President Harry S. Truman aptly described Eleanor Roosevelt as the “First Lady of the World.” During World War II—while her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt was President—and for the remainder of her life, Eleanor Roosevelt advocated for social activism, the rights of WWII refugees, women’s expanded roles in the workplace, and the civil rights of African-Americans and Asian-Americans.

Eleanor Roosevelt was a smart, unconventional First Lady—writing her own nationally syndicated newspaper column, testifying before congressional committees, and holding weekly press conferences with female reporters. She was a pragmatic, savvy politician who advised her husband on many policy matters while publicly disclaiming any influence. She served as the United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952 and was appointed Chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—30 rights and freedoms to be upheld for all humans.

In her speech Where Do Human Rights Begin, Roosevelt wrote:

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) was a compassionate and caring woman who forged forward through the loss of both of her parents at a young age to be raised by a strict grandmother, her physical awkwardness of buck teeth and extreme height of almost six-feet tall, her husband’s infidelity with a younger, more attractive woman, and the need to hide her romantic attraction for friend Lorena Hickok. She was also one of the most powerful women in Washington, D.C. A poem by Stephen Vincent Benét, for which Roosevelt was quite fond, captures her essence:

"She was often mistaken, not often blind/And she knew the whole duty of womankind/To take the burden and have the power/And seem like the well-protected flower."