The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (63 page)

The sixty-six-year-old
: On the background of Judge James Turner Clement and his role in the Waller case, see Sherman
, The Case of Odell Waller
, 20–32.

“a man charged”
: Quoted in Sherman,
The Case of Odell Waller
, 21; see also
Waller v. Commonwealth
, Record No. 2442, 178, 303.

His counsel’s background
: Sherman,
The Case of Odell Waller
, 19–20, and PM,
Song
, 157–58, 163.

“had to fight”
: PM,
Song
, 160.

“hear what she has to say”
: Ibid., 161.

“Gentlemen, I haven’t”
: Ibid., 160.

“If men of God”
: Ibid., 162.

“fine young feller”
: Ibid.

“prayers and blessings”
: Ibid.

10. “WILL YOU DO WHAT YOU CAN TO HELP US?”

She had raised
: PM, memorandum, “Funds Raised—Waller Defense Fund,” November 12, 1940, WDLC.

“We want you”
: PM to Odell Waller, November 15, 1940, WDLC.

“I know I have”
: Odell Waller to PM, November 20, 1940, WDLC.

“Will you bring”
: PM to Malvina Thompson, November 20, 1940, ERP.

“Dear Mrs. Roosevelt”
: PM to ER, November 20, 1940, ERP.

“We have raised”
: PM to Odell Waller, November 28, 1940, WDLC.

“a great sense”
: ER, “My Day,” January 10, 1939.

She was working
: Hollinger F. Barnard, ed.,
Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985), 156–58.

For ER to publicly
: On the tension ER’s advocacy for Waller created in the White House, see excerpt from Harry Hopkins’s diary quoted in John Gunther,
Roosevelt in Retrospect
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 19. Another account from a black servant in the White House appears in Parks with Speighton,
The Roosevelts
, 174–75. On FDR’s objection to ER’s work against the poll tax, which was a central issue in the Waller case, see Barnard, ed.,
Outside the Magic Circle
, 158.

“My dear Governor Price”
: ER to Governor [James H.] Price, November 30, 1940, ERP.

“wraithlike”
: PM,
Song
, 165.

“hands were scarred”
: Ibid.

“there was no one”
: Ibid.

“quavering voice”
: Ibid.

“worked like a slave”
: Ibid.

“When it was cold”
: Ibid., 155.

“I worked and I worked”
: Ibid., 165.

“Mrs. Waller is 65”
: PM to ER, November 25, 1940, ERP.

She had already broken
: “First Lady Sets Precedent at House Inquiry: Criticizes Welfare Agencies of Washington,”
NYT
, February 10, 1940. ER had previously testified before a House committee about the poor condition of welfare institutions in the District of Columbia.

She dazzled
: James D. Secrest, “Mrs. Roosevelt Wins Inquiry into Migrant’s Union Trouble,”
WP
, December 11, 1940; “First Lady Favors Planning for Peace: She Tells Inquiry on Migrants It Will Bring Problems Best Brains Should Tackle Now,”
NYT
, December 11, 1940; and PM to ER, December 4, 1940, WDLC. Despite the WDL’s efforts and ER’s advocacy for migrant workers, the Chirillos were evicted from the state of New York; see “3 ‘Relief Floaters’ Are Ousted from State: Mamaroneck Cobbler and Sons Hail Trip,”
NYT
, May 20, 1941.

“Mrs. Roosevelt asks me”
: Malvina Thompson to PM, December 9, 1940, ERP.

“Regret cannot give”
: Malvina Thompson to PM, December 11, 1940, WDLC.

“the oppressiveness”
: PM,
Song
, 167.

Murray yearned
: PM to Odell Waller, January 3, 1941, WDLC.

“short, stocky”
: PM,
Song
, 166.

“I am as sorry”
: Ibid., 167.

“straightforwardness”
: Ibid., 166.

“There is a greater”
: PM to Odell Waller, January 23, 1941, WDLC.

11. “MIGHT AS WELL BECOME A LAWYER”

“resistance against”
: PM to Morris Milgram and David L. Clendenin, January 9, 1940, WDLC.

They spoke to
: This description of the tour is drawn from Murray’s account in PM,
Song
, 168, and from the correspondence, flyers, financial reports, itineraries, newsletters, photographs, press releases, and program handouts in the Odell Waller files, WDLC.

But she spoke
: Springer-Kemp, interview by author.

She repeatedly urged
: PM to Odell Waller, December 7 and 21, 1940, WDLC.

An irrepressible desire
: Murray told an audience during the Waller tour that she yearned “to write like never before” when she returned home. PM, Vi Lewis, and Mother [Annie] Waller, audio recording, 1941, PMP.

“These boys”
: ER, “My Day,” April 1, 1941.

In March, ER went
: Todd Moye,
Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 30–52.

“flagrant discrimination”
: Mary McLeod Bethune to FDR, October 17, 1939, Mary McLeod Bethune Papers; quoted in Audrey Thomas McCluskey and Elaine M. Smith,
Mary McLeod Bethune: Building a Better World; Essays and Selected Documents
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 240. On Bethune’s role in the integration of women’s military units, see Janet Sims-Wood, “ ‘We Served America Too!’: Personal Recollections of African American Women in the Women’s Army Corps During World War II” (PhD diss., Union Institute, 1994).

“the Secret Service men”
: Quentin Smith, interview by Timothy J. Saunders, n.d., Quentin Smith Collection (AFC/2001/001/3001), Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.

ER had always loved
: ER, “Flying Is Fun,”
Collier’s
, April 22, 1939, 15; and ER, “My Day,” April 1, 1941.

“It was like being”
: “First Lady Flies with Miss Earhart: Aviatrix Pilots Mrs. Roosevelt, Who Feels ‘On Top of World’ on Night Hop to Baltimore,”
NYT
, April 21, 1933.

ER encouraged
: Minutes of the meeting of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, March 28, 1941, and “Notes on [Rosenwald] Fund Interests,” June 23, 1941, ERP; and Frederick D. Patterson to ER, August 6, 1943, ERP.

“bless…the name”
: Carlton E. Spitzer, “Eleanor Roosevelt Saved Tuskegee Airmen,”
Star Democrat
, February 6, 2011. See also J. Todd Moye,
Freedom Flyers
, 52.

In this tranquil
: PM,
Song
, 177–80.

“avoided causes and politics”
: PM, journal, July 31, 1941, Mount Airy, PMP.

Murray had written
: PM to Stephen Vincent Benét, October 1, 1939, PMP.

He responded
: Benét to PM, [October 1939?], PMP.

“might as well become”
: PM,
Song
, 162.

“had what it takes”
: Ibid.

“I’m really a submerged writer”
: PM to Lillian Smith and Paula Snelling, September 1, 1942, PMP. Whether to be a lawyer or a writer was a question that plagued Murray for much of her life.
Chapter 15
of PM,
Song
, 177–88, entitled “Writing or Law School?,” explores this conflict. See also Patricia Bell-Scott, “ ‘To Write Like Never Before’: Pauli Murray’s Enduring Yearning,”
Journal of Women’s History
14, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 58–61.

“Conflict”
: PM, “Conflict,” in
Dark Testament
, 70.

“Without a trade”
: PM,
Song
, 166.

“didn’t have the courage”
: PM to Lillian Smith, September 14, 1942, PMP.

12. “I HAVE DONE EVERYTHING I CAN POSSIBLY DO”

The delegation that went
: Leon A. Ransom and Ted Poston, who were also members of the delegation, are not in the photograph.

When Murray organized
: “Urge Roosevelt Fix Waller’s Fate: 600 Signers Are on Petition Taken to White House for Intervention for Negro,”
NYT
, July 2, 1942, and “Waller to Walk ‘Last Mile,’ ”
Northern Virginia Daily
, July 2, 1942, clipping, WDLC.

A religious pacifist
: On Murray’s FOR affiliation and residency at the Harlem Ashram, see PM,
Song
, 201, and PM, diary, January 4, 5, and 6, 1941. See Nico Slate,
Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012) on the relationship of black religious pacifists, including Murray, to the Indian freedom movement.

Between March 1941
: See “Chronology of Events: Odell Waller,” [1942?], WDLC; Sherman,
The Case of Odell Waller
, 74–179, provides a detailed summary of the appeal.

As the case made
: “Harlem Will Pray to Save a Slayer: Churches Join Movement for New Trial for Odell Waller,”
NYT
, May 26, 1942.

“to do whatever you can”
: PM to ER, May 18, 1942, ERP.

“I have heard lots”
: Odell Waller to ER, June 8, 1942, ERP.

In his piece
: John Dewey, “The Case of Odell Waller: Supreme Court to Be Asked Again to Hear Negro’s Petition,”
NYT
, May 19, 1942.

“My dear Governor Darden”
: ER to Governor Colgate W. Darden Jr., June 2, 1942, ERP.

“bitterness”
: “Mrs. Roosevelt Intervenes,”
Zanesville Times Recorder
, June 27, 1942, clipping, WDLC.

He was grieving
: Parks with Leighton,
The Roosevelts
, 240–41.

“notes and messages”
: Ibid., 169.

“small basket”
: Kathleen McLaughlin, “She Who Has Made a Mute ‘Office’ Articulate Is Aide and Counselor to the President and a Definite Factor in the Political Campaign,”
NYT
, July 5, 1936.

“personal and unofficial note
: FDR to Governor Colgate W. Darden Jr., June 15, 1942, FDRP.

Among the expanding network
: “Mrs. Coolidge Now Pleads for Waller,” [Danville]
Bee
, June 26, 1942, clipping, WDLC.