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

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NEW YORK—On Thursday night of last week I had a birthday party for an old friend and afterwards we had the great pleasure of seeing "Fanny" in which Ezio Pinza and Walter Slezak give such delightful performances. The music was good, the book had meaning and you really felt you had some connection with real people with whom you could sympathize and live. I found it the best musical play I have seen this season.

The past week was a gay one for me and I added to it on Friday night by going to hear the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, with Rafael Kubelik conducting. This was the last appearance in America for this orchestra which has travelled to 43 different cities in 51 days. They have had enthusiastic audiences everywhere, and the greatest success.

Last Friday night they received a standing ovation which they fully deserved for the evening was a wonderful one. First they played the Symphony in D minor, No. 2, by Antonin Dvorak and then Symphony No. 1 in D major by Mahler. I did not know the Mahler Symphony but found it very lovely. It has been a long time since I have had such a gay week of entertainment and I think it is refreshing to the soul.

Now let me turn for a minute to an apology that I wish to make. A short while ago, I had before me an article which used Judith Coplon's name in relation to William Remington's conviction and I used her name in my own article without verifying it. Since then I have found that it was Elizabeth Bentley who was involved in the Remington Case, and I want to apologize to Miss Coplon and to my readers.

I would not wrongfully add to anyone's burdens and where they concern this young man and his family I think they must be rather heavy to bear.

Under a grant from the Ford Foundation the National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students has been making a search for talent in the South with the purpose of discovering qualified Negro college candidates. In doing so, it has produced statistical affirmation of the recent Supreme Court finding that a separate school system is not inherently an "equal" school system.

The search disclosed that only half of the top 10 percent of the senior classes in the 81 highest-ranking high schools in the South possessed minimum college qualifications. This adds a cogent argument to many that can be advanced against segregated schools.

I know that a few years ago a similar search proved that on the lower level of education it was hard to find boys who had comparable qualifications at lower-school levels, not because they did not have the intelligence but because the schools they attended were really not equal.

E.R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1954, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, December 7, 1954

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
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.

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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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