Eleanor Roosevelt as “Ordinary” Citizen and “Expert” on Radio in the Early 1950s

Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady of the United States, usedradio to communicate on a wide variety of issues that she felt the American public, andwomen in particular, should know or think about. She had been a radio pioneer,broadcasting from the 1920s onward and starting with her own radio show in 1932. By the1950s, radio as a technology began facing increasing competition from television. Yet,as a medium to reach mass audiences and women in particular, radio continued to play avital role. From October 1950 until August 1951, Eleanor Roosevelt together with her sonElliott hosted a daily show on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) called TheEleanor Roosevelt Program. Focusing on this 1950-1951 program, this article seeks toexamine the way in which Mrs. Roosevelt communicated with her listeners and successfullyblended that which at first sight might seem opposites: the domestic with the global,the informal mode of address with the serious topics, the public with the private, andthe ordinary woman’s view with that of the expert international stateswoman