During the early years of World War II, white South Carolinians, like other southerners, passed rumors of \u201cEleanor Clubs\u201d back and forth. They told each other that African American cooks and laundresses, inspired by the liberal views of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, were organizing quasi-unions to raise their pay or leave domestic employment altogether. Club members, again according to the rumors, vowed to have \u201ca white woman in every kitchen by Christmas.\u201d After that, they would start to press for social equality and finally for the overthrow of white-led government.<\/p>\n
By the spring of 1942, the rumors of Eleanor Clubs had become so widespread and alarming that public officials, including Mrs. Roosevelt, called in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to see if they were true. South Carolina officials launched their own inquiry. Governor Richard Jeffries wrote each of the state\u2019s forty-six sheriffs asking them to search for Eleanor Clubs. A Columbia lawman reported that he discovered an \u201cEleanor Society\u201d in Cheraw, where at one meeting \u201ccooks and nurses\u201d decided that they \u201cwould not work for less than $6 per week.\u201d But most people came to the same conclusion as a Dillon police officer, who said that while \u201cthere has been talk of the \u2018Eleanor Roosevelt Society,\u2019 after investigating, I find all of this to be just false rumors.\u201d The editor of the Carolina Times, <\/em>an African American newspaper, thought he knew the real source of these misleading and hysterical reports. \u201cThe \u2018Eleanor Club\u2019 issue,\u201d he stated, \u201cis a . . . dastardly attempt to besmirch the name of the devoted helpmate of our war-burdened president, both of whom are doing all they can to make the Negro feel his responsibility to his country by giving him an opportunity to share in the benefits of democracy and render his best service to the nation in one of its darkest hours.\u201d<\/p>\n By the time of the D-day invasion in June 1944, the Eleanor Club rumors had evaporated. Few whites, it seems, spoke anymore of sinister plots hatched by the first lady. But that did not mean that the racial tensions and misconceptions that had given rise to these unsubstantiated stories were gone in South Carolina. They just took different forms.<\/p>\n Jeffries, Richard. Papers. South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia<\/p>\n Odum, Howard. Race and Rumors of Race: The American South in the Early Forties. <\/em>1943. Reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Simon, Bryant. \u201cFearing Eleanor: Racial Anxieties and Wartime Rumors in the American South, 1940\u20131945.\u201d In Labor in the Modern South, <\/em>edited by Glenn T. Eskew. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During the early years of World War II, white South Carolinians, like other southerners, passed rumors of \u201cEleanor Clubs\u201d back and forth. They told each other that African American cooks and laundresses, inspired by the liberal views of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, were organizing quasi-unions to raise their pay or leave domestic employment altogether. Club […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":-1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","class_list":["post-6542","entry","type-entry","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ecms-a-z","ecms-african-americans","ecms-e","ecms-encyclopedia","ecms-government-and-law","ecms-world-war-ii-1939-1945"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n