Etched in History: First Lady's 1933 visit to Whitetop

ABINGDON, Va. – It started as an idea to write a novel.

Growing up in Abingdon, Va., Christa Smith Anderson had heard for years about First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s visit to Whitetop Mountain on Aug. 12, 1933.

“I knew that Eleanor Roosevelt had come to Abingdon, and I knew that would be a big deal,” Anderson said. “She and Franklin [Roosevelt] both – they loved rural communities, and she visited them often.”

Anderson, 35, began researching the subject of Roosevelt’s visit in 2004. Initially, she had hoped to include it in the scenes of a novel. But, as the story unfolded, Anderson said, “It just kind of kept going and going and going.”

Ultimately, Anderson’s research resulted in a 6,000-word article called “A First Lady in a False Kingdom: A Curious Convergence on White Top Mountain.” It was published in a 2009 edition of the Oxford American magazine.

What Anderson, of Alexandria, Va., found was surprising.

“I had read about the White Top Folk Festival, and that it excluded black musicians, and that ran counter to everything that I had ever learned about Eleanor Roosevelt,” said Anderson, a 1992 graduate of Abingdon High School. “And I wondered how she ever ended up there.”

‘IT WAS FOR HER’

Eleanor Roosevelt had come to the festival, because she had ties to the area through her late father, Elliott Roosevelt, who had lived in Abingdon during the 1890s.

Her visit was a big deal for the region, remembered Charlie Moore, an 84-year-old resident of Bristol, Tenn.

“Nobody had ever seen her before – actually, in person,” Moore said. “It was a real event for her to be here, to come down here.”

Roosevelt’s train had arrived in Abingdon, and thousands came out to Whitetop Mountain to see her on that sunny Saturday.

Still more stood along roadsides, trying to get a glimpse of Roosevelt as she traveled by car from Abingdon to Whitetop. [The community’s name has since changed from two words to one.]
Eleanor Grasselli, 79, stood at the side of a bridge in her hometown – Damascus, Va.

“I was not quite 3,” Grasselli said, “but I knew that when I was waving, it was for her.”

Laughing, Grasselli remembered, “There were a couple of other people on either side waving flags, too. And we stood there until her car went by, and we waved.”

‘SO CROWDED’

Moore was 7 years old on the day Eleanor Roosevelt came to Whitetop Mountain.

“There were several cars on the side of the road that were over-heated,” Moore remembered. “It was so crowded. There weren’t any parking lots to speak of.”

Still, Moore got a glimpse of Roosevelt from a distance.

“There wasn’t any way you could get up close,” Moore said. “There were people everywhere. It was wall-to-wall.”

Moore did see the First Lady’s face, standing about 50 yards away. And the young boy noticed Mrs. Roosevelt’s mood.

“I had the impression that it was more of a chore than anything else,” Moore said. “I didn’t get the feeling that she was overjoyed.”

‘WHO WAS INVOLVED’

Circumstances of the entire visit still intrigue Anderson, who serves as a writer and editor in the Washington, D.C., area, working for the federal government.

“I just kept going with the research, because I wanted to know more,” Anderson said.

“I’ve found a lot of material. And I’m trying to figure out what to do with it now. It would be interesting to try and find more about the actual artists – to find out who was involved and who was excluded.”

As for her novel, Anderson said, “I will go back to it one day. I knew that was a lot of non-fiction that had to be told. And I’m not ready to abandon that yet. But I will finish the novel one day.”

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AN EXCERPT: “A First Lady in a False Kingdom: A Curious Convergence on White Top Mountain” by Christa Smith Anderson

She was tall and athletic and walked as she lived. That’s to say, at a pace that was difficult to keep up with, even for those much younger than she. Just two months shy of her forty-ninth birthday, it’s hard to imagine that Eleanor Roosevelt was anything other than undaunted by the approaching half-century mark or by the uneven, bald ground of volcanic rock that she strode swiftly across on White Top Mountain in Southwestern Virginia. A news photographer who’d stepped onto a ledge for a better shot lost his footing and had to grab a tree limb to save himself from a two-hundred-foot plunge. But for Mrs. R. (as members of her all-women press corps called her), perilous drop-offs be damned.

It was August 12, 1933, and the tenure of America’s longest-running first lady was in its infancy. Franklin Roosevelt had been in office just over five months. The FBI was still called the Bureau of Investigation, and its director, J. Edgar Hoover, hadn’t started compiling what would become his largest secret file – the 3,271 pages on Eleanor Roosevelt’s activities, many of them anti-segregation and, thus, “subversive.” The Ku Klux Klan didn’t know Eleanor Roosevelt well enough yet to have a price on her head. Another six years would pass before her infamous resignation from the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) over that organization’s refusal to allow African-American contralto Marian Anderson to perform in Constitution Hall.

So here was Mrs. R. on a resplendent August Saturday, standing on the second highest peak in Virginia. She wears a white hat and a dark (probably blue) dress with a loose, matching jacket. A corsage is pinned beneath the left shoulder of the jacket as she extends her arm and points off into the distance, as one is still inclined to do when looking out on that vista of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Some say Kentucky and West Virginia are visible, too – a stretch perhaps, but from more than a mile high – 5,520 feet up – it’s possible.

“My father spent two very happy years here, riding and living all through this country,” she said. “Now I know why he loved it so and said he knew of few places so beautiful.”

– Excerpted from The Oxford American 2009 Music Issue