Eleanor Roosevelt became one of the best known, most respected and acclaimed women of the 20th century. When her husband became president of America, Eleanor transformed the role of First Lady by getting involved in the work of her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the life of the nation. After her husband’s death, Eleanor was appointed as a delegate to the newly formed United Nations, where she helped create the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Eleanor was born in 1884 in New York. Her family was wealthy and politically active. It was one of the wealthiest and most influential in New York, but her father was an alcoholic and both her parents died as well as a brother before she was ten. She was raised by her grandmother. However, she spent three years at a school in London where her teacher introduced her to social issues. When she returned to New York in 1902 she got involved with the settlement house movement, teaching immigrant children and families at Manhattan’s Rivington Street Settlement House. Her work with poor and needy families taught her a great deal about the hardships many Americans faced, leading to a life-long passion for trying to solve the worst of their problems.
Then, in 1905, Eleanor married her distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Between 1906 and 1916 they had six children though one of the boys died in infancy. FDR was elected to the New York State Senate in 1910. Two years later he joined Woodrow Wilson’s administration.
When WWI broke out Eleanor volunteered with various relief agencies. She visited wounded soldiers and worked for the Navy–Marine Corps Relief Society, working in naval hospitals as well as in a Red Cross canteen. But her marriage had radically changed. In 1918 she discovered that FDR was having an affair with her personal secretary. The affair was ended and the marriage survived but it was never the same, more a partnership than a loving marriage.
In 1920, FDR was chosen as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, running with James Cox. However, they lost the election. Then, in 1921 FDR was struck down with polio, a common disease at the time which could kill its victims or leave them permanently disabled. FDR was left without the use of his legs. Eleanor helped FDR recover, both physically and politically but he would never regain the use of his legs. Eleanor, meanwhile, was also busy teaching at the Todhunter School in New York, a finishing school for girls she had helped buy in 1926.
As you will surely know, in 1928 FDR ran for governor of New York and won, and in 1932 he ran for president against the sitting president, Herbert Hoover, and again, won.
Eleanor had initially been unsure about women’s suffrage, but after its passage in 1920, she played a leading role in several organisations, including the League of Women Voters and the Women’s Trade Union League. She was head of the Women’s Division of the Democratic National Committee, recruited in 1928 to help Al Smith’s presidential bid. Now, with her husband president from 1933 to 1945, as First Lady, Eleanor remained politically active herself. The first time a First Lady had done so.
With the effects of the Great Depression still raging, she had a considerable influence on FDR’s presidency, travelling the country on his behalf and reporting back on the meetings she had and the kinds of help that people needed. In this way, and others, she had a profound influence on the New Deal. She ensured that groups left out of the New Deal were included by getting revisions to legislation and the programmes, including greater participation for women in the heavily male-dominated Civilian Conservation Corps. She also had an influence on FDR’s cabinets. For example, she helped secure Frances Perkins as the first woman to head the Department of Labour. Whilst she also had time to champion racial justice, for example working to help black miners in West Virginia and to help other groups and causes, including the homeless and tenant farmers, housing reform, child welfare, as well as equal rights for women and racial minorities.
She would, on occasion, find a way around prejudice that both highlighted and ridiculed it. For example, 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 of DAR and arranged to hold the concert at the nearby Lincoln Memorial. It was attended by 75,000 people. And when 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.
As First Lady, she held weekly press conferences with women reporters getting her message across to the American people whilst at the same time promoting women in journalism. And whilst FDR had his ‘fireside chats’ with the American public, Eleanor held regular Sunday “egg scrambles,” in which she invited people from all walks of life to the White House for a scrambled-egg brunch and a talk about the problems they faced and what support they needed to overcome them.
She was also a busy writer. She wrote nearly 3,000 articles in newspapers and magazines, authored six books and delivered countless speeches. In 1936, she began writing a newspaper column called ‘My Day’. She wrote the column six days a week until 1962, often covering controversial issues including the rights of women and minorities.
With America at war again and men being mobilised, Eleanor seized on the opportunity to fight for the rights of women to work. She also fought against racial discrimination in the workforce, the armed forces, and at home, arguing that African-Americans and other racial minorities should be given equal pay, equal work, and equal rights. During the war, she traveled all over the world, visiting soldiers. The Secret Service gave her the code name “Rover,” whilst the American people called her “Everywhere Eleanor” or “Public Energy Number One”. They were all intended to be very complementary.
After FDR’s death in 1945, President Harry Truman appointed Eleanor America’s delegate to the United Nations where she served for more than a decade. She chaired the United Nations Human Rights Commission and helped to write the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Working for numerous causes all over the world, President Truman referred to her as the ‘First Lady of the World’. She never hid from controversy though. In the 1950s she spoke out against McCarthyism and in 1960, President John F. Kennedy asked her to chair the Commission on the Status of Women which released a ground-breaking study about gender discrimination (a year after her death in 1963). She also worked on the Equal Pay Act that was passed the same year. Her civil rights work continued and she lobbied for swifter action in housing desegregation as well as protections for Freedom Riders and other activists.
Eleanor Roosevelt died in November, 1962. Her funeral was attended by President Kennedy and former presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. Not too long before she died, the Ku Klux Klan had put a $25,000 bounty on her head. Whilst J. Edgar Hoover had ordered his agents to keep a watch (and a bourgeoning file) on her. Perhaps these were her greatest accolades.