These Press Conferences Were for 'The Girls'

Pioneering journalist Ann Cottrell Free was among those who experienced Eleanor Roosevelt's one-of-a-kind, all-female first lady press conferences.

This is the first story in a two-part series about Ann Cottrell Free and her experience as a journalist in Eleanor Roosevelt’s all-women press conferences.

Journalist Ann Cottrell Free [second from the left] was part of the all-women press conferences held by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt [center]. (Photo courtesy of Elissa Free/Library of Congress)

On a sunny Mother’s Day in 1997, Elissa Free sits in a rocking chair on the back porch of her old farmhouse in rural Virginia at the center of Shenandoah County and readies a cassette tape recorder.

Her 80-year-old mother, Ann Cottrell Free, seated in the opposite rocking chair, waits as her daughter sets the scene.

“We’re starting again,” Elissa Free says into the recorder and notes the time. “It’s in the morning, about 8:30 or so. …She was in the middle of talking about ‘the girls.’”

There had already been hours of recordings. 

“Mrs. Roosevelt’s press conferences continued,” Ann Cottrell Free interjects, and before they get started, her…