Of course she was also a TIRELESS fighter for Negro rights and a great friend and supporter of another great hero--the dedicated Nurse and activist for human rights--Margaret Sanger! This is HISTORY! Bigots would love to rewrite history but they cannot! Sanger and Roosevelt and a dozen others lit the candles that brought a modicum of human rights and civilized status to the poor, the sick, and the afflicted. We owe them. We all owe them.
"Roosevelt received 35 honorary degrees during her life, compared to 31 awarded to her husband.
In 1968, she was awarded one of the United Nations Human Rights Prizes. There was an unsuccessful campaign to award her a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize. Roosevelt is Gallup's ninth most admired person in the 20th century.
While very popular as First Lady, sometimes even ranking higher than her husband in public popularity polls, Roosevelt's popularity increased in her post-White House years. ER was ranked #1 for 15 consecutive years as the "World's Most Popular Woman" from 1946 until 1961 and was up to do so again in 1962 the year she died. In 1961, all volumes of her autobiography were compiled into The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt, which is still in print.
Roosevelt was an early member of the Brandeis University Board of Trustees, delivered the University's first commencement speech, and joined the Brandeis faculty as a visiting lecturer in international relations.
Eleanor survived her husband by nearly 20 years. In 1960, at age 76, Roosevelt's health began to fail her. Roosevelt died at her Manhattan apartment. She was buried in the rose garden of her home at Hyde Park, next to her husband.
At her memorial service, Adlai Stevenson asked, "What other single human being has touched and transformed the existence of so many?" Stevenson also said that Roosevelt was someone "who would rather light a candle than curse the darkness."
Eleanor Roosevelt gained respect and admiration for her hard work, intelligence, common sense, optimism, and kind nature, and received many awards for her humanitarian work.
After her death, her son Elliott Roosevelt wrote a series of best-selling fictional murder mysteries wherein she acted as a detective, helping the police solve the crime, while she was First Lady. They feature actual places and celebrities of the time." |
