Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was an American first lady, the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a diplomat, humanitarian, activist, and political figure. The longest-serving first lady in American history (1933–1945), she was one of the most influential, powerful, and admired women in the world in the 20th century.
Born on October 11, 1884 in Manhattan to socialite parents, Eleanor Roosevelt, the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, grew up in the wealth and affluence of high society. Her upbringing, however, was not without its hardships. Her mother, who was emotionally distant, died in 1892 when Eleanor was just eight. Her father, an alcoholic who was eventually sent to a sanitarium, died two years later from a seizure after leaping from a window in the throes of alcohol withdrawal. She also lost one of her brothers at a young age.
Despite this, Eleanor made the best of her opportunities, completing an education at an elite private school in England before returning to America. Shortly after arriving back in the states, she met her father’s fifth cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with whom she started a secret relationship. The couple became engaged in 1903 and were married in 1905.
Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt’s marriage, though initially loving, proved a troubled one. Despite the six children they had together, one of whom died in infancy, the couple grew apart. Eleanor reportedly told her daughter that sex with her husband was an “ordeal to be borne”. For Franklin’s part, he was on the verge of divorcing Eleanor at one point to be with Eleanor’s secretary, with whom he’d been having an affair. An Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the time, and with ambitions for higher offices still, Franklin heeded the counsel of his political advisor not to divorce Eleanor. His decision was also influenced by his mother, who threatened to disinherit him if he did. The Roosevelt marriage stayed intact, but from that point on was a purely political union.
Following Franklin’s election as governor of New York in 1928, Eleanor vowed to start leading her own life in the eyes of the public. When her husband became president in 1933, Eleanor became the first presidential spouse to host her own press conferences, routinely using this platform to address controversial issues of the time, including civil rights. Likewise, she became the first presidential spouse to speak at a national party convention. In addition to writing her own newspaper column, titled “My Day”, Eleanor also worked on behalf of the League of Women Voters starting in 1933, spearheading efforts to help the poor and encouraging others to stand up against racial discrimination. Roosevelt became a prolific and highly sought-after public speaker and lecturer, maintaining a busy travel schedule and being one of the Roosevelt administration’s most visible and active representatives and liaisons to the public.
During both World Wars, Eleanor Roosevelt visited wounded soldiers and worked with humanitarian organizations, including the Red Cross, to raise awareness and inspire more to help. She was also an outspoken advocate for child welfare and housing reform during her many years of public life. After FDR’s death in 1945, President Harry S. Truman appointed Eleanor a delegate to the United Nations. She served as chair of the Commission on Human Rights from 1946 to 1951 and was instrumental in crafting and passing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She later worked for the campaigns of Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956, who lost both times to Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In her private life during these years, Eleanor found the love and romance her marriage no longer provided elsewhere. She first met her lover and lifelong friend Lorena Hickok, in 1928 when Hickok was working with the Associated Press. It took Hickock a few years to convince her editors to allow her to study Eleanor during her husband’s campaigning. The two became inseparable, and Lorena and Eleanor spent almost every evening together, quickly falling in love.
Although their duties soon forced them to live in different cities, their relationship is documented in the more than three thousand letters they wrote to one another. There was much debate about the precise meaning of this correspondence and what exactly the nature of these two women’s intimate relationship was. But as more letters came to light, and as social attitudes toward same-sex relationships grew more open-minded, it became increasingly difficult to pretend that this relationship was what Hickock’s biographer, Doris Fabra, dismissed as a schoolgirl crush. The consensus among historians today is that the relationship between Roosevelt and Hickock was one of genuine romance and not mere friendship.
In a letter to Lorena on March 6, 1933, Eleanor writes,
Hick darling, Oh! how good it was to hear your voice, it was so inadequate to try & tell you what it meant, Jimmy was near & I couldn’t say ‘je t’aime et je t’adore’ as I longed to do but always remember I am saying it & that I go to sleep thinking of you & repeating our little saying.
Their saying — “I love you, and I adore you,” — was repeated in hundreds of their heartfelt letters.
Eleanor passed away on November 7, 1962, from tuberculosis. The UN posthumously awarded her one of its early Human Rights Prizes in 1968. She revolutionized the role of First Lady, was a trailblazer for women in national politics in the United States, and she was also bisexual.
