First Lady Michelle Obama is making bold moves lately, and we don’t just mean her hair-whipping boogie-down on the White House lawn. She sparked a heated national debate recently when she broke precedent by inviting a rapper to read at a White House poetry event. She also scored a big victory for her campaign to end childhood obesity in January when she convinced the world’s largest retailer, Walmart, to eliminate trans fats and reduce sugar and sodium in its packaged foods. All of this just a few months after Forbes named her the most powerful woman in the world and after Kellogg’s, Coca-Cola, and General Mills pledged to lower the calorie content of their foods at her behest.
Like all presidential spouses before her, Michelle is navigating a tricky role in the White House. The First Lady has no official job description and no constitutional mandate; precedent is her only guideline, and historically, the most common role for wives of the commander in chief has been White House hostess and perennial fashion plate. Though the role has evolved over the years, with many adopting causes of their own, few first ladies have had the moxie to shake things up and act as a transformative political force in their own right. Michelle, an Ivy League–educated lawyer and successful community organizer, is doing just that, adding her name to a list of trailblazing women who dared to be ambitious in the White House and forced the country to rethink what it meant to be the president’s first mate. Check out these other presidential partners who revolutionized the role.
Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933–1945
Eleanor Roosevelt described herself as the “ears and legs” of her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but history revealed her to be much, much more. She was primarily concerned with human rights and the plight of the disadvantaged, something she made known in her daily column, “My Day,” which chronicled her travels around the nation and kept the public up to date on White House policies, and was syndicated in 180 newspapers nationwide. She became the first First Lady to testify before a congressional committee and caused a ruckus in 1939 when she stepped down from her role with the Daughters of the American Revolution to protest its decision to not allow a black singer to perform at Constitution Hall.
Her husband died while in office, but Eleanor’s commitment did not: she went on to be elected chairperson for the Commission of Human Rights at the newly formed United Nations in 1946 and drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights two years later. Eleanor’s contributions to civil rights and world peace earned her a place as of one of the greatest humanitarians of her time.
