US first lady (193345) and humanitarian, born in New York City, New York, USA, the niece of Theodore Roosevelt. Shy and insecure as a child, she was educated privately, and in 1905 she married Franklin D Roosevelt, a distant cousin. The first sign of her abilities came during World War 1 when she worked for the Red Cross, and after her husband's polio attack and paralysis (1921) she took an ever more active role on his behalf in New York State politics. With his election as president, she emerged as a truly public figure in her own right, travelling throughout the country, promoting her causes - particularly those helping women, children, and the poor - giving radio broadcasts, and writing a syndicated column, My Day (starting in 1935). Although both ridiculed and vilified by some, she continued to speak out even when her views, such as those on racial discrimination, put her well in advance of her husband.
During World War 2 she travelled abroad to visit US servicemen, and following the death of Franklin (1945), she embarked on a new career, serving as a delegate to the UN General Assembly (194551), and serving as chair of the UN's Human Rights Commission (194651) that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She remained an active force in Democratic politics and served as a sort of unofficial American ambassador to the world of the downtrodden. In 1961 President John F Kennedy reappointed her to the US delegation to the UN, and she also chaired the Kennedy administration's Commission on the Status of Women. By the time of her death she was recognized as the most active and influential of all the US presidents' wives and had earned the sobriquet, first lady of the world.
| Anna Eleanor Roosevelt | |
|---|---|
| White House portrait | |
| Born |
October 11, 1884 New York City, New York, USA |
| Died |
November 7, 1962 New York City, New York, USA |
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was an American political leader who used her stature as First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945 to promote her husband's (Franklin D. Roosevelt's) New Deal, as well as Civil Rights.
Early life
Family background
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born at 56 West 37th St. New York City, New York to Elliott Roosevelt and Anna Eleanor Hall and was the favorite niece and goddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt. Eleanor's family was descended from Claes Martenszen van Rosenvelt who immigrated to New Amsterdam (Manhattan) from the Netherlands in the 1640s. His grandsons, Johannes and Jacobus, began the Oyster Bay and Hyde Park, New York branches of the Roosevelt family. Eleanor was descended from the Johannes branch while her future husband, Franklin was descended from the Jacobus branch. Roosevelt is also a descendant through her mother's family, of William Livingston, a signer of the U.S. Constitution. Two brothers followed young Anna Roosevelt. The Roosevelt family was completed with the addition of Elliott Jr. (1889-1893) and Hall Roosevelt (1891-1941).
Childhood
Following her parents' deaths, young Anna Eleanor was raised by her maternal grandmother Mary Ludlow Hall (1843-1919), an emotionally cold woman, in Tivoli, New York. Eleanor was looked down upon by most of her mother's family, presumably because they deemed Eleanor plain looking with an uncommon six foot tall frame. her Hyde Park cousin and future mother-in-law, Sara Delano Roosevelt would condescend to her less wealthy Manhattan Roosevelt cousins by saying, "We got all the looks and the money." In her grandmother's home, Eleanor's Hall uncles tended to be wealthy alcoholic playboys and recent historical allegations have surfaced that Eleanor may have felt insecure around lecherous eyes. Eleanor's grandmother, Mary Hall, had limited contact with the Roosevelts after Elliott's death. The only other contact she had with young men was at a house party given by her aunt Corinne Robinson at Christmas and it was at one of these parties that she met her 5th cousin and future husband Franklin Roosevelt.
Education
With the encouragement of her aunt, Anna Cowles, Theodore Roosevelt's sister, she was sent to Allenswood, a girls' boarding school outside of London where she studied from 1899 to 1902. Souvestre had a fierce interest in liberal causes and the summers Eleanor spent traveling Europe with her as well as her studies in history, language and literature gave her an abiding interest in social justice as well as the knowledge and poise to articulate her opinions clearly and eloquently. Souvestre did her best to prepare her for a return to the far less structured world of the Hyde Park Roosevelts.
Eleanor and Franklin
In 1902 Eleanor ran into her cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Harvard student, on a train during the summer after her return from England, and they began a discreet courtship which led to their engagement in November 1903. Eleanor and Franklin were fifth cousins, once removed. Sara Ann Roosevelt, FDR's mother, was dead set against the match and managed to delay their marriage for 16 months. In a vain attempt to preoccupy Franklin's mind in hopes that he would forget Eleanor, Sara sent him on a trip with friends for an extended period of time. Most of Eleanor's Hall and Roosevelt clans approved the match with only one of Eleanor's Hall aunts asking, "What does she see in him?" Theodore Roosevelt approved as well and sent Franklin a letter and after the wedding ceremony told him "Well Franklin, there's nothing like keeping the name in the family." Roosevelt; President Theodore Roosevelt took the place of his late brother in giving Eleanor away in marriage. Her cousins Alice Roosevelt and Corinne Robinson were bridesmaids along with Isabella Greenway. Eleanor's mother-in-law insisted on dominating the young couple's daily life.
Their marriage produced six children, Anna Eleanor Jr., James, Franklin Delano Jr. As the children grew older and married, Mrs. Roosevelt was often depressed and disappointed by the "lack of self-discipline" displayed by her children. Eleanor Roosevelt often was more upset about her children's unsuccessful private lives than her husband's infidelity.
Following the death of her husband in 1945, Roosevelt continued to live on the Hyde Park Estate, in Val-Kill, the house that her husband had remodeled for her near the mainhouse. The home served as a private sanctuary from her domineering and oppressive mother-in-law, Sara Delano Roosevelt (Faber 1983). Roosevelt also entertained her circle of friends in informal gatherings at the house. The site is now the home of the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill.
First Lady of the United States
During Franklin Roosevelt's terms as President, Eleanor was very vocal about her support of the American Civil Rights Movement and of African-American rights.
World War II
Eleanor Roosevelt was very active on the homefront.
Eleanor earned large amounts of money from advertising activities. The Pan-American Coffee Bureau, which was supported by tax revenues from eight foreign governments, paid Roosevelt $1000 a week for advertising.
Postwar Politics
After World War II, Roosevelt played an instrumental role, along with René Cassin, John Peters Humphrey and others, in drafting the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Roosevelt served as the first chairman of the UN Human Rights Commission (Glendon 2000). On the night of September 28, 1948, Roosevelt spoke on behalf of the Declaration calling it "the international Magna Carta of all mankind" (James 1948). The Declaration was Roosevelt's crowning achievement.
From the 1920s until her death in 1962, Roosevelt remained involved heavily in politics.
The Catholic issue
In July 1949, her ambivalent attitude toward American Catholics caused a high visibility fight with Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Catholic Archbishop of New York. Most Democrats rallied behind Roosevelt, so Spellman came to Eleanor's Hyde Park home to bury the hatchet. Mrs. Roosevelt was never as popular among Catholics as her husband. (Lash, Eleanor: The Years Alone pp 156-65.)
New York and national politics
In 1954, Tammany Hall boss Carmine DeSapio campaigned against Eleanor's son, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., during the New York Attorney General elections, which Franklin (Jr.) lost. Roosevelt held DeSapio responsible for her son's defeat and grew increasingly disgusted with his 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 enhancing the democratic process by opposing DeSapio's reincarnated Tammany.
Eleanor was a close friend of Adlai Stevenson and supported his candidacies in the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections. Averell Harriman, who was a close associate of Carmine DeSapio, for the Democratic presidential nomination, Roosevelt was disappointed but continued to support Stevenson who ultimately won the nomination.
Roosevelt was responsible for the establishment, in 1964, of the 2,800 acre (11 km²) () Roosevelt Campobello International Park on Campobello Island, New Brunswick. This followed a gift of the Roosevelt summer estate to the Canadian and American governments.
Eleanor Roosevelt was outspoken on numerous causes and continued to galvanize the world with her comments and opinions well into her 70s.
Family matters
Relationship with mother-in-law
Eleanor had a sometimes contentious relationship with her domineering mother-in-law, Sara Delano Roosevelt, who at 5'10" was only 2 inches shorter than Eleanor. Long before Eleanor fell in love with her future husband and distant cousin, Franklin, she already had a relationship with Sara as a distant but highly engaging cousin with whom she corresponded. Although they had a somewhat contentious relationship, Sara sincerely wanted to be a mother to Eleanor and did her best before and during the marriage to fill this role. From Eleanor's perspective, she was relatively young, inexperienced and with a mother long dead, lacked the support that her own mother, Anna Eleanor, might have given had she lived. Despite her forceful and domineering personality, Sara Delano Roosevelt had much to teach her new daughter-in-law on what a young wife should know. Eleanor, while sometimes resenting Sara's domineering nature, nevertheless highly valued her opinion in the early years of her marriage until she developed the experience and confidence a wife gains from the school of marital "hard knocks". Sara would continue to give huge presents to her new grandchildren, but sometimes Eleanor had problems with the influence that came with "mother's largesse."
Tensions with some Oyster Bay Roosevelts
Although Eleanor was always in the good graces of her Uncle Theodore, the paterfamilas of the Oyster Bay Roosevelts, she often found herself at odds with his eldest daughter, Alice Roosevelt. Uncle Theodore felt Eleanor's conduct to be far more responsible, socially acceptable and cooperative: in short, more "Rooseveltian" than that of the beautiful, highly photogenic but rebellious and self-absorbed Alice, to whom he would ask, "Why can't you be more like 'cousin Eleanor'?" Eleanor's relationship with her cousin and other Oyster Bay Roosevelts would be aggravated by the widening political gulf between the Hyde Park and Oyster Bay families as Franklin D. Roosevelt's political career began to take off. Characteristically caustic comments by "Cousin Alice", such as her later description of Franklin as "two-thirds mush and one-third Eleanor" certainly did not help.
Franklin's affair
Despite its happy start, the Roosevelts' marriage almost split over Franklin's affair with Eleanor's social secretary Lucy Mercer (later Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd). Eleanor immediately offered a divorce if the affair continued. By the time of this affair, Sara had grown extremely fond of Eleanor. Sara told Eleanor that "Roosevelts don't do divorce", and said that Eleanor would have to raise her five children alone in the event of a divorce. Eleanor learned that Lucy Mercer had been there, and some of Eleanor's children (most notably her daughter Anna Roosevelt Boettiger) knew this as well. An altercation occurred between Eleanor and Anna because Anna helped arrange meetings between Lucy and Franklin, including their last when he died.
Controversy over personal life
There are conflicting opinions from historians that believe evidence indicates Eleanor may have been bisexual, or may have had a lesbian relationship.
Relationship with Lorena Hickok
In 1928, Eleanor met Associated Press reporter Lorena Hickok, a White House correspondent. They became close friends after Hickok conducted a series of interviews with Roosevelt in 1932, and remained so for the rest of their lives. Eleanor Roosevelt and Hickok maintained a personal correspondence when Roosevelt wrote to Hickok in 1933:
"My Pictures are nearly all up and I have you in my sitting room where I can look at you most of my waking hours! I can't kiss you [in person] so I kiss your picture good night and good morning...Most clearly I remember your eyes, with a kind of teasing smile in them, and the feeling of that soft spot just northeast of the corner of your mouth against my lips."Other letters between Hickok and Roosevelt are published in Roger Streitmatter's 1998 book Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok.
These affectionate (and ambiguous) letters, along with the fact that Hickok burned Roosevelt's letters after her death, have led some historians to conclude that Eleanor Roosevelt and Hickok might have been lovers. It is also widely known that Roosevelt discarded very little correspondence, excepting in 1933 and no writings from Hickok were ever found among Roosevelt's possessions. Doris Kearns Goodwin, who wrote a prize-winning biography of Franklin and Eleanor ("No Ordinary Time"), has publicly disputed Cook's assessment that Roosevelt had a lesbian side.
Roosevelt family members and friends have refused to consider the idea that Eleanor may have been bisexual. Her son James Roosevelt maintained that his mother "did not know what a homosexual was" and believed that his mother who grew up in the Victorian era often used tones that could seem overly affectionate leading to her statements being misconstrued. I simply cannot believe that Eleanor Roosevelt is a lesbian." Eleanor Seagraves has stated in recent years that her grandmother, Eleanor did indeed love Lorena Hickok but determined to remain asexual in the years following her husband's affair. A longtime friend of Eleanor's, a lesbian named Esther Lape, reviewed the contents of some of the letters, concluding that Eleanor was not a lesbian and that "... Esther and Eleanor cohabitated a cottage in Hyde Park along with Lape's partner, Nancy Cook, for several years.
Other relationships
Evidence has surfaced in recent years to suggest that besides the alleged lesbian affair, Roosevelt had other affairs with men. Roosevelt and Miller frequently took extended camping trips with others to Lake Chazzy, but more often went there alone together. Roosevelt and Gureswitch were frequent travel companions and was a regular guest at ER's Hyde Park home. Before and after Gureswitch's marriage, he resided with Roosevelt at both her Hyde Park home and in her New York City residences.
Roosevelt's relationship with Gureswitch caused tension with her children. In Roosevelt's later years and more notably during the treatment of the tuberculosis which Gureswitch claimed to be sure he could cure upset the Roosevelt children.
Death
In 1961, all volumes of her autobiography were compiled into The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt, still in print some 45 years later.
Eleanor Roosevelt survived her husband by nearly 20 years. By 1960, Roosevelt's health began to fail her.
Mrs Roosevelt was buried next to Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park, New York on November 10, 1962.
Mrs. Roosevelt maintained a strong loyalty to "Uncle Ted" even nearly forty-five years after his death. Among her belongings was her membership card for the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Roosevelt is the ninth most admired person in the 20th century, according to Gallup. Roosevelt's tales of her hunting excursions were well received, though they did not serve to further the cause of women's liberation; in keeping with the chauvinistic standards of the time, Roosevelt's stories were published under the masculine pseudonym "Chuck Painton" to avoid offending the magazine's overwhelmingly male readership. One of Roosevelt's prized trophies, the taking of which was immortalized in her poignant 1937 account Outwitting the Rompala Buck (Ye Sylvan Archer, v2), graced the mantle above the fireplace in her husband Franklin's presidential library for many years. After her death, her son Elliott Roosevelt wrote a series of best-selling fictional murder mysteries wherein she acted as a detective, helping the police solve the crime, while she was First Lady. Roosevelt received 35 honorary degrees during her life, compared to 31 awarded to her husband. Roosevelt is believed to be the tallest of all First Ladies: she was six feet tall. Was offered the first White House wedding in 1905 by her aunt Edith Roosevelt. Garfunkel's legendary folk-rock anthem, "Mrs. Robinson" (also the theme song to the Academy Award winning film "The Graduate"), was (according to Paul Simon) originally titled "Mrs. Roosevelt" in honor of Eleanor Roosevelt. The song was a tribute to Elenaor Roosevelt and the recent times gone by in the 1940's '50's and (at that time) present-day 1960's. It was then that Simon changed the title of the song from "Mrs. Roosevelt" to "Mrs. Robinson." The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia (2001) Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 2, The Defining Years, 1933-1938 (2000). Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship Based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers (1971). Eleanor: The Years Alone (1972) Roosevelt, David B. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, 768 pages, ISBN 0-684-80448-4 Streitmatter, Roger. Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok, Free Press, 1998, Hardcover, 336 pages, ISBN 0-684-84928-3
For Young Readers
Weidt, Maryann N. Stateswoman to the World: a Story about Eleanor Roosevelt.
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