​"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

• HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST
  
• REDEFINED the role of First Lady as activist rather than homemaker and party planner
• Niece of Theodore Roosevelt -- her husband was also her distant cousin
• Orphaned at ten years old
• Volunteered at the Rivington Street Settlement House in New York in her late teens
• Before becoming First Lady, she worked with multiple organizations, including the National Consumers League, the Women's Trade Union League, and the League of Women Voters, campaigning for improved working conditions and oversight, child labor laws, affordable housing, women's suffrage, and prison and hospital reform
• Held more than 300 press conferences (no First Lady had ever held one before), but ONLY allowed women reporters to attend them, forcing newspapers to hire more women
• DEFIED racist views by going for an airplane ride with a Black pilot, as well as inviting Black Americans to the White House
• Lobbied to get Mary McLeod Bethune appointed as a director in the National Youth Administration
• Earned as much money per year as her husband through writing and giving speeches; donated most of it
• Served as a delegate to the United Nations, chairing the Human Rights Commission that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• At 77 years old, she was appointed by President Kennedy to chair his Commission on the Status of Women
• Wrote many books, including fiction, social commentaries, and autobiographies
• Nicknamed "First Lady of the World"

Public Domain Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Bibliography: Black, Allida Mae. "Roosevelt, Eleanor." The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, Vol. 3, Oxford University Press, 2008, 609-610.
Doyle, Caitlin. Girls Can Do Anything: From Sports to Innovation, Art to Politics, Meet Over 200 Women Who Got There First. Buffalo: Firefly Books, 2016. Print.
Drimmer, Stephanie W. National Geographic Kids: The Book of Heroines: Tales of History's Gutsiest Gals. Washington DC: National Geographic Partners, LLC, 2016. Print.

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Support these organizations dedicated to preserving her story & mission:

Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site: Val-Kill Cottage
Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library & Museum
Roosevelt Institute

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