FDR Friendly Conspiracy with the Press

PermalinkToday's AMIT, ,
Lead: Few people knew that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a man of immense energy and enthusiasm, in the prime of life, was crippled by polio.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: FDR was an up-and-coming politician. He had been the Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I, received the Democrat nomination for Vice-president, campaigned vigorously with James M. Cox and with him was buried in the Republican landslide of 1920. Then a painful tragedy struck his life and interrupted his steady political assent. While vacationing on Canada's Campobello Island in August, 1921 he was stricken with a severe case of poliomyelitis, for a time was almost completely paralyzed, and lost the use of his legs.

Download [7.18 KB]

The Roosevelt Wedding

PermalinkToday's AMIT,
Lead: In 1905 Franklin Delano Roosevelt married his cousin Eleanor. The guests almost ignored the bride and groom.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Sara Roosevelt was a dominating mother. Hovering over her son, Franklin, Sara at nearly every stage attempted to rule his life with an iron hand. When Frank began his courtship of his cousin Eleanor, Sara put her foot down but her reasons were hard to argue. She could hardly object to the girl on social grounds. As a distant member of the family, Eleanor was orphaned and lived with relatives Manhattan as part of one of first families of New York. If that were not enough, she was the favorite niece of another cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt. Her objections were to their relatively young ages. He was 21, she, 19, and MaMa extracted a promise that the engagement had to be kept secret for a year.

Download [7.58 KB]

Frederick Douglass II

PermalinkToday's AMIT, ,
Lead: Born a slave, Frederick Douglass became one of the most articulate spokesmen for abolition in the pre-Civil War era.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: After escaping from slavery as a teenager, Douglass began to speak to church audiences throughout the North about the horrors of slavery. "I've come to tell you about slavery. Other abolitionists can tell you something about slavery; they cannot refer you to a back covered with scars." William Lloyd Garrison, the crusading newspaper editor, hired Douglass as a lecturer and audiences of whites flocked to hear his eloquent and compelling denunciation of America's peculiar institution. So effective was Douglass on the speaking circuit that his handlers began to fear attempts to recapture him and take him back South. Therefore, they sent him on a two-year European tour. He returned after twenty-one months, an international celebrity.

Download [8.27 KB]

Frederic Douglass I

PermalinkToday's AMIT, ,
Lead: "All the other speakers seemed tame after Frederick Douglass. He stood there like an African Prince, majestic in his wrath."Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Elizabeth Cady Stanton knew her activists. It was an age of moral agitation and she would go on to great fame at the side of Susan B. Anthony in the service of women's rights. That day in the mid-1800s when Frederick Douglass spoke to an antislavery meeting in Boston, Stanton was as moved as the rest at the sound of his voice and the moral imperative of his message.

Douglass was an escaped slave. Raised by his grandmother on a Chesapeake Bay plantation, at the age of six he began his work under Captain Aaron Anthony, the white farm manager and, so some of the slaves said, Frederick's father. In later years, he would make vivid to audiences throughout the North the picture of life as a slave.

Download [7.61 KB]

First Ladies: Lady Bird Johnson

PermalinkToday's AMIT,
Lead: Her time in the White House began with the tragic assassination of President Kennedy, but Lady Bird Johnson’s service as First Lady was many decades in the making.

 

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

 

Content: Few politicians of his generation could match the white, hot ambition of Lyndon Baines Johnson. He pursued power with a steady and furious determination and at times evidenced a stormy and occasionally abusive personality when dealing with enemies but also colleagues, subordinates, friends and even his family. In the middle of all that sound and fury resided his wife from 1934, Claudia Alta Taylor, whom he always called by her nickname from birth, Lady Bird.

 

Download

First Ladies: Mary Todd Lincoln II

PermalinkToday's AMIT,
Lead: Already the subject of much public abuse, Mary Lincoln began to come unglued with the death of the couple’s young son, William.

Intro: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts

Content: Not until Eleanor Roosevelt did a First Lady have to endure the carping of critics as did Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of the 16th President of the United States. She was vilified as being generous, stingy, energetic, retiring, patriotic and treasonous, all at the same time. But it was the death of her middle son, Willie, which set Mary Lincoln on the path to emotional disintegration. Willie contracted typhoid fever, and died in February 1862. Both of the Lincolns were shattered, but Mary seemed close to mental collapse. She had convulsions, stayed in bed for days, and began attending séances in hopes of making contact with him.

Download

First Ladies: Mary Todd Lincoln I

PermalinkToday's AMIT,
Lead: Mary Lincoln was the first Presidential wife to be center of ill-deserved, widespread, and sometimes bitter controversy.

Intro: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts

Content: When Mary came with her husband to Washington, the city was gloomy with the prospect of civil war. Lincoln’s election in November had provoked the deep South to secession. She was hopeful that she and her husband might help reduce tension, but she was disappointed. Not until Eleanor Roosevelt was a First Lady subjected to the abuse Mary Lincoln was forced to endure.

Download

The Mayflower Compact II

PermalinkToday's AMIT,
Lead: The Mayflower Compact of 1620 committed the Pilgrims to a just and equal government in their new colony on Massachusetts Bay. Its roots can be traced in surprising directions, but its legacy probably did not lead to increased democracy.

Intro. : A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: One of the fascinating characteristics of democracy as it developed in England and the United States is that democratic institutions resist ideology and tend to promote consensus. Among the early proponents of freer representative government were religious ideologues such as the puritans. They championed the parliamentary cause in two civil wars against King Charles I in the 1640s and many fled to the colonies of Massachusetts Bay after 1620. Their purpose was to secure the right to worship as they chose and to create a godly commonwealth.

Download