Bennett College-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt accepts flowers from two girl scouts during her visit to Bennett College for Women

March 22, 1945, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt accepts flowers from two girl scouts during her visit to Bennett College for Women.
She was on a tour of Black education institutions.

Photograph © Carol W. Martin/Greensboro History Museum Collection.
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From First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's diary:

Eleanor Roosevelt, "My Day, March 22, 1945,"
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition

GREENSBORO, N.C., Wednesday—I reached New York City Monday afternoon, and in the evening I went to speak at the Rev. Charles Young Trigg's church at 129th Street and Seventh Avenue. It was a community inter-denominational meeting in celebration of Brotherhood Week. Dr. Robert W. Searles of the Greater New York Federation of Churches also spoke, and a united choir from many churches sang very beautifully.

We made the 10 o'clock train for Greensboro, and arrived yesterday morning, unfortunately too late to go to Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown's school at Sedalia, in which my mother-in-law was interested. I had a chance to go to the home of my hostess, Mrs. Julius Cone, before Dr. and Mrs. David D. Jones of Bennett College took us to the agricultural and technical college, where some thousand young colored people are getting a very good education in home economics, farming, horticulture, engineering and other fields.

After a very delightful lunch at Mrs. Cone's, we were at Bennett College at 2 o'clock, and had an opportunity to see a number of the campus buildings and to meet some of the faculty and students at tea. Finally we went out to find school children from the colored public schools gathered on the campus with a few of their elders. I talked to them, and later was interviewed on the local radio station by one of the women broadcasters.

* * *

Spring has come and is in full bloom down here. Every flowering shrub and tree is out, and the garden of this delightful home, as well as everywhere we have been today, reminds you that spring will be with us even in the north before long. It is so warm that I have been wondering why I thought it necessary to wear a coat, and by the time we came home at half past four I was quite ready for a nice, peaceful hour or two before dinner and the evening speech at Bennett College.

Bennett College is having a week's institute on "The Returning Serviceman," and Miss Katharine Lenroot has already spoken to them. As we drove in this afternoon two high school boys were waiting, camera in hand. They reminded me of the professional photographers, because they took at least six photographs and then asked me to wait until they changed to a color film. Insatiable, just as the professional ones.

* * *

I have read a magazine article which deals with all the peoples living on all the small islands in the Pacific which we find now under our control. If we retain the responsibility for any of them, we will have the added problem of establishing new standards of living in that area, where human rights have never been given much attention. Here we are confronted with the whole question of how people who are not yet ready to look after their own affairs, without some assistance from the outside, are going to be handled in the postwar period. There undoubtedly will be much interest on this point in the San Francisco conference.

E. R.

(COPYRIGHT 1945 BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)

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Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced
Persons

Brown, Charlotte Hawkins, 1883-1961 [ index ]
African-American educator
[ LC | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC ]

Cone, Julius, Mrs. [ index ]
Real name: Laura Weil Cone, American lawyer and civic leader, second marriage to Julius Cone

Jones, David Dallas, 1887-1956 [ index ]
American educator; president of Bennet College
[ SNAC | Other source ]
Jones, Susie, 1892- [ index ]
[ LC | VIAF | SNAC | Other source ]

Lenroot, Katharine F. (Katharine Fredrica), 1891-1982 [ index ]
American government official
[ LC | ISNI | VIAF | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives ]

Roosevelt, Sara Delano, 1854-1941 [ index ]
FDR's mother
[ ERPP bio | LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives ]
Searles, Robert W. [ index ]

American, member of the Greater New York Federation of Churches
Trigg, Charles Y. [ index ]
New York City pastor
[ LC | VIAF ]

Organizations
Bennett College (Greensboro, N.C.) [ index ]
[ LC | ISNI | VIAF | SNAC ]
Greater New York Federation of Churches [ index ]
[ LC ]

Palmer Memorial Institute (Sedalia, N.C.) [ index ]
[ LC ]

United Nations Conference on International Organization (1945 : San Francisco, Calif.) [ index ]
[ LC | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST ]

Geographic
Dateline: Greensboro (N.C., United States) [ index ]
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Source link for image: https://gateway.uncg.edu/islandora/object/ghm%3A14425

Source link for E. Roosevelt's papers: https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm...