Eleanor Roosevelt (First Lady/U.S. Delegate to the UN/Human Rights Activist)

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and was an advocate for civil rights.

"It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness."

After her husband died in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an internationally prominent author, speaker, politician, and activist. She worked to enhance the status of working women, although she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because she believed it would adversely affect women.

In the 1940s, Roosevelt was one of the co-founders of Freedom House and supported the formation of the United Nations. Roosevelt founded the UN Association of the United States in 1943 to advance support for the formation of the UN.

She was a delegate to the UN General Assembly from 1945 and 1952, a job for which she was appointed by President Harry S. Truman and confirmed by the United States Senate.

During her time at the United Nations she chaired the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President Truman called her the "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements.

Active in politics for the rest of her life, Roosevelt chaired the John F. Kennedy administration's ground-breaking committee which helped start second-wave feminism, the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women.

Roosevelt was one of the most admired people of the 20th century, according to Gallup's List of Widely Admired People. She was an honorary member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA) Sorority.