The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice
Authors: Patricia Bell-Scott
Tags: #Political, #Lgbt, #Biography & Autobiography, #History, #United States, #20th Century
The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice
Patricia Bell-Scott
Knopf (2016)
Rating: ★★★★★
Tags: History, United States, 20th Century, Biography & Autobiography, Political, Lgbt
Historyttt United Statesttt 20th Centuryttt Biography & Autobiographyttt Politicalttt Lgbtttt
Longlisted for the National Book Award
A groundbreaking book—two decades in the works—that tells the story of how a brilliant writer-turned-activist, granddaughter of a mulatto slave, and the first lady of the United States, whose ancestry gave her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, forged an enduring friendship that changed each of their lives and helped to alter the course of race and racism in America.
Pauli Murray first saw Eleanor Roosevelt in 1933, at the height of the Depression, at a government-sponsored, two-hundred-acre camp for unemployed women where Murray was living, something the first lady had pushed her husband to set up in her effort to do what she could for working women and the poor. The first lady appeared one day unannounced, behind the wheel of her car, her secretary and a Secret Service agent her passengers. To Murray, then aged twenty-three, Roosevelt’s self-assurance was a symbol of women’s independence, a symbol that endured throughout Murray’s life.
Five years later, Pauli Murray, a twenty-eight-year-old aspiring writer, wrote a letter to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt protesting racial segregation in the South. The president’s staff forwarded Murray’s letter to the federal Office of Education. The first lady wrote back.
Murray’s letter was prompted by a speech the president had given at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, praising the school for its commitment to social progress. Pauli Murray had been denied admission to the Chapel Hill graduate school because of her race.
She wrote in her letter of 1938:
“Does it mean that Negro students in the South will be allowed to sit down with white students and study a problem which is fundamental and mutual to both groups? Does it mean that the University of North Carolina is ready to open its doors to Negro students . . . ? Or does it mean, that everything you said has no meaning for us as Negroes, that again we are to be set aside and passed over . . . ?”
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to Murray: “I have read the copy of the letter you sent me and I understand perfectly, but great changes come slowly . . . The South is changing, but don’t push too fast.”
So began a friendship between Pauli Murray (poet, intellectual rebel, principal strategist in the fight to preserve Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, cofounder of the National Organization for Women, and the first African American female Episcopal priest) and Eleanor Roosevelt (first lady of the United States, later first chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and chair of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women) that would last for a quarter of a century.
Drawing on letters, journals, diaries, published and unpublished manuscripts, and interviews, Patricia Bell-Scott gives us the first close-up portrait of this evolving friendship and how it was sustained over time, what each gave to the other, and how their friendship changed the cause of American social justice.
**
Pauli Murray, 1933
Eleanor Roosevelt, 1934
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright ©
2016
by Patricia Bell-Scott
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Ltd., Toronto
.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC
.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to The Estate of Pauli Murray for permission to reprint excerpts of letters, notes, previously published poems, and photographs by Pauli Murray. Other materials are reprinted by courtesy of The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, The Literary Estate of Eleanor Roosevelt, and The Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University
.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: Bell-Scott, Patricia
Title: The firebrand and the first lady : portrait of a friendship : Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the struggle for social justice / Patricia Bell-Scott
.
Other titles: Portrait of a friendship, Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the struggle for social justice
Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2015033959| ISBN 9781101946923 (eBook) | ISBN 9780679446521 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884–1962—Friends and associates. | Murray, Pauli, 1910–1985—Friends and associates. | Women social reformers—United States—Biography. | Presidents’ spouses—United States—Biography. | African American women civil rights workers—Biography. | African American feminists—Biography. | Episcopal Church—Clergy—Biography. | African American intellectuals—Biography. | Female friendship—United States
.
Classification: LCC E807.1.R48 B45 2016 | DDC 973.917092—dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015033959
Cover images: (left) Graduation photograph of Anna Pauline (Pauli) Murray, 1933. Courtesy Archives & Special Collections, Hunter College Libraries, Hunter College; (right) Eleanor Roosevelt. Science Source / Getty Images
Cover design by Janet Hansen
eBook ISBN 9781101946923
v4.1
a
In memory of Louis Wilbanks Jr., Patrick C. McKenry, and Hilda A. Davis
and for
Charles Vernon Underwood Jr
.
For me, becoming
friends with Mrs. Roosevelt was a slow, painful process, marked by sharp exchanges of correspondence, often anger on my side and exasperation on her side, and a gradual development of mutual admiration and respect.
—
PAULI MURRAY
,
“Challenging Mrs. R.,”
The Hunter Magazine
, September 1983
One of my finest young friends is a charming woman lawyer—Pauli Murray, who has been quite a firebrand at times but of whom I am very fond.
—
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
,
“Some of My Best Friends Are Negro,”
Ebony
, February 1953
The measure of her greatness was her capacity for growth, her ruthless honesty with herself, and the generosity with which she responded to criticisms.
—
PAULI MURRAY
,
Song in a Weary Throat
, 1987
I have known Miss Murray for a long time and she is a very brilliant girl.
—
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
to
David Morse of the
International Labour Organization in Geneva, concerning Pauli Murray’s application for a staff position, June 14, 1951
She asked me of my future plans and seemed to approve. You would have thought I was talking to either you or Aunt Sallie, the way she talked to me.
—
PAULI MURRAY
to Mother [Pauline Fitzgerald
Dame], regarding her first White House visit with Eleanor Roosevelt, June 4, 1943
When more whites and Negroes become friends and lose whatever self-consciousness they started out with, we shall have a much happier world.
—
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
, “Some of My Best Friends Are Negro,”
Ebony
, February 1953
CONTENTS
Introduction: The Hand of Friendship
PART I
TAKING AIM AT THE WHITE HOUSE, 1938–40
1. “It Is the Problem of My People”
2. “Members of Your Race Are Not Admitted”
3. “We Have to Be Very Careful About the People We Select”
4. “I Am Resigning”
5. “We…Are the Disinherited”
6. “It Was the Highest Honor…to Meet and Talk with You”
7. “When People Overwork Themselves,…They Must Pay for It”
PART II
BUMPING UP AGAINST THE LAW, 1940–42
8. “Miss Murray Was Unwise Not to Comply with the Law”
9. “Where Were We to Turn for Help?”
10. “Will You Do What You Can to Help Us?”