She is worldwide renown as one of the most beloved First Lady of the 20th Century, but she was so much more. An activist, a reformer, a diplomat , an author; during her 78 years of life she forever changed the image of First Lady through her active participation in American politics and dedication improving the lives of those less fortunate, always leading by example. This is Eleanor Roosevelt.
Born in Manhattan, NYC on on October 11, 1884 Anna Eleanor Roosevelt ( her full name) was the first of Elliot and Anna Hall Roosevelt’s three children. Her family was affluent and politically prominent, her uncle was in fact Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States. She lived a quite happy childhood until she was 8 years old. Unfortunately the mother died of diphtheria and the father, who had always struggled with alcoholism and narcotic addiction, died only 2 yers after. The death of Eleanor’s father, to whom she had been especially close, was very difficult for her. Eleanor and her sibling went to live with the maternal grandmother in Tivoli, in the Hudson River Valley. Apparently the grandmother was a very critical and harsh woman who damaged Eleanor’s self-esteem as a result she grew up timid and awkward and believed that she compared badly with other girls ( she was always taller then her piers, 5.11″ to be exact! Michelle Obama was the only other First Lady who could compete with her hight) . When she was 15 years old she enrolled the distinguished London’s Allenswood Academy in England in which she received her first chance to develop self-confidence among other girls. One teacher above all was her role model, the French headmistress Mademoiselle Marie Souvestre, who, with her intellectual curiosity and her taste for travel and excellence, awakened similar interests in Eleanor, who later described her three years there as the happiest time of her life. After she finished her school curriculum, she returned to New York in the summer of 1902 to prepare for her “coming out” into society that winter. Following family tradition, she devoted time to community service, including teaching immigrant children and families on Rivington Street in a settlement house on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. In 1905, after three years long courtship, she decided to marry her distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a charming, Harvard graduate in his first year of law school at Columbia University. His taste for fun contrasted with her own seriousness ( her childhood nickname was in fact “granny” !) and she often commented on how he had to find companions in pleasure elsewhere. The couple married in NYC on March 17,1905 and her uncle, President Theodor Roosevelt walked Eleanor down the aisle. The Roosevelts settled in New York, on East 65th street where they lived with Franklin’s controlling mother, who, like her grandmother earlier, was harsh in her criticism of her daughter-in-law. While Franklin advanced his career, his wife raised their daughter and four sons under the watchful eye of her often belittling mother-in-law. Then in 1911, Franklin was elected to the New York State Senate, and the couple moved to Albany. Here Eleanor started the job of “political wife “, which she had to continue even when in 1923 Franklin was appointed assistant secretary of the navy, and the family moved to Washington, D.C. Eleanor had to perform “official” duties such as attending formal parties and making social calls in the homes of other government officials. For the most part she found these occasions tedious. While she was initially uncomfortable with the DC political scene, Eleanor was growing in her political consciousness, but she definitely missed her active social work she had done all her life in NYC. When World War I broke out in April 1917, Eleanor was able to resume her volunteer work. She visited wounded soldiers and worked for the Navy–Marine Corps Relief Society and in a Red Cross canteen. This work increased her sense of self-worth, and she wrote later: “I loved it…I simply ate it up.”. In 1918she discovered that her husband was having an affair with her social secretary, Lucy Mercer. She was devastated and offered Franklin a divorce if he wouldn’t agree to stop seeing Mercer. Mindful of his political career and fearing the loss of his mother’s financial support, Franklin refused Eleanor’s offer of a divorce and agreed to stop seeing Mercer ( even though only momentarily, in 1945 she was in fact with Franklin when he died at Warm Springs, Georgia). The Roosevelts’ marriage settled into a routine in which both kept independent agendas while remaining respectful and affectionate toward each other. Eleanor began to live a more independent life and often escaped to Val-Kill, her upstate New York home, where she was also part of a women-owned furniture cooperative. But, even though their relationship had ceased to be an intimate one, she remained his political ally and advisor. When Franklin was stricken with poliomyelitis in 1921, she tended him devotedly. She became active in the women’s division of the State Democratic Committee to keep his interest in politics alive. From his successful campaign for governor in 1928 to the day of his death, she dedicated her life to his purposes. She became eyes and ears for him, a trusted and tireless reporter traveling all over the United States to represent the husband ( many newspapers nicknamed her “Busybody”). All this increased Eleanor’s interest in politics and the desire to work for important causes. She joined the Women’s Trade Union League and became active in the New York state Democratic Party. As a member of the Legislative Affairs Committee of the League of Women Voters, she began studying the Congressional Record and learned to evaluate voting records and debates. Her activities were widely covered in the media in the 1920s, making her more publicly recognizable than her husband when he decided to run for governor in 1928! When Mrs. Roosevelt came to the White House in 1933, she understood social conditions better than any of her predecessors and she transformed the role of First Lady accordingly, using the position to advance many of her progressive and egalitarian goals. In her first year as First Lady, Eleanor worked hard to keep women involved in establishing and evaluating the New Deal. She introduced in the White House the habit of holding press conferences covered by women reporters only, to make them active part of the information, giving the opportunity to so many of them to keep their jobs as reporters and to even create new positions in the newspapers (those that had not formerly employed women were forced to do so in order to have a representative present in case important news broke). The First Lady believed this so strongly that she titled the first book she published while First Lady “It’s Up To The Women“. When she left the White House, she continued to press Truman and Kennedy to appoint more women and to address women’s issues with more concern and diligence.She wrote nearly 3,000 articles in newspapers and magazines, including a monthly column “My Day” where she argued that women must “become more conscious of themselves as women and of their ability to function as a group. At the same time they must try to wipe from men’s consciousness the need to consider them as a group or as women in their everyday activities, especially as workers in industry or the professions.” The First Lady believed women had special qualities that made them peacemakers, conferees and mothers, but she also believed these qualities made them fine politicians, reformers, advocates and professionals. She authored six books and traveled nationwide delivering countless speeches. She also championed racial justice, working to help black miners in West Virginia, and in 1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to let Marian Anderson, an African American opera singer, perform in Constitution Hall, Eleanor resigned her membership from the organization and arranged to hold the concert at the nearby Lincoln Memorial. The event was incredibly successful, it was attended by 75,000 people! On another occasion, when local officials in Alabama insisted that seating at a public meeting be segregated by race, Eleanor carried a folding chair to all sessions and carefully placed it in the centre aisle. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in 1945, she did not retire in her country home to live peacefully and in relax. She was in fact appointed by the husband’s successor, President Truman , a delegate to the United Nations (UN) ( the institution established by her husband) , where she served as chairman of the Commission on Human Rights (1946–51) and helped write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Eleanor also worked on the Equal Pay Act that was passed that same year. Her commitment to racial justice was evident in her civil rights work and efforts to push the Government to take swifter action in housing desegregation and protections for Freedom Riders and other activists. Kennedy nominated Roosevelt for the Nobel Peace Prize and though she did not win, she remained at the top of national polls ranking, the most respected women in America decades after her death.
Eleanor Roosevelt died from a rare form of tuberculosis, in 1962. She is buried at Hyde Park, her husband’s family home on the Hudson River.
