The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (8 page)

· · ·

THE PRESIDENT
’
S STAFF FORWARDED
Murray’s correspondence to
Ambrose Caliver, senior specialist in Negro education at the federal
Office of Education. Caliver would pass it on to
Hilda Worthington Smith, specialist in workers’ education in the WPA, from whom Murray would hear a month later. ER, on the other hand, responded in two weeks.

December 19, 1938

My dear Miss Murray:

I have read the copy of the letter you sent me and I understand perfectly, but great changes come slowly. I think they are coming, however, and sometimes it is better to fight hard with conciliatory methods. The South is changing, but don’t push too fast. There is a great change in youth, for instance, and that is a hopeful sign.

Very sincerely yours,

Eleanor Roosevelt

While the first lady’s plea for patience was not an answer Murray could accept, she was grateful that ER “
answered under her personal signature.” The contrasting tone in their exchange—Murray the impatient youth and ER the cautious elder—symbolized the tension at the beginning of their friendship.

Even though ER advised Murray against pushing “too fast,” the young woman’s argument reverberated two days later in “My Day.” “
I could not help thinking of some of the letters which pass through my hands,” the first lady told readers. Paraphrasing Murray’s appeal to the president, ER wrote, “
Are you free if you cannot vote, if you cannot be sure that the same justice will be meted out to you as to your neighbor; if you are expected to live on a lower level than your neighbor and to work for lower wages; if you are barred from certain places and opportunities?”

Left to right: University of North Carolina president Frank Porter Graham, Eleanor Roosevelt, and
Daily Tar Heel
reporter Louis Harris en route to a luncheon at the Campus Inn, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1942. Harris, who would become an influential pollster, covered campus reaction to Pauli Murray’s application for admission.
(Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

2

“Members of Your Race Are Not Admitted”

O
n December 12, 1938, shortly after Pauli Murray wrote to the Roosevelts, the
U.S. Supreme Court issued a six-to-two decision in the case of
Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada
. The plaintiff,
Lloyd Lionel Gaines, was an honors graduate of
Lincoln University. Lincoln, an all-black
college located in Jefferson City, Missouri, had no
law school, and Gaines, a duly qualified state resident, had applied to the University of Missouri School of Law. Because he was African American, the university refused to admit him. Gaines and NAACP counsel
Charles Hamilton Houston appealed first to the county and state courts, which
upheld the university’s decision. From there, they took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

To the delight of the NAACP and the dismay of southern segregationists, the high court held that the state of Missouri could not deny Gaines admission to the University of Missouri School of Law on racial grounds and at the same time provide legal education to whites within the state. The court directed Missouri to provide legal education to blacks “
substantially equal” to that offered whites, and it forbade the state from using a “limited demand” for legal education by blacks as an excuse for discrimination in favor of whites.

The court also ruled that Missouri could not satisfy the requirements of the equal protection clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment by making legal education available to its black residents outside the state, as it had previously done. In short, the
Gaines
decision torpedoed the strategies southern authorities used to maintain segregated schools. Funding Gaines so he could attend law school in another state was no longer an option. Only the possibility of separate and “substantially equal” facilities remained viable.

Thrilled by the court’s opinion, Murray sent a letter of congratulations and encouragement to Gaines. This victory marked a milestone for the NAACP legal brain trust. She thought it improved the prospects for her application to the University of North Carolina, as well.
By the time
Hilda Smith acknowledged Murray’s letter to President Roosevelt and offered to help identify a school that would admit her, Murray was determined to see how far she could push UNC.

The
Gaines
decision was barely forty-eight hours old when UNC dean
William W. Pierson drafted a letter to Murray that ignored the implications of what the federal court had done. “
I am not authorized to grant you admission to our Graduate School,” Pierson wrote. “Under the laws of North Carolina, and under the resolutions of the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina, members of your race are not admitted to the university. It has long been the social policy of the State to maintain separate schools for the whites and Negroes.” Acknowledging that no black college in North Carolina offered graduate degrees, the dean continued, “It is expected that the Legislature of the State will make provision for graduate instruction for Negroes.” But the nature of that provision was yet to be announced.

Murray was undeterred.
Unlike
Thomas R. Hocutt, a graduate of the
North Carolina College for Negroes, whose earlier attempt to enroll at UNC was thwarted by the refusal of NCCN president
James E. Shepard
to release his transcript, Murray had proffered a bachelor of arts from
Hunter College and a fully completed application.

Convinced that the scales of justice were tilting in her direction, Murray dispatched a letter of introduction to UNC president
Frank Porter Graham on December 17, 1938, opening a three-month exchange with campus leaders. In addition to proposing that she and Graham meet, Murray indicated that she had been reared in
North Carolina and that she was a graduate of the state’s public schools. She underscored the significance of the
Gaines
decision, and she reminded Graham of the responsibility for
liberal leadership
Franklin Roosevelt had entrusted to the
university.

If Murray’s legal argument did not move Graham, her characterization of the moral problem should have made him cringe. “
How much longer,” she asked, “is the South going to withhold elementary human
rights from its black citizens. How can Negroes, the economic backbone of the South for centuries, defend our institutions against threats of fascism and barbarism if we too are treated the same as the
Jews of
Germany?” To make sure Graham understood her intentions, Murray threatened to follow Gaines’s example. “
It would be a victory for liberal thought in the South,” she wrote, “if you were favorably disposed toward my application instead of forcing me to carry the issue to the courts.”

· · ·

FRANK GRAHAM
, a native North Carolinian and a UNC alumnus, was a friend of the Roosevelts’. The president had twice tapped Graham, a
southern liberal and a supporter of the
New Deal, to chair the study committee on unemployment insurance and social security in 1934, and again to head the advisory committee on the economic problems of the South in 1938. FDR’s effusive speech at Chapel Hill was in part a reflection of his regard for Graham, whom some believed Roosevelt eyed as a potential running mate.

Eleanor Roosevelt’s friendship with Graham began in 1935, when he invited her to speak at graduation. She was the first woman to give a commencement address, and the first first lady to visit the campus. Like Graham, she valued open dialogue. Their mutual concern for the poor and minorities drew them to organizations such as the
Southern Conference for Human Welfare, where they became natural allies and their friendship blossomed.

“Dr. Frank,” as he was affectionately called around campus, had a record that made liberals proud.
He had permitted the black poet Langston
Hughes to speak at the university, even though 285 citizens had signed a petition sent to North Carolina governor
Oliver Max Gardner opposing Hughes’s appearance.
On learning that the medical school had a quota system for
Jewish applicants, Graham abolished it, over the dean’s objection.
His leadership of the
SCHW, whose racially diverse membership included Republicans and Democrats, along with Communists and socialists, made him a target for conservative critics.

In his keynote address at the founding meeting of the SCHW, Graham, whose short, 125-pound frame bore no relationship to his personal power, brought the audience to its feet when he declared, “
The black man is the primary test of American
democracy and
Christianity.” This statement would have pleased Murray had she been present, for she had scribbled a similar thought in one of her notebooks: “
It seems to me that the testing ground of democracy and Christianity in the United States is in the South.” She had repeated essentially the same argument in her letter to Franklin Roosevelt.

Not one to use words carelessly, Murray meant what she wrote. She viewed her application as a test for UNC, American democracy, and Christianity. And she dared professed
liberals, such as Graham and the Roosevelts, to do more than say the right thing.

Graham found himself cornered by political realities antithetical to his personal ideals. He believed in educational opportunity for blacks, and he was “
aware of the inequities” Murray pointed out. Yet as a state employee, he felt bound not to admit blacks until state laws were changed. His only recourse, he wrote to Murray, was to advocate for the development and strengthening of programs at black colleges, as he’d done. He was under intense criticism for what he had “tried to do in behalf of Negro people,” and he implored Murray not to disrupt the progress made thus far. In the end, the races “go up or down together,” he warned.

While Murray could not agree with Graham’s obedience to a law she believed unjust, she had to admit that he wrote a “
very fine letter.” It had the familiar ring of Eleanor Roosevelt’s earlier message: to be patient and avoid provoking the opposition. It was advice Murray would not heed.

3

“We Have to Be Very Careful About the People We Select”

I
n January 1939, Murray sent copies of her correspondence with UNC officials to
NAACP executive secretary
Walter White. White passed her materials on to
Thurgood Marshall, assistant special counsel for the association. While Murray awaited word from Marshall, the local media and then the
national press picked up the story of her application.

When Murray saw the January 6, 1939, headline of the
Durham Morning Herald
, “Negress Applies to Enter Carolina,” she felt as if she had been slapped in the face. That her name had been withheld did not numb the sting of the offensive noun or the opinion reflected. “
Rational members of both races understand that the policy of segregation of races with respect to schools is a fixed one in this part of the country,” reported the newspaper. “No one in his right mind favors trying to abandon or materially amend that policy at this juncture.”

North Carolina governor
Clyde R. Hoey’s response to Murray’s application lacked Frank
Graham’s diplomacy and Eleanor Roosevelt’s hopefulness. “
North Carolina does not believe in social equality between the races and will not tolerate” integrated schools, said Hoey. He favored “
equality of opportunity” for blacks “in their respective fields of service.” What the governor meant was that he would upgrade black schools, if necessary, to keep UNC all white.

Eager to share her position, Murray launched her own publicity campaign, sending
open letters to Hoey and copies of her correspondence with UNC officials to the press. African American newspapers gave
prominent coverage to her case.
The
Carolina Times
, the black weekly
in Murray’s hometown edited by her friend
Louis E. Austin, reprinted her letter to UNC’s President
Graham and ran an editorial with a photograph and a warning: “
North Carolina will do well to regard the application of the young Negro woman from New York as having the support of a majority of thinking Negroes in the state. There will be many more to follow from points much closer.”
The
Afro-American
, which reached a national audience, excerpted Murray’s letter to Franklin Roosevelt under the title “Did F.D.R. Mean It?” and highlighted the paradox of the president’s remarks at UNC and the school’s rejection of Murray’s application.

According to the
Daily Tar Heel
, sentiment at UNC was mixed.
Howard K. Beale, a professor of history, and
Paul Green, the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and English professor who had invited Langston
Hughes to campus, wanted to admit Murray outright. UNC was either a
liberal institution or not, argued Beale. If it was the former, then the only option was to welcome qualified blacks. By contrast, Professor
Howard W. Odum, who headed the School of Public Welfare and the Sociology Department, to which Murray had applied, said the time was not right. Odum, a native
southerner and an influential scholar of race relations, insisted that integration had to be gradual and carefully planned. It was “
asking too much” of the South, he said, to admit Murray immediately.