Did Americans realize FDR was in a wheelchair?

If a president sits in a wheelchair and no one's there to photograph him, is he really paraplegic? Franklin Delano Roosevelt never explicitly denied that he'd lost the use of his legs, but he sure did his damnedest to keep people—especially of the camera-toting variety—from seeing him wheel around. read more

Roosevelt was very rarely photographed while sitting in his wheelchair, and his public appearances were choreographed to avoid the press covering his arrival and departure at public events, which would have shown him getting into or out of a car. read more

FDR was perhaps the most effective American politician of all time, and throughout his career he managed his disability with a hard-nosed pragmatism that, as with so much of his presidential style, could be classified either as take-charge leadership or outright manipulation, depending on your perspective. read more

Time and the New Yorker both casually mentioned FDR using a wheelchair in 1934, as did a 1941 Life profile. Yet even his political adversaries — and Henry Luce was no fan — didn’t harp on Roosevelt’s disability, though Luce managed to publish a rare photo of him in a wheelchair in 1937. read more