Site Dedication

      This website is dedicated to a woman on the Dutch side of my family tree, prominent author, speaker, politician and activist First Lady Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962).
      Although she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution (believing it would adversely affect working women) she worked ceaselessly to promote women's rights in the U.S. And as chair of President Kennedy's ground-breaking Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, she helped to inaugurate the second wave of Feminism.
      Dubbed "First Lady of the World" by President Truman, Eleanor Roosevelt was a tireless advocate for human rights in many areas and used her influence to effect change in unconventional ways. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow African-American contralto Marian Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall. In defiance of the DAR's racist decision, Eleanor Roosevelt, assisted by her husband Franklin Delano Roosevelt, arranged for Anderson to perform an open-air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Anderson sang to a crowd of more than 75,000 people and to millions of Americans listening in on their radios. I would like to have been there to see that.
      Eleanor Roosevelt was my seventh cousin twice removed.