Eleanor Roosevelt is more than simply a former First Lady. Her advocacy for both human rights and civil rights for people not only in The United States but around the world; set her apart from the First Ladies who came before her and from most women of her generation. She was a Roosevelt before she married FDR.
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on Oct. 11, 1884 in New York City. She was never called Anna, always Eleanor. The Roosevelts were a wealthy family. Both of her parents were from prominent New York families. While she certainly grew up more privileged than most, her childhood wasn’t idyllic. Her mother, Anna, who was a leading debutante, nicknamed her daughter “Granny” because she felt she was very plain looking. Anna died at the age of 29 from Diphtheria. Eleanor was 8 years old. Her father, Elliot Roosevelt was the younger brother of President Teddy Roosevelt. He was an alcoholic and he traveled to different places in Europe in search of treatment. Despite their distance, the two were close and frequently exchanged letters. Her father died at the age of 34. He tried to kill himself by jumping out of a window. He survived the fall but died of a seizure the next day. Both of her parents and her brother died by the time she was 10.
After the death of her mother, Eleanor Roosevelt was raised by her maternal Grandmother, Mary Livingston Ludlow Hall. She was not equipped for this task. Her late husband was extremely religious and controlling. She wasn’t allowed to make any decisions, even about the clothes she would wear. After her husband’s death, she had no idea how to run a household and relied on her daughter, Anna. When Anna died, she had her own younger children to raise along with Eleanor and Eleanor’s younger brother. Eleanor would later write of her Grandmother, "My grandmother's life had a considerable effect on me, for even when I was young I determined that I would never be dependent upon my children by allowing all my interests to center in them." She was going to have her OWN life apart from being someone’s wife or mother.
For the majority of her younger years, Eleanor was privately tutored at home. At the age of 15, she was sent to an elite finishing school, Allenswood Academy in England. It was there where Eleanor’s passion and commitment to helping those in need was formed. She began her social work and life of public service that she would continue on with until her death.
She returned to NY in order to make her debut as a socialite – to her Grandmother’s insistence. In 1902, she reconnected with her distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the two began writing letters to each other. They were married in NYC in March of 1905, and her uncle, Theodore Roosevelt walked her down the aisle. They lived in a home connected to FDR’s mother’s house who was incredibly controlling. Controlling over her only son and even over her Grandchildren. There’s was not a very happy marriage. FDR had an affair with Eleanor’s secretary. An affair he would rekindle without Eleanor’s knowledge and would continue until his death. The two remained married but in name only. They lived separate lives in a sense but Eleanor was a great support to FDR. The two had 6 children. Neither was a doting parent. For FDR he was busy paving the way for his political ambitions and career and for Eleanor, she was quoted as saying that motherhood just didn’t come naturally to her. She also had to contend with her mother in law who went as far as telling her children that she was there real mother, that Eleanor only gave birth to them.
In the summer of 1921, FDR contracted Polio after visiting a Boy Scout camp near Bear Mountain, NY. As FDR worked to regain his strength, Eleanor became his legs. Her interest in politics grew. She got involved with the Women’s Trade Union League. While working with the WTUL, she advocated for better working conditions and pay for women and became active in New York State’s Democratic Party.
As first lady she toured the US during The Great Depression. She met with men, women and children across the country. She visited factories and tenements. She pushed for women to have access to opportunities opened by New Deal legislation.
She held regular press conferences as First Lady in The White House and only allowed female reporters as they were barred from the President’s press conferences. She held them weekly and they focused on matters that were of interest to women. In total there were 348 press conferences. These conferences not only educated the public, but ensured that many female reporters kept their jobs.
Roosevelt began a syndicated newspaper column, called “My Day.” It ran six days a week starting in 1935. By the 1950s, readership grew to 4 million readers in 90 publications. She continued her column until 1962. Some of the issues she addressed in her column were Prohibition, Pearl Harbor, women’s issues and race relations. From 1936-1945, “she wrote… more than 2,500 columns, and 200 articles, published six books, and delivered at least 70 speeches a year”. She was a fierce supporter of women and encouraged her husband to appoint women to important leadership roles. He was the first President to appoint a woman to a cabinet level position. Francis Perkins was appointed to head the Department of Labor in 1933.
She was a supporter of Civil Rights. In 1943, she joined the NAACP and worked to gain support for an anti-lynching bill. As early as 1901, there were calls for the legislative branch to pass an anti-lynching bill. Make it a crime to hang people… imagine that being hard to do, but it was. Thousands of people were lynched in The United States, the majority of them were black. In fact, an anti-lynching bill wouldn’t get passed by both houses until 2018. She worked in support of this Bill even to her husband, the President of the US, unwillingness to support himself because he didn’t want to alienate southern democratic supporters. See why term limits are important? She worked so well with the NAACP that rumors started to swirl that she was mixed race and the KKK had a 25,000-dollar bounty on her head at one point. She resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution when they refused to allow singer Marion Anderson to sing at their hall in 1939. She also wrote about her resignation and why she did so in her daily column. Instead, Eleanor Roosevelt invited her to sing at The White House for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and also helped to have her sing in front of The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC in front of 75,000 people.
She Visited the troops overseas during WWII and would wear her red cross uniform. Less than a year after the United States entered WWII, Queen Elizabeth, the wife of King George VI invited the First Lady to visit the British home front. The British home front was very different from the US home front, aside from Pearl Harbor, our cities weren’t being bombed. The country had been at war for years and supplies were limited but their resolve to continue to fight and to do without stayed with Eleanor Roosevelt. She also spent time shedding light on how women were helping the war effort. She toured bombed out neighborhoods and bomb shelters, military hospitals and American GI’s stationed in Great Britain. She personally wrote to General Eisenhower after hearing how the men were developing blisters from their cotton socks and advocated that they be given wool socks instead. In August of 1943, she traveled to the Pacific theater of WWII. From San Francisco she traveled to Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, throughout the South Pacific and most impressively the island of Guadalcanal. Throughout her 5-week trip, she inspected the conditions of the military outposts, spoke to servicemen and women and comforted the wounded recovering in hospitals. She chronicled her trip in her news column “My Day”. Traveling across the country let alone across the world was not something First Ladies before her had done.
She was shocked by FDR’s support of Executive Order 9066. She spoke out against Japanese Incarceration camps to her husband and felt as though the Government didn’t have the right to imprison US citizens without due process of law. She even visited some of the camps and pushed for better conditions and more working opportunities outside of the camps.
When her husband died, she helped to plan his funeral despite the terrible betrayal of finding out her husband had continued on with an affair he agreed to end and that he was with his mistress when he died. She was also the one to tell Vice President Harry Truman of her husband’s death. The two maintained contact until the end of the war and the two cemented a close bond. They continued their correspondence until 1960.
US Delegate for the United Nations
In 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt was appointed by President Harry S. Truman to the first United Nations delegation, the only woman among the delegates. Mrs. Roosevelt didn’t feel equal to the task and questioned President Truman saying “How could I be a delegate to help organize the United Nations when I have no background or experience in international meetings?” He was able to persuade her to take the job and as it turned out, she was more than equal to the task. At the first meeting of the General Assembly she was asked to take part in the Human Rights Commission. She was then elected by her peers to chair this committee. She famously helped to create the Universal declaration of human rights. It was formally adopted by the United Nations in 1948. It serves as a guideline for an individual’s basic rights and freedoms. It has inspired international human rights laws, international treaties and constitutions of countries. The adoption of this document is celebrated every Dec. 10th as World Human Rights Day. She served as a delegate to the UN until 1953.
During the age of McCarthyism – she disagreed with Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Her outspoken nature on a number of hot button issues landed the former First lady in the cross hairs of the FBI. The 3,000-page file on Eleanor Roosevelt was one of J. Edgar Hoover’s largest files. The FBI file on her began in 1924 and continued until her death. Much of the file remains redacted today. Still by the 1960s, her reputation precedes her and her support was needed for JFK to win the black vote. She didn’t agree to campaign for him until the very end of the election. President Kennedy asked her to chair the Commission on the Status of Women. The report documented the inequities women faced. The report was ahead of its time and called for an end to discrimination and recommended things like maternity leave and affordable child care. Things most American women still don’t have access to and the biggest hurdle for women to rejoin the workforce after having children.
Her health began to decline in 1960 after she was hit by a car. Tuberculosis that had been dormant in her bone marrow once again became active and she died on Nov. 7, 1962. She had hoped her funeral to be a private affair and didn’t even want her death announced until after the funeral. President Kennedy ordered all flags to be flown at half-mast. Her funeral was attended by both President Kennedy & Mrs. Kennedy and Vice President Johnson as well as former Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. A number of UN delegates as well as Governors and Mayors. She is buried alongside her husband in the rose garden at Hyde Park. Generations of people around the world continue to owe a debt of gratitude to Eleanor Roosevelt. I’d like to end this episode with the words of Eleanor Roosevelt. These are two of my favorite quotes of her and I hope they will resonate with you as much as they do with me.
"Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes.”
“Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.”
