Humanitarian; United Nations diplomat; and first lady, the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Her tremendous participation in twentieth century politics impacted widespread issues, including feminism and civil rights, public policy and social work, and international peace relationships with the United States. Born Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, on October 11, 1884, in New York City, to Anna Hall and Elliott Roosevelt. EleanorÕs father was the younger brother of President Theodore Roosevelt (whose presidency lasted from 1901-1909). The death of her mother in 1892 required Eleanor to live with her maternal grandmother. Her father died two years later.

As a teenager, Eleanor suffered from overwhelming shyness. From 1899-1902, she attended Allenswood School in England, where the headmistress Madame Souvestre prided her on what she called a superior intellect and encouraged Roosevelt to believe that she was Òa born leader.Ó She returned to New York in 1902, making her society debut at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on December 11. From 1903-04, her involvement in the Junior League and the Consumers League, both in New York, gave her an early firsthand awareness of the discrimination and poor working conditions within the garment industry, as well as the poverty of immigrant living conditions.

In 1903, she became engaged to Franklin Delano RooseveltÑher distant cousin, then a student at Harvard UniversityÑand the couple was married two years later, on March 17, 1905. President Theodore Roosevelt, EleanorÕs uncle, gave away the bride.

FranklinÕs graduation from Harvard, and then Columbia University Law School, led to a prestigious position in the Wall Street law firm of Carter, Ledyard, and Milburn. Not satisfied with a profession in law, he eventually followed the encouragement of his cousin Theodore and pursued a political career, albeit as a Democrat (President Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican). In 1910, he won a seat in the New York Senate, and during his tenure he came to champion progressive issues, particularly those involved with social policy reform.

In 1912, Eleanor, who had already served as her husband's political helpmate, became even more involved when she attended her first Democratic Party convention. She joined the Red Cross during World War I and visited wounded veterans in the hospital, a morale-boosting practice she continued throughout her life.

In 1918, Eleanor discovered a handful of love letters from her private secretary, Lucy Mercer, addressed to Franklin. Eleanor offered her husband a divorce, which he refused, promising to end the affair instead. The Roosevelts remained married. However, all physical intimacy between them vanished. (Lucy Mercer later married, but after her own husbandÕs death, she and Franklin rekindled their affair, and she attended him on his deathbed in 1945.)

In 1920, Eleanor joined the League of Women Voters, an organization devoted to the advancement of womenÕs political initiatives, and for which Eleanor made her first public speeches. In 1922, she joined the WomenÕs Trade Union League and the WomenÕs Division of the Democratic State Committee, where she befriended numerous leading activists. In 1926, with help from some of them, she purchased a school for girls, named Todhunter, where she taught history and government. During this time, her published writings included an article written for Redbook magazine, ÒWomen Must Learn to Play the Game as Men DoÓ (1928), solidifying her stance as a forceful leader of female independence. The same year, she became director of the Bureau of WomenÕs Activities of the Democratic National Committee.

In 1921, during a vacation at Campobello Island in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Franklin contracted poliomyelitis, which left him paralyzed from the waist down. Despite optimism that his condition was temporary, he never recovered the use of his legs and spent the remainder of his life in a wheelchair. Nonetheless, Eleanor encouraged him to remain in politics, despite this physicallyÑas well as emotionallyÑdebilitating disease. Throughout the next decade, she traveled extensively throughout the nation, observing for and speaking on behalf of her husband on such issues as civil rights and feminist mobility; vicariously maintaining his presence and thus keeping his career alive as he gradually recovered.

During the 1932 presidential election in which he ran against President Herbert Hoover, FranklinÕs unshakable self-confidence and ÒNew DealÓ proposal to the Depression-struck United StatesÑ13 million Americans were unemployedÑwon him the confidence of the nation. In his inaugural address, he stated: ÒThis great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and prosper. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.Ó His premonition eventually came true, although recovery of the economyÑbrought about by New Deal reform policiesÑdid not become a reality until 1938, when Franklin was already well into his second term as president.

On March 6, 1933, Eleanor became the first wife of a president to hold a press conference (throughout her tenure as first lady, she held more than 300 press conferences). Additionally, she allowed only female journalists to attend; and in this way, she pressured the largely male-staffed newspapers to hire female reporters. Frank and articulate, she was a genuine moral force, motivating not only her husbandÕs policy decisions, but the tide of popular opinion as well. In 1935, she began to publish her opinion in a daily syndicated column, ÒMy Day,Ó which she continued to write until her death in 1962.

During the 1930s, she spearheaded an experimental homestead project for coal miners in West Virginia, and in 1934, she helped initiate the National Youth Administration, securing employment rights for young employees. Throughout FranklinÕs four-term tenure as president, Eleanor arranged numerous meetings between him and various activists, spotlighting many issues on the nationÕs political agenda. Among these issues were expanding the role of women in politics, denouncing anti-segregation policy in the South (she once violated segregation laws in Birmingham by sitting defiantly in the center aisle at the Southern Conference for Human Welfare), and creating anti-lynching legislature in cooperation with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Among many other examples of her social advocacy, in February 1939, she publicly resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR)Ña feminist leagueÑafter it barred Marian Anderson, an African-American singer, from performing before its assembly in Washington, D.C. In her letter of resignation to the president general of the DAR she stated, ÒI am in complete disagreement with the attitude taken in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artistÉYou had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way and it seems to me that your organization has failed.Ó Following the very public reprimand, Marian Anderson was then invited by the federal government to perform on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, 1939. The recital was attended by an estimated 75,000 peopleÑof whom the singer later remarked, ÒAll I knew then was the overwhelming impact of that vast multitudeÉI had a feeling that a great wave of good will poured out from these people.Ó

Following FranklinÕs death in 1945, and at the request of President Harry S. Truman, Eleanor became a U.S. delegate for the United Nations. She remained devoted to improving awareness and international policies towards civil and human rights issues. After a 1946 debate with a Soviet delegate over refugee repatriation, the General Assembly voted in her favor, cementing her position as the worldÕs foremost human rights advocate. Her persuasion at the executive level of government continued even after her husbandÕs death. In 1948, she convinced President Truman to aid the newly created country of Israel; she had threatened to resign from the U.N. if he did not. Four years later she actually did resign, following the election of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. She was reappointed by President John F. Kennedy (whose campaign she had actively supported) in 1961, and continued her reports to the General Assembly on the status of civil rights in the United States.

Throughout most of her adult life, she was known as one of the most admired and courageous women in the world. Eleanor died November 7, 1962, and was buried next to her husband at Hyde Park.

In her 1960 autobiography, You Learn By Living, Eleanor writes, ÒYou gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the faceÉ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.Ó

Franklin and Eleanor had six children: Anna, James, Franklin Jr. (who died of influenza as an infant), Elliott, Franklin Jr. II, and John.