The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (12 page)

Since Murray’s hospitalization at the Long Island Home three years
earlier, she had been consulting with doctors and scouring the scientific literature in search of an “
answer to true homosexuality.” That Murray asked one psychiatrist if she had “
a mother fixation” demonstrated her familiarity with psychoanalysis. Having rebuffed psychiatric treatment and the theory that her attraction to women was a manifestation of homosexuality, Murray constructed an alternative explanation.
She convinced herself that she
was a pseudohermaphrodite with secreted testes (and she would hold this belief until X-rays of her uterus, fallopian tubes, and the surrounding area proved her wrong). Such a condition pointed to biology—specifically, the presence of male gonads and hormones—rather than mental illness as the source of her attraction to women, her tomboyishness, and her lack of interest in feminine pursuits, such as housekeeping.

While this idea gave Murray a way to reject a homosexual identity, it did not protect her from the perception of others, including the doctors who refused to prescribe the hormones she hoped would help her, that she was lesbian. Nor did it spare her the prejudice and discrimination against homosexuals. Just a few years earlier, Murray had proudly asked
Nancy Cunard to publish a photograph of Pete, her “boy-self.”
Now the suspicion of people she admired, such as
Thurgood Marshall, and possibly the rejection of someone she loved overwhelmed her with shame and despair.

· · ·

TWO DAYS AFTER
the NSW banquet, Murray, much improved, wrote an upbeat letter thanking Eleanor Roosevelt for her contribution. Murray admitted that she was physically exhausted, but she said nothing of her emotional difficulties. “
When people overwork themselves, even for the best of causes, they must pay for it,” she wrote. “And so I was in the Hospital on the night of the
Annual Dinner-Forum for National Sharecroppers Week, and my punishment was that I was unable to hear you speak, or to participate in the activities of our campaign, even by listening over the radio. I am still in the Hospital, but hope to be out by the first of next week.”

Murray concealed that she was in a psychiatric unit by writing on NSW letterhead and using her home address for the return. The only hint of her anguish was her reaction to a comment ER made about a
character in
Elizabeth Goudge’s book
The Sister of the Angels
. That character, ER had said in her column, “
accepts people as they are and does
not try to turn them into the kind of people they should be.” Murray made no mention of her own longing for acceptance, but she did tell ER that her
column had “
helped people along in their personal problems.”

Murray also apologized for lashing out at
ER’s remarks about the
Keith Theatre protest. The version of “My Day” Murray read in the
New York World-Telegram
had
omitted the most important paragraph—the last one. “Here you developed your attitude on the basic rights of minority groups, but it was only after I had written you a critical comment that I discovered this paragraph in one of the Negro news weeklies,” Murray explained. That deleted paragraph left no doubt where ER stood on the theater’s policy. She had written, “
There are basic rights, it seems to me, which belong to every citizen of the United States and my conception of them is not a rule in the nation’s capital which bars people freed from slavery from seeing in a public place one of the greatest dramatic presentations of that story.”

It pleased Murray that ER had spoken out about the theater’s policy. It must have thrilled Murray to learn that
Thomas Bomar and his daughter were “
sitting in row 5” the night of the premiere. According to the
Philadelphia Afro-American
, the management had given Bomar complimentary tickets before they realized he was black, and he “
had slipped unceremoniously past the ticket takers who were unable to distinguish him as colored, as were the judges who had selected him from among hundreds of photographs as the perfect
Lincoln double.”

ER had no knowledge of the stressors in Murray’s life. Yet ER may have sensed the young woman’s vulnerability, for she reached out with a bouquet of flowers and a get-well note. She congratulated Murray on an “
excellent” banquet and made a one-hundred-dollar donation. She also opened the door to tea “here [in the White House] or in New York later.”

Rest and the first lady’s “
tentative invitation” revitalized Murray. She drafted a list of things she intended to do. Writing was priority number one. Dancing more often and improving her “
swimming technique to the point of going into deep water” made the list as well. In good spirits by the next week, Murray wrote to the first lady again: “
Your lovely letter and flowers brought happiness to many people—patients, doctors, nurses, neighbors and friends. They lived in almost as many homes as there were flowers for more than a week. My greatest joy was in sharing them and in the realization that those who received them felt as happy and honored as I. And so a great personality touches the lives and hearts of many people unknowingly.”

PART II

BUMPING UP AGAINST THE LAW,
1940–42

A vermin-infested jail in Petersburg, Virginia, where Pauli Murray and Adelene McBean spent Easter weekend, March 1940. After this encounter with “southern justice,” Murray would no longer “regard it with the same terror.” (
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
)

8

“Miss Murray Was Unwise Not to Comply with the Law”

B
y late March 1940, Pauli Murray’s recovery and the approaching Easter holiday made her hungry for family. She decided to go home to
Durham, and Adelene McBean, a former WPA worker who was one of several women with whom Murray shared a big apartment at 35 Mount Morris Park West, said she wanted to go, too. Mac, as Murray called her, was a young “
peppery, self-assertive woman of West Indian parentage” and a close friend. Mac had arranged Murray’s transfer from the psychiatric unit at
Bellevue to a private
hospital under the care of Dr. Helen Rodgers and had looked after Murray’s cousins while she was away. Mac had not been to the South, and Murray was uneasy about
how she would deal with segregation and how white southerners would respond to such an outspoken black woman.

Their trip began without incident. Murray and Mac took a new, well-appointed
Greyhound from New York City to Washington, D.C. The “
trouble” started on Saturday, March 23, after they transferred to a small, dilapidated bus in
Richmond, Virginia. Unlike the previous coach, where the seating was on a first-come basis, white passengers spread out in the front of the old bus. Blacks sat in the rear.

Murray and Mac took the only vacant seats in the black section, which happened to be atop a wheel well that “
protruded into the floor space.” The rickety bus nearly hurled them into the aisle when the driver,
Frank W. Morris, made sharp turns. The jostling caused “
a stabbing pain” in Mac’s side, and she suggested to Murray that they move into the white section, where there were several open seats. They were traveling alone, and Murray was apprehensive about defying segregation laws. Nevertheless, she asked Morris if he would move the white passengers forward, so that she and her ill friend could shift to a better seat in the rear. Elbowing Murray away, Morris told her to “
get out of his face” and return to her seat. She tried to reason with him again, but he insisted they stay where they were until the bus reached
Petersburg, Virginia.

In Petersburg, while Morris was boarding new passengers, Murray and Mac moved up two rows. Although they were “
still behind all the white passengers,” moving up changed the racial dividing line. When Morris saw what they had done, he ordered them to return to their original seats. They told him their old seat was broken and refused to move back. He went to get the police.

As Murray and Mac sat waiting for the authorities, the anxiety inside the bus became palpable. All the passengers kept their distance. A band of menacing-looking white men gathered outside. Preparing for the worst, Murray wrote her name and
Aunt Pauline’s address on a note she handed to a black passenger, and she asked him to tell her aunt to contact the
NAACP.

Morris returned forty-five minutes later with two white policemen.
Officer Andrews was a slim man dressed in a crisp uniform set off by a Sam Browne belt and shiny boots.
Officer McGhee, a man of ample girth, touched each seat as he walked down the aisle toward the women. Both men carried weapons. When Andrews asked the pair to move, a young white male passenger heard Mac snap, “
You can’t scare us. We’re not animals. We’re not dirt. Just because we’re
colored, you think you can push us around like sacks of meal! I’m not afraid of you, do you hear me?
You don’t frighten me one bit, not one tiny bit, with your gold-plated badge and your shiny bullets.” Mac maintained that she had rights, she was in pain, and she would not sit in a broken seat. She had paid the same fare as other passengers; therefore, she deserved the same quality of service.

Mac’s argument and her demeanor befuddled the officers. Recognizing the volatility of the situation and that they were dealing with blacks who were not locals, the officers retreated with the driver to reconsider their strategy. Minutes later, McGhee returned and tried to coax the women into compliance. Segregated seating was the law in Virginia, the portly officer said, his voice just above a whisper, his head bowed in their direction. Neither he nor they could change it, and he was obliged to arrest them if they did not move.

Mac glared at McGhee in silence before she let loose again: “
I’m a free American citizen. I can travel when and where I please.” She did not care about the law in Virginia because she knew the United States
Constitution. She was ill, the seat behind her was broken, and she had not paid “
good money” to ride in a broken seat. She and
Murray stayed put.

At Officer Andrews’s request, Morris examined the seat and readjusted the cushion. Murray tested it, judged it satisfactory, and she and Mac moved back. The impasse seemed to be over, until the driver began distributing incident-report cards to the white passengers. When he skipped over the black passengers, Murray asked, “
Why he did not hand out some of the cards to the people in the rear?” This question, coming after Mac’s insistence that he apologize, was more than Morris could bear. He bolted from the bus and returned with the police. They charged the women with creating a public disturbance and disorderly conduct and took them into custody.

Murray stood up and took her books, briefcase, coat, typewriter, and Mac’s hatbox from the overhead rack. As she made her way toward the door, there was a commotion in the rear. Mac, spent from vacillating between anger and tears, had fainted. The officers “
half-carried, half-dragged” her off the bus.

The sight of Mac lying on a stretcher, the congregation of white men watching, and the nippy evening wind caused Murray to tremble.
That she was apparently dressed in male clothing and had told officers, according to one passenger, that her name was Oliver Fleming must have added to her fears. Then, out of nowhere, a professional-looking black man stepped close and asked for Murray’s name “
under his breath.” That man,
E. C. Davis of the local
NAACP, would wire Murray’s sister Mildred
Murray Fearing and report the incident to the chapter president, who would in turn contact NAACP headquarters.

The officers took Murray and Mac first to
Petersburg Hospital, where Mac was “
treated for hysteria and minor bruises.” As soon as she was conscious and ambulatory, the officers transported them to Petersburg City Prison, whereupon Murray gave her name and clarified her sex status as they were booked. They had little money and refused bail. The authorities confiscated their belongings, except for Murray’s coat, in which she had hidden pencils, paper, and a flashlight.

A deputy placed Murray and Mac in a small, cold cell with three women inmates and a fetid “
open toilet.” Unable to sleep, Murray and Mac sat on the end of their bedbug-infested mattresses and watched their cellmates shoo away large cockroaches with a small fire. Black male
prisoners, who were crammed into the corridor outside the women’s cell door, tried to watch the women use the toilet. The men also peppered the women with obscenity-laced chatter about “
sex and sexual gratification.” This banter, coupled with the negative reaction of the women prisoners to Mac’s accent and Murray’s appearance, kept them on edge.

Murray and Mac thought of testing a
Gandhian principle they had read about in
Krishnalal Shridharani’s
War Without Violence. Satyagraha
, or
nonviolence resistance, was a response to oppression that appealed to Murray’s philosophical and political instincts. Stirred by this concept, the women drafted three documents. The first was a firm but polite memo to the prison authorities demanding humane treatment for themselves and the other black prisoners. The second was a note to fellow inmates describing the reason for their arrest, “
stressing the injustice of racial segregation.” The third was a “
detailed Statement of Facts on [their] arrest and imprisonment.”