Eleanor Roosevelt

First Lady

• Born: October 11, 1884
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: November 7, 1962
• Place of death: New York, New York

First Lady of the United States

As First Lady and as a private citizen, Roosevelt worked for civil rights, women’s rights, and domestic and international peace and justice.

Areas of achievement Government and politics, civil rights, women’s rights

Early Life

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (ROH-zeh-vehlt) was the first child of Elliott Roosevelt and Anna Livingston Ludlow Hall Roosevelt. Her beautiful and aristocratic mother, who was only twenty years old when Eleanor was born, was more involved in the social life of her contemporaries than in the needs of her daughter. Elliott Roosevelt, although handsome and charming, was troubled by problems associated with alcoholism. As a result of her parents’ self-absorption, Eleanor’s early childhood was lonely and somber despite her family’s wealth and social position.

Anna Roosevelt died of diphtheria in 1892, depressed and discouraged by her husband’s drinking and irresponsibility. Eleanor idolized her father and imagined that she would live with him and that they would travel to exciting places together. In reality, however, Elliott’s attitude toward Eleanor, although expressed in loving words, was characterized by thoughtlessness. Elliott died on August 14, 1894, of complications related to his drinking.

After her father’s death, Eleanor lived with her maternal grandmother Mary Livingston Ludlow Hall. A strict disciplinarian, Hall insisted on a regimented life for her grandchildren. Despite her grandmother’s insistence that she wear unfashionable clothes and a back brace to improve her posture, and despite the dreary atmosphere of Hall’s New York townhouse, Eleanor’s childhood was not as miserable as some writers have suggested. She had, for the first time in her life, a stable and orderly home. Her grandmother and aunts were sympathetic and supportive of her academic and athletic activities, and the family’s country estate at Tivoli was a pleasant place with spacious grounds for a child to roam.

Eleanor remained in this environment until the age of fifteen, when she was sent to Allenswood, a girls’ boarding school in England. Presided over by Mademoiselle Marie Souvestre, Allenswood provided a rigorous academic environment that encouraged young women to think and act independently. Eleanor came into her own at boarding school. She was an outstanding student, was active in sports, was held in the highest esteem by her fellow students, and was a protégée of Mademoiselle Souvestre. She took from Allenswood an intellectual self-possession, an increased sense of tolerance, and a commitment to public activity.

Life’s Work

At eighteen, Eleanor Roosevelt returned to New York, at her grandmother’s insistence that she make her debut. Although in her own memoirs Roosevelt describes herself as shy and awkward at this period of her life, her contemporaries remembered her as attractive and sought-after by the more thoughtful young men. One young man who was particularly interested was her fifth cousin once removed, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), at the time a Harvard student. The two became secretly engaged in November, 1903, and were married in March, 1905, after a courtship during which his rather possessive mother tried to raise obstacles.

During the years before her marriage, Roosevelt had become involved in volunteer work in New York City. There she had found a sense of usefulness and satisfaction that social life had never held for her. She worked with the Junior League to teach settlement house children, and she joined the Consumers’ League, helping to investigate women’s working conditions in factories and department stores. She had firsthand exposure to urban poverty, and her commitment to improving the lives of the less fortunate dates from this period of her life.

After their wedding, Eleanor and Franklin settled in New York City in a townhouse adjoining his mother’s home. During the next eleven years, Roosevelt had six children: Anna (1906); James (1907); Franklin (1909), who lived only seven months; Elliott (1910); Franklin, Jr. (1914); and John (1916). Her life was filled with domestic responsibilities and with her mother-in-law’s interference in the younger Roosevelts’ household. Those were years of little personal satisfaction for Roosevelt. She had little involvement with friends or work outside her family.

In 1910, Franklin began his political career by winning a seat in the New York state legislature. Roosevelt also began her public life. She enjoyed the role of political wife, especially because it brought her into contact with the issues and figures of the day. Contrary to some reports, she was not opposed to woman suffrage during this period. She had not given the issue much thought until FDR came out in support of votes for women in 1911. Then she realized that “if my husband were a suffragist I probably must be too.”

In 1913, the Roosevelts moved to Washington, D.C., where Franklin served as assistant secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. There, during World War I, Eleanor organized the Red Cross canteen and the Navy Red Cross. She knitted, entertained troops, and served food to servicemen. She visited soldiers in the hospital and raised money for a recreational center for wounded men. Her work often lasted from 9:00 a.m. until long past midnight.

The war years also brought her heartache and disillusionment when she learned of her husband’s affair with her social secretary, Lucy Mercer. Roosevelt offered to divorce Franklin at this time, but he refused. Certainly, the Roosevelts’ decision to continue their marriage was made partly because divorce was a serious liability in politics in the early twentieth century, but also because Franklin realized that his wife’s special skills would be invaluable in his career. For Eleanor, the Lucy Mercer episode encouraged her to seek her own fulfillment in the world outside her marriage.

After an unsuccessful run for the vice presidency in 1920, Franklin developed polio in 1921. Spurred by these events, Eleanor became involved in politics both in women’s issues and in the Democratic Party. During the 1920’s, she became active in the League of Women Voters and the Women’s Trade Union League, which supported protective legislation for women. She became acquainted with such activist women as Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read, who introduced Roosevelt into a community of independent women. With her friends Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook, she built a cottage called Val-Kill on the grounds of the Roosevelt family estate at Hyde Park. There they created a partnership that managed a furniture crafts factory and also published the Women’s Democratic News. With her friends, she also purchased Todhunter, a private girls’ school in New York City. She taught there three days a week until she became First Lady in 1933. Teaching fulfilled a dream from her days at Allenswood, gave her immense satisfaction, and brought her into contact with the young people she always loved.

With the phenomenal energy that characterized her whole life, Roosevelt also entered Democratic politics, first as a representative of her husband during his convalescence and then in her own right as a spokesperson for women and social reform. She organized Democratic women in New York, traveled and spoke for Democratic Party candidates, and advocated the election of women to public office.

When Franklin was elected governor of New York in 1928 and president of the United States in 1932, Eleanor worked with the Women’s Division of the Democratic National Committee to involve women in the election process and to ensure that women were appointed to positions in the administration. Among those whom she brought to her husband’s attention was Frances Perkins, the secretary of labor, the first woman ever appointed to a presidential cabinet.

Roosevelt had feared that the position of First Lady would mean curtailing her own political and reform activities, but she discovered new opportunities to promote her primary concerns, such as equal rights and the concerns of the poor and dispossessed. She held regular press conferences that were open only to women reporters, gave radio interviews and lectures, and wrote a syndicated newspaper column called “My Day.” In addition, she supervised the responses to the thousands of letters she received, sometimes sending a personal note or a check. She also traveled throughout the country as the president’s “eyes and ears,” seeing for herself the conditions on farms, in mines and factories, and in the homes of the poor during the Depression. She brought representatives of excluded groups to the White House, frequently seating them next to the president so that he could hear their stories.

A primary commitment of Roosevelt’s adult life was to civil rights for African Americans. She had grown up in an isolated and prejudiced environment, but living in Washington, D.C., had made her aware of the evils of racism. Her advocacy took the form both of symbolic gestures, as when she insisted on placing her chair in the center of the aisle between black and white sections at a segregated meeting of the Southern Conference on Human Welfare in 1939, and of quiet lobbying, as in her role of messenger between her husband and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She supported federal legislation to outlaw lynching and, during World War II, worked to eliminate discrimination in the armed forces.

During the war, Eleanor endeavored to ensure women’s participation in all aspects of the mobilization, visited troops in hospitals and in the field, and sought to continue the many New Deal social reforms jeopardized by the country’s focus on the international crisis.

Franklin died in April of 1945, during his fourth term as president. Roosevelt continued her public life, perhaps feeling freer because she was no longer perceived as a politician’s wife. She turned many of her efforts to international matters, an extension of her long-standing interest in building a lasting peace. She had earlier been an advocate of the League of Nations and the World Court, and now President Harry S. Truman appointed her as a delegate to the newly formed United Nations, where she served until 1953. She chaired the committee that produced the 1948 Declaration on Human Rights and was nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The “First Lady of the World” showed concern for the victims of war and oppression parallel to her continuing domestic interests in civil rights and women’s issues. Roosevelt’s last public role was as the chairperson of President John F. Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women, in which capacity she supported full access by women to economic and political opportunities. She died in New York City on November 7, 1962, of a rare type of tuberculosis.

Significance

Eleanor Roosevelt’s life bore out the advice she had written to women in 1930, “to be ready to go out and try new adventures, create new work for others as well as herself, and strike deep roots in some community where her presence will make a difference in the lives of others.”

Roosevelt defined a new role for women in American public life. Although during much of her life she filled a position as the wife of a prominent politician, her contributions stand on their own. With compassion and a commitment to humanitarian interests, she helped to place the issues of racial and gender justice on the national agenda. She was an advocate for all excluded groups, using her public visibility as a means to bring their concerns to national attention and using her influence to promote changes in attitudes and in legislation. On the international scene, she reached out to the victims of injustice and poverty, legitimizing and promoting their well-being.

To women of future generations, Roosevelt became a model of energy, humanity, and courage. Always an example of impeccable courtesy, she could also confront leaders of the Soviet Union or the proponents of segregation and state her case. She demonstrated the need to redefine power as not only the authority to move armies or to control economic might but also the ability to inspire, to question the status quo, and to work for equality without the expectation of personal gain.

Further Reading

Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt. Vol. 1. New York: Viking, 1992. The first volume of a projected two-volume study, Cook’s sensitive biography places Eleanor Roosevelt in the context of a rich emotional life and emphasizes her lifelong strengths.

Glendon, Mary Ann. A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New York: Random House, 2001. Recounts how Roosevelt and others in 1947 began drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations the following year. Includes a legal analysis of the declaration and its applicability to the twenty-first century.

Hoff-Wilson, Joan, and Marjorie Lightman, eds. Without Precedent: The Life and Career of Eleanor Roosevelt. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. An excellent collection of articles on Roosevelt’s character and contributions. The essays introduce fine scholarship dealing with the major themes in her life.

Lash, Joseph P. Eleanor and Franklin. New York: W. W. Norton, 1971. The first part of a two-volume biography of Roosevelt. Lash had full access to Roosevelt’s papers.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Eleanor: The Years Alone. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972. The second volume of the biography looks at Roosevelt’s life after her husband’s death. Lash’s personal friendship with Roosevelt enabled him to provide a warm and comprehensive picture of her life.

Roosevelt, Eleanor. The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961. Three volumes consolidated into one, this autobiography is indispensable to the student but provides a picture that is too self-effacing.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. My Day: The Best of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Acclaimed Newspaper Columns, 1936-1962. Edited by David Emblidge and Marcy Ross. New York: Da Capo Press, 2001. A selection of Roosevelt’s syndicated newspaper columns in which she expresses her views on the New Deal, World War II, human rights, and other issues.

Youngs, J. William T. Eleanor Roosevelt: Personal and Public Life. 3d ed. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2006. A biography that touches on Roosevelt’s life at home and in the public eye.