel that the U.N. is something that touches their lives. If they really feel this, they will eventually interest their parents also, no matter how indifferent their parents may be.

I went down to be photographed with these young people just to keep up the tradition of the past four years and to show that the America Association for the U.N. is interested in the work with our schools.

Mr. Golden also asked me to read the U.N. Day Prayer and I hope that many people will hear this prayer over the radio or read it in their newspapers on U.N. Day. The papers may well think it is too long to print, though it is a short prayer, but it is one that can be said by people of all faiths. Since it prays for peace, I think it might well be added to the prayers we say daily for that is one of the main things that each one of us carries in our hearts as a hope at all times.

I went to Mt. Vernon to speak the other evening, but before leaving to go there I had the pleasure of having the daughter of Professor Takagi of Tokyo, who was so kind to me during my visit there, come to tea with her husband.

The world is so much smaller now that I am always finding pleasant reunions with people whom I have met or whose family and friends I have met in faraway places.

E.R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1953, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, October 24, 1953

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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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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