Welcome to Words Matter with Katie Barlow.

Welcome to Words Matter, I'm Katie Barlow.

Our goal is to promote objective reality.

As a wise man once said, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, not their own facts.

Words have power and words have consequences.

This week, in honor of Women's History Month, we wanted to pay tribute to one of the most consequential leaders in American history.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the niece of the 26th president of the United States and the wife of the 32nd, but make no mistake. She was a political thinker, an international activist, and a world leader in her own right.

Of all her achievements and successes, perhaps none was more personally satisfying and poignant than her work after FDR's death at the United Nations, in particular on the universal declaration of human rights.

Adopted at the 3rd UN General Assembly held in Paris, to this day, it is one of the most meaningful and important accomplishments in the 75 year history of that world assembly.

The universal declaration of human rights, as Ken Burns noted in his award-winning series The Roosevelt's, was history's first attempt at laying out the principles under which all nations should behave toward their own citizens and toward each other.

And it was largely the work of one delegate from the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt.

It was no easy task leading the International Drafting Committee at the dawn of the Cold War, but the former First Lady, as always, was shrewd, persuasive, and relentless.

As tough as she was tactful, she drove her fellow delegates so hard that one felt compelled to remind her that they had human rights too.

If they wanted shorter days, FDR Roosevelt's favorite niece answered, they should make shorter speeches.

At 3am on the morning of December 10, 1948, the General Assembly approved the universal declaration of human rights without a single dissenting vote.

After that historic vote, the entire General Assembly did something it had never done before and has never done since.

It rose to give a standing ovation to a single delegate, Eleanor Roosevelt.

With that, let's listen to Eleanor Roosevelt's 1948 speech on the universal declaration of human rights.

Hello, delegate.

The long and meticulous cadet and debate of which this universal declaration of human rights is the product, means that it reflects the composite views of the many men and governments.

Who have contributed to its formulation.

Not every man nor every government can have what he wants in a document of this kind.

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