LOU HENRY HOOVER: UNSUNG HEROINE, PART II
The fascinating contradiction in Lou Hoover's attitude towards publicity is even more intriguing when you consider the very public role she played as First Lady. While keeping her personal life and affairs very private, she used the media to get her activist message across. She spoke to nation-wide audiences on radio. She even set up a lab on the second floor of the White House to "test" her performances and improve her radio talks.
Lou's speeches had a definite feminist slant. On a Saturday evening in June 1929, she spoke to a group of 4-H club members at Camp Rapidan, and the National Broadcasting Company broadcast the speech nationally. She urged her listeners to help make their homes a more attractive place, a responsibility, she said, as much of boys as of girls. She then chided the boys to help with the cleaning and dishes: "Boys, remember you are just as great factors in the home making of the family as are the girls." An unusual message for 1929.
There were other ways in which Lou Hoover exerted a surprisingly modern and liberal influence. She invited noticeably pregnant women, who had traditionally been excluded, to join her in reception lines, and she encouraged women to pursue individual careers. In December 1932, Executive Order 5984 amended the Civil Service Rule VII to require nominations "without regard to sex," unless the duties to be performed could be done only by men or women. Students of the Hoover Administration believe that Lou influenced her husband on this and other such matters. In his single term, Herbert Hoover named seven women to positions requiring Senate approval, bringing the total up to 20, double the number it had been in 1920.
On delicate social matters that were important to the Washington political community, Lou Hoover increased her workload rather than risk offending anyone. When a protocol feud erupted between Dolly Gann, sister of the widowed Vice-President, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth, wife of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Lou gave two parties instead of one to avoid either being assigned social precedence over the other.
One event in particular showed Lou Hoover's unknown dedication to people and equal rights. One of the duties of the First Lady was to entertain the wives of congressmen. Chicago Congressman Oscar DePriest was the first Negro to serve in the legislature since Reconstruction. No black person had been a guest at the White House
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