The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (65 page)

“You are very much”
: PM to FDR, July 23, 1942.

“Will you read this letter”
: PM to ER, July 23, 1942, ERP.

The first lady’s indignation
: For a discussion of ER’s opposition to internment, see Allida M. Black,
Casting Her Own Shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of a Postwar Liberalism
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 142–47.

“If we can not meet”
: ER, “My Day,” December 16, 1941.

“These people are good Americans”
: Quoted in Black,
Casting Her Own Shadow
, 143.

“children behind barbed wire”
: ER, “My Day,” May 13, 1942.

She worked diligently
: Black,
Casting Her Own Shadow
, 142–47.

“outburst”
: PM,
Song
, 193.

“Dear Miss Murray”
: ER to PM, August 3, 1942, PMP.

“Dear Mrs. Roosevelt”
: PM to ER, August 9, 1942, ERP.

“easier to talk”
: PM,
Song
, 193.

“for fear”
: Ibid.

“an affectionate hug”
: Ibid.

“wounds of interracial conflict”
: PM to ER, May 4, 1943, ERP.

“militant”
: PM,
Song
, 193.

“Mrs. R.”
: On ER asking young friends to address her as Mrs. R., see ER, “Some of My Best Friends Are Negro,”
Ebony
, February 1953, 16–20, 22, 24–26.

“I cannot tell you”
: PM to ER, August 28, 1942, ERP.

Soviet delegate Lieutenant Lyudmila Pavlichenko
: “Guerrilla Heroes Arrive for Rally,”
WP
, August 28, 1942, and Scott Hart, no title [profile of Pavlichenko], WP, August 29, 1942.

In a speech
: “President’s Call to Youth to Meet Problems of the War and the Future,”
NYT
, September 4, 1942.

She showered the delegates
: ER, “My Day,” September 2 and 5, 1942, ERP.

“a ringleader”
: PM,
Song
, 194.

These resolutions
: Ibid. See PM, “An American Negro Views the Indian Question,”
Call
, September 4, 1942, for her discussion of the parallels between the fight for independence in India and the struggle for black civil rights in the United States.

“Pauli, I want to talk”
: PM,
Song
, 194.

“searching blue eyes”
: Ibid.

“The declaration”
: ER, “My Day,” September 7, 1942.

15. “HE REALLY DIDN’T KNOW WHY WOMEN CAME TO LAW SCHOOL”

“the comparative freedom”
: PM,
Song
, 182.

The College of Liberal Arts
: On the background of HU faculty during Murray’s tenure, see Walter Dyson,
Howard University: The Capstone of Negro Education, a History: 1867–1940
(Washington, DC: Howard University Graduate School), 156–77, 219–38; Rayford W. Logan,
Howard University: The First Hundred Years, 1867–1967
(New York: New York University Press, 1967), 323–405; and PM,
Song
, 182, 200.

Ware, a New Englander
: For Ware’s background and her contributions as a historian, see Ellen Fitzpatrick, “Caroline F. Ware and the Cultural Approach to History,”
American Quarterly
43, no. 2 (June 1991): 173–98.

“whizzed around blind corners”
: PM,
Song
, 233.

“sanctuary for city-weary students”
: Ibid., 198.

“segregation laws”
: Ibid., 199.

“parallels between racism”
: Ibid.

They would examine
: On the lifelong friendship and collaboration between Ware and Murray, see Anne Firor Scott, ed.,
Pauli Murray and Caroline Ware: Forty Years of Letters in Black and White
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).

Murray would seek his counsel
: PM,
Song
, 228.

“unmercifully”
: Ibid., 182.

“cool and detached”
: Ibid., 148.

University policy constrained
: Aileen Hernandez, interview by author, San Francisco, April 16, 1997.

“This is Political Science 183”
: Ibid.

It was the first step
: Marva Rudolph, “Aileen Hernandez,” in
Notable Black American Women
, ed. Jessie Carney Smith (Detroit: Gale Research, 1992), 491–94.

There were currently no women
: PM,
Song
, 183, and J. Clay Smith Jr., “Appendix B: Pioneering Facts About Black Women Lawyers and Law Teachers,” in
Rebels in Law: Voices in History of Black Women Lawyers
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 277–78.

“trudging alone by herself”
: Ruth Powell, interview by author, Mount Vernon, NY, February 5, 1996.

“nice” young women
: Aileen Hernandez, interview by author.

Murray, who had been
: PM, interview by McNeil.

“he really didn’t know why”
: PM,
Song
, 183; Murray identified Professor Ming in PM, interview by McNeil.

“to recite”
: Ibid.

“smoker”
: PM,
Song
, 182.

Murray could not fathom
: Ibid., 184.

“I have no right”
: PM to Attorney Dobbins, November 7, 1941, PMP.

“the same policies of exclusion”
: Ibid.

“entered law school preoccupied”
: PM,
Song
, 238. On Murray’s development as a legal activist and theorist, see Rosalind Rosenberg, “The Conjunction of Race and Gender,”
Journal of Women’s History
14, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 68–73; Serena Mayeri,
Reasoning from Race: Race, Feminism, Law, and the Civil Rights Revolution
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011); and Kenneth W. Mack, “The Trials of Pauli Murray,” in
Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 207–33.

In addition to Ware
: PM,
Song
, 202–6, 185–88.

Murray also reconnected
: On Morrow’s background and her friendship with Murray, see PM to ER, June 30, 1954, PMP.

“It is difficult”
: PM [and Pauline Redmond], “Negro Youth’s Dilemma,”
Threshold
2, no. 1 (1942): 8–11.

To protect Redmond
: PM,
Song
, 185; Pauline Redmond Coggs, interview by author, Milwaukee, WI, February 28, 1996.

16. “MANY GOOD THINGS HAVE HAPPENED”

This campaign was set off
: This description of the campaign and Murray’s role as co-leader is drawn from PM,
Song
, 202–9; Powell, interview by author; and PM, comp., “Record of Howard University Student Civil Rights Campaign and Sit-ins, Washington, D.C., NAACP Civil Rights Committee 1943 and 1944, B. Ruth Powell, Chairman, Direct Action Committee” (unpublished scrapbook of clippings, planning documents, handwritten notes, and circulars assembled for Ruth Powell, n.d.), in Ruth Powell’s possession. For press accounts, see Harry McAlpin, “Howard Students Picket Jim Crow Restaurant,”
Chicago Defender
, April 24, 1943, and “Howard University Students Picket Force Restaurant to Drop Color Bar,”
Baltimore AA
, April 23, 1943. See also PM, “A Blueprint for First Class Citizenship,”
Crisis
51, no. 11 (November 1944): 358–59, and Flora Bryant Brown, “NAACP Sponsored Sit-ins by Howard University Students in Washington, D.C., 1943–1944,”
Journal of Negro History
85, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 274–85.

“a torrent of resentment”
: PM,
Song
, 203.

“established”
: Ibid.

“nothing superficial”
: Powell, interview by author.

“the powder room”
: PM,
Song
, 202.

“sitting at her typewriter”
: Powell, interview by author.

“made more trips”
: Ibid.

“the heart of a poet”
: Ibid.

Yet Mr. Chaconas
: Murray spelled the proprietor’s name as “Chaconas,” whereas April 1943 editions of the
Afro-American
newspaper use “Choconas.”

“unsuspecting”
: PM,
Song
, 206.

On Saturday, April 17, 1943
: PM,
Song
, 207–8.

While the mainstream press
: On ER’s friendship with Mordecai Johnson and Howard Thurman, see ER, “My Day,” September 8, 1939; April 2, 1937; and January 23, 1941; Logan,
Howard University
, 395; and Howard Thurman,
With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 141, 146.

“Many good things”
: PM to ER, May 4, 1943, PMP.

Their placards
: PM,
Song
, 207.

“induced”
: PM to ER, May 4, 1943.

“to help him”
: Ibid.

“discussion on Inter- and Intra-racial”
: Ibid.

“It was wonderful”
: Ibid.

“to discuss techniques”
: Ibid.

“full and equal opportunity”
: PM and Henry Babcock, “An Alternative Weapon,”
South Today
7 (Autumn-Winter 1942–43): 53–57.

Murray also enclosed
: PM, “I Just Want to Eat, Mister,”
Forty-Six: Freshman Assembly Bulletin
2, no. 25 (May 1943): 1, 5–6.

For Eleanor Roosevelt
: Cook,
ER
, 2:117.

“is well done”
: ER to PM, May 11, 1943, PMP.

At Murray’s request
: PM to ER, [May 13, 1943?], ERP, and Malvina Thompson to PM, May 17, 1943, PMP.

They called for
: March on Washington Movement,
Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit, September 26–27
, 1942.

MOWM’s bold agenda
: John D’Emilio,
Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin
(New York: Free Press, 2003), 57–58, and Albert W. Hamilton to A. Philip Randolph, July 16, 1942, PMP.