Hillary Clinton Channels Eleanor Roosevelt On the Stump

As first lady, Hillary Clinton followed an iconoclastic role model.

Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, right, gestures towards supporters after speaking at her first campaign rally at Four Freedoms Park with husband, Bill Clinton, former U.S. President, second from right, daughter Chelsea Clinton, and Marc Mezvinsky, husband of Chelsea Clinton, on Roosevelt Island in New York, U.S., on Saturday, June 13, 2015. Clinton launched the second phase of her presidential campaign today, drawing heavily on her personal story as she outlined her vision for shared prosperity for all Americans.

Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
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Eleanor Roosevelt was America’s longest-serving first lady, and arguably its most revolutionary. She held her own press conferences—at the first, in 1933, she allowed in only female reporters—she spoke at a national party convention, she traveled around the country to observe living and labor conditions. And when she disagreed with her husband, the president, she made it known. She was an activist, a journalist, a diplomat: instrumental in the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The first lady who followed her, Bess Truman, “wasn’t even in Washington most of the time,” said Eleanor Roosevelt biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook, a professor of history and women’s studies at the City University of New York. “She wanted no part.” First Ladies Jackie Kennedy and Lady Bird Johnson took on more traditional women's roles, too.