The Four Freedoms of FDR
In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.- Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
excerpted from the Annual Message to the Congress,
January 6, 1941
Inspiration by Franklin Roosevelt... Illustration by Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell
was inspired to paint The Four Freedoms series by Franklin Roosevelt's speech of
the same name.
Rockwell, knowing he was too old to serve in the military, sought
to do something to help his country during World War II. He came up with the
idea of illustrating Roosevelt's speech.
He labored on these paintings for 6 months in 1942. He lost 15
pounds and many nights sleep. When he was finished, he had created some of the
greatest masterpieces of his entire career.
After seeking unsuccessfully to find a United States government
wartime agency to sponsor these works, he turned to his old friends, The
Saturday Evening Post and Curtis Publishing.
Published by the Saturday Evening Post
The first Freedom painting published was Freedom
of Speech, which appeared in the February 20, 1943. The Series continued
with Freedom
to Worship (February 27), Freedom
from Want (March 6) and concluded with Freedom
from Fear on March 13, 1943.
In addition to publishing the paintings, Curtis Publishing
commissioned essays to accompany the paintings in print. Each accompanying article expounded on the thoughts
provoked by Rockwell's imagery.
The editors of The Post did a masterful job of finding the right
author for each essay. All four author added to the message the paintings
conveyed.
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Freedom
of Speech
was written by Booth Tarkington (1869-1946.) At that time, Tarkington was called the "dean of popular American letters." He was a frequent contributor of short stories and serials to The Saturday Evening Post and other magazines.
Tarkington's works are too numerous to mention them all. He was
best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novels The Magnificent
Ambersons and Alice Adams.
Booth Tarkington was also an illustrator in his own righ. He illustrated many of his own books. He
also illustrated the books of other authors. As a coincidental relationship to
Rockwell, Tarkington also illustrated a 1933 reprint of Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn.
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Freedom
to Worship
was written by essayist Will Durant (1885-1981.) Durant was one of the foremost philosophers and civil rights advocates of the time. As a former Catholic seminarian, Durant had a unique perspective on Freedom to Worship.
Together with his wife Ariel, Will Durant spent over fifty years
researching and writing about human behavior in the critically acclaimed
eleven-volume series, The Story of Civilization.
His first book, The Story of Philosophy (1926), is credited
as the book that introduced more people to the subject of philosophy than any
other book before or since. He penned numerous other books that explored the
deeper meaning to humanity's existence and advocated a more civilized approach
to living and dealing with one another.
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Freedom
from Want was written by Philippine immigrant, poet and author, Carlos
Bulosan (1913-1956.) His first fiction book, The Laughter of My Father, a
collection of short stories inspired by Philippine folk tales and published in
1944, became an international best-seller.
Also published in 1943 was his autobiographical book, America
Is in the Heart. That book describes details of his childhood in the
Philippines, his voyage to America in 1930 and the years he spent as an
itinerant laborer following the harvest trail in the rural West.
Bulosan was, at the time of publication, and probably still is the
least well-known of the essayists. His works have often been used to demonstrate
how brutal racism can be.
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Freedom
from Fear
was written by Stephen Vincent Benét (1898-1943), a novelist and poet. Benét's well known works include John Brown's Body from 1928 and American Names. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1929 for John Brown's Body. Benét also wrote the short stories, The Devil and Daniel Webster and By the Waters of Babylon.
He also adapted the Roman myth of the rape of the Sabine Women
into the story, The Sobbin' Women, The Sobbin' Women was, in turn,
later adapted into the movie musical, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, in
1954.
A very odd coincidence is that Stephen Vincent Benét died at age
44 on the same day that this story was published. Thus it was probably one of
his last published works.
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Then Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms made history in the
publishing world. Response to the publication was so strong that over 25,000
readers ordered sets of prints from the magazine.
Read more: http://www.best-norman-rockwell-art.com/four-freedoms.html#ixzz2GeVlu100
