► SPOTLIGHT ON…
THE LIVES OF HISTORY’S MOST FAMOUS FIGURES
Eleanor Roosevelt: first lady of the world
More than a president’s wife, the longest-serving first lady was a political heavyweight, a diplomat and a humanitarian, who dictated her own place in the world – and then changed it for the better
Words: Jonny Wilkes
When Eleanor Roosevelt moved into the White House in 1933, she introduced herself to the press as “plain, ordinary Mrs Roosevelt”, before going on to fundamentally change the role of first lady in a president’s administration. When she moved out of the White House 12 years later, she declared, “The story is over”, before going on to be a pioneering United Nations delegate and driving force for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Modesty? Perhaps. Or at these milestones, did Eleanor refuse to do what was expected, even from herself?
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt had not been a self-assured child. Born on 11 October 1884, she grew up in a wealthy family in New York high society, but both of her parents and a brother died before she was 10, and she became serious and insecure. It was only at 15, when sent to a progressive boarding school, Allenswood Academy near London, England, that she found her confidence, strength of mind, and power to lead. Over three profoundly influential years, 1899 to 1902, the French headmistress Marie Souvestre instilled in her social responsibility and the imperative, as a young woman, for independence.
Political partnership
They were lessons Eleanor (always known by her middle name) took to heart, matched by a deep sensitivity for the less fortunate. She was not happy to return to New York to be a silent housewife. That was until she fell in love. In 1905, she married Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a distant cousin – with her uncle, US president Theodore Roosevelt, giving her away – and went on to have six children, although one died in infancy. Being a mother did not keep Eleanor from her social work. During World War I, she volunteered with the American Red Cross.
She was also a politician’s wife, once Franklin was elected to the state Senate in 1910. But her marriage was then hit by two traumas: in 1918, she discovered her husband’s affair with her social secretary and her call for a divorce was refused; three years later, he contracted an illness that left him paralysed from the waist down. Depressed, not broken, Eleanor made a decision to turn her marriage into a political partnership and take an active role in FDR’s career. When he was elected New York governor in 1928 and then president in 1932, she was there. Simultaneously, she was free to lead her own life, in which she bought and taught at a girls’ school, and cofounded a furniture factory. More political in her own right, she got involved with the Democratic Party, and joined the Women’s Trade Union League and League of Women Voters.
Being first lady meant sacrificing autonomy, Eleanor knew, so if that was her duty she would make the role her own: not a White House hostess, but a visible force in the administration. It was the Great Depression, and while her husband implemented his New Deal policies, she toured the nation as “the president’s eyes, ears and legs”. She also started a newspaper column, My Day, a candid public diary six days a week (that she kept up for the rest of her life). Through her travelling and writing, “plain, ordinary” Eleanor became a beloved public figure.
She blazed new trails, unphased by the controversy and misogyny this courted. Eleanor held women-only press conferences, hosted radio shows, campaigned for liberal causes and vigorously supported equal rights for women and racial minorities. When the Daughters of the American Revolution denied African-American opera singer Marian Anderson from performing in 1939, Eleanor put on a concert for her at the Lincoln Memorial with a 75,000-strong crowd.
“Eleanor Roosevelt was the powerhouse for the drafting and adoption of a seminal document for all nations regarding the rights of their citizens”
Tireless activism
The outbreak of World War II only intensified her activism. Whether fighting for European refugees or the black air force squadron, the Tuskegee Airmen; being a leading example of home-front volunteering or heading to the Pacific to boost soldier morale, she was tireless. And while Franklin’s death in April 1945 meant she did not see out the war in the White House, she left as the longest-serving first lady.
But her story was not “over”, as she claimed. New president Harry Truman appointed Eleanor a delegate to the recently created United Nations, where she chaired a human rights commission and was soon the powerhouse for the drafting and adoption of a seminal document that set the standard for all nations regarding the rights of its citizens. “This Universal Declaration of Human Rights may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere,” she announced in a stirring speech at the General Assembly.
The rest of Eleanor’s life was far from idle. Before her death on 7 November 1962, aged 78, she remained involved at the UN, travelled the world meeting leaders, wrote and lectured prolifically, stood up for civil rights – to the point the Ku Klux Klan put a bounty on her head – and served as chair of the Commission on the Status of Women. Yet the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was her crowning achievement. When adopted in late 1948, the delegates gave her a standing ovation. Truly, as Truman called her, Eleanor was the “first lady of the world”.
