Feisty Female Friday: Eleanor Roosevelt

The FFF this week is Eleanor Roosevelt.

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born in NY City. Both her parents died when she was a child, so Eleanor went to live with her grandmother. She was educated by private tutors and then attended a school for girls in England. After graduation, Eleanor became involved in social service work, joined the Junior League, and taught at the Rivington Street Settlement House. She married her fifth cousin, FDR, became the mom of six children, and managed her husband's political career.

As WWI began, she became active in the ARC and in volunteer work in Navy hospitals. After FDR was stricken with polio, Eleanor became increasingly active in politics to help him maintain his interests and to assert her own personality and goals. She participated in the LWV, joined the WTUL, worked for the Women's Division of the NY SDSC, and helped to establish Val-Kill Industries, and taught at the Todhunter School. Eleanor was an extraordinary First Lady, holding her own press conferences with only female reporters permitted to attend. Throughout FDR’s presidency, Eleanor traveled extensively around the nation, visiting relief projects, surveying working and living conditions, and then reporting her observations to the President. She was "the President's eyes, ears and legs" and provided objective information to her husband. Eleanor became an advocate of the rights and needs of the poor, minorities, and of the disadvantaged.

The public was drawn in by the First Lady's exploits and adventures which she recounted in her daily syndicated column, "My Day" which she began writing in 1935 which continued until her death in 1962.Known as “The First Lady of the World,” she served as ADCD and visited England and the South Pacific to foster good will among the Allies and to boost the morale of U.S. servicemen overseas. After FDR’S death, Eleanor continued in her public life. President Truman appointed her to the UN where she served as chair of the HRC and worked tirelessly to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted by the GA in 1948. She also volunteered her services to the American Association for the U. N. and was an American representative and became a chair to the World Federation of the U. N. Associations' Board of Directors. She was reappointed to the US Delegation to the U. N. by President Kennedy and appointed her to the NAC of the Peace Corps and chair of the President's Commission on the Status of Women where she became a recognized leader in promoting humanitarian efforts.

She was in great demand as a speaker and lecturer and often appeared on television. Eleanor was a prolific writer with many articles, books, and a multi-volume autobiography, and a member of many educational, humanitarian, and political organizations. In her later years, Mrs. Roosevelt lived at Val-Kill and maintained an apartment in NY City.

When died she was buried alongside her husband in the Rose Garden of their estate at Hyde Park, now a national historic site.