Eleanor Roosevelt’s activism

One hundred years ago today … Eleanor Roosevelt was hailed as “an indefatigable worker” for her work pushing well-endowed churches to accept new congregants to fill out empty pews. 

1921 was a pivotal year for Roosevelt on a number of counts. Following the 1920 election loss of her husband Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the couple had moved to New York City, where Roosevelt would “embark on her own political career,” according to her biographer Blanche Wisen Cook (288). Among other projects, she became involved with the League of Women Voters She had been encouraged in this regard by chair of the League’s New York chapter, Narcissa Cox Vanderlip, whom Roosevelt admired. In the spring of 1921, the League endured a struggle over leadership that threatened Vanderlip’s position. In May, Roosevelt wrote her a letter that began: “I’ve been meaning to write and congratulate you on your wonderful work and the persistence which finally let you succeed” (qtd. Cook, 543).

Roosevelt became the legislative chair of the League’s national organization, in which role she spoke at a May 5th meeting held in Syracuse, NY., reviewing the legislative achievements and failings of the organization, offering a critique of US Congress from the League’s perspective. She inveighed against bills that created election inequities and that reduced mental health care that the League fought against, but noted their progress toward “the eight-hour day for women and ... various welfare bills.” Roosevelt ended with this stirring message about women in politics:

Politics is a powerful weapon in the hands of women and we ought to work together to reform the world which needs it. The reason we can do it better than men is because women instinctively work with a conscience. Politics is not a masculine contrivance, and it is the duty of women to get out and push forward go legislation which will make a better world for our children.

( “Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt Reviews Legislative Activities of Women,” Standard Union, 5 May, 1921, p. 7.)

References/ Further reading:

Cook, Blanche Wisen. Eleanor Roosevelt Vol 1, 1884-1933. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.

– Jonathan Goldman, May 10, 2021

TAGS: Women in politics, religion, activism, equality, voting rights