The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (47 page)

As Murray prepared to return to the States, she tried to capture her feelings in the essay
“What Is Africa to Me?” Coming to terms with her African heritage and the uniqueness of her African American background was at the heart of her quest. “
I am beginning to understand that I am the product of a new history which began on African shores but which has not been shared by Africans, a history accompanied by such radical changes in a new environment that over time it produced a new identity,” she wrote. “For me, the net gain of coming to Africa has been to reexperience imaginatively this break in continuity as well as to gain an appreciation for the peoples and cultures who remained on the African side of the historical divide.”

At peace with who she was, Murray neither romanticized nor demonized Africa and its people. “
Africans are no longer faceless peoples,” she declared. “They have emerged as individuals who may be kind or cruel, honest or thievish, industrious or lazy, arrogant or gentle, as the case may be. And in this knowledge of real people, lingering ghosts of the past have been exorcised. I can face all the contradictions of my American background without ambivalence and return to my country with renewed determination to claim my heritage.”

Tractors for Freedom Committee members (front, left to right) Eleanor Roosevelt; Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers; and Milton Eisenhower, president of Johns Hopkins University with (at rear) a delegation of Cuban invasion prisoners, Washington, D.C., May 22, 1961. ER hoped that an exchange of tractors with the Cuban government would save lives.
(Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library)

56

“Read That You Had a Bad Case of Flu”

O
n January 20, 1961,
John Kennedy took the oath of office and became the thirty-fifth president of the United States.
Eleanor Roosevelt had brought the full weight of her influence to his campaign after he had pledged to end segregation in federal
housing and joined her at a
civil rights conference in
Harlem. She rallied African Americans
and
Stevenson supporters, raised funds, and appeared in political ads. “
If I am right,” she wrote optimistically in her column, “perhaps we are going to have someone who can draw from the people of the United States the greatness that underlies all their everyday concerns.”

A warm atmosphere permeated the inaugural ceremony, despite the bitter cold and a six-inch carpet of snow.
ER arrived early, swathed in a
fur coat, hat, and blanket. Kennedy had offered her a seat on the podium with his family, in gratitude for her contributions to his campaign, but ER declined and sat with friends on a stand beneath the dais.
It must have pleased her that
Marian Anderson, who had been barred from
Constitution Hall twenty-two years earlier, sang “The
Star-Spangled Banner” before Kennedy gave his address. Hard of hearing, ER lifted her head as the newly sworn-in president began, “
We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom—symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning—signifying renewal, as well as change.” Perhaps no line in his speech excited her more than his embrace of the U.N. as “
our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace.” ER left the Capitol grounds buoyed by the president’s call to service: “
My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

From
Ghana, where she was working on the index and galleys for her textbook, Pauli Murray tracked developments in the new administration through press accounts and letters from home. She was not surprised by ER’s optimism or that Kennedy had appointed her to the national advisory board of the
Peace Corps. A new program whose goal was to send volunteers to teach and provide technical support to developing countries, the Peace Corps captured the spirit of the national youth service program ER had advocated during the
New Deal.

In spite of Murray’s reservations about the president, she was “
glad” that ER agreed to serve on the Peace Corps board and to chair the politically sensitive
Tractors for Freedom Committee, organized in April 1961 after a group of U.S.-backed
Cuban exiles invaded the
Bay of Pigs but failed to overthrow the Cuban regime. When President
Fidel Castro offered to return the men in exchange for agricultural equipment, Kennedy established the TFC as a nongovernmental entity to raise funds for the equipment and to avoid the appearance of paying ransom. When Castro’s demands escalated to include millions in relief, the TFC disbanded. The men would eventually be released in December 1962.

Murray took comfort in the fact that ER’s support for the president did not dampen her willingness to challenge him. After only nine of the first 240 federal appointments went to
women, ER met with Kennedy in the White House and handed him a three-page list of women qualified for high-level positions. “
This is still a man’s world,” she said later at a press conference, and “men have to be reminded that women exist.”

When the president’s advisers proposed sending military aid, including U.S. troops, to
Vietnam, ER aligned herself with a group that urged
him to take the issue to the U.N., where people with different perspectives could come together, discuss the ramifications, and work toward mutual understanding. “
Guns never really change ideas,” she said. “We must have new ideas to fight those in which we do not believe.”

ER’s apprehension about the threat of
nuclear war and the escalating tensions between the United States and the
Soviet Union moved her to sign and reprint
“A Declaration of Conscience and Responsibility” in her
column. This statement, developed by the
American Friends Service, took a stand against “
the present drift towards war” and called upon the signers to engage in initiatives for peace.

The exclusion of
women from the executive branch of government reinforced Murray’s misgivings about the president. “
He seems a little slow on the uptake in that department,” she wrote to ER. “In fact, some of us gals have a slogan that in the Kennedy Administration we are trying to raise women to the status of Negroes! (This should amuse you.)”

Murray was anxious to see firsthand the changes stirring in the nation. She was also ecstatic about returning to school. “
You’ll be pleased to know that I have just been
awarded a fellowship to do graduate law at Yale next year, and that I am going to try for my doctorate,” she proudly announced to ER. “This 18-month experience suggests that I have teaching ability, so I think I shall move in that direction.” Brimming with anticipation of their next visit, Murray added, “Seriously, I have thought of you often and hope that you are taking care of yourself. Read that you had a bad case of flu, and do hope that you are feeling fit again.”

· · ·

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT HAD ALWAYS BEEN
a hardy woman whose endurance astounded those around her. However, during the last year, a series of colds had sapped her energy, made her hoarse, and, at times, forced her to bed. Plagued by fatigue, she catnapped between engagements.

ER had
aplastic anemia, a condition in which the bone marrow fails to produce adequate red and white blood cells and platelets. Along with exhaustion and recurring infections, this illness caused bouts of fever and chills, shortness of breath, dizziness, and a tendency toward bleeding. Still, she maintained a taxing
schedule. “
As one gets older,” she told
David E. Lilienthal, who had headed the Tennessee Valley Authority under FDR and chaired the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission under President Truman, “there are aches and pains, more and more, and if you pay much attention to them, the first thing you know you’re an invalid.”

In March, she accepted yet another presidential assignment when
Kennedy named her to the U.S. delegation to the U.N. In this capacity, she appeared briefly at a meeting of the
Commission on Human Rights. Although she had made plans to attend the plenary sessions, she had to stay home with her “
two old legs in the air” she confided to
Adlai Stevenson, who was now U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

News reports said ER had the flu, but this was not true. She “
didn’t want to talk about” her condition and “thought the flu a good excuse.” The real culprit was
phlebitis, an inflammation of the veins caused by the transfusions her doctors had prescribed to combat her fatigue and blood cell deficiency.

ER resolved not to become preoccupied with her condition or to alarm friends and colleagues. “
I am delighted to hear about your fellowship and I look forward with joy to seeing you when you return,” she wrote in a cheerful note to Murray, making no mention of her health. “I hope you will plan to come and stay with me, so do let me know when you arrive.”

· · ·

IN JUNE
, Murray and
Smokey returned to the States.
Their homecoming was marred by an encounter with a
New Haven rental agent who refused to lease Murray an apartment because she was
black. She eventually found a two-room apartment in an integrated housing complex five minutes from
Yale Law School. This “
space capsule,” as she called it, housed “the personal effects of six large rooms in Ghana,” plus the “equipment of a law office.” Finding a place for everything was a feat. When Smokey claimed the corner where she studied for his “
private office,” she had to move her books to avoid a “territorial squabble.”

Sixteen years had passed since Murray had finished the master of laws, and she had to learn how to be a student again. Preparing for class took her “
three times” longer than the other students, most of whom were young men half her age. Twenty-five of the fifty graduate students were foreign nationals. Only two, she and
Mary Ellen Caldwell, were
women.

The complexion and gender of the law school faculty at Yale had changed little since 1931, when it graduated its first black woman,
Jane Matilda Bolin. Murray’s professors, all white men, were an esteemed group that included Eugene V.
Rostow, school dean and critic of the Japanese internment program;
Myres S. McDougal and
Leon Lipson, specialists in international law;
Filmer S. C. Northrup, philosopher and ethicist;
Boris I. Bittker, expert in tax law; and
Telford Taylor, former
U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Military Tribunals.
Thomas I. Emerson, a constitutional scholar and
civil liberties activist, became Murray’s adviser.

The law school student body, by contrast, was more diverse. There was a young crop of black civil rights activists.
W. Haywood Burns and
Clarence Laing would become law professors and assist in the defense of
Angela Davis, the African American scholar and activist charged with—and eventually acquitted of—conspiracy, abduction, and the murder of a California judge during an attempted prisoner escape.
Inez Smith Reid would have a distinguished career in government service that culminated in her appointment to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
Marian Wright Edelman would champion the rights of minority, poor, and disabled children as founder of the Children’s Defense Fund.
Eleanor Holmes Norton would be elected delegate to the U.S. Congress from the District of Columbia and, before that, serve as the first woman chair of the U.S.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In that capacity, Norton would oversee the implementation of
Title VII, a provision barring sex discrimination in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. She would credit Murray with “
almost single-handedly” preserving the provision when it was imperiled by conservatives.

While Murray was acclimating herself to
Yale, ER was experiencing negative reactions to the blood transfusions. Her condition worsened, yet her outlook and correspondence remained upbeat. “
I was delighted to get a message from you and astonished to note that you are home,” she wrote to Murray. “I do want to see you and I hope you will be in touch with me soon. At the moment I am resting in bed but I hope shortly to be back on my regular schedule.” Murray would not realize for a year that ER’s innocuous comments about her
health masked serious illness.