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Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady who only admitted women to her press conferences

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt He was born in Manhattan, New York, on October 11, 1884, into a privileged family. She is the niece of an American president, Theodore Rooseveltdeveloped a link with power and politics from an early age.

Unfortunately and despite his comfortable life, he lived a unhappy childhood losing her mother and father while she was still a child. The first, because of the diphtheria. The second, an alcoholic, jumped from one of the windows of the sanatorium in which he was confined after an attack caused by his abstinence syndrome.

After the death of her parents, Eleanor grew up with her grandmother, training in Allenswood Girls’ Academy, where he began to develop his independent thinking. She was always an insecure child, but her stay at the academy and the role of her director, Marie Souvestre, helped develop her trust in herself.

Although piloting a plane already sounds like an adventure, perhaps another kind of adventure also had a place in your private life. The publication of correspondence that he had with Lorena Hickok reveals the passionate romance that arose between the two women.

The author, Susan Quinn, reveals their relationship in her work Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Ladyan history about intense lesbian love between two exceptional women.

It is seen that what it seemedIn public life, a perfect relationship, it was not so perfect in the private sphere, since her husband’s various affairs during his time as president are an open secret. Why should she have deprived herself of building her life too?

Amelia Earhart and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, National Geographic Society event, 1935

“Surprisingly, both Eleanor and Franklin recognized, accepted, and encouraged this situation (…) Eleanor and Franklin were determined people who cared deeply about each other’s happiness, but they realized their own incapacity to provide it.” This is how the biographer Jean Edward referred to the adventures that his marital relationship entailed.

Of course, Eleanor Roosevelt was a woman of many facets. But there was one that stood out above all of them. One that made her the reference point for her, the inspiration she still is today: her unbreakable spirit of struggle in the face of inequality, and her tireless dedication to her cause. In her own words: “It is not enough to talk about peace, you have to believe in it. And it is not enough to believe, you have to work to achieve it”.

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