Page 8 - 50 American Heroes Every Kid Should Meet (2nd Revised Edition)

Eleanor

Roosevelt

OCTOBER 11, 1884–NOVEMBER 7, 1962

“First Lady of the World”
HUMANITARIAN
DIPLOMAT
FIRST LADY

onely, sad, afraid—these words
Lbarely begin to describe Eleanor

as a child. But this shy little girl couldn’t
stay frightened forever. Not when others were
feeling excluded and unwanted too.
The United States in the 1930s was a racially
divided land. Many white citizens blindly
carried on their parents’ and grandparents’
prejudices against people of color. But not
Eleanor Roosevelt. She was the wife of a
popular president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(FDR), who led our country through the Great Eleanor Roosevelt was the wife of a president,
Depression and World War II. Eleanor believed but she is best remembered as a hands-on social
with all her heart the words of our Declaration activist.
of Independence: that all people are created
equal and have equal rights (“life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness”). And while being for the concert. On Easter Sunday, Marian
afraid was part of her childhood, Eleanor wasn’t Anderson proudly sang in front of the Lincoln
afraid as an adult to stand up for her beliefs. Memorial, and seventy-five thousand people
For example, in 1939 African American came to listen.
singer Marian Anderson was to perform at During that same year, Eleanor attended a
Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. She was meeting in Birmingham, Alabama, where state
an incredibly gifted opera singer. But some of law forbade whites and blacks to sit together
the members of the Daughters of the American in public places. Well, she simply refused to
Revolution (DAR) objected to a black person obey the law and sit on the “white side” of the
singing in their auditorium and canceled the meeting room. Instead, she had a chair placed in
performance. Eleanor, a life-long member of the room’s center aisle. There she sat, showing
the DAR, was outraged. She immediately quit the Alabama legislators what she thought of
the group, then helped arrange a new location their segregation laws.

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