She was obviously useful at the UN because she had a public persona before she ever got there. She was well known. She was a spokeswoman for many important things. When she got there, what she said was paid attention to, undoubtedly much more than would have been if just Joe Blow had been made our representative to the United Nations. In that sense, I think it was useful to have her there.

Well, you have to remember that until 1948, when Hubert Humphrey and others forced the Democratic Party to adopt a new policy on civil rights, the Democratic Party was the party of the old solid South. All of the racists, all of the Cottonhead Smith types and so on were Democrats, allies of Franklin Roosevelt - because of their seniority - of all the major committees of the Congress.

In terms of legacy, I'm not sure that I see some great historic deposit there, as a result of her passing our way. She heightened the sense of social conscience in the New Deal generally. To her great credit, she was early on the side of the blacks in their fight for civil rights. She had a tendency to participate, which easily oozed over into meddlesomeness.

That was a general impression that one got, that she [Eleanor Roosevelt] was always flitting around the country and descending on some place in the Ozarks that she decided was disadvantaged, and announcing that something had to be done. And she had a very active social conscience, which I think in general is to her credit, although it tended, as many people thought, to just be overdone to the point where it gave rise to this crack that she regarded the whole world as one vast slum project

And Eleanor's husband was the man who did the interning. And I think they - Governor Warren, who was later to become such an impassioned Chief Justice on all sorts of human rights issues, was very big in the internment process. And I think that we simply sometimes tend not to understand or remember how people felt.

Eleanor Roosevelt had both her admirers and her detractors. And they admired her and detracted from her for many of the same reasons. People who liked her social activism, who thought that she was calling attention to problems that needed solving, were all for her.

Our Navy was very largely sunk. And we were at war in no time at all. I share, in retrospect, the distress we all share at the internment of the Japanese American citizens of the United States. It was not our finest hour. But the Supreme Court had it before it at the time, and justified it and upheld it.