First Ladies and Social Causes

Overview

Among First Ladies of the United States were many women to whom nineteenth century social mores would not dictate virtual invisibility. Some First Ladies moved into their quarters in the White House and stayed there; some appeared dutifully at official functions, but it was never a consideration for them to publicly express their thoughts regarding issues. Other First Ladies were exceptions. Then, during the twentieth century, the position of First Lady evolved into one consisting of partnership and activism. Not only does the modern First Lady often advise the president on policies and appointments; she also serves as a visible advocate for a wide range of social causes.

History

Most First Ladies have been able to avoid the inherent dangers of an aristocratic style of behavior. Along with their husbands, they have readily recognized the pitfalls of offending the American public with anything that smacked of snobbishness. Over the years, it has been a fundamental societal expectation in the United States that women should be agreeable and charming. This perception has evolved and been significantly modified during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Consequently, a number of First Ladies have felt comfortable using the symbolic power of their position to perform some active crusading in order to address national problems or for the purpose of correcting social injustices nationwide.

Human Rights Advocates

First Ladies have played an essential role in advocating human rights throughout the years. Although they have not necessarily been high-profile leaders in a variety of human rights causes, they have oftentimes been involved in the front lines of battles being waged in their time. First Ladies have taken up the social causes of civil rights and child welfare laws and have served as outspoken advocates of national and international peace. They have also served as proponents of aid for the poor, hungry, disenfranchised, and homeless.

First Lady Ida McKinley was an advocate for peace as an opponent of the Spanish-American War. Rosalynn Carter was considered to be an outspoken champion of international human rights. Edith Roosevelt played a high-profile role in assisting President Theodore Roosevelt in his efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Russo-Japanese War. She attended peace talks attended by representatives of Russia and Japan and assisted in efforts designed to decode highly confidential messages that were being transmitted by countries involved in the conflict. Theodore Roosevelt would later receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the peace talks.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton’s administration announced the formation of massive efforts to provide disaster relief for Latin American countries that had been ravaged by earthquakes and hurricanes. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was responsible for announcing the launching of this huge humanitarian effort. She played a key role as a visible leader of the effort to raise funds and deliver aid to the affected nations.

First Ladies have long championed the cause of disabled veterans and soldiers who had been hospitalized or were incapacitated by their wounds. During the Civil War, Caroline Harrison often appeared at her husband’s troops’ camps in Kentucky and Tennessee. She frequently provided assistance in mending uniforms and performing day-to-day chores. In addition, she worked closely with the Ladies Patriotic Association and Ladies Sanitary Committee in her efforts to organize public food drives. She also assisted in gathering food, clothing, and medicine for soldiers. Michelle Obama cofounded Joining Forces during Barack Obama's administration. The organization worked to improve the lives of service members and veterans by providing various supports to them and their families.

Barbara Bush was an advocate of universal literacy. First Lady Grace Coolidge taught deaf children prior to living in the White House, and she returned to efforts on their behalf after she returned to private life. Hillary Rodham Clinton was actively involved in working with the Children’s Defense Fund, along with renowned children’s rights activist Marian Wright Edelman, prior to becoming First Lady. She continued to champion this cause during the Clinton administration, including writing It Takes a Village, a 1996 bestselling book on children’s welfare. After leaving the White House, Clinton continued her humanitarian efforts when she served as a US senator and US secretary of state. Michelle Obama worked to end the epidemic of childhood obesity through her organization Let's Move! which she founded in 2010. Let's Move! helped encourage children to be more active and schools to provide healthier lunches, among other initiatives. Obama also advocated for education, especially among girls and disenfranchised populations, through two initiatives: Reach Higher, which focused on older students obtaining the information needed to complete an education beyond high school, and Let Girls Learn, which was a global initiative to educate girls around the world. Dr. Jill Biden worked alongside Obama on many of these goals while she served as Second Lady during the Obama administration, and she continued her work on initiatives supporting girls' education after becoming First Lady in 2021.

Civil Rights Activists

Frances Cleveland was highly active in raising public awareness of the need for civil rights. She worked toward the creation of a charitable organization dedicated to assisting poor and orphaned Black children. However, her efforts in this regard were unsuccessful, as she was unable to solicit sufficient public and financial support for the project. She was, however, a highly influential member of the Colored Christmas Club. This organization donated funds to needy African Americans in Washington, DC, during the holiday season. Cleveland opened White House reception areas as well as her Saturday receptions to African Americans, becoming perhaps the first First Lady to integrate the White House through these activities.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had a long and illustrious record of serving as an advocate for human rights from 1933 until her death in 1962. Her role as a proponent of human rights beyond US borders earned her the nickname First Lady of the World. She has often been referred to as the leading advocate for human rights in the history of the White House. Roosevelt was among the First Ladies who were targets of vocal criticism for allowing African Americans to visit the White House. As a civil rights activist, she openly opposed job discrimination against Black people, favored desegregation of the United States military, and brought to national attention the inequalities in people of color's pay. During her time as First Lady, Roosevelt convinced Franklin D. Roosevelt and other key members of his administration to support antilynching laws. Eleanor was successful at convincing her husband to do so, in spite of his concerns as to how such advocacy would be perceived in the South.

Roosevelt participated in numerous civil rights activities and organizations. She became involved in sit-ins in restaurants, invited Black entertainers to perform at the White House, served on the board of directors for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and was named an honorary member of the National Council for Colored Women. When traveling in the South, the First Lady usually defied local segregation codes by sitting in “colored only” areas of public facilities. She also actively supported African Americans in political office.

Roosevelt's human and civil rights activism was not limited to the cause of African Americans. She also advocated on behalf of miners and laborers, the poor, women, prisoners, and those who were hospitalized in mental health institutions. In fact, it has been said that she embraced the cause of almost every individual she considered to be at a disadvantage. Roosevelt reported on the conditions she found in various institutions, fought for housing and public aid for the poor, and played an essential role in convincing her husband to appoint Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first woman ever to head a federal department.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was nominated for the American Peace Award for her work on behalf of human rights. She continued in such endeavors after she left the White House. Roosevelt was appointed to serve as a United States delegate to the United Nations. She also chaired the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which produced the highly acclaimed United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The mass circulation and availability of newspapers and television served to heighten the visibility of First Ladies as human rights advocates during the twentieth century. Lou Hoover received a great deal of media attention when she hosted Jessie DePriest, wife of the Illinois representative Oscar DePriest, for tea at the White House. That Mrs. DePriest was an African American was not overlooked by the southern press in 1929. As a result of the controversy created by media coverage of this event, Lou Hoover was eventually symbolically censured by the Texas state legislature.

Lady Bird Johnson’s personal train, The Lady Bird Special, was used during her efforts to support Lyndon B. Johnson’s campaign for president in the South. She was sent by her husband on a whistle-stop tour for the express purpose of minimizing White hostility toward his signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Needless to say, her travels were carefully and meticulously covered by members of the media. Hostile mobs and threats from the Ku Klux Klan in the racially divided South of the early 1960s awaited Lady Bird Johnson’s train at every stop along its route. She also was the target of harsh and virulent public criticism by the ultraconservative John Birch Society. Johnson firmly held her ground throughout the campaign in spite of this whirlwind of public and media scrutiny and criticism. She would later earn the praise and respect of the more open-minded and objective journalists. As a result of the highly visible and pervasive media coverage of her campaign efforts in the South, the cause of the civil rights movement received much national support and further heightened public awareness of the issue.

First Lady Rosalynn Carter was an outspoken advocate of mental health care during her time spent both in the Georgia governor’s mansion and in the White House. It was while living in Washington, DC, that she played a leading role in drafting legislation designed to meet the needs of the mentally disabled. She also served as honorary chairwoman of the presidentially commissioned task force on mental health. Growing up in the rural and segregated South provided Carter with firsthand experiences related to racial prejudice and intolerance. She was quite vocal in her criticism of White Baptist preachers for disallowing Black people to attend their churches or to become members of their congregations.

Barbara Bush would add yet another facet to the multidimensional roles played by First Ladies in advocating civil rights. She delivered the commencement address at Bennett College, a predominantly Black school in Greensboro, North Carolina. She was also the first presidential wife to appoint a person of color to a senior position on her official staff through her designation of Anna Perez as her press secretary. (No First Lady before Edith Roosevelt enjoyed the services of staff members paid for by the government.) As the first Black First Lady in the White House, Michelle Obama played a unique role in civil rights issues. She worked to end racial injustice through all of her various initiatives—a cause she had long worked on as a lawyer before entering the White House. Obama was later honored with the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum in 2021.

Abolitionists

Slavery was a prominent human rights issue for a number of First Ladies. Mary Todd Lincoln was raised in a prominent, slaveholding southern family. However, before and during the Civil War, she was an outspoken critic of slavery and was highly active in support of the war efforts of the Union army. Her convictions regarding this matter were so strong that not even harsh criticism from the northern or southern press could deter her involvement in this cause. Lincoln was considered to be a traitor by the South and was not trusted by the North. There even were accusations of treason brought against her.

The Civil War and slavery were deeply personal issues for Lincoln. She was overcome with grief at the death of several relatives who fought for the Confederacy, but she was also proud of her maternal grandmother, who assisted enslaved people in their efforts to escape to the North through the Underground Railroad. Lincoln befriended a free Black woman named Elizabeth Keckley who was an outspoken abolitionist and supporter of aid for free Black people. Keckley remained Lincoln's close friend and confidante as well as her personal assistant, despite strong criticism of their relationship, although the two would eventually have a falling out.

Lincoln's relationship with Keckley perhaps served as a catalyst for her support of the Contraband Relief Association, an organization dedicated to raising funds and support for freed enslaved people. She delivered numerous speeches in support of providing assistance to freed Black people and raised money for the relief effort, donating some herself. At the White House, she hosted Frederick Douglass, who at the time was likely the most prominent Black leader nationwide. In addition, Lincoln invited other prominent African Americans to visit the White House, years before such relationships were deemed acceptable. These interactions occurred roughly seventy-five years prior to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt engaging in the same type of behavior. However, Roosevelt was both brutally criticized for these visits and praised for taking such bold steps.

Two other First Ladies who openly opposed slavery were Abigail Fillmore and Jane Pierce. Both women were disappointed by their northern husbands’ vulnerability to arguments from southern politicians and their subsequent acquiescence to the southern delegation in Congress. Fillmore opposed the Fugitive Slave Act, which had the reluctant support of her husband. This piece of legislation would allow the federal government to provide assistance in returning runaway enslaved people to bondage.

First Lady Fillmore was an opponent of slavery prior to her marriage and to occupying the White House. She taught enslaved people who were owned by her family to read and write. She would later offer them their freedom. Louisa Adams also despised slavery and publicly supported the abolitionist movement. She became a devotee of the Garrisonians, who at the time were considered one of the United States’ most prominent antislavery societies. Not only did she read the periodical The Liberator, but she also participated in the dissemination of antislavery petitions in Washington.

Lucy Hayes’s husband, Rutherford B. Hayes, had served as a Union officer during the Civil War. She pleaded with him not to permit soldiers serving under him to return enslaved people to the South. Furthermore, she became a highly visible figure in the abolition movement and was a proponent for the rights of former and freed enslaved workers. Over the years, she has received credit for having a significant influence on her husband’s opposition to slavery. Hayes was an individual of powerful convictions; she practiced what she preached. She taught Weliza Jane Burrell, a former enslaved person, to read and write. In addition, Hayes developed a friendship with Winnie Monroe, another former enslaved person, whom Hayes hired to serve as a cook in the White House.

Of course, not all First Ladies were leaders on civil rights issues. The issue was considered off-limits by several women. Others, such as Sarah Polk, owned enslaved people while she lived in the White House. Later, First Lady Polk would adhere to a neutral position regarding the Civil War; however, enslaved workers were held on her cotton plantation in Mississippi after she left the White House. Furthermore, she neglected to free them after James Polk’s death, even though there was a stipulation to do so in his will. Other First Ladies who owned enslaved people included Margaret Taylor, who was from Maryland, and Martha Washington, who was from Virginia. Ellen Arthur’s family not only owned enslaved people but also fought for the South during the Civil War.

Activism pertaining to human rights issues on the part of First Ladies ranged beyond the geographic borders of the United States to international concerns during the second half of the twentieth century. Pat Nixon traveled with her husband to Africa in 1972, while First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton joined President Bill Clinton on a similar journey in 1998. The International Women’s Year Conference in 1977 featured First Ladies Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, and Rosalynn Carter in attendance. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a keynote speech at a similar meeting nearly twenty years later.

Women’s Advocates

Betty Ford was an outspoken proponent of women’s rights on an international level. She also championed the cause of universal literacy and was a strong advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment, lobbying the United States Congress on behalf of the measure.

One of the pioneers for women’s rights was Lucy Hayes. Her husband was elected president in 1876, in a contentious campaign following the Civil War. The Democrats won the White House by approximately half a million popular votes. Southern states, which were still under military occupation, were allegedly bribed by Republicans to oppose the Democrats. Hayes won the election by one electoral vote. Needless to say, the outcome hardly reflected a national consensus. Hayes entered the White House as a president disdained by more than half the voters. As a result, Lucy Hayes’s role as First Lady became significant during her husband’s administration. She was the first First Lady to hold a college degree and was more than prepared for the challenges that faced her during her years in the White House.

Hayes served as a catalyst for hope being instilled in the minds and hearts of many women who were starting to develop a resentment toward their separate but not quite equal status in American life. The Cincinnati Wesleyan-educated First Lady was viewed as being the embodiment of the New Woman, one who wanted to receive equal pay for equal work and to have the right to enter the workplace and the political sphere.

Women’s rights was an extremely unpopular issue during the late 1800s. Hayes was acutely aware that her husband was in no position to run the risk of having a politically controversial spouse. As a consequence, instead of joining the women’s rights movement or the women’s temperance movement, Hayes became the honorary president of the Women’s Home Missionary Society, an organization that campaigned for the betterment of the lives of the poor in the appalling slums of nineteenth century American cities. This cause was beyond criticism from all areas of the political arena.

Hayes was a politically astute and tremendously popular First Lady. Although her husband was the target of constant criticism, few people (other than those in opposition to the temperance movement) had anything negative to say about the First Lady. She was praised in verse by the well-known poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Journalist Ben Perley Moore declared her to be the most influential First Lady since Dolley Madison.

Advocates for the Needy and the Poor

Another pioneering First Lady launched a crusade that sent a message to the president almost forty years after Lucy Hayes left the White House. Woodrow Wilson’s first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, achieved this during the brief time span of eighteen months that she served in the White House. Born in Savannah, Georgia—the segregated South—Wilson did not consider herself to be a crusader for radical reform. Instead, she believed that all Americans possessed certain basic rights. Although this message was a central theme of her husband’s foreign policy, the Wilson administration, which was dominated by conservative southerners, was ironically negligent in its dealings with domestic racial injustice.

Upon Wilson’s election to the presidency, many progressive White and Black citizens had high hopes for the role he might play in significantly changing the Jim Crow laws that permeated the federal government. Instead, by the summer of 1913, merely six months after his inauguration, segregation in all departments of the federal government had actually increased. Subsequently, a petition was signed by more than twenty thousand angry Black Americans from thirty-four states, urging the president to change this policy.

During her brief tenure in the White House, Wilson met Charlotte Wise Hopkins, a force in the District of Columbia branch of the National Civic Foundation, whose objective was to improve living conditions for the poor, regardless of race. Hopkins blamed segregation, which made it impossible for African Americans to buy homes in most areas of Washington, for the substandard housing in which many people lived. Her solution to the problem was to construct model homes, which could be built inexpensively, with plumbing and electricity.

Within a week after her initial encounter with Hopkins, Wilson visited the fetid alleys of Washington. She informally talked to the residents without identifying herself as the First Lady. Soon thereafter, she became a stockholder in the Sanitary Housing Company, the organization that was responsible for erecting the model homes. Before long, Wilson became the honorary chair of the women’s department of the National Civic Foundation. Word of her involvement in this cause spread swiftly throughout Washington. A group of fifty prominent citizens drafted an “Alley Bill” that proposed the clearing of the slums and the construction of model homes in their stead. This piece of legislation was later passed by Congress.

Social Activists

First Ladies have become closely identified with their particular social causes. Barbara Bush was best known for her support for adult literacy, while Lady Bird Johnson advocated conservation and beautification of the outdoors. To a great extent, the First Lady can be seen as the country’s “first volunteer.” Lucy Hayes visited many prisons, schools, and asylums as part of her efforts to improve their conditions. Frances Cleveland participated in making clothing for the poor.

Ida McKinley made slippers for charities. Caroline Harrison supported several Washington charities and was a benefactor of the Garfield Hospital. Helen Taft sponsored the planting of cherry trees throughout Washington. Lou Hoover supported a variety of needy causes, including the Lyceum Club, Friends of the Poor, the League of Women Voters, the Campfire Girls, and the Girl Scouts.

Lady Bird Johnson was perhaps the exemplary advocate of social causes among First Ladies. Her support for conservation extended beyond mere beautification. She was aware of the close relationship between quality of life and the physical environment. She lobbied for the removal of unsightly billboards and advocated planting wildflowers, preserving scenic rivers, and enhancing national parklands. She was successful in gaining the passage of the Highway Beautification Act of 1967, known as “Lady Bird’s Bill.” She later became an active member of President Lyndon Johnson’s progressive Head Start program.

Though First Lady Melania Trump was notoriously private during her time in the White House, she did some activism work. In 2018, she founded BE BEST, a campaign to support and bring awareness to the healthy living and emotional health of children, through awareness of such issues as the negative effects of social media, as well as the dangers of opioid abuse.

Significance

The office of the First Lady is, by its form and substance, highly political. It has evolved over the years to become an essential component of the American political process. Many First Ladies have been passionate in advocacy of their causes and were highly successful in their efforts to gain support for their positions. Their sphere of influence extended beyond the walls of the White House. They were effective spokespersons in bringing about significant changes in attitudes, behaviors, and legislation in the United States.

Bibliography

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