On My Own

After her husband's death in 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt continued to be an international author, speaker, politician, and activist for the New Deal coalition. She worked to enhance the status of working women. In the 1940s, Roosevelt was one of the co-founders of Freedom House and supported the formation of the United Nations. During her time at the United Nations she chaired the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Active in politics for the rest of her life, Roosevelt chaired the John F. Kennedy administration's ground-breaking committee which helped start second-wave feminism, the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women.