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Introduction:
Ann Eleanor Roosevelt, famously known as Eleanor Roosevelt was an extraordinary American female humanities activist, and is believed to be one of the most important women of the 20th century.[i] One should be able to define the word activism in order to be able to understand the great magnitude of Roosevelt’s life contributions. According to the Webster’s dictionary activism is the doctrine or practice of vigorous action or involvement as means of achieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstrations, protests. Etc. Eleanor is such an important figure not only American History but she was internationally respected as well. [ii] She was more than an activist. Eleanor Roosevelt was the wife of the thirty second American president Franklin D. Roosevelt, a well known philanthropist, a renowned author, a world diplomat, and a persevering champion of liberal causes ranging from women’s rights to global human rights.[iii] She broke the stereotypical mold that the first ladies were generally a little more than appendages to the president, and became the finest first lady to exceed the prominence of her chief executive husband.[iv] Roosevelt work in behalf of youth, blacks, the poor, women, and the United Nations surpassed her twelve years as first lady. [v] Eleanor Roosevelt was a woman with great sensitivity to the underprivileged, and her constant work to improve the world made her one of the most loved women in history.[vi]
Child Hood:
According to some historian Ann Eleanor Roosevelt was a shy awkward child starved for love. She was born October 11, 1884 in New York into an economical comfortable but trouble family.[vii] Her father Elliot Roosevelt was the brother of Theodore Roosevelt (the 26th President of the United States) and came from the famous Dutch landowning who settled in New Amsterdam in the 17th century.[viii] Her mother Ann Hall was a descendant of the Livingston clan who played an important role in the foundation of the United States and the statehood of New York.[ix]
Eleanor Roosevelt had a dreadful and unhappy childhood. Her father Elliot was an alcoholic and her beautiful but neurotic mother was so preoccupied with the family’s image in upper-class society that she became embarrassed by Eleanor’s homeliness.[x] Eleanor’s mother often teased her for her sense or responsibility for her younger brothers, her grandmother, and her aunts. Even though, Eleanor grew up around the social elite, her social advantages could not shield her from her father’s alcoholism, and her mother’s forced legal separation from her father despite Eleanor’s two younger brothers. Ann Hall died in 1892 from diphtheria. Roosevelt and her brothers were left in the care of her grandmother Valentine Hall. Eleanor was very fond of her father; unfortunately he died shortly after her mother.
Eleanor was educated by private tutors until 1899.[xi] When she was fifteen-years old she was sent to finishing school in London called Allenswood.[xii] This marked the turning point in Eleanor’s adolescence. The school’s head mistress took a personal interest in Roosevelt, and through her guidance Eleanor blossomed into an articulate woman. When Eleanor returned to New York at the age of eighteen she was at the top of the social echeloned.[xiii] She became a Junior League volunteer in an Eastside settlement, and taught dance and literature.
Marriage and Children:
Eleanor Roosevelt met Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1902 while volunteering for the Junior League. Franklin was her sixth cousin removed. He was strikingly handsome and well educated. The two began a courtship and fell in love. However, Franklin’s mother Sara Roosevelt had no intentions of giving up her son, and tried to prevent Eleanor and Franklin’s marriage.[xiv] Sara only succeeded in delaying the wedding. Eleanor and Franklin were married on March 17, 1905.
The Roosevelt’s had six children, which consisted of one daughter and five sons. The children’s names are the following: Anna (1906-1975); James (1907- 1991); Franklin Delano, Jr. (died of pneumonia at three months, 1909); Elliot (1910- 1990); Franklin Delano, Jr. (1914-1988); and John (1916- 1981).[xv] While raising her children Eleanor would often submit to her mother-in-law, which made Eleanor feel distant from her children.
Political Life under the Shadow of Franklin D. Roosevelt:
Eleanor’s husband became interested in politics in 1910. She supported him when he was elected as a Democrat to the New York State Senate. They moved the family to Albany and Eleanor finally gained freedom from her oppressive mother-in-law. The move helped her to be more of a mother to her children, and helped her recognized her interest in politics as well. Eleanor became friendly with her husbands fellow legislators, and acted as hostess to the Democratic caucuses held in her own living room.[xvi]
In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Eleanor’s husband has Assistant Secretary of the Navy. The promotion forced to family to relocate to Washington, D.C., which was an even larger diverse political and social atmosphere. [xvii] During this time period (World War I) Eleanor served as volunteer for the Red Cross in the hospitals, and supervised the knitting of woollies for the Navy.
The Beginnings of Eleanor’s Political Career and Activism:
In 1918, Eleanor suffered a devastating blow to her marriage when she discovered her husband’s infidelity. Franklin had been writing and receiving love letters from his social secretary Lucy Mercer. Eleanor was deeply hurt, but confronted her husband and demanded that the affair end or she would file for divorce. Franklin heeded to Eleanor’s warning, but their marriage was never the same. Her heartache led her to be even more determined to be her own woman, and in 1920 she began to take an active role in politics.[xviii]
Roosevelt became involved in the League of Women voters as vice president of the New York Branch. She also served as a member of the Women’s Trade Union League and the Women’s Division of the Democratic Party.[xix] Through these organizations she was able to fight for many controversial issues of the time period, such as the right of women to vote, better working conditions for women, and women’s rights in general.[xx]
When Eleanor’s husband’s leg became paralyzed from polio in 1921, she still encouraged him to become a stronger politician while she became more active. For example, in 1926 Eleanor became a co-founder of a furniture factory in Val-Kill, N.Y. to provide jobs for the unemployed. Through Val-Kill Eleanor was able to pursue her own interest as well as live her of life.[xxi] With the help of her friend Marion Dickerman, Eleanor purchased a private school for girls in New York City to teach history and government as well.
In 1928, Franklin Roosevelt was elected Governor of New York. Eleanor took on the responsibility as her state’s first lady and was very active. She answered letters for New York residents, performed inspections of state institutions, and traveled state on fact finding missions for her husbands. All of her groundwork for the progressive legislation laid the foundation for her husband’s career as president.[xxii] In 1932, Franklin was elected as president of the United States.
Duties as First Lady of the United States of America:
On March 4, 1933 Eleanor Roosevelt became first lady of the United States of America. As first lady she held weekly conferences with women reporters as a way to not only to discuss current issues, but to promote jobs for women. [xxiii] She traveled the country to promote her husbands New Deal idea; which was a program that provided recovery from the Great Depression. In 1935 she started a column called “My Day” in which she addressed issues of concern to her. She became deeply concerned with the affects of the Depression on America’s youth. So she persuaded her husband to create a program to aid rural and urban youth, both male and female. In 1935 she helped form the National Youth Administration; which provided financial aid to students in high school, college, and graduate school, and provided job training to young people who were out of school. Eleanor took an active role in the NYA as an adviser to its administrators and she was spokeswoman for the program.[xxiv]
Eleanor also took an active interest in civil rights for African Americans. She worked closely with the NAACP and the National Council of Negro Women.[xxv] Roosevelt was also instrumental in the creation of the integrated Southern Tenant Farmers Association in 1934.[xxvi] Eleanor even resigned for the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1939 when the group barred the African American singer from performing at Constitution Hall.[xxvii] This act alone deemed was classified as her greatest act in on behalf of the racially discriminated.
During World War II, Eleanor was appointed as assistant director of the Office of Civilian Defense (OCD), in which she over saw civilian volunteer participation and community organization in behalf of the war effort. [xxviii] How ever, she received a lot of criticism from ultraconservative members of congress for appointing liberals who supported the war and desired to avoid the draft after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.[xxix] In 1942, Eleanor visited troops in Great Britain, and in 1943 she visited American troops in the South Pacific. She never liked war but she constantly supported her troops.
In 1944, Eleanor accompanied her husband to Quebec to discuss the final defeat of Germany and Japan. She spoke in favor of the Morgenthau Plan which outlined the dismantling of German industries and would transform the country into a pastoral paradise.[xxx] The plan never came to existence.
Eleanor’s twelve years as first lady and 40 years of marriage her life came to a sudden end on April 12, 1945 when her husband died from cerebral hemorrhaging. At the time she was in Washington and she flew immediately to Warm Springs, GA to find that Lucy Mercer was with Franklin at the time of his death. [xxxi]She even discovered her own daughter Anna had helped her father cover up the affair that never ended. Eleanor was devastated and it took years for her to forgive her daughter. Eleanor never stopped loving her husband nor being proud of him.
Life after the White House:
Eleanor left the White House having charted a whole new frontier for the future first ladies.[xxxii] In 1945, Harry Truman appointed Eleanor as a delegate to the first United Nations General Assembly where she was assigned to the committee that dealt with humanitarian, social, and cultural issues. While serving in the UN she helped women world leaders gain proper recognition. In 1946, when she was appointed as chairwoman of the UN Human Rights Commission she was responsible for drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.[xxxiii] This declaration stated that all people are born equal in dignity and rights of life, liberty, security of person. It also stated that all people can choose their employment, have the right to decent working conditions, protection against the unemployment, and to form unions.[xxxiv]
Eleanor had an enormous sympathy for the Jewish Holocaust victims and refugees. As a UN delegate she saw herself in a position to do much work for the establishment of a Jewish state. With Eleanor’s effort-along with many others- the state of Israel was established in 1948.[xxxv] During her tenure with the UN Eleanor attempted to cooperate with the Soviet Union, but they viewed her Human Rights Declaration as a sign of weakness. [xxxvi]
Life After the UN:
Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the UN in 1952. However, she still remained as an active unofficial ambassador and traveled to the Middle East, Asia, and Europe in addition to the Soviet Union. She remained active in the Democratic Party was a supported of John F. Kennedy.
In her semi-retirement she began to write her memoirs. She wrote an autobiography entitled This Is My Story in (1937), This I Remember (1950), and On My Own (1958). Eleanor Roosevelt died in 1962 from bone marrow tuberculosis at the age of seventy- eight. She is remembered as a woman of vigor, visions, and benevolence who stood up for what she believed in. She upgraded the standards for future first wives, and opened numerous opportunities for women. She opened her arms to the racial discriminated and the destitute. Her influence has yet to fade from the scene and her legacy shines through.
Citations
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[i] “Women in the Post War World: Foreward’ The Journal of Educational Sociology Vol. 17 no. 8 : 1 reproduced by American Social logical Association 1944 http://www.jstorrf.org/stable
[ii] “Eleanor Roosevelt.” Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd e. 17 vols. Gale Research, 1998. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2008 http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC
[iii] Source listed above
[iv] Women in History. Eleanor Roosevelt biography- extended. Last updated: 1/25/2009. pg. 1
[v] Source listed above pg. 1
[vi] http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/firstladies/ar32.html
[vii] Women in History. Eleanor Roosevelt biography- extended. Last updated: 1/25/2009. pg. 1
[viii] Source listed above
[ix] “(Anna) Eleanor Roosevelt. “Dicitonary of American Biography, Supplement 7:1961-1965. American Council of Learned Societies, 1981. Reproduced in biography Resource Center. Framington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2008. http://galente.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC
[x] Cook, Blanche W., Eleanor Roosevelt, vol.1: 1884-1932 (Viking Penguin 1993): 40
[xi] Goodwin, Doris Kearns, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (Simon & Schuster 1994): 32
[xii] Lash, Joseph P., Eleanor and Franklin (Norton 1971)
[xiii] Lester, Dee Gee, Roosevelt Research: Collections for the Study of Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor (Greenwood Press 1992)
[xiv] Women in History. Eleanor Roosevelt biography- extended. Last updated: 1/25/2009. Lakewood library pg. 2
[xv] Source listed above pg. 3
[xvi] Source listed above pg. 3
[xvii] Source listed above pg. 3
[xviii] Source listed above pg. 4
[xix] Source listed above pg. 4
[xx] Source listed above pg. 4
[xxi] Source listed above pg. 5
[xxii] Source listed above pg. 6
[xxiii] Source listed above pg 7
[xxiv] Source listed above pg. 7
[xxv] Source listed above pg. 7
[xxvi] Source listed above pg 7
[xxvii]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eleanor/peopleevents/pande01.html Eleanor Roosevelt new content 1999
[xxviii] National Coordinating Committee for udhr50. Aug 05 1998. http://www.udhr.org/history/biographis/bioer
[xxix] Asbell, Bernard. Mother and Daughter: The Letters of Anna and Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1982: 72
[xxx] Chafe, Will. “Anna Eleanor Roosevelt,” in Notable American Women: The Modern Period, edited by Barbara Sicherman & Carol Hurd Green. Cambridge: Havard University Press 1980.
[xxxi] Spandenberg, Ray and Mose, Diane K. Eleanor Roosevelt A passion to Improve. New York Facts of File 1997.
[xxxii] “(Anna) Eleanor Roosevelt. “Dicitonary of American Biography, Supplement 7:1961-1965. American Council of Learned Societies, 1981. Reproduced in biography Resource Center. Framington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2008. http://galente.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC
[xxxiii] “Eleanor Roosevelt.” Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd e. 17 vols. Gale Research, 1998. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2008 http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC
[xxxiv] Source listed above
[xxxv] Source listed above
[xxxvi] Ashby, Ruth. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Milwaukee, WI: World Almanac Library, 2005
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