Biography

Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11, 1884 in New York City. In 1899, Roosevelt began her three years of study at London’s Allenswood Academy, where she became more independent and confident. Her teacher, Mademoiselle Marie Souvestre, with her passionate embrace of social issues, opened Roosevelt up to the world of ideas and was an early force in Roosevelt’s social and political development.

Roosevelt returned to New York for her social debut in 1902. She became involved with the settlement house movement, teaching immigrant children and families on Rivington Street. n 1905, after a long courtship, she married her distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1913 the Roosevelts moved to Washington, DC, when Franklin joined Woodrow Wilson’s administration as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. While she was initially uncomfortable with the DC political scene, Roosevelt was growing in her political consciousness. When World War I broke out, she volunteered with various relief agencies, further increasing her visibility and political clout.

Although initially wary of women’s suffrage, after its passage in 1920, Roosevelt promoted women’s political engagement, playing a leadership role in several organizations, including the League of Women Voters and the Women’s Trade Union League. In the White House from 1933 to 1945, Roosevelt became the most politically active and influential First Lady in history, using the position to advance many of her progressive and egalitarian goals. 

Roosevelt had immense influence on her husband’s decisions as president and in shaping both his cabinet and the New Deal. She lobbied her husband to appoint more women, and ensured that groups left out of the New Deal were included by seeking revisions to programs and legislation, including greater participation for women in the heavily male-dominated Civilian Conservation Corps. She also championed racial justice, working to help Black miners in West Virginia, advocating for the NAACP and National Urban League, and resigning, with much media fanfare, from the Daughters of the American Revolution when they refused to allow African American singer Marian Anderson to perform in their auditorium.

Appointed in 1946, she served for more than a decade as a delegate to the United Nations, where she not only chaired the United Nations Human Rights Commission, she also helped write the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.  Roosevelt’s continued commitment to racial justice was evident in her civil rights work and efforts to push Washington to take swifter action in housing desegregation and protections for Freedom Riders and other activists. In 1960, at the request of President John F. Kennedy, she chaired the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, which released a ground-breaking study about gender discrimination a year after her death in 1963. She also worked on the Equal Pay Act that was passed that same year.

Eleanor Roosevelt continues to be remembered as one of the most prominent humanitarians of her generation, and is one of five women honored in 2023 by the U.S. Mint's American Women Quarters Program. Her quarter features her portrait against the scales of justice, symbolizing her work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“Biography: Eleanor Roosevelt.” Biography: Eleanor Roosevelt, https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/eleanor-roosevelt. Accessed 7 Mar. 2024.