Eleanor Roosevelt

October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962

  • 1933 – 1945  First Lady of the United States
  • 1957 – New York CCW
  • she carried a pistol instead of Secret Service protection

“After the head of the Secret Service found I was not going to allow an agent to accompany me everywhere, he went one day to Louis Howe [FDR’s secretary], plunked a revolver down on the table and said ‘Well, all right, if Mrs. Roosevelt is going to drive around the country alone, at least ask her to carry this in the car.’”

Eleanor’s autobiography

“When Roosevelt defied death threats by the Ku Klux Klan to travel  to Tennessee in 1958 to attend a civil rights workshop, she and the woman who picked her up at the Nashville airport drove to the conference with ‘a loaded pistol on the front seat between them.’”

her biographer Allida Black

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

Eleanor Roosevelt, “You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys to a More Fulfilling Life”