In this season of gratitude, it’s appropriate to recall the “four freedoms”—freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from fear and freedom from want—articulated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the threshold of World War II and illustrated so memorably in Norman Rockwell’s iconic renditions.
A. Gail Prudenti. Photo: Philip Hinds/Hofstra University
Eleven months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, with Europe under siege and Congress leery of getting involved, Roosevelt sought to remind the American people that the freedoms we sometimes take for granted must be nurtured and guarded. In his State of the Union address on Jan. 6, 1941, Roosevelt proposed four essential, bedrock freedoms that people “everywhere in the world” have a right to enjoy.
