For Immediate Release Contact: Pat Kremer/Nancy O’Shea (312) 665-7100 (For Media Use Only) Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt Eleanor Roosevelt was by far the most publicly active, the most powerful, the most admired, and the most controversial first lady until Hillary Clinton. The niece of Theodore Roosevelt (and a distant cousin of the man she would marry), Eleanor was brought up with a strong sense of public service. As a young woman she taught in a settlement house on Manhattan’s Lower East Side; during World War I she did volunteer work for the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society and the Red Cross. Partly to help her husband’s political career, she became active in the Women’s Trade Union League, the League of Women Voters, and the New York Democratic Party, where she established a network of activist women. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected governor of New York, Eleanor held down two careers: as political hostess in Albany, and as a teacher at a Manhattan girls’ school that she had purchased with two friends. During her 12 years as first lady, Eleanor redefined the job. She held hundreds of press conferences, at which she allowed only female reporters—forcing some news outlets to hire their first women employees. At the same time, she wrote a daily newspaper column as well as magazine articles and books, made inspection tours around the country for her husband, spoke at political meetings, and chaired public works committees. She worked tirelessly for racial equality, the welfare of children and youth, housing for the poor, and other progressive causes—bringing many new constituencies into the political process. Perhaps her most cherished and successful cause was equal rights for women. During FDR’s first term, Eleanor helped put more than a hundred women into significant government jobs, from the National Aeronautics Board to the Department of Labor, where Frances Perkins became the first woman to hold a cabinet position. Perkins and Eleanor worked closely to institute major social programs, including unemployment insurance, social security, and the National Labor Relations Act, aimed at preventing employers from interfering with unions. Eleanor also opened up many more opportunities for women—including, one historian has said, more than 4,000 jobs in the Post Office alone. Eleanor was an early and committed supporter of civil rights. At a segregated political meeting in Alabama, for example, she carried a folding chair to each session and sat in the aisle separating Blacks and Whites. When the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let Marian Anderson, the brilliant African-American contralto, sing in Constitution Hall, Eleanor resigned from the organization, denounced its position, and arranged to hold the concert at the Lincoln Memorial. More than 75,000 people attended, and the event is seen as a turning point in the history of race relations in the U.S. After FDR’s death, Eleanor’s involvement in politics continued unabated. President Truman made her a delegate to the United Nations, where she chaired the Commission on Human Rights and played a major role in the writing and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She continued to write books and columns and to work actively in the Democratic party. In 1961 President Kennedy appointed her chair of his Commission on the Status of Women, where she served until shortly before her death. Continue