Eleanor Roosevelt
"What other single human being has touched and transformed the existence of so many? She walked in the slums and ghettos of the
world, not on a tour of inspection, but as one who could not feel contentment when others were hungry."
— Adlai E. Stevenson
Eleanor Roosevelt has been called one of the 20th century's most influential women.
She was a wife, mother, teacher, first lady of New York, first lady of the country, newspaper columnist, author,
world traveler, diplomat, and seasoned politician. Upon her "coming out" in 1902, several young men started to
court her. One of them was her distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was a 20-year-old student at
Harvard. Franklin met Eleanor at the immigrant settlement house several times, and she introduced him to a
world he had never known.
Franklin proposed in November 1903. After Eleanor accepted, he declared himself the happiest man on earth.
The couple were married on March 17, 1905. President Theodore Roosevelt gave the bride away. The early
1920s were a contradictory time for American women — a mixture of new freedoms and traditional patriarchal
values. By 1928, Eleanor was the director of the Bureau of Women's Activities of the Democratic Party. She
was one of the most powerful and well-known women in national politics. She began to write articles for major
magazines, and also endorsed products.
Eleanor held press conferences for women only. She also urged her husband to appoint women to governmental
positions. She argued that everyone, including women, youth, and black Americans, should be included in
FDR's programs. Those ideas led to her recognition as a new kind of first lady.
In 1934, Eleanor coordinated a meeting between FDR and NAACP leader Walter White, to discuss antilynching legislation. The following year, she arranged a meeting of FDR, Democratic National Committee
chairman James Farley, and Molly Dewson, head of the Women's Division of the DNC, to discuss the role of
women in elections.
In one three-month period, Eleanor logged 40,000 miles of travel. She gave lectures, visited schools and
factories, and wrote a newspaper column six days a week called, "My Day." In her travels, she witnessed how
the Depression had devastated entire industries and regions. She saw, first hand, new government programs at
work, and reported back to FDR.
Franklin Roosevelt ran for, and won, the 1936 presidential election by a landslide. In 1940, Eleanor made an
impromptu speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that helped President Roosevelt to win an
unprecedented third term. Although happy for her husband, a quarter of a century in politics had taken a heavy
toll on Eleanor's family. All the Roosevelt children led troubled lives, struggling with financial difficulties and
failed marriages. Among the five children, there were 19 marriages.
By the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which brought America into World War II, FDR's priorities had
shifted from domestic issues to winning the war. The Roosevelts' four sons enlisted in the armed services.
By 1944, the war had taken its toll on FDR. He had been president for 11 years and was now 62 years old.
Despite his exhaustion, he sought a fourth term. Although Eleanor felt that he desperately needed rest, she knew
that he felt he had to finish his work. FDR was suffering from heart disease. His daughter, Anna, carefully
monitored his health. He asked her to accompany him to Yalta for his meeting with Joseph Stalin and Winston
Churchill. Following his return, the president's failing health was apparent to everyone.
FDR traveled to Warm Springs in April 1945. Eleanor stayed behind in Washington. On April 12, she received
a telephone call, informing her that her husband had died of a brain hemorrhage. She traveled all through the
night to Warm Springs, where she was informed that Lucy Mercer, the woman with whom the president had
had an affair decades before, was with him when he died. That was devastating for Eleanor, and as Franklin's
body was carried back to Washington, she was scarcely seen. Just days following the funeral, Eleanor moved
out of the White House and back to her home, Val Kill.
In 1945, Eleanor joined the NAACP board of directors. In December of that year the new president, Harry S.
Truman, asked Eleanor to be a delegate to the first meeting of the United Nations, in London. Just eight months
after FDR's death, Eleanor arrived in England to begin a new career.
In 1946, Eleanor was elected head of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. She drafted the
Declaration of Human Rights, which passed on December 10, 1948. Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her UN post
at the age of 68. She began to travel extensively, visiting Japan, India, Israel, and the Soviet Union. She kept a
relentless schedule of conferences, lectures, and committee meetings.
In the closing years of her life, Eleanor enjoyed, more than ever, her time at Val Kill. Her house was always
filled with people — grandchildren, close friends, former New Dealers, visiting dignitaries and neighbors.
Eleanor Roosevelt died at the age of 78 of tuberculosis. All government offices and overseas installations were
ordered to fly the Flag at half-mast. The gesture was acknowledgement of what Americans already knew from
the polls, and from stories that would come from villages and hamlets all over the world, that she was the most
admired woman in the world.
Although the FBI never launched a formal investigation into Eleanor Roosevelt's affairs, references to her
comprise one of the largest single files in J. Edgar Hoover's collection. Her affiliation with such liberal groups
as the American Youth Congress, as well as her outspokenness about segregation and violence against blacks,
and her advocacy of free speech, rendered her, in the minds of Hoover's ilk, a threat to the status quo. The
3,000-page file contains allegations against her for suspected Communist activities, threats to her life on
grounds of her disloyalty to the country, close monitoring of her activities and writings, and a record of
potentially insurrectionary groups that she may have influenced.
Eleanor Roosevelt denounced the means by which Hoover's FBI procured its information as "Gestapo-ish" and
wrote letters of outrage, protesting the investigations of her friends and even her personal secretary. Despite her
protests, her file would continue to grow until her death.