Helen Keller was born on this day in 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. During her extraordinary lifetime she met 13 U.S. Presidents from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson. She also wrote letters to eight of these Presidents, starting in 1903 with Theodore Roosevelt. She received a reply for each.
This picture is of Helen Keller with Eleanor Roosevelt and others in Marthas Vineyard, Massachusetts. 8/25/1954.
The Presidential Libraries hold many other records related to disabilities and in the coming weeks we’ll be inviting you to get involved in making these records more accessible.
Learn more about researching the archives of The Presidential Libraries here.
-from the Roosevelt Library
Source: fdrlibrary.marist.edu
- Who: Herbert Hoover, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone
- Why: Thomas Edison’s 82nd birthday celebration
- Where: Florida
- When: February 11, 1929
Herbert Hoover relaxes in Florida with his old friends. Next on their calendar? Hoover’s presidential inauguration on March 4, 1929.
Source: presidentialtimeline.org
Tonight: Harry Belafonte / Tomorrow: Tom Brokaw
The Carter Presidential Library has quite a line up of guests this week. This evening, November 16th, Harry Belafonte will visit. The entertainer and civil rights advocate will be speaking about his life and new autobiography.
Tomorrow night, November 17th, television news anchor and author Tom Brokaw will be speaking about his latest book, The Time of Our Lives.
The Carter Library is in Atlanta, Georgia and both events start at 7 pm. Learn more about events at the Library here.
Pictured: Harry Belafonte at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963.
Source: research.archives.gov
“That’s the way it is.”
-Walter Cronkite’s nightly sign-off for the CBS evening news
Walter Cronkite, the iconic newsman, was born on November 4, 1916. His career as a broadcast journalist spanned 5 decades and 9 U.S. presidents. From the 1930s to the 1980s Cronkite reported on the biggest news of the day including D-Day, the Nuremberg Trials, the Vietnam War, civil rights, the moon missions, and Watergate. It was Cronkite who broke the news of President Kennedy’s assassination, and he covered the subsequent killings of Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, and John Lennon.
Cronkite’s broadcasts seemed to capture the emotions of the country. His excitement for the Apollo 11 moon mission was so great that he reported live on the event for 27 hours straight and exclaimed, “Go, baby, go!” at blast off.
In 1972, a nationwide poll determined that Walter Cronkite was “the most trusted man in America.” Other choices in the poll had included contemporary journalists, the Vice President, and the President.
Here are photos of Cronkite and a CBS news crew with Marines during the Battle of Hue City in Vietnam, interviewing President Kennedy, and with President Carter in the White House.
Happy birthday Walter Cronkite
November 4, 1916 - July 17, 2009
Jackie Robinson
January 31, 1919 - October 24, 1972
Jack Roosevelt Robinson was the first African American to “officially” play in Major League Baseball. When he retired from the game, Jackie Robinson went on to champion the cause of civil rights from his position as a prominent executive of the Chock Full o’Nuts Corporation. Robinson had grown increasingly impatient with what he regarded as President Eisenhower’s failure to act decisively in combating racism. In this letter, he expresses his frustration and calls upon the President to finally guarantee Federal support of black civil rights. Shown here is Robinson’s 1958 letter to President Eisenhower, and a photo of Robinson with his son at the March on Washington D.C. in 1963. Jackie Robinson passed away on this day, 39 years ago.
Because Lou Henry Hoover was awesome-
Before she became First Lady, Lou Henry Hoover was a tomboy, outdoors woman, bareback horse rider, Girl Scout leader, world traveler, and one of the first women geologists at Stanford. Have we mentioned she spoke Latin and Chinese?
Here’s Lou on a camping trip to California’s Mount Gleason in 1891. She is seated on a burro outside the Acton store-post office-photographers studio.
Source: ecommcode2.com
“…one day I appeared to be fine and the next day I was in the hospital for a mastectomy. It made me realize how many women in the country could be in the same situation.
That realization made me decide to discuss my breast cancer operation openly, because I thought of all the lives in jeopardy. My experience and frank discussion of breast cancer did prompt many women to learn about self-examination, regular checkups, and such detection techniques as mammography. These are so important. I just cannot stress enough how necessary it is for women to take an active interest in their own health and body.
Too many women are so afraid of breast cancer that they endanger their lives. These fears of being “less” of a woman are very real, and it is very important to talk about the emotional side effects honestly. They must come out into the open.”
-Betty Ford in her remarks to the American Cancer Society, 1975
People didn’t talk openly about breast cancer when Betty Ford was diagnosed with the disease in 1974. As First Lady, Betty openly shared her breast cancer and mastectomy experiences with the public. In the process, she advocated for public awareness of breast cancer, self-examinations for early detection, and women’s health. In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month, here are photos that the First Lady shared with the public following her breast cancer surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital on October 4, 1974. One year later, Betty greeted the press in front of the Guttman Institute for Early Detection of Breast Cancer in New York.
Have you got George Harrison in your head from watching the Martin Scorsese documentary? In 1974, the iconic musician visited President Ford in the White House. Here’s a photo taken in the Oval Office of Billy Preston, George Harrison, and Gerald R. Ford. Also, a list of who else was there from the President’s Daily Diary for December 13, 1974.
-from the Ford Library
Happy birthday Michael Jackson!
Here’s one for the King of Pop on what would have been his 53rd birthday:
Michael Jackson with President and Nancy Reagan at the White House ceremony to launch the Campaign against Drunk Driving. May 14, 1984.
I felt a real special relationship to Elvis Presley because he came from Mississippi, he was a poor white kid, he sang with a lot of soul. He was sort of my roots — “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Love Me Tender,” that was sort of the beginning of the awakening of America to rock and roll.
President Bill Clinton in a 1997 interview with VH1.
If you’re near Little Rock, Arkansas, the “Elvis at 21” exhibit will be up for one more week, featuring photographs by Alfred Wertheimer of Elvis Presley at the very beginning of his fame.
Elvis Presley, January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977
