15th Day of Women's History Month: Eleanor Roosevelt

There’s just something about Eleanor Roosevelt that intrigues me.  Perhaps it’s that she was an “activist First Lady”—finding her own causes, and using her “power” to make an impact.  Perhaps it's that she had a life outside of the White House, and actually had a career, and made an impact on the lives of others, after her husband's death.  Perhaps it’s that she was wealthy, and yet chose to use that wealth for good (can you think of another wealthy woman, other than Melinda Gates, who’s out there working on behalf of the needy in the world?).  Perhaps it's that she looks like she was so intelligent.  Perhaps it’s that she was not conventional. Perhaps it’s all of these things.  Perhaps it's that photos of her make her look so approachable. Perhaps it's that others made fun of her, and I feel sympathy for someone who obviously wanted to be judged for her actions, not her looks.

Eleanor Roosevelt was born in 1884.  After attending a boarding school in England, Roosevelt returned to New York City and worked with the poor in NYC settlement houses--this work led to her being a strong advocate of worker's rights. This work continued even when she was First Lady--she traveled all over the country, observing first-hand the conditions in slums, coal mines, factories, and prisons.  She visited the South, to see what life was like for African Americans.  After FDR's death, President Harry Truman asked her to be a delegate to the newly formed United Nations.  She helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Her last job was to chair John F. Kennedy's Commission on the Status of Women.
I think the story from Eleanor Roosevelt's life that I like most involved contralto Marian Anderson--this comes from the book, My Day  The Best of Eleanor Roosevelt's Acclaimed Newspaper Columns:
When Howard University planned to present the acclaimed contralto Marian Anderson in concert, she was banned from Washington's Constitution Hall.  The Daughters of the American Revolution, who espoused a "No Negroes" policy, controlled the hall.  Having welcomed Marian Anderson to the White House in 1936, Eleanor Roosevelt could no longer support the DAR's policy and resigned from the organization....FDR's Secretary of the Interior...and NAACP leaders....helped Anderson find a new concert space:  the foot of the Lincoln Memorial.  At the free concert, more than 75,000 people listened to Marian Anderson's renditions of "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" and "America".
Here's what Eleanor Roosevelt wrote:  WASHINGTON, FEBRUARY 27--I am having a peaceful day.  I drove my car a short distance out of the city this morning to pilot some friends of mine who are starting off for a vacation in Florida.  I think this will be my only excursion out of the White House today, for I have plenty of work to do on an accumulation of mail, and I hope to get through in time to enjoy an evening of uninterrupted reading.  I have been debating in my mind for some time, a question which I have had to debate with myself once or twice before in my life.  Usually I have decided differently from the way in which I am deciding now.  The question is, if you belong to an organization and disapprove of an action which is typical of a policy, should you resign or is it better to work for a changed point of view within the organization?  In the past, when I was able to work actively in any organization to which I belonged, I have usually stayed until I had at least made a fight and had been defeated.
Even then, I have, as a rule, accepted my defeat and decided I was wrong or, perhaps, a little too far ahead of the thinking for the majority at that time.  I have often found that the thing in which I was interested was done some years later.  But in this case, I belong to an organization in which I can do no active work.  They have taken an action which has been widely talked of in the press.  To remain as a member implies approval of that action, and therefore I am resigning."  You may think this was not earth-shattering, but keep in mind her column was sort of the "First Lady" blog of the day--she wrote it for 26 years, six days a week, for the United Features Syndicate.  She wrote, people read; maybe, just maybe, she changed some minds.  Oh to have the influence of Eleanor Roosevelt!