FDR Delivers Four Freedoms Speech: Democracy Defined
Roosevelt's State of the Union on January 6, 1941 — eleven months before Pearl Harbor — named four freedoms every person should have: speech, worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. It wasn't just rhetoric. He was making the case for Lend-Lease, the program to arm Britain and the Soviet Union. The four freedoms became the moral framing for American involvement in World War II. Norman Rockwell painted all four. Eleanor Roosevelt used them as the foundation for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
January 6, 1941
85 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on January 6
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