The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (14 page)

Locals, to Murray’s frustration, confused the Workers Defense League with the RWL. The organizational names had a similar ring; however, the WDL, unlike the RWL, was an independent body supported by a broad base of progressives. Murray immediately made bringing Waller’s appeal under WDL control a priority.

Many white southerners saw the campaign as an affront by outsiders because the case called attention to unjust labor, judicial, and voting practices in Virginia. Only a handful of whites and a small
Unitarian
Church group indicated a willingness to help. Murray faced resistance from blacks as well. Administrators at
Virginia Union University, a local black school, denied her appeal to address a student assembly. Being turned away by a group from whom she’d expected at least a modicum of consideration left her despondent.

Murray was so afraid of another rejection that she “
had to fight off the urge to vomit” before meeting with a conference of black
Baptist ministers. As she waited to speak, a number of people came before the group, requesting help with equally compelling cases.
Leon Ransom, one of the Howard University School of Law professors she had met during preparations for the
Petersburg case appeal, made an impassioned plea for four black men accused of raping a white woman. As Murray listened, she lost her nerve and tried to leave through a side door. Before she escaped, Reverend
Joseph T. Hill, the minister who had invited her, called her up front and asked the group to “
hear what she has to say.”

Stressed and exhausted, Murray blurted out, “
Gentlemen, I haven’t the strength to give you my message.” She then burst into tears. Handing her prepared statement to Reverend Hill, she took a seat and gathered herself as he read. When he finished, Murray stood up and spoke without notes about a poor African American sharecropper on death row, wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder. Having met not one black person or organization in Richmond willing to join the campaign, she pleaded, “
If men of God could not take Waller’s plight into their hearts, where were we to turn for help?”

At the end of Murray’s presentation, Reverend
E. H. Bouey, Waller’s death-row spiritual counselor, rose and said that Waller was a “
fine young feller who needs a chance.” Bouey asked his brethren to help in any way they could. Each minister, many of them teary-eyed, stepped forward and put his contribution on the table. They were men of modest means, and their combined offering was barely twenty-five dollars. Nonetheless, Murray believed that their “
prayers and blessings” prepared her for the trying months to come.

Pauli Murray, age thirty, WDL field secretary in charge of the Odell Waller campaign. The faint inscription at the bottom right of photograph reads, “To Mother with Love, 1941, Pauli.”
(The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University and the Estate of Pauli Murray)

10

“Will You Do What You Can to Help Us?”

B
ack in
New York, Pauli Murray summarized her notes from the
Richmond trip.
She had raised $37.50 in cash, of which $5.50 had come from relatives. This was merely a drop in the bucket, given the thousands Odell Waller’s appeal would surely cost. Since she was not a member of Waller’s family or his counsel, the authorities would not let her visit him in jail. From where she sat, the problems with the case seemed insurmountable.

Undaunted by Murray’s report, the
Workers Defense League hired her full-time as the field secretary for the Waller case. Emboldened by their vote of confidence, she rolled up her sleeves and began to map out a campaign. The first person she reached out to was Odell Waller.

The memory of conditions in the Petersburg prison made Murray concerned about
Waller’s welfare. On November 15, 1940, she tucked two dollars in an envelope with a note introducing herself and the WDL. “
We want you to feel encouraged and to know that you have thousands of friends all over the country.… Try to keep well and strong because you have a tough job ahead of you. Many people are praying for you.… I am sorry that I could not come…to see you in prison,” she explained. “The rules would not permit me to do so.… Just have courage and believe that life is before you.”

Waller was grateful to get Murray’s letter and the money. A high school dropout for whom reading and writing were a challenge, he scribbled a reply: “
I know I have some friends same time I think every one have gone against me.”

That same day, on her thirtieth birthday, Murray sent a packet via special delivery to Eleanor Roosevelt with a cover note to
Malvina Thompson. “
Will you bring this letter to Mrs. Roosevelt’s attention as soon as she has a free moment?” she asked.

November 20, 1940

Dear Mrs. Roosevelt:

At the risk of intruding upon your Thanksgiving, I must write you about an urgent matter. It is the case of a young Negro sharecropper, Odell Waller, condemned to die on December 27th.…

The Workers Defense League, defense agency for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union has entered the case and is handling the appeal in cooperation with the NAACP.

Young Waller’s plight symbolizes the deep-rooted injustice of the sharecropper-landlord system. It also reveals the essential undemocratic features of the poll-tax law. Since jury lists in Virginia are drawn from lists of those who have paid their poll-tax, Waller was not tried by his peers, but by a jury ten of whom were planters.

This young man deserves a fair trial. We must have $350.00 to file the appeal on Monday, November 26th. To carry this case to the United States Supreme Court, $2,000 is needed.

With intelligent handling, we may be able to get the Supreme Court to review the poll-tax law. John F. Finerty, lawyer for Tom Mooney has entered the case as our special legal counsel. If we are not successful in our appeal, we will find it necessary to apply to Governor Price of Virginia for pardon or commutation.

I have just returned from Richmond where the young man awaits execution in the death cell. I have talked with a number of interested citizens, both Negro and white, including Mr. Virginius Dabney, Editor of the
Times-Dispatch
, and Reverend Henry Lee Robinson, Director of Religious Work in the State Penal Institutions, 101 N. Jefferson Street. Both gentlemen seem interested in Waller’s case. They will be glad to give you further information, if you desire it.

Waller’s spiritual adviser in the death cell told me he seems to be a young man of good character and feels he has been condemned unjustly. While we must take our stand against the social evils which have brought about his tragic situation, we do not want to antagonize the good people of Virginia.

Will you do what you can to help us?

Waller’s mother, Mrs. Annie Waller, is arriving in New York on Saturday of this week. She will appeal to interested people in her son’s behalf. Since she was present at the time of the shooting of Waller’s landlord, I am sure she would be glad to answer any questions you care to ask.

May I wish you and your family a happy Thanksgiving, and offer my earnest hope for continued success in the coming four years. We need your intelligent leadership.

Sincerely yours,

Pauli Murray,

Field Secretary in

Charge Waller Case

Encouraging developments were on the horizon. “
We have raised nearly $1,000 within two weeks,” Murray wrote to Odell Waller. “Worn dollar bills come in from very poor people who want to see you have another chance.” Thanks to her influence, Waller would soon give the WDL complete authority over his case, disavowing the
Revolutionary
Workers League’s support, thus distancing himself from the
Communist Party USA.

John Finerty, who represented
Tom Mooney, the labor activist unfairly charged and convicted in 1916 for the bombing deaths of ten people, agreed to serve pro bono as special legal counsel, along with WDL counsel
Morris Shapiro. The addition of Finerty and Shapiro diminished the role of Thomas
Stone, Waller’s original counsel, and he would eventually withdraw. Even though Virginius Dabney, the influential editor of the
Richmond Times-Dispatch
, did not see grounds for appeal, he continued to discuss the case with Murray. She took their dialogue as a hopeful sign.

· · ·

MURRAY
’
S MENTION
of the
Mooney case and the
poll tax in the letter to ER linked
Waller’s case to two issues that had already stirred the first lady’s conscience. ER had followed Mooney’s trial and conviction, and she said his release after twenty-two years in prison brought “
a great sense of vindication” to his supporters.
She was working for anti–poll-tax legislation as well with the white
southern activist
Virginia Durr and the
National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax.

Given ER’s interest in poor workers and minority rights, her natural inclination was to sympathize with Waller. Yet a meeting between the first lady and Waller’s mother would further complicate FDR’s relations with southern conservatives, whose election to Congress depended on the disenfranchisement of African Americans and poor whites in their home states.
For ER to publicly back or lend her name in any way to the appeal of a black sharecropper convicted of first-degree murder by a legally sanctioned all-white
jury in Virginia would put the president in a predicament he could ill afford. Not only did he face resistance to his domestic policy, but isolationists opposed his efforts to address
Great Britain’s desperate need for aid.
Germany had invaded
France in June, and U.S. preparedness had become FDR’s overriding concern.

In deference to political considerations, Eleanor Roosevelt did not meet with
Annie Waller. However, she forwarded Murray’s material to the governor of Virginia with a cover note that made her feelings clear:
“My dear
Governor Price— The enclosed correspondence has been sent to me and I hope very much that you will look into the case and see that the young man has a fair trial.”

· · ·

MOTHER WALLER
, as Annie came to be known among supporters, arrived in New York City late in November 1940. She was a “
wraithlike, tiny, brown-skinned woman whose harsh life was etched indelibly in her face.” Her “
hands were scarred purple,” her back “stooped from constant bending in the fields.” She had never been away from home. Still, she braved this frighteningly unfamiliar
world to speak to religious, labor, and civil rights groups on behalf of her son. Her husband was dead and “
there was no one else to do it.”

In a “
quavering voice that was almost like a sob,” she spoke in broken English of a loving son who “
worked like a slave.” Mother Waller brought audiences to tears with her narrative of the sharecropper’s lot. “
When it was cold and raining, and so raw no woman ought to been
outdoors, there I was working up to my ankles in that red mud in the rain till it was so dark I couldn’t even see the rows before me,” Annie said. “
I worked and I worked, but it was all for Mr. Davis. I didn’t see nothing in the ground for Annie.”

Murray, with whom
Mother Waller stayed during her month-long visit, wrote to ER again. “
Mrs. Waller is 65 years old and has come all the way to New York alone to appeal to interested persons to help in the defense of her son. Her story is so heartbreaking. I am convinced you would be glad to hear it. She cannot write and I am writing for her,” Murray explained. “Do please give her fifteen minutes of your time if you are anywhere in the vicinity of New York or Washington. I will see to it that she will be present at whatever time and place you suggest.”

When Murray’s appeal arrived, ER was preparing to testify before the
Select Committee to Investigate the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens.
She had already broken ground as the only
first lady to testify before
Congress; this would be her second appearance.
She dazzled the committee with her observations of the
migrant camps in
California and the findings in reports she’d received from Murray and other activists on cases, such as that of the Chirillos, a family of seven from Ohio accused of being relief floaters because they’d moved to New York and applied for assistance. Contrary to popular opinion, migrants were often industrious, ER told the legislators. She called for better housing, sanitation, nutrition, and education, as well as an end to discrimination against migrant workers.

Murray was thrilled by the first lady’s testimony—and even more excited about a note she received from Tommy. “
Mrs. Roosevelt asks me to tell you that she has a letter from the Governor of Virginia, in which he states that the attorneys for the Waller boy have requested an opportunity to present the matter to the Supreme Court of Appeals,” the message read. “Additional time is being granted the young man and his attorneys to prepare the case for consideration before the court.”