ROOSEVELT, ANNA ELEANOR
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884–November 7,
1962), who used the name Eleanor, made a notable contribution to both print and broadcast journalism during her
years as first lady from 1933 to 1945 and subsequently as an
United States representative to the United Nations. Married
to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only individual to have been
elected president of the United States four times, she pursued a parallel career in public communication, making use
of her opportunities as the president’s wife to gain material
for newspaper columns, magazine articles, books, and radio
programs. She also enlarged opportunities for other women
in journalism by holding White House press conferences
for women reporters only, thus forcing some news organizations to hire women to cover her.
She was born on October 11, 1884, in New York City, to
Anna Hall Roosevelt, considered a beauty in elite social circles, and Elliott Roosevelt, the younger brother of Theodore
Roosevelt, who served as president of the United States from
1901 to 1909. Her parents separated due to Elliott Roosevelt’s drinking and drug addiction and both died before she
had her tenth birthday. Sent to live with her maternal grandmother, Mary Ludlow Hall, she received little attention.
She was educated privately and at the Allenswood School
in England, a finishing school for wealthy young women,
which Roosevelt attended from 1899 to 1902.
After making her debut into society, she became engaged
to her distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the two
were married in 1905. From 1906 to 1916 she bore six children, one of whom died in infancy, and devoted herself to
her family while her husband launched a political career.
The couple almost divorced in 1918 when she learned of
Franklin Roosevelt’s affair with Lucy Mercer, her social
secretary, but agreed to stay together for the sake of his
political aspirations and their children.
After her husband was crippled with infantile paralysis
in 1921, she began to make political speeches, overcoming
her own shyness and developing a public presence while
keeping his name before voters in New York State. Coached
in journalistic skills by Louis Howe, a newspaperman who
was Franklin Roosevelt’s chief advisor, she edited the Women’s Democratic News and started to write for mass periodicals, mainly women’s magazines. She also began speaking
on New York radio stations. In addition, she taught history,
literature and current events at Todhunter School in New
York City, a private girls’ school.
Following Franklin Roosevelt’s election as governor
of New York in 1928, she wrote more than twenty magazine articles, gaining an independent income from them.
According to one son, Elliott Roosevelt, it was important
to his mother’s self-esteem to earn money in her own right.
Topics, drawn from her own experiences, included women
and politics, modern marriage, housekeeping, education,
and her own philosophy of life, which called for overcoming personal adversity by drawing on inner resources and
thinking of others.
Following her husband’s election as President in 1932,
her journalistic activity increased. She wrote newspaper
columns, gave sponsored radio broadcasts, and became a
staple of women’s magazines. Offering an unsophisticated
view of such subjects as daily life in the White House,
her comments, allegedly nonpartisan, reinforced Franklin
Roosevelt’s New Deal political philosophy of offering government aid to the poverty-stricken as the nation battled the
Great Depression of the 1930s.
From 1933 to 1935, for example, she wrote “Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Page” in the Women’s Home Companion, then the nation’s top-selling women’s periodical, which
urged readers to send her letters in care of the magazine.
In columns based on these letters, Roosevelt, who received
$1000 a month from the Companion, addressed controversial issues such as improving sweatshop conditions and
outlawing child labor as well as less contentious subjects
like national holidays and gardening. When critics complained that she traded on her husband’s name for both print
and broadcast work, she justified commercial contracts as
first lady on grounds that she donated most of her earnings to charity. In later years she used the income for living
expenses as well as charity.
In the 1940s she was paid $2500 a month for a questionand-answer column, “If You Ask Me,” that gave her views
on personal relationships as well as political topics. It was
published in the Ladies’ Home Journal, which had serialized the first portion of her autobiography, This Is My Story,
in 1937, for $75,000. When the Journal balked at serializing
the second volume of her autobiography, This I Remember,
rights to both it and her column were purchased in 1949 by
McCall’s magazine, a move that helped McCall’s overtake
the Journal in circulation.
Her most famous journalistic venture, a daily syndicated
diary of her activities, called “My Day,” began on December 30, 1935, and continued until shortly before her death in
1962. Billed as a personal chat with her readers, the column
introduced them to the people she met and the places she
went, humanizing the Roosevelt administration and showcasing the accomplishments of women. By 1938 it appeared
in sixty-two newspapers with a total circulation of more
than four million.
Appointed a United Nations delegate after Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s death in 1945, she served until 1952, continuing to write and broadcast. She was one of the first women to participate in public affairs programming on television.
“My Day” emerged as a platform for her political views,
allowing her to oppose McCarthyism, speak up for civil
rights and the establishment of Israel, and back presidential
candidates. After leaving the United Nations, she worked as
a volunteer on behalf of the organization, referring to it in
her magazine articles and columns.
Eleanor Roosevelt died in New York City on November
7, 1962, leaving behind a legacy of activism on behalf of
liberal causes along with more than a dozen books, many
based on her personal experiences and hopes for social betterment. Her journalism was an unique undertaking that
personified interest in presidents’ wives as public figures. It
also claimed their right to their own careers.
Further Reading
Beasley, Maurine H., Holly C. Shulman, and Henry R. Beasley.
The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.
Beasley, Maurine H. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1987.
Black, Allida M. What I Hope to Leave Behind. Brooklyn: Carlson, 1995.
——. Casting Her Own Shadow. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1996.
Chadakoff, Rochelle, ed. Eleanor Roosevelt’s ‘My Day,’ vol. 1.
New York: Pharos, 1989.
Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt, vols. 1, 2. New York:
Viking, 1992, 1999.
Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, “Anna Eleanor Roosevelt,” http://www.
gwu.edu/~erpapers/abouteleanor/erbiograpy.html.
Emblidge, David, ed. Eleanor Roosevelt’s ‘My Day’, vols. 2, 3.
New York: Pharos, 1990, 1991.
Lash, Joseph P. Eleanor and Franklin. New York: Norton, 1971.
Roosevelt, Eleanor. The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt.
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961.
Seeber, Frances. “‘I Want You to Write Me’: The Papers of Anna
Eleanor Roosevelt.” In, eds. Modern First Ladies: Their
Documentary Legacy, edited by Nancy Kegan Smith, and
Mary C Ryan. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and
Records Administration, 1989.
Maurine H. Beasley