Chapter 34

Summary

• The chapter is set in Washington D.C. at the White House on June 14, 1935.
• The narrative starts with Eleanor Roosevelt hearing someone call her name. She's just finished a meeting about a speech she'll be delivering at an NAACP conference.
• She runs into Steve Woodburn, a man she deeply dislikes due to the Souther Democrat views he holds.
• Woodburn criticizes Eleanor for the inflammatory communications sent by NAACP leader Walter White to the president, Franklin Roosevelt. Woodburn labels White as a troublemaker presenting inappropriate demands.
• Feeling provoked by Woodburn's audacity, Eleanor rushes into the Oval Office to talk to her husband.
• Franklin sees the situation differently and warns Eleanor that White's persistence and her association with him is inviting criticism that could affect her initiatives.
• Franklin tells her that he heard someone saying that she is so amenable to people of color that she must have "Negro" blood. This was an example, he suggests, of the controversy her affiliations might provoke.
• He advises her not to attend the NAACP conference, where she was planning to give a speech, because of his concern that it may upset Southern Democrats and risk jeopardizing the passing of the Social Security Act.
• Eleanor is conflicted. However, she decides to oblige Franklin, not because she is submissive, but because she sees a potential opportunity to further the cause of civil rights by getting her friend Mary, a person of color, a seat at the federal New Deal table.