Sixty years ago, on April 12, 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd president of the United States, died. Arguably the greatest president of the 20th Century, FDR left behind a legacy of achievements so transformative of American society that even today their underlying principles provide the frame of reference for national debate on who we are as a people and the meaning of our mutual commitment.
Leaving aside FDR’s considerable achievements as a war leader and international statesman, his legacy in domestic matters alone deserves great admiration. One can quibble, I suppose, as historians such as myself are wont to do as they reinterpret the past through the ever-changing lens of the present, about many of the specifics of the New Deal.
But taking a longer view, it seems unassailable that he, along with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, inspired people not to despair even in the darkest hours of the Depression. The Roosevelts gave people hope, through action, of a brighter future for themselves and their children.
Viewed from the dark days of 1933, when Roosevelt took office, the world of 1945 was a much better place.
Better, but not perfect. As World War II drew to an end, most Americans still lived in a country often divided along racial and religious lines. In Chicago, as in many other places in the country at that time, one sign of that discrimination was the practice of placing quotas on admission to colleges and universities for blacks, Jews, immigrants, women and others.
But at the same time that the country was mourning the death of its great president, brave and principled people here in Chicago were taking action to change at least one aspect of that tarnished legacy in higher education.
James Sparling, president of Central YMCA College, refused to provide his Board of Trustees with demographic data because he believed the information would become the basis of a quota system, limiting those seeking to enroll, including GIs returning from the war.
Predictably, he was fired.
But an outraged faculty, in a 62-to-1 vote, decided to abandon the college in favor of creating a new one. Critically, the students, when asked to join in the new venture, came along by a vote of 488-to-2.
Those who were there during those momentous occasions vividly recall the crowded rooms, heightened tension and passionate rhetoric. To my knowledge, no faculty members from those days are still alive, but numerous alumni have told me about people standing on tables, calling for principled action. As the options were considered and voted upon, a liberating feeling swept over the faculty and students who knew that they had taken the right course.
I doubt that today, even if such a clear choice were to exist in an institution of higher learning, that many could be found who would be willing to replicate this act of moral courage.
Hopefully no administration or board would present a college community with such an ultimatum on its core values.
Under Sparling’s leadership, the new venture was quickly established with financial help from Marshall Field III, the Julius Rosenwald Foundation, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and others. Chartered as Thomas Jefferson College on April 17, 1945, the name of the college was changed to Roosevelt five days later when Eleanor Roosevelt agreed to Sparling’s request to honor FDR’s memory.
Thus Roosevelt College was born out of this stand for racial and religious freedom.
Eleanor Roosevelt, who worked tirelessly in support of the school’s early success, evoked parallels between the American dream and the college’s founding principles when she dedicated Roosevelt College in November 1945. She noted that its purpose was to “provide educational opportunities for persons of both sexes and of various races on equal terms and to maintain a teaching faculty which is both free and responsible for the discovery and dissemination of the truth.”
Today, of course, these principles of access to higher education are generally accepted and also encoded in statutes and court decisions, though some continue to debate how best to implement them in specific circumstances.
For the last year we at Roosevelt have been reflecting on these matters through lectures and discussions as we celebrate our 60th anniversary. During this year we honor not only FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt (the university was renamed for both of them in 1959), but all 65,000 alumni who have thrived because Roosevelt gave them an opportunity to turn their dreams and hopes into an engaged life.
We also have recognized that there is much work still to be done if the dream is to be sustained and expanded, and we have recommitted ourselves to these purposes.
FDR imagined a world in which people uniformly enjoyed the Four Freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom to worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Taken together, these ideals are beacons for all people to be productive and engaged citizens. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, they guide us as we seek to attain “the enlightenment of the human spirit.”
We who are stewards of this Rooseveltian legacy today believe that this vision requires a vital role for higher education in the success of American society. The American dream of access and opportunity, of civic engagement and democratic values, depends upon many things, of course, but none is more central than the education of the citizenry so that the principles upon which the country was founded and for which FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt advocated so passionately will survive and prosper in the future.
History has shown that, in that fateful spring of 1945, the death of a president and the birth of a college, taken together, provided an opportunity to continue a legacy and to keep the torch burning for generations to come. I, for one, am glad that these visionary founders of Roosevelt University had the courage of their convictions. Chicago and higher education are better for it.
