Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962) redefined the role of the First Lady of the United States. Her commitment to social justice and strong opinions on a number of issues considered controversial during her time (e.g., racial relations, women's rights, etc.) made her one of the most beloved women in American politics for some and one of the most scandalous ones for others, including many among her husband's supporters. She served as the First Lady from 1933 to 1945, developing and pursuing her own active political agenda. However, she was a well known public life figure before Franklin Delano Roosevelt took over the presidential office and long after her husband's death in 1945.
Born in a wealthy family, Roosevelt followed trends popular among women of her own class. By the end of the 19th century, many progressive middle and upper class urban women believed that they had a social responsibility to help those in need. While the belief was linked to the paternalistic attitudes of upper classes that pushed the working class and the poor to strive for what the more affluent saw as respectable middle class standards, throughout her life, Roosevelt continued to move beyond the expectations imposed on women of her class. She married Franklin, her distant cousin, in 1905 and devoted the first years of their marriage to raising their children (she gave birth to six children, one of whom died as an infant). In 1918, she discovered her husband extramarital affair and although the marriage did not end, it also never emotionally recovered, turning into what historians describe as political partnership.
In the 1920s, Eleanor supported a number of women's rights and labor causes. She was active in organizations fighting for minimum wage, maximum working hours, ban on child labor, and other labor regulations. She also supported women's right to vote and became an influential member of the Democratic Party in New York. Historians credit Eleanor for encouraging and even partly facilitating (through personal support and political activism) her husband's return to politics after he suffered from polio. When Franklin won governorship of New York in 1928, Eleanor became actively involved in his work, becoming one of the most known women in American politics.
THE FIRST LADY
Throughout Franklin's presidency, Eleanor served as a close and influential presidential adviser but also established her own position as a political figure with much more radical views than those of her husband's. She regularly held her own press conferences and maintained a close relationship with the White House female press corp. Her use of popular media to promote the New Deal and her own messages included also a newspaper column "My Day" that appeared in newspapers across the country from 1935 until 1962.
She traveled extensively, both internationally and in the United States. The domestic travels helped her better understand the plight of Americans during the Great Depression and allowed her to serve the role of the messenger between the people that she met and her husband. On the one hand, she assured ordinary Americans that her husband cared for them. On the other, she pushed Franklin to address the needs of those whom he forgot, ignored, or simply refused to support. Already in 1933, Eleanor publicly pointed out that the New Deal ignores the interests of women. She also advocated for the needs of young Americans. Her efforts led to creating the National Youth Administration, which focused on providing work and education for Americans between the ages of 16 and 25 as part of the 1935 Work Progress Administration.
Unlike her husband, Eleanor was a fervent supporter of civil rights for African Americans. She advocated for anti-lynching legislation, even when she realized that Franklin would not endorse it for fear of alienating white Southerners in Congress. Her most publicized act of opposition to segregation was when in 1939 she severed her connection with the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), after the organization banned Marian Anderson, a black opera singer, from performing at the Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. that DAR owned. With the help of Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, also anti-segregationist, she arranged for Anderson to sing on the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial.
While Eleanor supported other struggles of black communities, this well known episode demonstrates how different her attitude towards African Americans was from that of her husband's. She was explicit in her support of civil rights for black Americans, did not hide her agenda from the often critical public eye, challenged her husband's political opponents and allies (especially racist white Southerners), and sought attention for the civil rights cause through relationships and close friendships with black leaders, most notably Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder of the National Council of Negro Women, member of the Black Cabinet, and director of the Division of Negro Affairs at the National Youth Administration. and Walter White, the NAACP's executive secretary and anti-lynching legislation activist. During World War II, Eleanor continued to support racial integration in labor force and in the military. While her activism did not result in any sweeping civil rights legislation, historians note that her fight for racial equality had symbolic significance. Despite the fact that during the post-WWII period black leaders accused Eleanor of giving up on the civil rights struggle, she was an unusual representative of her own class. Analogously, in opposition to her husband's stance, she warned against the prejudice targeted at Japanese Americans in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack. Reportedly, she also privately opposed the internment camps established by the Roosevelt administration.
THE POST-WHITE HOUSE PERIOD
After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international influence as an author, speaker, politician and activist. She worked to enhance the status of working women although she criticized and never supported the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1945, President Harry Truman appointed Eleanor to be a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly (an organization championed by her husband). She was the chairperson of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and one of the key officials behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Roosevelt also remained an influential figure in the Democratic Party. In 1952 and 1956, she did not endorse Dwight Eisenhower but former Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson as the Democratic presidential candidate. This decision provoked opposition and disappointment among African Americans as Stevenson was a segregationist and civil rights opponent. She reluctantly endorsed John Kennedy in 1960. Kennedy reappointed her to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations, asked her to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission for the Peace Corps, and made her chair of the Presidential Commission of the Status of Women.
Eleanor Roosevelt died of a rare form of bone tuberculosis in 1962, at the age of 78.
Eleanor Roosevelt
White House Portrait