She would often act as his conscience, reminding him of the human cost of his political decisions, and urging him to speak out courageously about racism and inequity. Eleanor would become FDR’s most important partner in the great challenges he faced. Americans were in desperate need of the leadership Franklin Roosevelt was promising to provide. Banks were running out of money, unemployment was spiraling upward, and there was a very real possibility that the country would erupt in violence. She wrote a profile which was frank about Eleanor’s reluctance to become First Lady, but without revealing all the reasons why.Īmerica was in the depths the Great Depression. Hick knew both the publishable and the unpublishable reasons for Eleanor’s unhappiness. By the time she wrote her stories for the AP, Eleanor and Hick had fallen in love.

Hickok - “Hick” to everyone who knew her - worked patiently to gain Eleanor’s trust. Lorena Hickok, a top reporter assigned to cover the new First Lady for the Associated Press, was one of the few who noticed Eleanor’s unhappiness and took it seriously. In the midst of the victory celebrations, Eleanor was filled with dread about her future. Now she was about to become a First Lady, with all the duties that would entail. By the time Franklin Roosevelt was elected President in 1932, his wife Eleanor had succeeded in forging an independent life for herself - a life of teaching, writing, and political activism.

Eleanor and Hick by Susan Quinn