The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (40 page)

“
I am so sorry to hear about your Aunt’s death but I am sure you are consoled by the fact that she is relieved from pain,” ER wrote in condolence. “Nonetheless this is a very sad time for you and I can understand the great sense of loss you must feel now that two of your very dear ones are gone. I have already written giving you another date but, under the circumstances, I will understand if you feel you can’t come in. Do take care of yourself.”

Aunt Sallie had “
clung to life” long enough to see
Proud Shoes
go to press. After each hospital visit, Murray went home
“to the
typewriter,” hoping to stay the grief. Now that the book was done, depression set in. She had little interest in returning to private
practice. “
Cut adrift” from the family elders, who were the pillars of her childhood, Murray found that her
friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt became her anchor.

Eleanor Roosevelt and Autherine Lucy, the first black student admitted to the University of Alabama (right), at a civil rights rally in Madison Square Garden, New York City, on May 24, 1956. ER had called on the school to admit “not one student but ten.”
(Bettmann/CORBIS)

44

“You’re a Bit of a Firebrand Yourself”

U
nsettling events in the state of Alabama distracted Pauli Murray from thoughts of her loss.
In
Montgomery, the December 1, 1955, arrest of
Rosa Parks, a local
NAACP leader and seamstress who refused to give her seat to a white passenger, had set off a
bus boycott led by the young, charismatic Reverend
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In Tuscaloosa, some ninety miles north, a reserved yet strong-willed twenty-six-year-old native,
Autherine Juanita Lucy, was admitted to the
University of Alabama’s graduate school under court order. The youngest of nine children, she was a graduate of the historically black
Miles
College.

Lucy’s first day on campus was uneventful. Some students tried to make her feel welcome by sitting close to her. Others wished her well as they passed by. Only a somber gray mist and the band of reporters and
police escorting the attractive newcomer around campus hinted at the storm to come.

Over the weekend, a white mob hammered the campus with chants of “
Keep ’Bama White” and “
Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Autherine’s gotta go.” Before it was over, the mob had swelled to a thousand, raised a
Confederate flag, and burned a
cross.
On Monday, when Lucy returned to school, she faced a barrage of eggs, rocks, sticks, and racial epithets. As she braved the walk from one building to another, protesters stepped into her path. She heard someone behind her shout, “
Let’s kill her!”
When university officials permanently expelled Lucy, purportedly for her own protection and the security of the campus, she was too exhausted to continue. It would be three decades before the authorities overturned the expulsion and Autherine Lucy Foster reenrolled. She would graduate with a master’s degree in 1992, alongside her daughter
Grazia Foster, who received a bachelor’s degree.

Eleanor Roosevelt was following the developments in Alabama, too.
She invited
Rosa Parks to tea, and after five hundred students signed a petition supporting Lucy, ER praised them. “
They must have known that their names would be published and that there would be feeling against them,” she said. “It takes
courage to act on one’s belief in the dignity of man.”

On May 24, 1956, ER joined Lucy, Reverend King, Rabbi
Israel Goldstein, Congressman
Adam Clayton Powell, A. Philip Randolph, and
Roy Wilkins on the podium at a civil rights fund-raiser in
Madison Square Garden. Before an audience of sixteen thousand, ER called on state and federal officials to obey the court order and protect “
the Negroes’ right to vote” in southern states.

Notwithstanding the turmoil in
Tuscaloosa, there were white Alabamans in whom ER and Murray put their faith. In
Montgomery,
Virginia
Durr, a cofounding member of the
Southern Conference for Human Welfare, and her husband, Clifford, a lawyer and civil liberties activist, had worked with
E. D. Nixon, the local
NAACP branch president, to post bail for Rosa Parks.
Aubrey Williams, a former executive director of the National Youth Administration, was also part of the interracial coalition supporting Parks and the bus boycott.

There were others working for justice across the South without fanfare and little support. In
Louisville, Kentucky, Superintendent
Omer Carmichael orchestrated the peaceful integration of the public schools. Mindful of the resistance whites like him faced, Murray sent Dr. Carmichael a note, applauding his “courage” and “intelligent planning.” Then
she brought Carmichael to the attention of ER, who followed Murray’s example by sending him a personal letter. Not content to convey her admiration privately, ER publicly compared the “
outstandingly good job” Carmichael did in Louisville with the situation in
Clay, Kentucky, where a “crowd of unsmiling men” had turned a black mother and her two children away from a white school.

· · ·

SEPTEMBER
1956
WAS DOUBLY SPECIAL
for Murray.
Proud Shoes
came off the press, and she had lunch with Eleanor Roosevelt.
Murray handed an advance copy to ER, in place of
Aunts Pauline and Sallie, who were now gone. Recognizing the significance of Murray’s gesture, ER wrote afterward, “
I am very happy that our date coincided with the launching of your book. No one could wish you more luck with it than I do.”

ER promised to review
Proud Shoes
, which she sent with
Killers of the Dream
,
Lillian Smith’s penetrating critique of southern racism, to
Adlai
Stevenson.
ER’s wish to have the governor read these books evidenced her uneasiness about his relations with African
Americans. Her concern was well founded.
Black voters in key states were reportedly leaning toward President
Eisenhower and the
Republicans. As the election approached, the
Pittsburgh Courier
ran a front-page feature under the headline “
We’re for Eisenhower.” An editorial in the
Philadelphia Afro-American
said, “
We like both Ike and Adlai” but added that Eisenhower “should be re-elected.”

ER campaigned fiercely to preserve the
Democratic base. She told the
NAACP and the Americans for Democratic Action—both had endorsed New York governor
W. Averill Harriman for the Democratic nomination because he’d pledged to support the
Powell amendment and uphold the
Brown
decision—that Stevenson’s appeal for moderation was not a retreat from integration. “
What moderation really means is that you face all the realities of a situation,” she argued.
Gradualism, moreover, “doesn’t mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done, according to priority.”

In an effort to keep conservatives from abandoning the
Democratic Party, ER crafted a civil rights platform that embraced the principles of racial justice and obedience to the law but omitted specific reference to the
Brown
decision. “
I do not think it is necessary to say a specific thing when you have said quite clearly that you accept the law of the land,” she told reporters.

For progressives like Murray, a Democratic platform that did not mention
Brown
was a bitter pill to swallow. She was convinced that a second term for the
Eisenhower-Nixon administration would be disastrous for the nation. Even so, she could not be silent about what she believed to be Stevenson’s halfhearted support of
Brown
or his attempted rapprochement with segregationists. She found his
speeches uninspiring and his call for gradualism insulting, given the violent resistance in the South.
Only after a soul-searching discussion with
Lloyd Garrison did she join the Committee on Registration and Voting in Special Areas of Stevenson’s New York campaign.

When Powell announced at a news conference in the White House that he was endorsing Eisenhower because Stevenson had snubbed him and waffled on school desegregation, Murray pleaded with the governor to show that he had “
the moral leadership and vision necessary to advance integration on all fronts during the next four years.… You
have
the support of those to whom a rational appeal makes sense,” she said. “You need to
get
those who respond to an appeal from the heart.” Murray took the bold step of sharing an excerpt from a speech by Garrison, as an example of the kind of “tone” she thought helpful. To make sure Stevenson got her message, she copied ER, who promptly forwarded the letter to the governor. Thus, Stevenson received Murray’s letter twice.

While neither Murray nor ER budged on their feelings about Stevenson’s political strategy, ER did appreciate Murray’s feedback. ER knew the governor’s penchant for abstract rhetoric was a problem. Yet she had defended him when a critic called him an “
egghead.”

· · ·

ON OCTOBER 31
, Murray attended a
Women’s Luncheon for Stevenson in New York City, where Eleanor Roosevelt gave a rousing address. In a letter dashed off the next day, Murray exclaimed, “
One of the reasons we
‘firebrands’ (your own term) love you so is that when you’re ‘riled up,’ you’re a bit of a firebrand yourself.… I gloried in you. You had the indignant fire of one who has labored a lifetime to build values of peaceful solutions to international problems, and could see it slipping away because of stupidity, dishonesty and downright apparent lack of integrity.… You are a constant inspiration to us more obvious ‘firebrands.’ ”

In spite of Stevenson’s efforts to broaden his appeal, he lost the election. Eisenhower won 57 percent of the popular vote and the electoral vote in forty-one states. Even in the Democratic stronghold of New York City, where Murray had campaigned, the president made significant inroads with African Americans.

Left to right: Sylvia L. Ravitch, trustee, New York Urban League; Lloyd K. Garrison, attorney and former president, National Urban League; Pauli Murray; and Frank Horne, executive director, New York City Commission on Intergroup Relations, celebrate the release of
Proud Shoes
in New York City on October 17, 1956. Eleanor Roosevelt declared Murray’s family memoir a testament to “the courage and the great strength of the Negro people who have slowly forged ahead, both in the North and South.”
(Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

45

“You Caught the Feeling I Had in Mind”

P
roud Shoes
was a personal and literary milestone for Pauli Murray. The
New York Times
called it “
a gallant book” by “a writer of uncommon gifts,” who “proves that the work of Grandfather Fitzgerald and all those like him was not ended.” Langston
Hughes, who had recently published the travel memoir
I Wonder as I Wander
, “
loved” Murray’s book and suggested that they organize a literary event that featured authors of newly published autobiographies. After reading Murray’s memoir during a trip to California, Eleanor Roosevelt responded, “
I have finished
Proud Shoes
, a fascinating story, told with restraint and
deep feeling.” Mindful of the doubt and hardship Murray overcame to complete the book, ER added, “What courage!”

It had taken two decades for the entry Murray scribbled in her diary on July 18, 1933, to blossom into the family saga at the core of
Proud Shoes
.
For its title, she had borrowed a phrase from
Stephen Vincent Benét, who first urged her to write the story. The dedication—“To Caroline [
Ware], Edmund [
Ziman], Marie [
Rodell] and the Memory of
Pauline
Fitzgerald Dame”—was a tribute to Murray’s mentor, psychiatrist, literary agent, and mother-aunt, respectively.

Using data gathered from census, church, court, business, and military and school records; family
diaries, letters, and legends; personal interviews; photographs; and sites where her
ancestors once lived, Murray constructed a narrative that gave the reader two views of the American experience. One was a close-up of the Fitzgeralds from the early 1800s to the beginning of the twentieth century. The other was a wider-angle portrayal that positioned her family within a larger cultural mosaic.