October 11: Birthday of Eleanor Roosevelt (1884)
Prayer Idea
Pray for people who are promoting the recognition and protection of human rights around the world.
History Note
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born in 1884 in New York City, to Elliott and Anna Hall Roosevelt. Elliott was the brother of future president Theodore Roosevelt. Eleanor’s father suffered from depression and alcoholism and was often away from home. Eleanor had two younger brothers, Elliott and Hall.
When Eleanor was eight, her mother died. The next year, her little brother Elliott died at age four. Though Eleanor was able to make some good memories with her father, he also died before she was ten.
Eleanor’s maternal grandmother, Mary Livingston Ludlow Hall, became the guardian of Eleanor and Hall. Eleanor went to Allenswood School in London when she was 15. For three years, she studied language, literature, and history. In the summers, Eleanor traveled in Europe with the school headmistress, Marie Souvestre. They visited grand tourist attractions and also places where people lived in poverty.
In 1902 Eleanor took a trip by train. She ran into her distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The two developed a friendship and soon began to court secretly. In November 1903, they were engaged. When they married in March 1905, Eleanor’s uncle Theodore Roosevelt, then serving as president, gave her away at the wedding.
Franklin and Eleanor had six children. While her husband served in government positions in New York and Washington, D.C., Eleanor was involved with helping people, first through the Navy Relief organization and later through the Red Cross. She also helped to run and teach at Todhunter School, a private school for upper-class girls in New York City. She took students on field trips to markets, tenement houses, and New York Children’s Court to see the challenges regular people faced.
Eleanor Roosevelt became involved in the Democratic Party. She began to write articles for political, scholarly, and popular magazines and to speak at political events. By the time her husband ran successfully for governor of New York in 1928, she was a major influence in Democratic politics. She played a major role in Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential campaign.
Two days after Franklin was inaugurated as president, Eleanor showed Americans that she would be an active first lady. She held her own press conference and announced that she would meet with female reporters once a week. Mrs. Roosevelt began writing a monthly column in Woman’s Home Companion magazine. She titled her first article, “I Want You to Write Me.” By January 1934, 300,000 Americans had written to her. When guests came to the door of the White House, Eleanor often greeted them herself.
In 1935 the first lady began to write a newspaper column, six days a week, called My Day. She kept writing for 27 years, missing only four days when her husband died in 1945. After Franklin’s death, Eleanor said goodbye to people she had worked with for over 12 years and moved out of the White House.
President Harry Truman appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as a delegate to the United Nations, where she participated in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the last 17 years of her life, Eleanor Roosevelt published 16 books. She continued to speak out for equal treatment of African Americans. She hosted events that honored her late husband and continued to be involved in the Democratic Party. When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, she campaigned for him.
Eleanor Roosevelt died in 1962.
This photo by Thomas J. O’Halloran shows Eleanor Roosevelt speaking at the 1960 Democratic National Convention. Photo courtesy the U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.
Learn More
This is a speech by Eleanor Roosevelt for a television program on Human Rights Day, December 10, 1948.
Find more resources at Homeschool History.
