Eleanor Roosevelt First Lady and Human Rights Activist (1884–1962)
Eleanor Roosevelt cast a long shadow over the American political landscape. Her life spanned the crises the nation faced as it confronted two world wars, the Great Depression, the cold war, the birth of the United Nations and the human rights movement, and the resurgence of intense debates over civil rights, civil liberties, and feminism. Her transition from progressive reformer to New Dealer to human rights activist put a human face on the policies promoted by her husband, President Franklin Roosevelt, and on the United Nations, the Democratic and Republican parties, and liberalism and its critics.
In late 1936 Roosevelt moved beyond writing books and a monthly newspaper column for Pictorial Review to writing “My Day,” a syndicated column distributed six days a week to more than forty newspapers across the nation until 1962, when illness forced her to reduce her output to three days a week. In 1941 she embarked on her own radio career, interviewing noted political leaders,...
