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29 THE CAPITOL DOME the Folger Shakespeare and Henry E. Huntington libraries. And he personally owned the most important private collec- tion of American constitutional documents. By 1937 he had added to it one of the original fourteen handwritten copies of the first Ten Amendments, which he called the most im- portant document in American Jewish history and "one of the most precious in American history." His devotion to the Bill of Rights was so strong that he allowed the document to be displayed publicly on several occasions, most promi- nently on 1 October 1939, Bill of Rights Day at the New York World's Fair. Fair Commissioner Sol Bloom spoke on on the occasion. 18 In 1939, as part of the sesquicentennial celebration, the legislatures of Connecticut, Georgia, and Massachusetts belatedly ratified the Bill of Rights—the latter somewhat defensively, after reluctantly accepting the State Depart- ment's claim that it had failed to ratify in the eighteenth cen- tury. 19 By 1941 several organizations existed that celebrated the document; among them were the Bill of Rights Com- memorative Society, the National Federation for Constitu- tional Liberties, and the Society of the National Shrine of the Bill of Rights. Herbert Bayard Swope's Bill of Rights Sesquicentennial Commission published and widely dis- tributed Our Bill of Rights: What it Means Today to educate the American people. Upon receiving his copy, Roosevelt thanked Swope, calling the Bill of Rights "that precious document . . . one of America's greatest contributions to the happiness of mankind." 20 On 27 November 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt des- ignated 15 December as Bill of Rights Day—a day which twenty-five governors and a hundred mayors called upon their citizens to observe. A variety of events occurred through- out the nation. One broadside proclaimed that "Today our lives, our fortunes, our stature as free men, all are jeopar- dized before the shot and shell of fascist guns." A thousand people attended the Bill of Rights Defense Rally luncheon in New York City to hear First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and others speak. The distinctive, throaty voice of actress Ethel Barrymore reading Rosenbach's copy of the Bill of Rights electrified the audience. Many Americans concluded the day by turning on their radios to hear "We Hold These Truths," an hour-long docudrama broadcast simultaneously on all major radio networks. It was written and produced by radio innovator Norman Corwin, the son of English Jewish immi- grants and a man deeply influenced by his religious heritage. 21 The program concluded with an address by the President. Roosevelt focused on Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party: 22 . . . today, with the exception of Germany, Italy, and Japan, the peoples of the whole world . . . sup- port its [the Bill of Rights's] principles, its teach- Fig. 4. Sol Bloom, ca. 1923, shortly after standing as Tammany Hall's Democratic candidate for Congress and narrowly winning the Republican-leaning 19th Congressional District in New York City's Upper East Side. He would go on to serve thirteen con- secutive terms in the House. PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS COLLECTION, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Fig. 5. Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach and group with the Bill of Rights at the 1939-40 World's Fair in Flushing, New York NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR 1939-40 RECORDS, MANUSCRIPTS AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY