An Introvert as Humanitarian
This post pays homage to Eleanor Roosevelt, whose quiet, forceful and principled activism demonstrated how an introvert could have an outsized public impact.
When she died in 1962, hundreds of millions in dozens of countries mourned her as “First Lady of the World.” She had stood up countless times for women, racial minorities and poor people, with a vision of justice, dignity and respect. Decades before today’s feminism, she demonstrated that married women could accomplish much more than just sparkle and charm alongside their husband. As the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, she held more than 300 press conferences, speaking about such issues as remedying poverty, furthering civil rights and triumphing over fascism. She spearheaded the creation of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and chaired the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. In her seventies, Eleanor Roosevelt averaged 150 speaking engagements a year.
Let’s see how all of this gibes with her inborn temperament as an introvert.
Born in 1884 to one of the wealthiest families in New York, Eleanor Roosevelt was adored by her alcoholic father and spurned by her mother for being awkward and homely. Her mother even nicknamed her “Granny” because the girl was so serious and quiet. Although that surely stung, Eleanor found contentment in books and a vivid imagination. “I lived in a dream world of my own, thinking of the life I wanted and keeping up a kind of private correspondence with my imaginary friends,” she wrote in an autobiography.
Orphaned at 10, Eleanor went to live with her grandmother, who hired private tutors to educate her. But from age 15 through 18, she attended a boarding school in England, where the headmistress took a particular interest in Eleanor, taking her traveling and overseeing her studies. The other girls at the school admired Eleanor’s kindness, intelligence and curiosity. She gained confidence, stood tall and expressed independent opinions. Undoubtedly, this experience gave her a firm sense of herself as separate from the social whirl that girls from her background were expected to join once they “came out” as debutantes. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent,” she later declared – one of Roosevelt’s many insights that continue to strengthen the backbone of anyone who feels looked down on.
We can see the introvert influence in a key decision Eleanor made at the outset of her marriage to Franklin Roosevelt. A distant cousin, he was drawn to her empathy and independence. Eleanor’s uncle, President Teddy Roosevelt, offered to host the wedding at the White House, but she declined, explaining that they preferred something “more private.” The wedding took place instead at the New York City home of Eleanor’s aunt. In an echo of many other prominent introverts’ distaste for ceremonial fuss, as a political wife Eleanor continued to minimize her involvement in purely social events.
Her adult life featured a remarkable degree of public activism amidst family dramas of illness, infidelity and a domineering mother-in-law. Eleanor Roosevelt anchored herself by keeping a daily diary for decades, rather than by talking out problems with others. She also enjoyed expressing herself in letters and in a syndicated column for around 180 newspapers called “My Day” that she wrote for more than a quarter of a century. As an increasingly accomplished public speaker on radio and eventually on TV, she impressed listeners not with emotional charisma but with deep and sincere convictions.
When it came to causes that she championed, Roosevelt had a knack for taking actions that uniquely dramatized the issues involved. At the White House, she held frequent press conferences – but allowed in only women reporters. This spurred many media outlets to hire women so as to have access to these events. In 1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let African American singer Marian Anderson perform in their Constitution Hall, Eleanor resigned from the organization. But even more effectively, she arranged for Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial, an Easter Sunday concert that was attended by 75,000 people. Also in the late 1930s, while attending a meeting at an Alabama church where Whites sat on one side and Blacks on the other side, Roosevelt pulled her chair into the aisle, where she sat smack in the middle, bridging the segregationist divide.
Behind the scenes, Roosevelt placed great emphasis on meeting ordinary folks, visiting coal miners, prisoners, soldiers and downtrodden people of all races face to face, listening deeply and reporting back to FDR and others in the government. Eleanor’s listening tours, her favoring of written expression and her creatively standing up for moral principles continue to mark her as a role model for other introverts interested in fostering change while remaining true to themselves.