Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
When Franklin D. Roosevelt took the presidential oath in March 1933, his wife Eleanor entered the White House declaring that she was "just going to be plain, ordinary Mrs. Roosevelt. And that's all." The promise was not long kept. Soon Eleanor Roosevelt was deeply engrossed in the politics of her husband's New Deal. Touring the nation's depression-ridden communities, she returned to Washington to promote Federally sponsored planned communities. She made speeches and gave press conferences where addressed such matters as child labor and sweatshops. Most important, she was her husband's conscience urging him toward some measures that he might otherwise have avoided in the name of political expedience. As she herself put it after FDR's death, "I think I sometimes acted as a spur even though the spurring was not always welcome."
The New York Times ran this portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt by S.J. Woolf with an article about her written by Woolf. FDR had died only the previous spring, but already, Woolf reported, the former first lady was already reestablishing her active public life which would soon include serving as a delegate to the new United Nations.
Samuel J. Woolf (1880-1948)
Charcoal and chalk on paper, 1945
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
©Estate of S. J. Woolf
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