Discussion Questions. Eleanor was born into a privileged, high-profile family. How did her upbringing shape the rest of her life? What opportunities did she have?
What challenges did she face? How did Eleanor first become involved in social activism? Why was working in a settlement house significant? How was it different from what was expected of her in society? Why was her marriage so important to her life and career? How did Eleanor see her role as first lady?
What did she do and why? What were some of the issues Eleanor cared most about? What was she able to do to help as first lady? Why do you think Eleanor was uniquely qualified to work with the Human Rights Commission? Why do you think she considered it one of her greatest achievements? Eleanor is considered one of the most important figures in American history. Why do you think this is the case?
What was special about her life and career? Print Section. Suggested Activities. Lesson Plan: In this lesson designed for kindergarten through second grade, students will learn about global citizens and the rights they protect. Both Eleanor and Pauli Murray sought to define what human rights could and should look like in the post-war period.
Read both of their life stories and consider how their approaches and philosophies intersected. Eleanor interacted with so many of the women featured in WAMS! Connect this life story to resources in Modernizing America: — to explore her life during the Progressive Era. Eleanor was a longtime opponent of the ERA, although she was often careful not to make her feelings known publicly.
Eleanor refused to allow the title of first lady to limit her activism and political power. Compare her life story with that of an earlier first lady who also defined the role, Dolley Madison. How did each woman affect change and exercise their roles as unofficial politicians?
Eleanor started her activist career as a volunteer in a settlement house. Source Notes. Print Entire Page. Quick Links. Shop Now. Sign Up. About Curriculum Discover More Search. Eleanor Roosevelt was the niece of one U. Redefining the role of the first lady, she advocated for human and women's rights, held press conferences and penned her own column. After leaving the White House in , Eleanor became chair of the U. The groundbreaking first lady died in in New York City.
Known as a shy child, Eleanor experienced tremendous loss at a young age: Her mother died in and her father followed suit two years later, leading to her being placed under the care of her maternal grandmother.
Eleanor was sent to Allenswood Academy in London when she was a teenager — an experience that helped draw her out of her shell. After Eleanor became reacquainted with her distant cousin Franklin in , the two embarked on a clandestine relationship. They were engaged in and, over the objections of Franklin's mother, Sara, were married on March 17, , a ceremony that featured Theodore walking his niece down the aisle.
As her husband achieved success in politics, Eleanor found her own voice in public service, working for the American Red Cross during World War I.
She also exerted herself more prominently after Franklin suffered a polio attack in that essentially left him in need of physical assistance for the rest of his life. When Franklin took office as president in , Eleanor dramatically changed the role of the first lady. Not content to stay in the background and handle domestic matters, she gave press conferences and spoke out for human rights, children's causes and women's issues, working on behalf of the League of Women Voters.
On the one hand, if you do go and examine the evidence of people who knew her, they consistently say, oh, Mrs. Roosevelt knew nothing about homosexuality. But then of course everybody would go back and read, in shocking and up-close detail, the now-legendary letters between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok , which offer a very forthright record of two people figuring out how to have a loving relationship that admitted of great erotic passion and great, great love.
Yet in her adulthood she flowered into this extraordinarily adaptable and effective person. Bamie was a highly independent woman, of whom it was said that she would have been president had women been allowed in effect to seek the office. Her father, Theodore Sr. There were in fact many hospitals and alms houses and places where people could get care and help that were funded or run by Theodore Roosevelt, Sr.
So, his children and certain of his grandchildren became fully aware of an obligation that is characterized by the phrase noblesse oblige. She was herself an outsider, someone who had been cast by fate, by the deaths over a month period of, first, her mother, then a baby brother, and then her beloved father, respectively, from diphtheria, scarlet fever and alcoholism mixed with drug addiction.
She experienced that sense of exile to the point that when she found people suffering from the same apartness, the same alienation, the same lostness, she understood them, and she felt close. She developed an ability to feel, to see more than was being shown, and to hear more than what was being said. It came out of all the anguish of having been cut off so dramatically from the person she might have been had she continued as the charming, cheerful daughter of Elliot and Anna Roosevelt.
That was the psychological springboard that ultimately enabled her to become a champion for people afflicted by poverty, tyranny, disease, discrimination and dislocation throughout the world. A pivotal experience for the younger Eleanor was her time at Allenswood, a private, bilingual secondary school near London headed by the charismatic French educator Marie Souvestre. You describe the school as joyously alive, with flowers throughout the day rooms in fall and spring.
For all its lovely touches, however, this was no finishing school for debutantes. Souvestre was training young women to think independently and develop a social conscience. Those years left an imprint. For a period after that, it was more about telling young women what they should think and say, how to behave properly.
Allenswood was different. Timid and awkward, she believed that she compared badly with other girls. Roosevelt returned to New York for her social debut in She became involved with the settlement house movement, teaching immigrant children and families on Rivington Street. In , after a long courtship, she married her distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a charming, Harvard graduate in his first year of law school at Columbia University. Her uncle and close relative, President Theodore Roosevelt, walked her down the aisle.
The Roosevelts settled in New York, where Eleanor found herself under the thumb of her controlling mother-in-law, Sara Roosevelt, who, like her grandmother earlier, was harsh in her criticism of her daughter-in-law. While Franklin advanced his career, his wife raised their daughter and four sons under the watchful eye of her often belittling mother-in-law. 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. Hurt when she discovered in that her husband had had an affair with another woman, she remained married, though her feelings changed. She began to live a more independent life and often escaped to Val-Kill, her upstate New York home, where she was also part of a women-owned furniture cooperative.
Nonetheless, she remained his political ally and advisor, among those who urged him to remain in public life despite the polio he contracted in She surrounded herself with politically astute women such as Molly Dewson and Rose Schneiderman.
Her activities were widely covered in the media in the s, making her more publically recognizable than her husband when he decided to run for governor in Though unhappy about his bid for the governorship and his equally successful run for the presidency in , Roosevelt became the most politically active and influential First Lady in history, using the position to advance many of her progressive and egalitarian goals.
In a few short months, she received several hundred thousand responses and donated what she earned from the column to charity. She also authored six books and traveled nationwide delivering countless speeches.
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