Franklin Delano Roosevelt Reading Comprehension Lesson

From New York to the White House

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in 1882 at Hyde Park, New York. He attended Harvard University and Columbia Law School and became a lawyer. When he entered politics, he was a member of the Democratic Party. In 1910, he was elected to the New York State Senate. President Woodrow Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and in 1920 he was the Democratic Party’s nominee for vice president. The ticket lost, but Roosevelt’s career was just beginning.

In 1921, at the age of thirty-nine, Roosevelt came down with a disease called polio and was unable to walk. He was determined to use his legs again and used swimming as a way to rebuild strength. Although he never fully recovered, his determination did not waver. He remained interested in politics, and in 1928 he was elected governor of New York. Roosevelt rarely allowed himself to be photographed in his wheelchair, and many Americans did not even know the full extent of his disability.

In 1932, Roosevelt was elected President of the United States during the Great Depression. Thousands of people were out of work and the banks were closed. In his first one hundred days in office, he pushed through a wave of programs — called the New Deal — designed to bring relief to those without jobs, create new jobs through public works, and reform the banking system. Roosevelt’s confident voice on his radio “Fireside Chats” reassured an anxious nation that better days were ahead.

Pearl Harbor, World War II, and Legacy

When World War II began in Europe in 1939, Roosevelt kept the United States neutral during the early years of the war by sending supplies to Britain and France but no troops. That changed on December 7, 1941, when Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Roosevelt called December 7th “a date which will live in infamy” and asked Congress to declare war on Japan. Within days, the United States was at war with Japan, Germany, and Italy.

Roosevelt was president throughout almost all of World War II. He met several times with Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of Britain, and Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, to plan the Allied war strategy. Roosevelt also played an important part in the development of the United Nations. He hoped this organization would become a place where future problems between countries could be settled through discussion rather than war.

Roosevelt was elected to a remarkable four terms as president — more than any other person in U.S. history. Following his presidency, the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution limited future presidents to two terms. Roosevelt spent much of his life in a wheelchair due to polio, and his health declined as the war was ending. He died of a stroke on April 12, 1945, just weeks before Germany surrendered. He is remembered as one of the most influential American presidents of the 20th century.

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