i am sassa

President Truman famously referred to Anna Eleanor Roosevelt as “First Lady of the World” because of all she accomplished for human rights.

Though she only had a small office to herself, she worked at least as hard as her husband, and was even known to compete with him. One of the first articles I read about Eleanor posed the question of whether or not the US has already had a female president due to the massive amount of work she did in her record twelve years as first lady. And she wasn’t even done when that gig was up - after Eleanor left the White House, she served as the first US United Nations Delegate from 1945-1952. She also oversaw the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and was the first person to serve as chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Eleanor took a lot of heat during her time as First Lady, mainly due to the fact that she didn’t seem to give a flip what anyone thought she should do. She fought for equal rights for African Americans, Asian Americans, and women in the workplace. She held women-only press events at the White House, securing the jobs of female reporters. If she disagreed with her husband’s policies, she said so, and she didn’t whisper. And she certainly never filled any role traditionally held by women at home, because she was never home. She traveled constantly, including many times to a little town in West (by God!) Virginia called Arthurdale where she helped develop housing for the families of unemployed miners.

For every awesome deed there is to learn about ER, there are two juicy deets about her rambunctious personal life. After finding out about her husband’s affair, it seems that all bets were off and she was free to love who she chose, including Lorena “Hick” Hickok, the first female (gasp!) journalist to get a front page byline in the New York Times. Clutch your pearls! Ok, ok, it’s technically not proven that her relationship with Hick was a lesbian affair. You read their thousands of love letters and decide for yourself. Or just the 300 that were published in Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok.

Thank you, Eleanor Roosevelt.