from "The Writer's Almanac" on NPR (National Public Radio) in the U.S. :


It's the birthday of (Anna) Eleanor Roosevelt, born into a prominent, wealthy family in New York City (1884). Her father was in ill health and an alcoholic. Her mother was famous in New York for her striking beauty, and she made Eleanor feel bad about her appearances, calling her "granny" and "very plain." Eleanor said, "I was a solemn child without beauty. I seemed like a little old woman entirely lacking in the spontaneous joy and mirth of youth." She was close for a time with her father, but by the age of 10 she was an orphan. She went off to live with her grandmother, and then to a school in London. While there, she was inspired by her headmistress, who was passionately devoted to liberal causes and social justice.

One day on a train to Tivoli, where Eleanor's grandmother lived, she bumped into Franklin Delano Roosevelt, her distant cousin, and the two began a secret courtship that ended in marriage in 1905. She had six children with FDR, one of whom died in infancy. She was an active wife and mother, but also a volunteer for social causes. Her husband was Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I, and Eleanor accompanied him, expecting to do nothing more than support her husband. But she found herself taking an active role, working for the Red Cross and visiting wounded and shell-shocked troops in the Naval Hospital. She was appalled at the state of the hospitals and demanded that the government inspect the poor conditions affecting the sailors.

In 1921, FDR contracted polio and was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Eleanor got even more involved in politics, joining various women's rights organizations of the 1920s. She tried to make up for her husband's disability by traveling around and meeting with important people whom her husband had trouble reaching. He was elected president in 1933, and Eleanor continued to be actively involved as the First Lady. Franklin and Eleanor were both champions of the disadvantaged. But at times Eleanor was even more adamant than her husband. She supported anti-lynching laws that her husband did not, and she wrote a confidential letter to the NAACP expressing frustration that her husband and Congress weren't complying.

In 1933, she was the first president's wife to give her own press conference. In 1936, she began writing a daily syndicated newspaper column as a means to advance communication between the president and the public. People loved her and called her "the first lady of the world."

Franklin died in 1945, and Eleanor became a delegate to the United Nations and chaired the Human Rights Commission as they drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."