129 Facts About Eleanor Roosevelt

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was an American political figure, diplomat, pacifist and activist.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D Roosevelt's four terms in office, making her the longest-serving first lady of the United States.

Eleanor Roosevelt had an unhappy childhood, having suffered the deaths of both parents and one of her brothers at a young age.

The Roosevelts' marriage was complicated from the beginning by Franklin's controlling mother, Sara, and after Eleanor discovered her husband's affair with Lucy Mercer in 1918, she resolved to seek fulfillment in leading a public life of her own.

Eleanor Roosevelt persuaded Franklin to stay in politics after he was stricken with a paralytic illness in 1921, which cost him the normal use of his legs, and began giving speeches and appearing at campaign events in his place.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the first presidential spouse to hold regular press conferences, write a daily newspaper column, write a monthly magazine column, host a weekly radio show, and speak at a national party convention.

Eleanor Roosevelt launched an experimental community at Arthurdale, West Virginia, for the families of unemployed miners, later widely regarded as a failure.

Eleanor Roosevelt 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.

Eleanor Roosevelt pressed the United States to join and support the United Nations and became its first delegate.

Eleanor Roosevelt served as the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights and oversaw the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11,1884, in Manhattan, New York City, to socialites Anna Rebecca Hall and Elliott Roosevelt.

Eleanor Roosevelt's mother nicknamed her "Granny" because she acted in such a serious manner as a child.

Anna emotionally rejected Eleanor Roosevelt and was somewhat ashamed of her daughter's alleged "plainness".

Eleanor Roosevelt had a half-brother, Elliott Roosevelt Mann, through her father's affair with Katy Mann, a servant employed by the family.

Eleanor Roosevelt was born into a world of immense wealth and privilege, as her family was part of New York high society called the "swells".

On May 19,1887, the two-year-old Eleanor Roosevelt was on board the SS Britannic with her father, mother and aunt Tissie, when it collided with White Star Liner SS Celtic.

Eleanor Roosevelt was lowered into a lifeboat and she and her parents were taken to the Celtic and returned to New York.

Eleanor Roosevelt's mother died from diphtheria on December 7,1892, and Elliott Jr.

Eleanor Roosevelt survived the fall but died from a seizure.

Eleanor Roosevelt doted on Hall, and when he enrolled at Groton School in 1907, she accompanied him as a chaperone.

Eleanor Roosevelt took pleasure in Hall's brilliant performance at school, and was proud of his many academic accomplishments, which included a master's degree in engineering from Harvard.

Eleanor Roosevelt was tutored privately and with the encouragement of her aunt Anna "Bamie" Eleanor Roosevelt, she was sent to Allenswood Academy at the age of 15, a private finishing school in Wimbledon, London, England, where she was educated from 1899 to 1902.

Souvestre took a special interest in Eleanor Roosevelt, who learned to speak French fluently and gained self-confidence.

At age 17 in 1902, Eleanor Roosevelt completed her formal education and returned to the United States; she was presented at a debutante ball at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on December 14.

Eleanor Roosevelt was later given her own "coming out party".

Eleanor Roosevelt was active with the New York Junior League shortly after its founding, teaching dancing and calisthenics in the East Side slums.

Eleanor Roosevelt was a lifelong Episcopalian, regularly attended services, and was very familiar with the New Testament.

The wedding date was set to accommodate President Theodore Eleanor Roosevelt, who was scheduled to be in New York City for the St Patrick's Day parade, and who agreed to give the bride away.

Early on, Eleanor Roosevelt 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.

Sara sought to control the raising of her grandchildren, and Eleanor Roosevelt reflected later that "Franklin's children were more my mother-in-law's children than they were mine".

Eleanor Roosevelt once told her daughter Anna that it was an "ordeal to be borne".

Eleanor Roosevelt considered herself ill-suited to motherhood, later writing, "It did not come naturally to me to understand little children or to enjoy them".

In September 1918, Eleanor Roosevelt was unpacking one of Franklin's suitcases when she discovered a bundle of love letters to him from her social secretary, Lucy Mercer.

Eleanor Roosevelt had been contemplating leaving his wife for Mercer.

Disillusioned, Eleanor Roosevelt again became active in public life, and focused increasingly on her social work rather than her role as a wife.

Eleanor Roosevelt herself named the place Val-Kill, loosely translated as "waterfall-stream" from the Dutch language common to the original European settlers of the area.

Each year, when Roosevelt held a picnic at Val-Kill for delinquent boys, her granddaughter Eleanor Roosevelt Seagraves assisted her.

Eleanor Roosevelt was close to her grandmother throughout her life.

Seagraves concentrated her career as an educator and librarian on keeping alive many of the causes Eleanor Roosevelt began and supported.

In 1924, Eleanor campaigned for Democrat Alfred E Smith in his successful re-election bid as governor of New York State against the Republican nominee, her first cousin Theodore Roosevelt Jr.

The relationship was further strained because Eleanor Roosevelt desperately wanted to go with her husband to Yalta in February 1945, but he took Anna instead.

Eleanor Roosevelt was close friends with several lesbian couples, such as Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, and Esther Lape and Elizabeth Fisher Read, suggesting that she understood lesbianism; Marie Souvestre, Eleanor Roosevelt's childhood teacher and a great influence on her later thinking, was a lesbian.

Eleanor Roosevelt had a close relationship with New York State Police sergeant Earl Miller, who was assigned by the president to be her bodyguard.

Eleanor Roosevelt was 44 years old when she met Miller, 32, in 1929.

Eleanor Roosevelt became her friend as well as her official escort, teaching her different sports, such as diving and riding, and coached her in tennis.

Eleanor Roosevelt was a longtime friend of Carrie Chapman Catt and gave her the Chi Omega award at the White House in 1941.

Eleanor Roosevelt joined Franklin in touring the country, making her first campaign appearances.

Eleanor Roosevelt started working with the Women's Trade Union League, raising funds in support of the union's goals: a 48-hour workweek, minimum wage, and the abolition of child labor.

Eleanor Roosevelt dogged Theodore on the New York State campaign trail in a car fitted with a papier-mache bonnet shaped like a giant teapot that was made to emit simulated steam, and countered his speeches with those of her own, calling him immature.

At the school, Eleanor Roosevelt taught upper-level courses in American literature and history, emphasizing independent thought, current events, and social engagement.

Eleanor Roosevelt continued to teach three days a week while FDR served as governor, but was forced to leave teaching after his election as president.

Cook's failing health and pressures from the Great Depression compelled the women to dissolve the partnership in 1938, at which time Eleanor Roosevelt converted the shop buildings into a cottage at Val-Kill, that eventually became her permanent residence after Franklin died in 1945.

Eleanor Roosevelt became First Lady of the United States when Franklin was inaugurated on March 4,1933.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the first presidential spouse to hold regular press conferences and in 1940 became the first to speak at a national party convention.

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote a daily and widely syndicated newspaper column, "My Day", another first for a presidential spouse.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the first first lady to write a monthly magazine column and to host a weekly radio show.

Eleanor 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.

Eleanor Roosevelt has been ranked by participating historians as the best-regarded first lady in each of the five such surveys to be conducted.

Eleanor Roosevelt was ranked the second-highest in the remaining category behind only Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Eleanor Roosevelt was found the be the second-easiest first lady for historians to imagine serving as president herself.

Deeply affected by the visit, Eleanor 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.

Eleanor Roosevelt hoped the project could become a model for "a new kind of community" in the US, in which workers would be better cared for.

The experience motivated Eleanor Roosevelt to become much more outspoken on the issue of racial discrimination.

Eleanor Roosevelt remained a vigorous fundraiser for the community for several years, as well as spending most of her own income on the project.

Eleanor Roosevelt herself was sharply discouraged by a 1940 visit in which she felt the town had become excessively dependent on outside assistance.

Eleanor Roosevelt is seen by historians as having been significantly more advanced than her husband on civil rights.

Eleanor Roosevelt became one of the only voices in her husband's administration insisting that benefits be equally extended to Americans of all races.

Eleanor Roosevelt broke with tradition by inviting hundreds of African-American guests to the White House.

Eleanor Roosevelt later presented Anderson to the King and Queen of the United Kingdom after Anderson performed at a White House dinner.

Eleanor Roosevelt 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.

Eleanor Roosevelt was involved by being "the eyes and the ears" of the New Deal.

Eleanor Roosevelt looked to the future and was committed to social reform.

Eleanor Roosevelt brought unprecedented activism and ability to the role of the first lady.

Eleanor Roosevelt 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.

In 1942, Eleanor Roosevelt 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.

Rumors spread of "Eleanor Roosevelt Clubs" formed by servants to oppose their employers and "Eleanor Roosevelt Tuesdays" on which African-American men would knock down white women on the street, though no evidence has ever been found of either practice.

When race riots broke out in Detroit in June 1943, critics in both the North and South wrote that Eleanor Roosevelt was to blame.

Eleanor Roosevelt 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.

On May 21,1937, Eleanor Roosevelt visited Westmoreland Homesteads to mark the arrival of the community's final homesteader.

Eleanor Roosevelt was an unprecedentedly outspoken First Lady who made far more use of the media than her predecessors; she held 348 press conferences over the span of her husband's 12-year presidency.

Eleanor Roosevelt relaxed the rule only once, on her return from her 1943 Pacific trip.

Eleanor Roosevelt was interviewed by many newspapers; the New Orleans journalist Iris Kelso described Roosevelt as her most interesting interviewee ever.

Eleanor Roosevelt agreed at first that she would avoid discussing her views on pending congressional measures.

Just before Franklin assumed the presidency in February 1933, Eleanor Roosevelt published an editorial in the Women's Daily News that conflicted so sharply with his intended public spending policies that he published a rejoinder in the following issue.

Eleanor Roosevelt continued her articles in other venues, publishing more than sixty articles in national magazines during her tenure as first lady.

Eleanor Roosevelt began a syndicated newspaper column, titled "My Day", which appeared six days a week from 1936 to her death in 1962.

Eleanor Roosevelt read a commercial from a mattress company, which sponsored the broadcast.

Eleanor Roosevelt said she would not accept any salary for being on the air, and that she would donate the amount to charity.

Eleanor Roosevelt continued to broadcast throughout the 1930s, sometimes on CBS and sometimes on NBC.

Eleanor Roosevelt 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.

Eleanor Roosevelt soon found other wartime causes to work on beginning with a popular movement to allow the immigration of European refugee children.

Eleanor Roosevelt 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.

Eleanor Roosevelt 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.

In October 1942, Eleanor Roosevelt toured England, visiting with American troops and inspecting British forces.

Eleanor Roosevelt's visits drew enormous crowds and received almost unanimously favorable press in both England and America.

Eleanor Roosevelt supported increased roles for women and African-Americans in the war effort, and began to advocate for women to be given factory jobs a year before it became a widespread practice.

Eleanor Roosevelt 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.

Eleanor Roosevelt flew with African-American chief civilian instructor C Alfred "Chief" Anderson.

Eleanor Roosevelt did use her position as a trustee of the Julius Rosenwald Fund to arrange a loan of $175,000 to help finance the building of Moton Field.

Eleanor Roosevelt later learned that her husband's mistress Lucy Mercer had been with him when he died, a discovery made more bitter by learning that her daughter Anna had been aware of the ongoing relationship between the President and Rutherfurd.

Eleanor Roosevelt lived here until 1953 when she moved to 211 East 62nd Street.

Eleanor Roosevelt remained chairperson when the commission was established on a permanent basis in January 1947.

Eleanor Roosevelt attributed the abstention of the Soviet bloc nations to Article 13, which provided the right of citizens to leave their countries.

Eleanor Roosevelt served as the first United States Representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and stayed on at that position until 1953, even after stepping down as chair of the commission in 1951.

Eleanor Roosevelt learned about the memorandum and arranged a meeting between McDougall and her husband, the president of the United States of America.

Eleanor Roosevelt supported reformers trying to overthrow the Irish machine Tammany Hall, and some Catholics called her anti-Catholic.

In July 1949, Eleanor Roosevelt had a bitter public disagreement with Cardinal Francis Spellman, the Archbishop of New York, over federal funding for parochial schools.

Eleanor Roosevelt was an early supporter of the Encampment for Citizenship, a non-profit organization that conducts residential summer programs with year-round follow-up for young people of widely diverse backgrounds and nations.

Eleanor Roosevelt routinely hosted encampment workshops at her Hyde Park estate, and when the program was attacked as "socialistic" by McCarthyite forces in the early 1950s, she vigorously defended it.

Eleanor Roosevelt grew increasingly disgusted with DeSapio's political conduct through the rest of the 1950s.

Eleanor Roosevelt supported Adlai Stevenson for president in 1952 and 1956, and urged his renomination in 1960.

Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from her UN post in 1953, when Dwight D Eisenhower became president.

Eleanor Roosevelt addressed the Democratic National Convention in 1952 and 1956.

Eleanor Roosevelt died just before the commission issued its report.

Eleanor Roosevelt continued to pen her newspaper column and made appearances on television and radio broadcasts.

Eleanor Roosevelt averaged one hundred fifty lectures a year throughout the 1950s, many devoted to her activism on behalf of the United Nations.

Eleanor Roosevelt supported Moroccan independence through both personal intervention with the US authorities and addressing the Moroccan question in her column My Day.

Eleanor Roosevelt received the first annual Franklin Delano Eleanor Roosevelt Brotherhood Award in 1946.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the most admired living woman, according to Gallup's most admired man and woman poll of Americans, every year between 1948 to 1961 except 1951.

Eleanor Roosevelt was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1973.

The centerpiece is a statue of Eleanor Roosevelt sculpted by Penelope Jencks.

In 1997, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington DC was dedicated; it includes a bronze statue of Eleanor Roosevelt standing before the United Nations emblem, which honors her dedication to the United Nations.

In 2007, Eleanor Roosevelt was named a hero by The My Hero Project.

Eleanor Roosevelt was retroactively named Woman of the Year 1948 for her efforts on tackling issues surrounding human rights.

Eleanor Roosevelt will be honored on an American Women quarter in 2023.

In 1972, the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute was founded; it merged with the Franklin D Roosevelt Four Freedoms Foundation in 1987 to become the Roosevelt Institute.

Eleanor Roosevelt lived in a stone cottage at Val-Kill, which was two miles east of the Springwood Estate.

In 1976, Talent Associates released the American television miniseries Eleanor and Franklin, starring Edward Herrmann as Franklin Roosevelt and Jane Alexander as Eleanor Roosevelt; it was broadcast on ABC on January 11 and 12,1976 and was based on Joseph P Lash's biography from 1971, Eleanor and Franklin, based on their correspondence and recently opened archives.

Eleanor Roosevelt is played by Gillian Anderson, and by Eliza Scanlen as young Eleanor.