The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (31 page)

Pauli Murray, age thirty-six, former deputy attorney general for the state of California and lawyer with the American Jewish Congress, 1946. She would soon set up her own law practice.
(Bettmann/CORBIS)

29

“Glad to Hear the Operation Was Successful”

P
auli Murray returned to
New York City in the spring of 1946. It seemed unwise to go back to
California, where there was virtually no chance the attorney general could rehire her. Fortunately, she got work with the American Jewish Congress Commission on Law and Social Action. This position allowed her to focus on civil rights, but it did not give her the experience in legal practice she wanted and needed.

Nine months into the job, Murray had an emergency appendectomy at
Sydenham
Hospital. The day of the surgery, April 8, 1947, Eleanor Roosevelt and Dr.
Peter Marshall Murray (no relation to Pauli), the renowned
African American surgeon scheduled to perform the procedure, were at the
Howard University Board of Directors meeting. Dr.
Vaughn C. Mason,
Dr. Murray’s thirty-one-year-old associate, operated in his absence.

Seven years earlier, Pauli had hidden her institutionalization in the psychiatric ward of
Bellevue Hospital from ER. This time, however, she disclosed the details of her hospitalization at Sydenham. Her doctor had found “
an enlarged and enflamed appendix…, an ovarian cyst…, and one other little maladjustment which needed suspension,” but the surgery went well, she reported to ER. Within twenty-four hours, Murray was walking in the hospital.

ER was “
glad to hear the operation was successful,” and she sent a pot of African violets to brighten Murray’s hospital room. Though ER hoped Murray would “take a good long rest,” she agreed to send a reference letter to Sydenham Hospital, where Murray had applied for a position in the outreach program. ER also opened a new door in their friendship. “Once I get settled in the country,” she wrote, “if you are still in
New York City, perhaps you would like to come to Hyde Park for a day or two of peace and quiet?”

Murray considered it an honor to have visited ER in the
White House and at her New York City apartment. On the other hand, an invitation to stay overnight at
Val-Kill,
ER’s country retreat, was truly special. Family and good friends regularly gathered there, as did world leaders with whom she wished to talk in a relaxed setting. Such an invitation meant one had significance in ER’s personal life. It pained Murray to take a rain check, but she had decided not to return to the commission and she had to find a job as soon as possible.

· · ·

MURRAY WAS ONE OF
the brightest and best-trained
civil rights attorneys in the nation, irrespective of race or
sex. Still, no job offers in government, private practice, or the academy came her way.
She found herself on the outside of a profession where Ivy League credentials, prestigious clerkships, influential friends, and personal appearance marked one’s fate. The sentiment among most lawyers and their clients was that African Americans and
women were ineffective attorneys because they had little if any access to the social networks necessary to launch and sustain a successful
career. Given this attitude, Murray, a
black woman, was suspect on two counts.

The rejection she faced and the black-and-white polka-dot dress she wore to
interviews—it was the only business attire she had—were constant reminders of the disparity between her and the well-heeled men
who dominated the New York
legal community. Whether the firm was white- or black-owned, large or small, the response was always the same: hiring a black woman lawyer, no matter how smart, was too big a risk to take. Everywhere Murray went, the doors were closed. “
Being a woman in the field of
law is as bad as being a Negro and the combination is pretty awful,” she lamented in a letter to
Aunt Pauline.

Out of desperation, Murray took a job as a law clerk in a firm owned by Carson DeWitt Baker, a prominent black attorney who would become a municipal judge. Like scores of talented female attorneys regularly denied access to positions as associates and forced into clerkships, she was overqualified, underpaid, and overworked. Male partners and senior associates treated Murray as an “
errand girl” with “no authority.” Moreover, the humiliation extended into the courtroom.

One particularly demeaning incident occurred at a hearing where a white male witness for the prosecution identified Murray, rather than her client, as the prostitute with whom he had had sex. Murray fumed silently, while the court clerks snickered. Making matters worse was the judge’s refusal to dismiss the charge, even though the witness had failed to identify the defendant. To preserve her self-respect and set the terms of her work conditions, Murray struck out on her own. She would run her own firm—no matter how hard the financial struggle.

· · ·

MURRAY
’
S PREMATURE RETURN TO
the workforce complicated her recovery, and she was
rehospitalized in late April. Despite her doctor’s insistence that she rest, she could not resist the opportunity to offer tactical support to
Bayard Rustin and
George Houser, co-organizers of a two-week interracial
bus campaign into the upper South for the
Congress of Racial Equality.
The goal of the April 9 to 23, 1947,
campaign, which they christened the Journey of Reconciliation, was to test the 1946 Supreme Court
Morgan v. Virginia
decision that outlawed
segregation in interstate bus travel.

Irene Morgan, the defendant in that case, was a black twenty-seven-year-old mother of two who boarded a
Greyhound in Virginia, bound for Baltimore to see her doctor. Ill, Morgan refused to give up her seat to a white couple. Virginia authorities convicted her for resisting arrest and violating a state law requiring segregated seating.
Thurgood Marshall handled Morgan’s appeal to the
U.S. Supreme Court, and the justices ruled in a six-to-one decision that the statute was
unconstitutional.

Rustin and Houser, young staffers at the
Fellowship of Reconciliation,
were responsible for nurturing CORE. Like FOR, CORE was an interracial organization of activists whose goal was to use the
Gandhian principles of nonviolence and civil disobedience to advance civil rights. Unwilling to allow bus companies traveling south to ignore the
Morgan
decision, Rustin invited
Murray to join a small group of “
veterans” to plan a bus campaign.

Rustin and Murray had first learned about each other in the early 1940s, when he was organizing CORE chapters around the country and she was leading student boycotts at
Washington, D.C.,
restaurants. They were both supporters of
A. Philip Randolph and active in the March on Washington Movement. They found it a heady experience “
thinking through each possibility” together.

The planning group selected sixteen bus riders, eight blacks and eight whites, all men. The decision to exclude women on the ground that their presence would fan fear and hatred of
interracial relationships bothered Murray; nonetheless, she gave the project her blessings. Some prominent civil rights leaders were skeptical of the bus campaign.
Thurgood Marshall called the project “
insane.” Murray, by contrast, saw a connection between the bus ride and her earlier efforts. “
You will recognize the same techniques we used in Washington in the restaurant situations in 1943 and 1944,” she noted in the cover letter attached to the project description that she forwarded to ER.

At the same time Murray was mentoring a new generation of activists, she was juggling the demands of private practice and caring for
Aunts Pauline and Sallie, who had moved in with her in her
Brooklyn apartment. Having two elderly relatives underfoot was a jolt for Murray. She had been on her own for nearly two decades. Living in a large city was a major transition for her aunts, too. They had left lifelong friends and a home where they had “
flower gardens, shade, fruit trees, and space to move about, to come to a strange city and be confined to three boxlike rooms.”

· · ·

THE TWELVE MONTHS FOLLOWING
Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945 brought challenge and change for Eleanor Roosevelt as well. No sooner than she’d moved out of the White House, she began the process of turning Springwood, her husband’s ancestral home, over to the federal government, as the president had requested in his will. She would purchase
Val-Kill and nearby acreage from the president’s estate for herself. The transfer of Springwood to the government marked the end of her role
as a political wife. Her expanding duties at the U.N. as head of the
Commission on
Human Rights, her leadership in the Democratic Party, and her membership on the boards of the
NAACP and numerous educational and humanitarian organizations signaled the beginning of an autonomous life and a unique place in world affairs.

In August 1946, the demands of ER’s schedule endangered her life.
Sleep-deprived, she dozed off at the wheel of her Lincoln sedan on the
Saw Mill River Parkway, north of New York City, colliding with two cars, hitting one head-on, and swiping the other on its side. She hit her head on the steering wheel and broke her two front teeth “
about halfway up.” Her eyes were “black and blue.” Four people suffered lacerations and chest injuries.

ER took responsibility for the
accident and confessed to the authorities and the press that she had fallen asleep. After the court revoked her license for six months, she put the situation in perspective. “
I am a little sad about this, since it takes away one of the things that I enjoy, but I recognize fully the justice of punishment for endangering other people,” she wrote in her column. “And while I hope that some day the license may be restored to me, I shall certainly not ask for any special consideration. I can only be grateful that no one was permanently injured in the accident.”

One outcome of the mishap pleased ER. Her dentist repaired her “
protruding” front teeth with porcelain caps, which altered her profile and softened her smile.

Maida Springer, manager, Pauli Murray for New York City Council Campaign, circa 1950. The campaign slogan was “Good Government Is Good Housekeeping.”
(Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Martin P. Catherwood Library, Cornell University)

30

“I Hope to Follow the Roosevelt Tradition”

O
n March 12, 1947, Harry
Truman called for economic and military aid to
Greece and
Turkey. Fearing chaos and the spread of
communism, Truman told a special session of Congress, “
It would be an unspeakable tragedy if these countries, which have struggled so long against overwhelming odds, should lose that victory for which they sacrificed so much.” His speech troubled Pauli Murray, and she turned to Eleanor Roosevelt for an explanation. “
My superficial understanding of it is that it implies President Truman has no faith in the slower processes of the United Nations and is setting a dangerous precedent.… Does the President’s speech demonstrate good faith?” Murray asked.

ER was uncomfortable with Truman’s initiative, too. She thought it unfair for the
United
States to aid Greece and Turkey and ignore the need for food relief in
Yugoslavia and
Poland. She would have felt better about the president’s proposal had the United States given aid “
for relief and rehabilitation on a purely non-political basis” and then worked through the U.N. “in deciding what should be done on any political or policing basis to keep Greece and Turkey free from all outside interference.”

Nine days later, Truman signed
Executive Order 9835, establishing a loyalty review program that would remove disloyal employees from the federal government. He hoped to allay fears of Soviet expansion and silence the charge that he was soft on communism. ER characterized the president’s program as a “
repressive” measure that could harm innocent people. To her, loyalty reviews were antithetical to the democratic values of freedom of speech and freedom of association.

In the spring
of 1948, ER’s relationship with the president reached a crisis point after he and the State Department announced the
Proposal for Temporary United Nations Trusteeship for
Palestine. This signaled a reversal in the State Department’s support for partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The change in policy upset ER. She offered to resign, but Truman would not accept her resignation. It was an election year, and the president was eager to avoid a public rift with the influential Democrat leading the U.N. commission mandated to promote and protect human rights. When word of ER’s potential departure from the U.N. leaked, Murray insisted she stay on. “
They need a mind and personality which transcends legal technicalities and you have that,” she said.

Shortly after the State of
Israel was established, Pauli Murray and Maida
Springer went to a fund-raising rally organized by the
International Ladies’ Garment Workers’
Union to celebrate “
the birth of a new democracy.” From there, they went to Greenwich Village for dinner with ER, Tommy, and
Lorena Hickok, the newspaperwoman who became ER’s intimate friend in the 1930s. “
Mrs. R. sat at the head of the table with the golden light shining on her face,” Murray observed, and Hickok, who suffered from diabetes, inquired about
Aunt Pauline, who was also diabetic. “
It was different from the many meetings we have had, where race was the red-hot issue,” Murray reported to her adoptive mother. This time the discussion was about “
history in the making.”