Eleanor Roosevelt stamp – USA -1963 is issued to honor Eleanor Roosevelt on the 15th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It features Eleanor at a spinning wheel.
About Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was an American political figure, diplomat, pacifist and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four terms in office, making her the longest-serving first lady of the United States. Roosevelt served as United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952, and in 1948 she was given a standing ovation by the assembly upon their adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Roosevelt was a member of the prominent American Roosevelt and Livingston families and a niece of President Theodore Roosevelt. She had an unhappy childhood, having suffered the deaths of both parents and one of her brothers at a young age. At 15, she attended Allenswood Boarding Academy in London and was deeply influenced by its headmistress Marie Souvestre. Returning to the U.S., she married her fifth cousin once removed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1905. She persuaded Franklin to stay in politics after he was stricken with a paralytic illness in 1921, which cost him the normal use of his legs, and began giving speeches and appearing at campaign events in his place. Following Franklin’s election as Governor of New York in 1928, and throughout the remainder of Franklin’s public career in government, Roosevelt regularly made public appearances on his behalf; and as First Lady, while her husband served as president, she significantly reshaped and redefined the role.
Her work as a first lady of United States
Roosevelt became First Lady of the United States when Franklin was inaugurated on March 4, 1933. Having known all of the twentieth century’s previous first ladies, she was seriously depressed at having to assume the role, which had traditionally been restricted to domesticity and hostessing. Her immediate predecessor, Lou Henry Hoover, had ended her feminist activism on becoming first lady, stating her intention to be only a “backdrop for Bertie. Eleanor’s distress at these precedents was severe enough that Hickok subtitled her biography of Roosevelt “Reluctant First Lady”.
With support from Howe and Hickok, Roosevelt set out to redefine the position. According to her biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook, she became “the most controversial First Lady in United States history” in the process. Despite criticism of them both, with her husband’s strong support she continued with the active business and speaking agenda she had begun before assuming the role of first lady in an era when few married women had careers. She was the first presidential spouse to hold regular press conferences and in 1940 became the first to speak at a national party convention. She also wrote a daily and widely syndicated newspaper column, “My Day”, another first for a presidential spouse. She was also the first first lady to write a monthly magazine column and to host a weekly radio show.
In the first year of her husband’s administration, Roosevelt was determined to match his presidential salary, and she earned $75,000 from her lectures and writing, most of which she gave to charity. By 1941, she was receiving lecture fees of $1,000, and was made an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa at one of her lectures to celebrate her achievements.
Roosevelt maintained a heavy travel schedule in her twelve years in the White House, frequently making personal appearances at labor meetings to assure Depression-era workers that the White House was mindful of their plight. In one famous cartoon of the time from The New Yorker magazine (June 3, 1933), satirizing a visit she had made to a mine, an astonished coal miner, peering down a dark tunnel, says to a co-worker, “For gosh sakes, here comes Mrs. Roosevelt!”
About the stamp
Eleanor Roosevelt stamp – USA -1963 is issued to honor Eleanor Roosevelt on the 15th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It features Eleanor at a spinning wheel. Check out the other stamps of famous personalities here.