Eleanor Roosevelt

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Eleanor Roosevelt

It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know.
White House portrait
Chairwoman of the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women
In office
January 20, 1961 – November 7, 1962
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Preceded by None
Succeeded by Esther Peterson
United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly
In office
December 31, 1946 – December 31, 1952
President Harry S. Truman
Chairman of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights
In office
1946–1951
Preceded by New creation
Succeeded by Charles Malik
United States Representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights
In office
1947–1953
Preceded by New creation
Succeeded by Mary Lord
First Lady of the United States
In office
March 4, 1933 – April 12, 1945
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Preceded by Lou Hoover
Succeeded by Bess Truman
First Lady of New York
In office
January 1, 1929 – December 31, 1932
Preceded by Catherine A. Dunn
Succeeded by Edith Louise Altschul
Personal details
Born Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
October 11, 1884
New York City, U.S.
Died November 7, 1962 (aged 78)
Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Resting place Hyde Park, New York
Political party Democratic
Spouse(s) Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(m. 1905–1945; his death)
Relations
Children
Parents Elliott Bulloch Roosevelt
Anna Rebecca Hall
Occupation politician
Religion Episcopal
Signature

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

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WikiQuote

  • Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”
    • As quoted in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1944; 1948) by Dale Carnegie; though Roosevelt has sometimes been credited with the originating the expression, “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t” is set in quote marks, indicating she herself was quoting a common expression in saying this. Actually, this saying was coined back even earlier, 1836, by evangelist Lorenzo Dow in his sermons about ministers saying the Bible contradicts itself, telling his listeners, “… those who preach it up, to make the Bible clash and contradict itself, by preaching somewhat like this: ‘You can and you can’t-You shall and you shan’t-You will and you won’t-And you will be damned if you do-And you will be damned if you don’t.’ “
  • Understanding is a two-way street.
    • As quoted in Modern Quotations for Ready Reference (1947) by Arthur Richmond, p. 455
  • It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
    • Voice of America broadcast (11 November 1951)
  • We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk.
    • The New York Times (1960), as cited in The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women (1992) by Rosalie Maggio, p. 156
  • To me who dreamed so much as a child, who made a dreamworld in which I was the heroine of an unending story, the lives of people around me continued to have a certain storybook quality. I learned something which has stood me in good stead many times — The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.
    • Preface (December 1960) to The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (1961), p. xvi; the last line was originally used in the initial edition of her autobiography: This Is My Story (1937).
  • Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
    • Preface (December 1960) to The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (1961), p. xix
  • I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.
    • As quoted in Todays Health (October 1966)
  • When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.
    • As quoted in Eleanor : The Years Alone (1972) by Joseph P. Lash
  • I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
    • As quoted in Peter’s Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1972) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 5
  • Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.
    • As quoted in The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women (1992) by Rosalie Maggio, p. 130
  • When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
    • As quoted in “On The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” by Hillary Rodham Clinton in Issues of Democracy Vol. 3, No. 3 (October 1998), p. 11
  • You get more joy out of the giving to others, and should put a good deal of thought into the happiness you are able to give.
    • As quoted in Sheroes: Bold, Brash, and Absolutely Unabashed Superwomen from Susan B. Anthony to Xena (1998) by Varla Ventura, p. 150
  • I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on.
    • As quoted in The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America (2002) by James MacGregor Burns ad Susan Dunn, p. 563
    • Variant: I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on.

This Is My Story (1937)

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

  • Up to a certain point it is good for us to know that there are people in the world who will give us love and unquestioned loyalty to the limit of their ability. I doubt, however, if it is good for us to feel assured of this without the accompanying obligation of having to justify this devotion by our behavior.
  • The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.

You Learn by Living (1960)

  • One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. … All you need to do is to be curious, receptive, eager for experience. And there’s one strange thing: when you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.
    • p. 14
  • You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
    • p. 29–30
  • A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.
    • p. 63
  • Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively.
    • p. 95
  • “Anxiety,” Kierkegaard said, “is the dizziness of freedom.” This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then — it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.
    We must all face and unpalatable fact that we have, too often, a tendency to skim over; we proceed on the assumption that all men want freedom. This is not as true as we would like it to be. Many men and women who are far happier when they have relinquish their freedom, when someone else guides them, makes their decisions for them, takes the responsibility for them and their actions. They don’t want to make up their minds. They don’t want to stand on their own feet.

    • p. 152

My Day (1935–1962)

Her daily newspaper column : selections at PBS

At all times, day by day, we have to continue fighting for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom from want — for these are things that must be gained in peace as well as in war.

  • It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death. (1 April 1939)
  • I was one of those who was very happy when the original prohibition amendment passed. I thought innocently that a law in this country would automatically be complied with, and my own observation led me to feel rather ardently that the less strong liquor anyone consumed the better it was. During prohibition I observed the law meticulously, but I came gradually to see that laws are only observed with the consent of the individuals concerned and a moral change still depends on the individual and not on the passage of any law. (14 July 1939)
  • Little by little it dawned upon me that this law was not making people drink any less, but it was making hypocrites and law breakers of a great number of people. It seemed to me best to go back to the old situation in which, if a man or woman drank to excess, they were injuring themselves and their immediate family and friends and the act was a violation against their own sense of morality and no violation against the law of the land. (14 July 1939)
  • Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people? (16 October 1939)
  • No writing has any real value which is not the expression of genuine thought and feeling. (20 December 1939)
  • When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor. (23 February 1940)
  • I have a great belief in spiritual force, but I think we have to realize that spiritual force alone has to have material force with it so long as we live in a material world. The two together make a strong combination. (17 May 1940)
  • Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little. (1 July 1940)
  • One should always sleep in all of one’s guest beds, to make sure that they are comfortable. (11 September 1941)

I have never felt that anything really mattered but the satisfaction of knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.
  • Long ago, I made up my mind that when things were said involving only me, I would pay no attention to them, except when valid criticism was carried by which I could profit. (14 January 1942)
  • One of the blessings of age is to learn not to part on a note of sharpness, to treasure the moments spent with those we love, and to make them whenever possible good to remember, for time is short. (5 February 1943)
  • At all times, day by day, we have to continue fighting for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom from want — for these are things that must be gained in peace as well as in war. (15 April 1943)
  • One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education… The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted. (11 May 1943)
  • Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth. (22 August 1944)
  • I have never felt that anything really mattered but the satisfaction of knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could. (8 November 1944)
  • It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself.[1][2] (15 June 1946)
  • I have waited a while before saying anything about the Un-American Activities Committee’s current investigation of the Hollywood film industry. I would not be very much surprised if some writers or actors or stagehands, or what not, were found to have Communist leanings, but I was surprised to find that, at the start of the inquiry, some of the big producers were so chicken-hearted about speaking up for the freedom of their industry.
    One thing is sure — none of the arts flourishes on censorship and repression. And by this time it should be evident that the American public is capable of doing its own censoring.     Certainly, the Thomas Committee is growing more ludicrous daily. (29 October 1947)
  • The film industry is a great industry with infinite possibilities for good and bad. Its primary purpose is to entertain people. On the side, it can do many other things. It can popularize certain ideals, it can make education palatable. But in the long run, the judge who decides whether what it does is good or bad is the man or woman who attends the movies. In a democratic country I do not think the public will tolerate a removal of its right to decide what it thinks of the ideas and performances of those who make the movie industry work. (29 October 1947)

This is a time for action — not for war, but for mobilization of every bit of peace machinery.

  • What is going on in the Un-American Activities Committee worries me primarily because little people have become frightened and we find ourselves living in the atmosphere of a police state, where people close doors before they state what they think or look over their shoulders apprehensively before they express an opinion.
    I have been one of those who have carried the fight for complete freedom of information in the United Nations. And while accepting the fact that some of our press, our radio commentators, our prominent citizens and our movies may at times be blamed legitimately for things they have said and done, still I feel that the fundamental right of freedom of thought and expression is essential. If you curtail what the other fellow says and does, you curtail what you yourself may say and do.
    In our country we must trust the people to hear and see both the good and the bad and to choose the good. The Un-American Activities Committee seems to me to be better for a police state than for the USA. (29 October 1947)
  • The mobilization of world opinion and methods of negotiation should be developed and used by every nation in order to strengthen the United Nations. Then if we are forced into war, it will be because there has been no way to prevent it through negotiation and the mobilization of world opinion. In which case we should have the voluntary support of many nations, which is far better than the decision of one nation alone, or even of a few nations. (16 April 1954)
  • This is a time for action — not for war, but for mobilization of every bit of peace machinery. It is also a time for facing the fact that you cannot use a weapon, even though it is the weapon that gives you greater strength than other nations, if it is so destructive that it practically wipes out large areas of land and great numbers of innocent people. (16 April 1954 )
  • If the use of leisure time is confined to looking at TV for a few extra hours every day, we will deteriorate as a people. (5 November 1958)
  • The arts in every field — music, drama, sculpture, painting — we can learn to appreciate and enjoy. We need not be artists, but we should be able to appreciate the work of artists. (5 November 1958)
  • If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively. For people to have more time to read, to take part in their civic obligations, to know more about how their government functions and who their officials are might mean in a democracy a great improvement in the democratic processes. Let’s begin, then, to think how we can prepare old and young for these new opportunities. Let’s not wait until they come upon us suddenly and we have a crisis that we will be ill prepared to meet. (5 November 1958)

As long as we are not actually destroyed, we can work to gain greater understanding of other peoples and to try to present to the peoples of the world the values of our own beliefs.

  • In times past, the question usually asked by women was “How can we best help to defend our nation?” I cannot remember a time when the question on so many people’s lips was “How can we prevent war?”
    There is a widespread understanding among the people of this nation, and probably among the people of the world, that there is no safety except through the prevention of war. For many years war has been looked upon as almost inevitable in the solution of any question that has arisen between nations, and the nation that was strong enough to do so went about building up its defenses and its power to attack. It felt that it could count on these two things for safety. (20 December 1961)
  • A consciousness of the fact that war means practically total destruction is the reason, I think, for the rising tide to prevent what seems such a senseless procedure. I understand that it is perhaps difficult for some people, whose lives have been lived with a sense of the need for military development, to envisage the possibility of being no longer needed. But the average citizen is beginning to think more and more of the need to develop machinery to settle difficulties in the world without destruction or the use of atomic bombs. (20 December 1961)
  • We should begin in our own environment and in our own community as far as possible to build a peace-loving attitude and learn to discipline ourselves to accept, in the small things of our lives, mediation and arbitration. As individuals, there is little that any of us can do to prevent an accidental use of bombs in the hands of those who already have them. We can register, however, with our government a firm protest against granting the knowledge and the use of these weapons to those who do not now have them. (20 December 1961)
  • As long as we are not actually destroyed, we can work to gain greater understanding of other peoples and to try to present to the peoples of the world the values of our own beliefs. We can do this by demonstrating our conviction that human life is worth preserving and that we are willing to help others to enjoy benefits of our civilization just as we have enjoyed it. (20 December 1961)

Tomorrow Is Now (1963)

What we must learn to do is to create unbreakable bonds between the sciences and the humanities. We cannot procrastinate. The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now.

  • We face the future fortified with the lessons we have learned from the past. It is today that we must create the world of the future. Spinoza, I think, pointed out that we ourselves can make experience valuable when, by imagination and reason, we turn it into foresight.
    • p. xv
  • Human resources are the most valuable assets the world has. They are all needed desperately.
    • p. 71
  • There never has been security. No man has ever known what he would meet around the next corner; if life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.
    • p. 80
  • We must know what we think and speak out, even at the risk of unpopularity. In the final analysis, a democratic government represents the sum total of the courage and the integrity of its individuals. It cannot be better than they are. … In the long run there is no more exhilarating experience than to determine one’s position, state it bravely and then act boldly.
    • pp. 119–120
  • What we must learn to do is to create unbreakable bonds between the sciences and the humanities. We cannot procrastinate. The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now.
    • p. 134
  • Example is the best lesson there is.

Disputed

  • No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
    • Sometimes claimed to appear in her book This is My Story, but in The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes (2006), Keyes writes on p. 97 that “Bartlett’s and other sources say her famous quotation can be found in This is My Story, Roosevelt’s 1937 autobiography. It can’t. Quotographer Rosalie Maggio scoured that book and many others by and about Roosevelt in search of this line, without success. In their own extensive searching, archivists at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, have not been able to find the quotation in This Is My Story or any other writing by the First Lady. A discussion of some of the earliest known attributions of this quote to Roosevelt, which may be a paraphrase from an interview, can be found in this entry from Quote Investigator.
  • The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
    • Often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt without an original source in her writings, for example in the introduction to It Seems to Me : Selected Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt (2001) by Leonard C. Schlup and Donald W. Whisenhunt, p. 2. But archivists have not been able to find the quote in any of her writings, see the comment from Ralph Keyes in The Quote Verifier above.
  • Women are like tea bags. You never know how strong they are until you put them in hot water.
    • Another quote often attributed to her without an original source in her writings, as in The Wit and Wisdom of Eleanor Roosevelt (1996), p. 199. But once again archivists have not been able to find the quote in any of her writings, see the comment from Ralph Keyes in The Quote Verifier above.
    • A very similar remark was attributed to Nancy Reagan, in The Observer (29 March 1981): “A woman is like a teabag — only in hot water do you realize how strong she is.”
    • Variant: A woman is like a teabag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.
    • Variant: A woman is like a tea bag, you can not tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.
  • Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.
    • There are many published incidents of this as an anonymous proverb since at least 1948, and as a statement of Eleanor Roosevelt since at least 1992, but without any citation of an original source. It is also often attributed to Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, but though Rickover quoted this, he did not claim to be the author of it; in “The World of the Uneducated” in The Saturday Evening Post (28 November 1959), he prefaces it with “As the unknown sage puts it…”
    • Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and little minds discuss people.
      • In this form it was quoted as an anonymous epigram in A Guide to Effective Public Speaking (1953) by Lawrence Henry Mouat
      • New York times Saturday review of books and art, 1931: …Wanted, the correct quotation and origin of this expression: Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people…
    • Several other variants or derivatives of the expression exist, but none provide a definite author:
      • Great minds discuss ideas, mediocre minds discuss events, small minds discuss personalities.
      • Great minds discuss ideas
        Average minds discuss events
        Small minds discuss people
      • Small minds discuss things
        Average minds discuss people
        Great minds discuss ideas
    • …Some professor of psychology who has been eavesdropping for years makes the statement that “The best minds discuss ideas; the second in ranking talk about things; while the third group, or the least in mentality, gossip about people”… (Hardware age, Volume 123, 1929)
    • …It has been said long ago that there were three classes of people in the world, and while they are subject to variation, for elemental consideration they are useful. The first is that large class of people who talk about people; the next class are those who talk about things; and the third class are those who discuss ideas… (H. J. Derbyshire, “Origin of mental species”, 1919)
    • …Mrs. Conklin points out certain bad conversational habits and suggests good ones, quoting Buckle’s classic classification of talkers into three orders of intelligence — those who talk about nothing but persons, those who talk about things and those who discuss ideas… (review of Mary Greer Conklin’s book Conversation: What to say and how to say it in The Continent, Jan. 23, 1913, p. 118)
    • …[ Buckle’s ] thoughts and conversations were always on a high level, and I recollect a saying of his which not only greatly impressed me at the time, but which I have ever since cherished as a test of the mental calibre of friends and acquaintances. Buckle said, in his dogmatic way: “Men and women range themselves into three classes or orders of intelligence; you can tell the lowest class by their habit of always talking about persons, the next by the fact that their habit is always to converse about things; the highest by their preference for the discussion of ideas”… (Charles Stewart, “Haud immemor. Reminescences of legal and social life in Edinburgh and London. 1850-1900”, 1901,p. 33)

Misattributed

Quotes about Roosevelt

  • I have lost more than a beloved friend. I have lost an inspiration. She would rather light candles than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.
    • Adlai Stevenson, in a eulogy in the United Nations General Assembly (7 November 1962) adapting a statement that is the motto of the The Christophers, derived from a Chinese proverb (which has sometimes been attributed to Confucius).

External links

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (/ˈɛlɨnɔr ˈroʊzəvɛlt/; October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was an American politician. She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, holding the post from March 1933 to April 1945 during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s four terms in office. President Harry S. Truman later called her the “First Lady of the World” in tribute to her human rights achievements.[1]

A member of the Roosevelt and Livingston families, Eleanor had an unhappy childhood, suffering the deaths of both parents and one of her brothers at a young age. At 15, she attended Allenwood Academy in London, and was deeply influenced by its feminist headmistress Marie Souvestre. Returning to the U.S., she married her fifth cousin once removed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1905. The Roosevelts’ marriage was complicated from the beginning by Franklin’s controlling mother, Sara, and after discovering Franklin’s affair with Lucy Mercer in 1918, Eleanor resolved to seek fulfillment in a public life of her own. She persuaded Franklin to stay in politics following his partial paralysis from polio, and began to give speeches and campaign in his place. After Franklin’s election as Governor of New York, Eleanor regularly made public appearances on his behalf. She also shaped the role of First Lady during her tenure and beyond.

Though widely respected in her later years, Roosevelt was a controversial First Lady for her outspokenness, particularly her stance on racial issues. She was the first presidential spouse to hold press conferences, write a syndicated newspaper column, and speak at a national convention. On a few occasions, she publicly disagreed with her husband’s policies. She launched an experimental community at Arthurdale, West Virginia, for the families of unemployed miners, later widely regarded as a failure. She advocated for expanded roles for women in the workplace, the civil rights of African Americans and Asian Americans, and the rights of World War II refugees.

Following her husband’s death, Eleanor remained active in politics for the rest of her life. She pressed the US to join and support the United Nations and became one of its first delegates. She served as the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights, and oversaw the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Later she chaired the John F. Kennedy administration’s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. By the time of her death, she was regarded as “one of the most esteemed women in the world” and “the object of almost universal respect”.[2] In 1999, she was ranked in the top ten of Gallup’s List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century.[3]

Personal life

Early life

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born at 56 West 37th Street in New York City, to socialites Elliott Bulloch Roosevelt (1860–1894) and Anna Rebecca Hall (1863–1892).[4] From an early age, she preferred to be called by her middle name (Eleanor). Through her father, she was a niece of President Theodore “T.R.” Roosevelt, Jr. (1858–1919). Through her mother, she was a niece of tennis champions Valentine Gill “Vallie” Hall III (1867–1934) and Edward Ludlow Hall (1872–1932). She acted in such an old-fashioned manner as a child that her mother nicknamed her “Granny”.[5]

Eleanor had two younger brothers: Elliott Bulloch Roosevelt, Jr. (1889–1893) and Gracie Hall Roosevelt (1891–1941). She also had a half brother, Elliott Roosevelt Mann (c. 1890–1941), through her father’s affair with Katy Mann, a servant employed by the family.[6] Roosevelt was born into a world of immense wealth and privilege, as her family was part of New York high society called the “swells”.[7]

Her mother died from diphtheria on December 7, 1892, and Elliott Jr. died of the same disease the following May.[8] Her father, an alcoholic confined to a sanitarium, died on August 14, 1894 when he tried to jump from a window during a fit of delirium tremens. He survived the fall, but died from a seizure.[9] Her brother Hall would also suffer from alcoholism.[10] Eleanor’s childhood losses left her prone to depression throughout her life.[9]

After the deaths of her parents, Eleanor was raised in the household of her maternal grandmother, Mary Livingston Ludlow (1843–1919) of the Livingston family in Tivoli, New York.[9] In his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, Joseph P. Lash describes her in childhood as insecure and starved for affection, considering herself the “ugly duckling”.[7] However, Roosevelt wrote at 14 that one’s prospects in life were not totally dependent on physical beauty: “no matter how plain a woman may be if truth and loyalty are stamped upon her face all will be attracted to her.”[11]

Roosevelt was tutored privately and, at the age of 15, with the encouragement of her aunt Anna “Bamie” Roosevelt, the family sent her to Allenswood Academy, a private finishing school outside London, England.[12] Roosevelt attended the school from 1899 to 1902. The headmistress, Marie Souvestre, was a noted feminist educator who sought to cultivate independent thinking in young women. Souvestre took a special interest in Roosevelt, who learned to speak French fluently and gained self-confidence.[13] Her first cousin Corinne Douglas Robinson, whose first term at Allenswood overlapped with Eleanor’s last, said that when she arrived at the school, Eleanor was “‘everything’ at the school. She was beloved by everybody.”[14] Roosevelt wished to continue at Allenswood, but in 1902 was summoned home by her grandmother to make her social debut.[13]

In 1902 at age 17, Roosevelt returned to the United States, ending her formal education, and was presented at a debutante ball at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on December 14. She was later given her own “coming out party”.[15] Roosevelt was active with the New York Junior League shortly after its founding, teaching dancing and calisthenics in the East Side slums.[15] The organization had been brought to Roosevelt’s attention by her friend, organization founder Mary Harriman, and a male relative who criticized the group for “drawing young women into public activity”.[16]

Marriage and family life

In the summer of 1902, Eleanor encountered her father’s fifth cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), on a train to Tivoli, New York.[17] The two began a secret correspondence and romance, and became engaged on November 22, 1903.[18] Franklin’s mother, Sara Ann Delano, opposed the union, and made him promise that the engagement would not be officially announced for a year. “I know what pain I must have caused you,” Franklin wrote his mother of his decision. But, he added, “I know my own mind, and known it for a long time, and know that I could never think otherwise.”[19] Sara took her son on a Caribbean cruise in 1904, hoping that a separation would squelch the romance, but Franklin remained determined.[19] The wedding date was set to accommodate President Theodore Roosevelt, who agreed to give the bride away.[20]

Eleanor married Franklin on March 17, 1905 (St. Patrick’s Day), in a wedding officiated by Endicott Peabody, the groom’s headmaster at Groton School.[17][21] The couple spent a preliminary honeymoon of one week at Hyde Park, then set up housekeeping in an apartment in New York. That summer they went on their formal honeymoon, a three-month tour of Europe.[22]

Eleanor and Franklin with their two eldest children

Returning to the U.S., the newlyweds settled in New York City, in a house provided by Franklin’s mother, as well as at the family’s estate overlooking the Hudson River in Hyde Park, New York. From the beginning, Eleanor had a contentious relationship with her controlling mother-in-law. The townhouse Sara gave to Eleanor and Franklin was connected to her own by sliding doors, and Sara ran both households in the decade after the marriage. Early on, Eleanor had a breakdown in which she explained to Franklin that “I did not like to live in a house which was not in any way mine, one that I had done nothing about and which did not represent the way I wanted to live”, but little changed.[23] Sara also sought to control the raising of her grandchildren, and Eleanor reflected later that “Franklin’s children were more my mother-in-law’s children than they were mine”.[24] Eleanor’s eldest son James remembered Sara telling her grandchildren, “Your mother only bore you, I am more your mother than your mother is.”[24]

Eleanor and Franklin had six children:

Despite becoming pregnant and giving birth six times, Eleanor disliked sex. She once told her daughter Anna that it was an “ordeal to be borne”.[25] She also considered herself ill-suited to motherhood, later writing, “It did not come naturally to me to understand little children or to enjoy them”.[24]

Unpacking a suitcase of Franklin’s in September 1918, Eleanor discovered a bundle of love letters to him from her social secretary, Lucy Mercer. He had been contemplating leaving Eleanor for Lucy. However, following pressure from Franklin’s political advisor Louis Howe and from his mother Sara, who threatened to disinherit her son if he divorced, Franklin remained married to Eleanor.[26] However, the union from that point on was more of a political partnership. Disillusioned, Eleanor again became active in public life, and focused increasingly on her social work rather than her role as a wife, as she had for the previous decade.[27]

In August 1921, the family was vacationing at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, when Franklin was stricken with polio, which permanently paralyzed his legs. When the extent of his disability became clear, Eleanor fought a protracted battle with her mother-in-law over his future, persuading him to stay in politics despite Sara’s urgings that he retire and become a country gentleman. This proved a turning point in Eleanor and Sara’s long-running struggle, and as Eleanor’s public role grew, she increasingly broke from Sara’s control.[28][29] Tensions between Sara and Eleanor over her new political friends rose to the point that the family constructed a cottage, Val-Kill, which Eleanor and her guests lived in when Franklin and the children were away from Hyde Park.[30][31]

Other relationships

In the 1930s, Eleanor had a very close relationship with legendary pilot phenomenon Amelia Earhart. One time, the two snuck out from the White House and went to a party dressed up for the occasion. Roosevelt also had a close relationship with Associated Press (AP) reporter Lorena Hickok, who covered her during the last months of the presidential campaign and “fell madly in love with her”.[32] During this period, Roosevelt wrote daily ten- to fifteen-page letters to “Hick”, who was planning to write a biography of the First Lady.[33] The letters included such endearments as, “I want to put my arms around you & kiss you at the corner of your mouth,”[34] and “I can’t kiss you, so I kiss your picture good night and good morning!”[35] At Franklin’s 1933 inauguration, Eleanor wore a sapphire ring Hickok had given her.[36] Compromised as a reporter, Hickok soon resigned her position with the AP to be closer to Eleanor, who secured her a job as an investigator for a New Deal program.[37]

Scholars including Lillian Faderman,[36] and Hazel Rowley[38] have said that the pair’s relationship contained a sexual component, though this view is not universal. Hickok biographer Doris Faber argued that the seemingly amorous phrases had misled historians, while Doris Kearns Goodwin stated in her 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Roosevelts that “whether Hick and Eleanor went beyond kisses and hugs” could not be determined with certainty.[39]

In the same years, Washington gossip linked Eleanor romantically with New Deal administrator Harry Hopkins, with whom she worked closely.[40] Roosevelt also had a close relationship with a New York State Police sergeant, Earl Miller, whom her husband had assigned as her bodyguard.[41] Roosevelt was 44 years old when she met Miller, 32, in 1929. He became her friend as well as official escort, taught her different sports, such as diving and riding, and coached her in tennis. Biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook writes that Miller was Eleanor’s “first romantic involvement” in her middle years.[42] Hazel Rowley concludes, “There is no doubt that Eleanor was in love with Earl for a time….. But they are most unlikely to have had an ‘affair’.”[43]

Eleanor’s friendship with Miller happened at the same time as her husband’s rumored relationship with his secretary, Marguerite “Missy” LeHand. Smith writes, “remarkably, both ER and Franklin recognized, accepted, and encouraged the arrangement….. Eleanor and Franklin were strong-willed people who cared greatly for each other’s happiness but realized their own inability to provide for it.”[44] Eleanor and Miller’s relationship is said to have continued until her death in 1962. They are thought to have corresponded daily, but all letters have been lost. According to rumor, the letters were anonymously purchased and destroyed or locked away when she died.[45]

In later years, Eleanor was said to have developed a romantic attachment to her physician, David Gurewitsch, though it was likely limited to a deep friendship.[46][47]

Public life before the White House

Roosevelt in 1932

In the 1920 presidential election, Franklin was nominated as the Democratic vice presidential candidate with presidential candidate James M. Cox. Eleanor joined Franklin in touring the country, making her first campaign appearances.[48] Cox and Roosevelt were defeated by Republican Warren G. Harding, who won with sixteen million votes to nine million.[49]

Following the onset of Franklin’s polio in 1921, Eleanor began serving as a stand-in for her incapacitated husband, making public appearances on his behalf, often carefully coached by Louis Howe.[50] She also started working with the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL), raising funds in support of the union’s goals: a 48-hour work week, minimum wage, and the abolition of child labor.[7] Throughout the 1920s, Eleanor became increasingly influential as a leader in the New York State Democratic Party while Franklin used her contacts among Democratic women to strengthen his standing with them, winning their committed support for the future.[50] In 1924, she campaigned for Alfred E. Smith in his successful re-election bid as governor of New York State.[51] By 1928, Eleanor was promoting Smith’s candidacy for president and Franklin’s nomination as the Democratic Party’s candidate for governor of New York, succeeding Smith. Although Smith lost the presidential race, Franklin won handily and the Roosevelts moved into the governor’s mansion in Albany, New York.[52] During Franklin’s term as governor, Eleanor traveled widely in the state to make speeches and inspect state facilities on his behalf, reporting her findings to him at the end of each trip.[53]

In 1927, she joined friends Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook in buying the Todhunter School for Girls, a finishing school which also offered college preparatory courses, in New York City. At the school, Roosevelt taught upper-level courses in American literature and history, emphasizing independent thought, current events, and social engagement. She continued to teach three days a week while FDR served as governor, but was forced to leave teaching after his election as president.[54][55]

First Lady of the United States (1933–1945)

Roosevelt making an appeal for the Red Cross, May 22, 1940

Following FDR’s inauguration on March 4, 1933, Eleanor became First Lady of the United States. Having known all of the twentieth century’s previous First Ladies, she was seriously depressed at having to assume the role, which had traditionally been restricted to domesticity and hostessing.[56] Her immediate predecessor, Lou Henry Hoover, had ended her feminist activism on becoming First Lady, stating her intention to be only a “backdrop for Bertie”.[57] Eleanor’s distress at these precedents was severe enough that Hickok subtitled her biography of Roosevelt “Reluctant First Lady”.[58]

With support from Howe and Hickok, Roosevelt set out to redefine the position. In the process she became, according to her biographer Cook, “the most controversial First Lady in United States history”.[58] With her husband’s strong support, despite criticism of them both, she continued with the active business and speaking agenda she had begun before becoming First Lady, in an era when few married women had careers. She was the first presidential spouse to hold press conferences and in 1940 became the first to speak at a national party convention.[59] She also wrote a widely syndicated newspaper column, “My Day“, another first.[60][61] In the first year of FDR’s tenure, determined to match his presidential salary, Eleanor earned $75,000 from her lectures and writing, most of which she gave to charity.[62] By 1941, she was receiving lecture fees of $1,000.[31]

Roosevelt maintained a heavy travel schedule in her twelve years in the White House, frequently making personal appearances at labor meetings to assure Depression-era workers that the White House was mindful of their plight. In one widely circulated cartoon of the time from The New Yorker magazine (June 3, 1933), an astonished coal miner, peering down a dark tunnel, says to a co-worker “For gosh sakes, here comes Mrs. Roosevelt!”[47][63]

Roosevelt (center), King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in London, October 23, 1942

In early 1933, the “Bonus Army“, a protest group of World War I veterans, marched on Washington for the second time in two years, calling for their veteran bonus certificates to be awarded early. The previous year, President Herbert Hoover had ordered them dispersed, and the US Army cavalry charged and bombarded the veterans with tear gas.[64] This time, Eleanor Roosevelt visited the veterans at their muddy campsite, listening to their concerns and singing army songs with them.[65] The meeting defused the tension between the veterans and the administration, and one of the marchers later commented, “Hoover sent the Army. Roosevelt sent his wife.”[66]

Arthurdale

Roosevelt’s chief project during her husband’s first two terms was the establishment of a planned community in Arthurdale, West Virginia.[67][68] On August 18, 1933, at Hickok’s urging, Roosevelt visited the families of homeless miners in Morgantown, West Virginia, who had been blacklisted following union activities.[69] Deeply affected by the visit, Roosevelt proposed a resettlement community for the miners at Arthurdale, where they could make a living by subsistence farming, handicrafts, and a local manufacturing plant.[68] She hoped the project could become a model for “a new kind of community” in the US, in which workers would be better cared for.[70] Her husband enthusiastically supported the project.[68]

After an initial, disastrous experiment with prefab houses, construction began again in 1934 to Roosevelt’s specifications, this time with “every modern convenience”, including indoor plumbing and central steam heat. Families occupied the first fifty homes in June, and agreed to repay the government in thirty years’ time.[67][71] Though Roosevelt had hoped for a racially mixed community, the miners insisted on limiting membership to white Christians. After losing a community vote, Roosevelt recommended the creation of other communities for the excluded black and Jewish miners.[72] The experience motivated Roosevelt to become much more outspoken on the issue of racial discrimination.[73]

Roosevelt remained a vigorous fundraiser for the community for several years, as well as spending most of her own income on the project.[74] However, the project was criticized by both the political left and right. Conservatives condemned it as socialist and a “communist plot”, while Democratic members of Congress opposed government competition with private enterprise.[75] Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes also opposed the project, citing its high per-family cost.[76] Arthurdale continued to sink as a government spending priority for the federal government until 1941, when the US sold off the last of its holdings in the community at a loss.[77]

Later commentators generally described the Arthurdale experiment as a failure.[78] Roosevelt herself was sharply discouraged by a 1940 visit in which she felt the town had become excessively dependent on outside assistance.[79] However, the residents considered the town a “utopia” compared to their previous circumstances, and many were returned to economic self-sufficiency.[77] Roosevelt personally considered the project a success, later speaking of the improvements she saw in people’s lives there and stating, “I don’t know whether you think that is worth half a million dollars. But I do.”[78]

Civil rights activism

Roosevelt flying with Tuskegee Airman Charles “Chief” Anderson in March 1941

Eleanor became an important connection for Franklin’s administration to the African-American population during the segregation era. During Franklin’s terms as President, despite his need to placate Southern sentiment, Eleanor was vocal in her support of the African-American civil rights movement. She concluded after her experience with Arthurdale and her inspections of New Deal programs in Southern states that New Deal programs were discriminating against African-Americans, who received a disproportionately small share of relief moneys. Eleanor became one of the only voices in the Roosevelt White House insisting that benefits be equally extended to Americans of all races.[80]

Eleanor also broke with precedent by inviting hundreds of African American guests to the White House.[81] When the black singer Marian Anderson was denied the use of Washington’s Constitution Hall in 1939 by the Daughters of the American Revolution, Eleanor resigned from the group in protest and helped arrange another concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.[47] Roosevelt later presented Anderson to the King and Queen of the United Kingdom after Anderson performed at a White House dinner.[82] Roosevelt also arranged the appointment of African-American educator Mary McLeod Bethune, with whom she had struck up a friendship, as Director of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration.[83][84] To avoid problems with the staff when Bethune would visit the White House, Eleanor would meet her at the gate, embrace her, and walk in with her arm-in-arm.[85]

Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune, a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Black Cabinet, 1943

Eleanor also lobbied behind the scenes for the 1934 Costigan-Wagner Bill to make lynching a federal crime, including arranging a meeting between Franklin and NAACP president Walter Francis White.[86] Fearing he would lose the votes of Southern congressional delegations for his legislative agenda, however, Franklin refused to publicly support the bill, which proved unable to pass the Senate.[87] In 1942, Eleanor worked with activist Pauli Murray to persuade Franklin to appeal on behalf of sharecropper Odell Waller, convicted of killing a white farmer during a fight; though Franklin sent a letter to Virginia Governor Colgate Darden urging him to commute the sentence to life imprisonment, Waller was executed as scheduled.[88]

Roosevelt’s support of African-American rights made her an unpopular figure among whites in the South. Rumors spread of “Eleanor Clubs” formed by servants to oppose their employers and “Eleanor Tuesdays” on which African-American men would knock down white women on the street, though no evidence has ever been found of either practice.[89] When race riots broke out in Detroit in June 1943, critics in both the North and South wrote that Roosevelt was to blame.[90] At the same time, she grew so popular among African-Americans, previously a reliable Republican voting bloc, that they became a consistent base of support for the Democratic Party.[91]

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt spoke out against anti-Japanese prejudice, warning against the “great hysteria against minority groups”.[92] She also privately opposed her husband’s Executive Order 9066, which forced Japanese-Americans in many areas of the US into internment camps.[93] She was widely criticized for her defense of Japanese-American citizens, including a call by the Los Angeles Times that she be “forced to retire from public life” over her stand on the issue.[94]

Use of media

Eleanor Roosevelt, George T. Bye (her literary agent, upper right), Deems Taylor (upper left), Westbrook Pegler (lower left), Quaker Lake, Pawling, New York (home of Lowell Thomas), 1938

As an unprecedentedly outspoken First Lady, Roosevelt made far more use of the media than her predecessors had, holding 348 press conferences over the span of her husband’s 12-year presidency.[95] Inspired by her relationship with Hickok, Roosevelt placed a ban on male reporters attending the press conferences, effectively forcing newspapers to keep female reporters on staff in order to cover them. She only relaxed the rule once, on her return from her 1943 Pacific trip.[96] Because the Gridiron Club banned women from its annual Gridiron Dinner for journalists, Roosevelt hosted a competing event for female reporters at the White House, which she called “Gridiron Widows”.[97]She was interviewed by many newspapers; the New Orleans journalist Iris Kelso described Mrs. Roosevelt as her most interesting interviewee ever.[98]

Roosevelt with Shirley Temple in 1938

In February 1933, just before Franklin assumed the presidency, Eleanor published an editorial in the Women’s Daily News conflicting so sharply with his intended public spending policies that he published a rejoinder in the following issue.[99] On entering the White House, she signed a contract with the magazine Woman’s Home Companion to provide a monthly column, in which she answered mail sent to her by readers; the feature was canceled in 1936 as another presidential election approached.[100] She continued her articles in other venues, publishing more than sixty articles in national magazines during her tenure as First Lady.[101] Eleanor also began a syndicated newspaper column, titled “My Day”, which appeared six days a week from 1936 to her death in 1962.[97] In the column, she wrote about her daily activities but also her humanitarian concerns.[102] Beasley has argued that Roosevelt’s publications, which often dealt with women’s issues and invited reader responses, represented a conscious attempt to use journalism “to overcome social isolation” for women by making “public communication a two-way channel”.[103]

World War II

Gen. Millard Harmon, Eleanor Roosevelt and Admiral Halsey in the South Pacific Theater, 1943.

On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, marking the end of the relatively conflict-free “Phoney War” phase of World War II. As the US began to move toward war footing, Roosevelt found herself again depressed, fearing that her role in fighting for domestic justice would become extraneous in a nation focused on foreign affairs. She briefly considered traveling to Europe to work with the Red Cross, but was dissuaded by presidential advisers who pointed out the consequences should the president’s wife be captured as a prisoner of war.[104] She soon found other wartime causes to work on, however, beginning with a popular movement to allow the immigration of European refugee children.[105] She also lobbied her husband to allow greater immigration of groups persecuted by the Nazis, including Jews, but fears of fifth columnists caused Franklin to restrict immigration rather than expanding it.[106] Eleanor successfully secured political refugee status for eighty-three Jewish refugees from the S.S. Quanza in August 1940, but was refused on many other occasions.[107] Her son James later wrote that “her deepest regret at the end of her life” was that she had not forced Franklin to accept more refugees from Nazism during the war.[108]

Roosevelt visiting troops

Eleanor was also active on the homefront. Beginning in 1941, she co-chaired the Office of Civilian Defense (OCD) with New York City Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, working to give civilian volunteers expanded roles in war preparations.[109] She soon found herself in a power struggle with LaGuardia, who preferred to focus on narrower aspects of defense, while she saw solutions to broader social problems as equally important to the war effort.[110] Though LaGuardia resigned from the OCD in December 1941, Eleanor was forced to resign following anger in the House of Representatives over high salaries for several OCD appointments, including two of her close friends.[111]

In October 1942, Roosevelt toured England, visiting with American troops and inspecting British forces. Her visits drew enormous crowds and received almost unanimously favorable press in both England and the US.[112] In August 1943, she visited American troops in the South Pacific on a morale-building tour, of which Admiral William Halsey, Jr. later said, “she alone accomplished more good than any other person, or any groups of civilians, who had passed through my area.”[113] For her part, Roosevelt was left shaken and deeply depressed by seeing the war’s carnage.[114] A number of Congressional Republicans criticized her for using scarce wartime resources for her trip, prompting Franklin to suggest that she take a break from traveling.[115]

Eleanor Roosevelt entertains soldiers as she tells a story, September 1943

Roosevelt supported increased roles for women and African-Americans in the war effort, and began to advocate for factory jobs to be given to women a year before it became a widespread practice.[116][117] In 1942, she urged women of all social backgrounds to learn trades, saying “if I were of a debutante age I would go into a factory–any factory where I could learn a skill and be useful”.[118] Learning of the high rate of absenteeism among working mothers, she also campaigned for government-sponsored day care.[119] She notably supported the Tuskegee Airmen in their successful effort to become the first black combat pilots, visiting the Tuskegee Air Corps Advanced Flying School in Alabama. At her request, she flew with the Chief Flight Instructor Charles “Chief” Alfred Anderson for more than an hour, which had great symbolic value and brought visibility to Tuskegee’s pilot training program.[120]

After the war, Eleanor was a strong proponent of the Morgenthau Plan to de-industrialize Germany in the postwar period.[121] In 1946, she attended the “National Conference on the German Problem”, which issued a statement that “any plans to resurrect the economic and political power of Germany….. [were] dangerous to the security of the world”.[122]

Years after the White House

Franklin died on April 12, 1945 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Georgia. Eleanor later learned that FDR’s mistress, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, had been with him when he died,[123] a discovery made more bitter by learning that her daughter Anna had also been aware of the ongoing friendship between the president and Rutherfurd.[124] After the funeral, Eleanor packed and moved out of the White House, returning to Val-Kill.[125] In instructions left for Eleanor in the event of his death, Franklin proposed turning over Hyde Park to the federal government as a museum, and she spent the following months cataloging the estate and arranging the transfer. After FDR’s death, Eleanor moved into an apartment at 29 Washington Square West in Greenwich Village. In 1950, she rented suites at The Park Sheraton Hotel (202 West 56th Street). She lived here until 1953 when she moved to 211 East 62nd Street. When that lease expired in 1958, she returned to The Park Sheraton as she waited for the house she purchased with Edna and David Gurewitsch at 55 East 74th Street to be renovated.[126] The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum opened on April 12, 1946, setting a precedent for future presidential libraries.[127]

United Nations

Roosevelt with the Spanish version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which includes Franklin Roosevelt‘s Four Freedoms.
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt‘s January 6, 1941 State of the Union Address introducing the theme of the Four Freedoms (starting at 32:02)
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In December 1945, U.S. President Harry S. Truman appointed Eleanor as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly.[128] In April 1946, she became the first chairperson of the preliminary United Nations Commission on Human Rights.[129] Eleanor remained chairperson when the Commission was established on a permanent basis in January 1947.[130] She played an instrumental role, along with René Cassin, John Peters Humphrey and others, in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

On the night of September 28, 1948, Eleanor spoke in favor of the Declaration, calling it “the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere”.[131] The Declaration was adopted by the General Assembly on December 10, 1948. The vote was unanimous except for eight abstentions: six Soviet Bloc countries as well as South Africa and Saudi Arabia. Roosevelt attributed the abstention of the Soviet bloc nations to Article 13, which provided the right of citizens to leave their countries.[132]

Roosevelt also served as the first United States Representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights[133] and stayed on at that position until 1953, even after stepping down as chair of the Commission in 1951.[134] The UN posthumously awarded her one of its first Human Rights Prizes in 1968 in recognition of her work.[135]

Postwar politics

In the late 1940s, Democrats in New York and throughout the country courted Roosevelt for political office.

At first I was surprised that anyone should think that I would want to run for office, or that I was fitted to hold office. Then I realized that some people felt that I must have learned something from my husband in all the years that he was in public life! They also knew that I had stressed the fact that women should accept responsibility as citizens. I heard that I was being offered the nomination for governor or for the United States Senate in my own state, and even for Vice President. And some particularly humorous souls wrote in and suggested that I run as the first woman President of the United States! The simple truth is that I have had my fill of public life of the more or less stereotyped kind.[136]

Roosevelt with Frank Sinatra in 1960

Catholics comprised a major element of the Democratic Party in New York City. She supported reformers trying to overthrow the Irish machine Tammany Hall, and some Catholics called her anti-Catholic. In July 1949, Roosevelt had a bitter public disagreement with Cardinal Francis Spellman, the Archbishop of New York, over federal funding for parochial schools.[137][138] Spellman said she was anti-Catholic, and supporters of both took sides in a battle that drew national attention and is “still remembered for its vehemence and hostility.”[139]

In 1954, Tammany Hall boss Carmine DeSapio led the effort to defeat Eleanor’s son, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., in the election for New York Attorney General. Eleanor grew increasingly disgusted with DeSapio’s political conduct through the rest of the 1950s. Eventually, she would join with her old friends Herbert Lehman and Thomas Finletter to form the New York Committee for Democratic Voters, a group dedicated to opposing DeSapio’s reincarnated Tammany Hall. Their efforts were eventually successful, and DeSapio was forced to relinquish power in 1961.[140]

When President Truman backed New York Governor W. Averell Harriman, a close associate of DeSapio, for the 1952 Democratic presidential nomination, Roosevelt was disappointed. She supported Adlai Stevenson for president in 1952 and 1956 and urged his renomination in 1960.[141] She resigned from her UN post in 1953, when Dwight D. Eisenhower became President. Although Roosevelt had reservations about John F. Kennedy for his failure to condemn McCarthyism, she supported him for president against Richard Nixon. Kennedy later reappointed her to the United Nations, where she served again from 1961 to 1962, and to the National Advisory Committee of the Peace Corps.[96]

Roosevelt with President Ramon Magsaysay, the 7th President of the Philippines, and his wife at the Malacañan Palace in 1955.

By the 1950s, Roosevelt’s international role as spokesperson for women led her to stop publicly criticizing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), although she never supported it. In 1961, President Kennedy’s undersecretary of labor, Esther Peterson proposed a new Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. Kennedy appointed Roosevelt to chair the commission, with Peterson as director; she died just before the commission issued its report. It concluded that female equality was best achieved by recognition of gender differences and needs, and not by an Equal Rights Amendment.[142]

Throughout the 1950s, Roosevelt embarked on countless national and international speaking engagements; continued to pen her newspaper column; and made appearances on television and radio broadcasts. She averaged one hundred fifty lectures a year throughout the fifties, many devoted to her activism on behalf of the United Nations.[143] In 1961, all volumes of Roosevelt’s autobiography, which she had begun writing in 1937, were compiled into The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (Da Capo Press, ISBN 0-306-80476-X).

Roosevelt received thirty-five honorary degrees, thirteen of which were from universities outside the US.[144]

Death

Memorial in Riverside Park, Manhattan

In April 1960, Roosevelt was diagnosed with aplastic anemia. In 1962, she was given steroids which activated a dormant case of bone marrow tuberculosis.[145] Roosevelt died of resulting cardiac failure at her Manhattan home at 55 East 74th Street on the Upper East Side[146] on November 7, 1962, at the age of 78.[2][145]

President John F. Kennedy and former Presidents Truman and Eisenhower attended Roosevelt’s funeral at Hyde Park. At the memorial service, Adlai Stevenson asked, “What other single human being has touched and transformed the existence of so many?” He further praised her by stating, “She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.”[147] She was buried next to Franklin at the family compound in Hyde Park, New York on November 10, 1962.[148] After her death, the family deeded the family vacation home on Campobello Island to the governments of the U.S. and Canada and in 1964 they created the 2,800-acre (11 km2) Roosevelt Campobello International Park.[149]

The Eleanor Roosevelt Monument, in New York’s Riverside Park, was dedicated in 1996. It is said to be the first monument to an American president’s wife.[150] The centerpiece is a statue sculpted by Penelope Jencks. The surrounding granite pavement contains inscriptions designed by the architect Michael Middleton Dwyer, including a summary of her achievements, and a quote from her 1958 speech at the United Nations advocating universal human rights.[151]

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