Eleanor Roosevelt
The longest-serving First Lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt turned the role into a platform for public advocacy. During her 12 years in the White House, she traveled widely, wrote a syndicated newspaper column, and used her visibility to advocate for civil rights, workers’ rights, and women’s rights.
But Roosevelt’s most impactful work came after her husband’s death. His successor, President Harry Truman, appointed her to the United Nations, where she was elected as the first chair of the newly formed Commission on Human Rights. In that role, she helped navigate disagreements among countries over human rights and led the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the U.N. General Assembly adopted in 1948. Roosevelt considered it her greatest achievement.
She spent the rest of her life advocating for the principles behind the Declaration, work that would shape international law and diplomacy for decades.
