Eleanor Roosevelt’s blindspot:

Abstract

Eleanor Roosevelt was an American Hero. She had overcome great personal adversity by the time she read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 1948. The occasion represented the pinnacle of her life’s work as an esteemed humanitarian. The title, “First Lady of the World”, bestowed upon her by President Harry Truman was considered well deserved in view of her efforts for social justice and the protection of minorities – for those whose lives had been shattered by the Great Depression, for African Americans and for European Jewry when it was targeted by Hitler. While the stories of the years of her marriage to Franklin Delano Roosevelt have attracted the attention of historians and resulted in numerous scholarly and popular works, the post-White House period has been thus far neglected. It is this latter stage that my research considers. It is ...