Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the longest-serving First Lady alongside her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt, but Eleanor’s legacy extends far beyond her time in the White House.
Born on October 11th, 1884, Eleanor struggled through the deaths of both her parents and one of her brothers, and after attending finishing school in London at Allenwood Academy, she returned to the states and married Franklin in 1905.
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. Eleanor was the first presidential spouse to host her own press conferences, routinely using this platform to address controversial issues of the time, including civil rights.
In addition to writing her own newspaper column — “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.
Eleanor first met her lover and lifelong friend Lorena Hickock 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. Lorena and Eleanor spent almost every evening together, and they quickly fell into a loving relationship.
Although their duties soon forced them to live in different cities, their relationship is documented in over 3,000 letters to each other. There has been some debate about the meaning of these letters and the intimate relationship between these two women, but as more letters become known, it is increasingly difficult to pretend that their relationship was what Hickock's biographer, Doris Fabra, called an “unusually belated schoolgirl crush."[1]
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 7th, 1962, from tuberculosis. She was one of the most compassionate and outspoken women to grace us with her presence in the White House, revolutionizing the role of First Lady for generations to come.