The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (62 page)

“objectives”
: PM to ER, December 29, 1939, ERP.

“a chance for education”
: ER, “My Day,” January 19, 1940.

She and the president
: ER, “My Day,” January 19, 1940, and Erik S. Gellman and Jarod H. Roll, “Owen Whitfield and the Gospel of the Working Class in New Deal America, 1936–1946,”
Journal of Southern History
72, no. 2 (May 2006): 303–48.

“broke off one”
: ER, “My Day,” November 1, 1939.

“dread”
: ER, “My Day,” June 28, 1939.

“lay the book”
: Ibid.

After she finished
: “Mrs. Roosevelt Tours Mecca of Migrants: Inspects California Camps and Says Steinbeck Told Truth,”
NYT
, April 3, 1940.

“to any of the government”
: ER to PM, January 5, 1940, PMP.

“flustered”
: PM,
Song
, 135.

“Oh, dear”
: PM, interview by Soapes.

“had prepared tea”
: PM,
Song
, 135.

“stammered like schoolgirls”
: Ibid.

“got up and bowed”
: Ibid.

“talking with an affectionate”
: Ibid.

“radiated an inner beauty”
: Ibid.

The first lady agreed
: PM to ER, January 15, 1940, ERP; ER to PM, March 9, 1940, PMP; “First Lady to Give Prizes: Will Award Them to Students for Sharecropper Studies,”
NYT
, February 4, 1940; and “Sharecroppers Week to Open,”
NYT
, March 3, 1940.

“the conditions”
: Flyer, “National Sharecroppers Week: Contests for High School Students,” 1940, WDLC.

“giddy with success”
: PM,
Song
, 135.

“It was the highest honor”
: PM to ER, January 15, 1940, ERP.

“We should surely”
: ER, “My Day,” January 17, 1940.

ER loved the film
: ER, “My Day,” April, 13, 1940; and ER, “My Day,” October 10, 1938.

“beliefs would be accepted”
: ER, “My Day,” January 23, 1940.

“I reached the theater”
: ER, “My Day,” January 24, 1940.

“tall, lanky”
: Ralph Matthews, “Abe’s ‘Double’ Is Snubbed at Premier: Faces of Judges Red When Contest Winner Is Colored,”
Philadelphia AA
, January 27, 1940.

“stewed over it”
: PM,
Song
, 137.

“I was disappointed”
: PM to ER, January 30, 1940, ERP.

7. “WHEN PEOPLE OVERWORK THEMSELVES,…THEY MUST PAY FOR IT”

In Washington, D.C.
: “Capital News in Brief: Benefit for Sharecroppers,”
WP
, February 5, 1940, and “Sharecroppers to Meet Tonight,”
WP
, March 8, 1940.

In New York City
: “Sharecroppers Seek Aid: Campaign for $15,000 to Start Here Tomorrow Night,”
NYT
, March 4, 1940; “Topics of Sermons That Will Be Heard in the Churches of the City Tomorrow,”
NYT
, March 2, 1940.

More than 550
: “First Lady Urges Sharecropper Aid: Calls for National Effort to Solve Problem as Campaign Gets Under Way,”
NYT
, March 6, 1940.

The week before
: Murray’s medical records indicate that she was a patient at Bellevue Hospital on March 2, 1940. She was released in the custody of Adelene McBean. See “Notice to Adelene McBean,” Department of Hospitals, Division of Psychiatry, Bellevue Hospital, March 2, 1940, PMP.

“migrant Okies”
: “First Lady Urges Sharecropper Aid,”
NYT
.

“had talked at first hand”
: Ibid.

“problem”
: Ibid.

“quiet joy”
: PM to ER, March 7, 1940, ERP.

Unable to sleep
: This characterization of Murray’s hospitalization is drawn from her contemporaneous notes. See PM, “Summary of Symptoms of Upset—Pauli Murray,” March 8, 1940, PMP, and memo, PM to Dr. Helen Rogers and Mrs. Blount.

“family matters”
: Memo, PM to Dr. Helen Rogers and Mrs. Blount.

As an unmarried daughter
: Ibid.

“experimental theatre”
: Memo, PM to Dr. Helen Rogers, March 11, 1940, PMP.

“either falling in love”
: PM, “Summary of Symptoms of Upset.”

“disappearance”
: Memo, PM to Dr. Helen Rogers and Mrs. Blount.

“was dressed in men’s clothing”
: Report from Boston Office, Field Office File #140–3891, January 3, 1967, 2–3, U.S. Department of Justice, FBI, Subject: Anna Pauline Murray (140–33958); and Memorandum, Clyde Tolson to Cartha DeLoach, April 4, 1967, U.S. Department of Justice, FBI File, Subject: Anna Pauline Murray (140–33958).

“answer to true homosexuality”
: PM, “Questions Prepared for Dr. Titley, Long Island ‘Rest’ Home—Amityville, New York,” December 17, 1937, PMP.

“a mother fixation”
: PM, “Interview with Dr. —— [notes],” December 16, 1937, PMP.

She convinced herself
: Drury, “ ‘Experimentation on the Male Side.’ ” On the findings of a hysterosalpingogram, see John Randolph to Dr. W. Winters, July 31, 1942, PMP.

Now the suspicion
: PM, interview by McNeil. For a discussion of Murray’s frustration with her love life around the time of her hospitalization, see Drury, “ ‘Experimentation on the Male Side,’ ” 205–26.

“When people overwork”
: PM to ER, March 7, 1940, ERP.

“accepts people”
: ER, “My Day,” February 26, 1940.

“helped people along”
: PM to ER, March 7, 1940.

omitted the most important
: Ibid.

“There are basic rights”
: ER, “My Day,” January 24, 1940.

“sitting in row 5”
: Ralph Matthews, “Abe’s ‘Double’ Is Snubbed at Premier,”
Philadelphia AA
.

“had slipped”
: Ibid.

“excellent”
: ER to PM, March 9, 1940, PMP.

“tentative invitation”
: PM to ER, March 15, 1940, ERP.

“swimming technique”
: memo, PM to Dr. Helen Rogers, March 11, 1940.

“Your lovely letter”
: PM to ER, March 15, 1940.

8. “MISS MURRAY WAS UNWISE NOT TO COMPLY WITH THE LAW”

“southern justice”
: PM,
Song
, 149.

“peppery, self-assertive”
: Ibid., 138.

“trouble”
: Ibid.; for Murray’s account of the Petersburg bus incident and appeal, see ibid., 137–49. For the account of a white male passenger, see Herbert Garfinkel, “Color Trouble,”
Opportunity
, May 18, 1940, 144–52. For a discussion of Murray’s and Garfinkel’s accounts, see Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore,
Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919–1950
(New York: Norton, 2008), 322–25, and Rosalind Rosenberg, “ ‘Rights Talk’ Revisited: Incidents in the Life of Pauli Murray,” paper presented at Rice University Values in History Conference, Houston, TX, March 9, 2013.

“protruded into the floor”
: PM,
Song
, 138.

“a stabbing pain”
: Ibid.

“get out of his face”
: Ibid., 139.

“still behind”
: Ibid.

“You can’t scare us”
: Garfinkel, “Color Trouble,” 146.

“I’m a free American”
: Ibid., 147.

“good money”
: Ibid., 145.

“Why he did not hand”
: PM,
Song
, 141.

“half-carried”
: Ibid., 142.

That she was apparently dressed
: Garfinkel, “Color Trouble,” 144.

“under his breath”
: PM,
Song
, 142.

“treated for hysteria”
: Ibid.

“open toilet”
: Ibid., 143.

“sex and sexual gratification”
: Ibid., 145.

“stressing the injustice”
: Ibid.

“detailed Statement of Facts”
: Ibid., 146. For the original notes and diagrams, see “Petersburg Bus Incident—March 1940–May 16, 1940,” PMP.

Their outlook
: PM,
Song
, 146, and PM, interview by McNeil.

“devil’s advocate”
: PM,
Song
, 148.

“the core of an issue”
: Ibid.

She suspected
: PM and Adelene McBean to Robert Colley, n.d., PMP.

“slight,” light-skinned “young man”
: Garfinkel, “Color Trouble,” 144, 149.

Garfinkel’s story was well
: Gilmore,
Defying Dixie
, 325.

Murray dismissed
: PM and Adelene McBean to Robert Colley; and Gilmore,
Defying Dixie
, 325.

Murray’s “Color Trouble”
: PM, “Color Trouble,” in
Dark Testament
, 30.

“Pauli Murray and traveling companion”
: ER to Governor James H. Price, March 17, 1940, ERP.

“Mrs. Roosevelt asks me”
: Malvina Thompson to Mrs. [Mildred] Fearing, April 10, 1940, PMP.

“what it meant”
: PM,
Song
, 147.

9. “WHERE WERE WE TO TURN FOR HELP?”

“They are very dear”
: PM to Odell Waller, January 23, 1941, WDLC.

One of the cases
: For Murray’s account of the Odell Waller case, see PM,
Song
, 150–76; PM and Murray Kempton,
“All for Mr. Davis”: The Story of Sharecropper Odell Waller
, pamphlet reprinted in
The Rights of Man Are Worth Defending
(New York: Workers Defense League, 1942), 23–40; and PM, interview by McNeil. For a historical examination of the Odell Waller case, see Richard B. Sherman,
The Case of Odell Waller and Virginia Justice, 1940–1942
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992).

“ramshackle 1931 convertible”
: PM,
Song
, 152.

“Odell shot me”
: Quoted in Sherman,
The Case of Odell Waller
, 28; see also
Odell Waller v. Commonwealth of Virginia
, Record No. 2442, 178 Va. 294, 306; 16 S.E.2d 808 (Va., Oct. 13, 1941).