That Moment When Eleanor Roosevelt Made the ‘Most Fateful Decision of Her Life’

Historian Allida Black talks to the American FLOTUS podcast about the former first lady’s post-World War II legacy.

Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt holds the poster of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was drafted by a United Nations committee chaired by Roosevelt in Lake Success, New York, in November 1949. (FDR Presidential Library & Museum)

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was stricken with polio in 1921, years before his presidency, it profoundly impacted his wife, Eleanor. Not only because of the devastating diagnosis, but because she had just “come to grips with his affection for Lucy Mercer,” a secretary to Mrs. Roosevelt with whom he sustained a long affair.

In that moment, Allida Black, editor emeritus of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers project at George Washington University, tells American FLOTUS host Alan Lowe that Eleanor Roosevelt was faced with making the “most fateful decision of her life.”

“Does she give up who she is, who she struggled so hard to become to care for him? Or, is there a way that they can continue together?” Black asks rhetorically.