The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (21 page)

Murray also enclosed a version of the
poem
“
I Just Want to Eat, Mister,” which she’d dedicated “to the brave band of Howard University students who held the picket line at Little Palace Cafeteria and to the Little Greek, Mr. Chaconas, who promised to try our way.” This piece revealed a side typically not visible in Murray’s self-assured prose. Only
Thurman, Murray’s spiritual adviser, and close friends,
like Powell,
Ware, and Redmond, saw the private strain of leadership this stanza captured.

Oh God, I’m cold. It’s sleeting out here
,

And it’s raining, too; I’ve got an hour to walk
.

Hope I can stick it out
.

They think I’m strong

They elected me as a leader
,

But I’m cold, Lord, and I’m hungry
.

Murray’s compassion for Chaconas found expression in the poem as well.

But I don’t know, Lord
.

He’s a little man. He’s a Greek, He has no country
,

And sometimes I think I don’t have a country, too
—

Now Lord, what must I do
—

I don’t want to run him out of business
—

But I can’t let the kids down
.

I’ve got thirty minutes to go
.

And I’m cold
,

I’m hungry
,

I’m wet
—

Lord, you be the judge
—

Tell us
both
what to do
—

That
Murray wanted to share her poetry with the first lady signaled a growing trust in the friendship.
For Eleanor Roosevelt, who loved poetry and Murray’s favorite poet,
Stephen Vincent Benét, Murray’s poem was a pleasant surprise. It “
is well done,” the first lady wrote back.

Prior commitments prevented ER from participating in the training institute; however, she did invite Murray and the recently married
Pauline Redmond to tea on May 31 at the
White House.
At Murray’s request, her seventy-three-year-old adoptive mother, Pauline Dame, was added to the guest list.

· · ·

LAW SCHOOL
and the Little Palace boycott were not the only commitments on Murray’s agenda. She was active in the
March on Washington Movement, under whose auspices she had organized the silent demonstration to protest
Odell Waller’s
execution. MOWM was still pressing
Franklin Roosevelt on civil rights, even though he had issued
Executive Order 8802, which prohibited racial
discrimination in the national
defense industry, and
A. Philip Randolph had suspended the march. Murray joined the activists who drafted a program of demands at the MOWM policy conference in Detroit, on September 26–27, 1942.
They called for the elimination of the
poll tax and discrimination in federal jobs and job training programs, integration of the armed forces, eradication of racial bias in the media, employment of black reporters at white newspapers, special initiatives to address black women’s employment problems, and passage and enforcement of laws guaranteeing civil rights and due process.

MOWM’s bold agenda, Randolph’s use of the
Gandhian phrase “civil disobedience,” and his insistence that MOWM leadership and funding come exclusively from African Americans worried some liberals. After stories about the conference appeared in black newspapers, the black conservative
Warren H. Brown accused the black press and black leaders of “
sensation-mongering,” undermining the national morale in wartime, and fostering anti-Americanism.

Murray forwarded the MOWM conference proceedings and a pamphlet on civil disobedience to the White House after she learned that Eleanor Roosevelt had said that Brown’s criticism was “
temperate” and “
that there are times when the Negro press is unwise.” Murray admired the black press, and she took issue with Brown and ER. “
Some of us thought” Mrs. Roosevelt’s “statement on the Brown article…while sincere,
was unfortunate,” Murray wrote in the cover letter for an information packet she asked Malvina
Thompson to give the
first lady.

· · ·

THE FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES COMMITTEE
had been on shaky ground since its inception, in 1941. It lacked the power to enforce its judgments, and employers regularly defied its recommendations. Several members had resigned in frustration.

It bothered Murray that FDR had not appointed a woman to the committee. Plans were under way to appoint new members, and Murray, radicalized by her law school experience and her
friendships with
women activists, wired ER.

UNDERSTAND COMPLETION APPOINTMENT SIX-MAN FEPC COMMITTEE EXPECTED MOMENTARILY. CONVINCED GRAVE ERROR IF WOMAN MEMBER NOT INCLUDED. WOMAN WOULD BALANCE TENSIONS AND HELP OVER TACTLESS SITUATIONS. SURE YOU UNDERSTAND. PLEASE DO WHAT YOU CAN TO HELP ON THIS ISSUE. BELIEVE CAROLINE F WARE FRIEND OF MISS HILDA SMITH FITS ADMIRABLY BUT PRESENT ISSUE APPOINTMENT OF WOMAN NOT PARTICULAR PERSONALITY.

ER’s long-standing affiliation with the women’s trade union movement gave her an understanding of women’s employment needs. She regularly lobbied the president and administration officials about the needs of women workers.
When Franklin Roosevelt reconstituted the FEPC, one of the six appointees was a woman,
Sara E. Southall, supervisor of employment and
service for the International Harvester Company.

· · ·

MEMORIAL DAY, MAY
31, 1943, marked Murray’s first social visit to the
White House. To have gotten such an invitation filled her with pride and a sense of history. Her undergraduate friends were so thrilled that they gave her a bouquet of roses for ER.

The closer the time drew to Murray’s five o’clock appointment, the more apprehensive she became.
Aunt Pauline was too ill to go, and Murray almost did not make it herself. Two hours before she and
Pauline Redmond were due at the Executive Mansion, Theodore “Tee”
Coggs, Pauline’s husband, arrived. The Coggses had not seen each other since their marriage, right before he left for army training camp. Tee had only a weekend pass, and Pauline announced that she intended to stay with him.

Murray would not consider going to the White House alone, and she could not imagine passing up the opportunity to have tea with the first lady. ER had invited them together—and together Murray was determined to go.
She called the White House, talked her way through the switchboard operators to Tommy, and explained the situation. Tommy conferred with ER and added Tee to the guest list.

Just when Murray thought all was well, Tee, a newly commissioned lieutenant, announced that he was not going to the White House. His trousers were crumpled, and he had no change of clothes. He insisted that presenting himself to the first lady in a “
wrinkled” uniform would be disrespectful and reflect poorly on the army, in particular the black troops. Murray realized that she had no choice but to have Tee’s pants pressed. She phoned Tommy again to say they were delayed and ask if they might still come. Tommy rescheduled the group for five-thirty.

With Lieutenant Coggs dressed in a crisp uniform, the trio drove the couple’s 1933 Chevrolet at breakneck speed to the White House. They arrived at the gate just in time, but had inadvertently left their admission cards at home. They had to wait for security clearance from the first lady’s office.

Finally, Murray and the Coggs couple were escorted to the south portico, where they joined ER and Tommy for the next hour and a half. The first lady graciously accepted Murray’s wilted roses, which were now a reflection of how drained she felt. Only after Murray inhaled the fragrant white cups of the “
big magnolia tree planted by Andrew Jackson” and the honeysuckle blossoming in the adjacent garden did she relax.

While the Coggses basked in their love for each other at this “
mini-reception,” Murray noticed the first lady’s “sensible Red Cross shoes” and thought that someone practical enough to wear these round-toed, thick-heeled lace-ups would certainly appreciate the saga of near calamities that had delayed their arrival. Murray recounted the day’s events, and ER burst into “
spontaneous laughter.”

The memory of that afternoon lingered with both women. ER recalled the pleasant “
tea for a few guests and dinner on the porch” in her column. Murray waxed enthusiastic about the first lady’s warmth to relatives. “
She asked me of my future plans and seemed to approve,” Murray wrote to
Aunt Pauline. “You would have thought I was talking to either you or Aunt Sallie, the way she talked to me.”

The debris looters left at Orkin’s store on 125th Street was typical of what Pauli Murray saw after the Harlem riot on August 2, 1943. One southern newspaper held Eleanor Roosevelt “morally responsible” for the violence erupting around the country.
(Bettmann/CORBIS)

17

“Forgive My Brutal Frankness”

F
or Pauli Murray, tea with Eleanor Roosevelt in the
White House was an all-too-brief
break from the demands of being a full-time law student and a full-time activist.
Murray’s unrelenting schedule and the backlash about her affection for a second-year female student took a toll on her health in the spring of 1943. Before the end of the semester, she was
underweight, experiencing digestive and menstrual disturbances, and alternating between “
periods of crying and cheerfulness.” She spent a week in the Howard University infirmary before going to stay with Caroline
Ware and her husband.

In the sun and fresh air at
the Farm, Pauli tried to get over the campus gossip and a doctor’s threat to have her placed under
“
mental observation” at the city
hospital. Although she was worn-out and malnourished, she sensed that the doctor’s warning had as much to do with her sexuality
as it did with her physical
health. Pauli’s “
emotional attachments” to women troubled her sister Mildred, too, on many levels. One, Mildred, like their mother, Agnes, had become a nurse, and her medical training taught that homosexuality was a mental disorder. Two, the “
terrific breakdowns” Pauli suffered when a “love affair” ended weighed heavily on Mildred, for she was the sibling closest to Pauli and usually called upon to serve as caregiver. Three, Mildred was a member of a tightly knit circle of African American middle-class professionals in Washington, D.C., and she worried that Pauli’s presence at Freedmen’s Hospital, where she worked, would reignite old rumors of the
“mad
Murrays.”

Pauli knew she had the support of
Aunts Pauline and Sallie and a small circle of friends. She also knew that most people neither understood nor accepted her “
pattern of life,” she confessed in a heartfelt missive to Aunt Pauline.

This little “boy-girl” personality as you jokingly call it sometimes gets me into trouble. And to try to live by society’s standards always causes me such inner conflict that at times it’s almost unbearable. I don’t know whether I’m right or whether society (or some medical authority) is right—I only know how I feel and what makes me happy. This conflict rises up to knock me down at every apex I reach in my career and because the laws of society do not protect me, I’m exposed to any enemy or person who may or may not want to hurt me.

Convinced that she had “
done nothing of which to be ashamed,” Murray considered transferring to the
University of Michigan or dropping out to pursue a career as a journalist.
But Leon Ransom, whose faith in Murray had not wavered, insisted that she had “
legal genius.” He wanted her to finish at Howard, and he arranged for her to take her final exams over the summer.

Murray went to
Durham to continue her recovery, but the war and escalating racial tensions made it difficult to rest. On June 7, she wrote to ER about two matters, making no mention of her health or the difficulties at school.
One topic was the first lady’s ten-year-old grandson,
William Donner, who’d accidentally shot an eleven-year-old playmate with a .22-caliber rifle. Murray, a pacifist who believed in “
wearing a rose instead of carrying a gun,” said of the incident, “
We cannot expect to put guns in the fathers’ hands and not have little children follow unconsciously in their footsteps.”