Dr. Maurine Beasley co-edited The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia. (Photo by Nikki Hawkins)

By Nikki Hawkins
Maryland Newsline
Wednesday, April 11, 2001

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - It's more than 600 pages, and yet The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia could have been longer.

At least according to Dr. Maurine H. Beasley.

A professor of journalism at the University of Maryland, Beasley completed the four-year task of editing some 250 entries about the life and experiences of Eleanor Roosevelt, with co-editors Holly C. Shulman and Henry R. Beasley. The book, published in late 2000, has already been nominated for one award—the quinquennial Waldo G. Leland Prize given by The American Historical Association.

“I know we will use it here,” said Raymond Teichman, supervisory archivist for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, N.Y. “We get a fair number of inquiries about Mrs. Roosevelt and her life. She did so much. No one biography or article can contain all of it. This will be a valuable resource for many.”

As much information as there is about Eleanor Roosevelt, Beasley said there is plenty yet to be discovered.

Eleanor Roosevelt in Sydney, Australia, promoting the Red Cross (photo courtesy FDR Library)

“Eleanor Roosevelt hasn’t been written about that much by scholars, so some of the material in the book was independent research that we did at Hyde Park,” she said. “For example, we have an entry on the American Red Cross. Nobody really looked at Eleanor Roosevelt before in connection with the Red Cross.”

Roosevelt helped to bring media attention to the Red Cross during World War II, which raised the public's awareness of the organization founded in 1881 by Clara Barton.

Beasley said there are also original articles about Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, as well as on Roosevelt and foreign policy.

“In some ways we have entries that are truly groundbreaking in terms of Eleanor Roosevelt scholarship,” she said.

The encyclopedia examines the factual history of the former First Lady, who served from 1933-45. It also touches on her personality and finances.

“My husband [Henry R. Beasley] was the first to go through Eleanor Roosevelt's tax returns,” Beasley said. “Nobody had ever really looked at [her] tax returns before. One conclusion he reached from this is that Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the highest-paid women of her day; but even though she made a lot of money, she kept relatively little of it herself.

"What you can see from Eleanor Roosevelt's expenditures and tax records is that she was quite a generous person. She made money, but she spent it, too."

Beasley said that the NAACP and the state of Israel were among Roosevelt's favorite causes.

But there are still some questions left unanswered, Beasley said.

Front cover of The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia (Photo by Nikki Hawkins)

“If I met Eleanor Roosevelt, I think I would ask her about her role in the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights,” she said. “I really believe that was her most significant achievement, because the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights eventually will go down as one of the most pivotal political statements in the world. It’s already being used as the basis for international law and international observance of human rights. I don’t think we can underestimate Eleanor Roosevelt's accomplishments in creating this document.”

The document, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948, promotes humane and fair treatment of all people, regardless of nation. Roosevelt served as the chairman of the Human Rights Commission during the writing of the document and served as a vocal advocate of it.  

Beasley wondered aloud about the secrets to Eleanor Roosevelt's long and useful life. She died in 1962, at the age of 78.

“I would ask what she learned in her life. Toward the end of her life she gave quite a few interviews and wrote some books of advice. She liked to look back and reflect on her role and see what she had discovered about living that she could pass on to other people. She thought that was a way of connecting with future generations. She was always interested in young people.”

And so is Beasley.

In researching Eleanor Roosevelt, a journalistic quest that began more than two decades ago and resulted in the books "Eleanor Roosevelt: A Public Quest for Self-Fulfillment," and "The White House Press Conferences of Eleanor Roosevelt," Beasley discovered more than she expected.

“Her relationship with prominent women of that period led me further into women’s history in many ways,” she said. “Lorena Hickock, one of the reporters with whom Eleanor Roosevelt had a close personal relationship, is an individual who deserves recognition in her own right as a journalist. Through researching Eleanor Roosevelt, I discovered Lorena Hickock. I also discovered a large group of women journalists who were members of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Press Conference Association. Several of them would make excellent historical studies.

"What I'm sorry about is that I don’t have enough years left in my life to deal with all of these people in terms of academic research. But I hope that I can get students interested."

Wanting to waste no time, Beasley, 65, has already begun her next project—the third edition of "Taking Their Place: A Documentary History of Women and Journalism." The first edition was released in 1977; Beasley and co-editor Sheila J. Gibbons released the second edition in 1993.

And after this?

"Eleanor Roosevelt was arguably the most important woman in the United States and probably in the world in the middle decades of the 20^th century," Beasley said. "We’ve had some significant woman journalists, but we certainly haven't had anybody who came close to Eleanor Roosevelt in terms of dominating the media and lending a woman's presence to it. One could easily write a book three times this long, and probably still not cover everything she had a connection with or a hand in."

Perhaps another edition of The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia may be in order.

Copyright © 2001 University of Maryland College of Journalism.