Roosevelt, Eleanor (1884–1962)

The niece of Theodore Roosevelt and wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt is most remembered for her accomplishments as the nation's First Lady from 1933 to 1945.

Roosevelt was born in New York City on October 11, 1884. Both of her parents died when she was very young, and she was placed under the care of her maternal grandmother. When she was 15, she attended a finishing school for aristocratic young women, just outside of London. Under the tutelage of the school's founder, Marie Souvestre, Roosevelt developed her intellectual curiosity and her sensitivity to others. When she returned home, she taught school for a time in Rivington House, a settlement house in New York City.

In 1905, she wed her fifth cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR). Over the next 6 years, she bore six children. Roosevelt devoted herself to her husband's rising political career, first in the New York State Senate in Albany, and then in Washington, D.C., where he served as assistant secretary of the navy under Woodrow Wilson. During World War I, she volunteered to work in Red Cross hospitals. She became an advocate for improving the conditions in soldiers' hospitals. In 1918, Roosevelt discovered that her husband had been having an affair with her social secretary. This revelation ended the intimate facets of her marriage and caused her to direct her passions and energies into reform-minded politics.

In the 1920s, Roosevelt supported a variety of progressive causes and organizations including the Women's Trade Union League, the National Consumers' League, and the League of Women Voters. She also became active in the Women's Division of the New York State Democratic Party, in part, to keep her husband—who was rebounding from his diagnosis of polio—in the running for state-level offices. When FDR was elected governor of New York, in 1928, she quickly developed a reputation for being the governor's eyes and ears, as she was sent on various fact-finding missions around the state.

Their political partnership continued to flourish when FDR was elected president in 1932. Like her husband, she empathized with the plight of the economically disadvantaged. She convened a White House Conference on the Emergency Needs of Women in 1933, when she felt that federal relief efforts were ignoring women. She was the first president's spouse to hold regular press conferences. She maintained the presence of women in the Washington press corps by insisting that only female reporters be allowed to cover East Wing events at the White House. She revolutionized her official position in other ways. From 1935 until 1962, Roosevelt wrote a daily syndicated column that often promoted New Deal policies and other causes that she championed.

Throughout her time in the White House, Roosevelt worked tirelessly to support the policies of her husband's administration. She was the first activist First Lady. Through her encouragement, the administration created the National Youth Administration in 1935. The agency funneled aid to college students in rural and urban areas and created job-training programs. The Great Depression reaffirmed the First Lady's commitment to work for the preservation of democracy. Roosevelt felt that social and economic stability were the best paths toward promoting this larger goal.

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