The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (49 page)

59

“We Shall Be Working Doubly Hard to Carry On”

O
n August 3, 1962, three weeks after Pauli Murray’s visit to
Val-Kill, Eleanor Roosevelt was rushed to
Columbia Presbyterian
Hospital with a temperature of 102 degrees, night sweats, and chills. Being in the hospital and having her blood pressure, pulse, and temperature taken around the clock made her restless and depressed. Doctors released her five days later, after her fever dropped.

In ER’s growing mail pile was a memorandum from Murray to “
all the new friends of
Kwaku Baah,” a young
Ghanaian whom she had helped leave his country so he could attend Northwestern University on a fellowship
and avoid arrest by the Ghanaian authorities. (Baah had been classified as a security risk because of his opposition to the government’s preventive detention program.) ER was among the 135 donors who’d responded to Murray’s appeal for Baah’s travel fund. Two thousand dollars had been raised, and Baah had arrived safely in the United States. Enclosed with Murray’s memo were a receipt, a copy of
Proud Shoes
, and a cover letter with an affectionate postscript: “
Did anybody ever have the temerity—hutzpah—to tell you that you’re ‘a doll’?”

ER was happy to have another copy of Murray’s memoir. “
My uncle will want to read it too, for he was most interested to meet you,” she wrote on August 29. ER had “
had a miserable summer and spent a week in hospital,” she admitted. “I am slowly getting stronger and learning not to be impatient with my progress. All lectures, except dinner speeches, are being cut down, so I am really trying to lessen my workload from now through December.” This would be the last letter to Murray ER would sign in her own hand.

While she did curtail her commitments, ER still pushed herself beyond what her doctors and
family thought wise.
She continued to speak out on a range of issues, such as the influence of lobbyists on Congress, the need for prison reform, the obstacles to integration, the enduring Arab-Israeli conflict, the benefits of cultural exchange, and internal opposition to General
Francisco Franco of Spain.

ER was also working on her final book,
Tomorrow Is Now
. “
Staying aloof” was cowardice, she would write, “not a solution.” Fear, she declared, “
clouds the judgment” and “paralyzes action.” No longer willing to obey unjust laws, ER called upon people of conscience to challenge injustice wherever they saw it, which was what Murray had done more than twenty years earlier when officials at the
University of North Carolina rejected her application for admission and two
Petersburg, Virginia, policemen arrested her and
Adelene McBean for violating a state ordinance that required segregated seating on
buses.

When the
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge, linking Lubec, Maine, and Campobello Island, New Brunswick, was dedicated, ER was too weak to attend the ceremony. Her son
James went as the family representative. ER did fly to the island against her doctor’s orders, although she could hardly walk. Her voice was but a whisper.
Nonetheless, she stayed for over a week, recalling her husband’s fondness for Campobello as a young boy and the pleasure she and her children had taken in the island’s natural beauty. This trip and the stops ER made on her way home to see
dear friends, such as Esther Lape, whom she had known since 1920, were undoubtedly a personal farewell.

ER was hospitalized again on September 26, the day her last column appeared. She had blood in her stool, and her fever reached 105 degrees.

· · ·

WHILE DOCTORS RAN TESTS
to determine the cause of ER’s persistent high fever, Murray was hard at work on a presentation for the October 1 meeting of the
President’s Commission on the Status of
Women, where ER was expected to preside. Murray’s presentation,
“
A Proposal to Reexamine the Applicability of the
Fourteenth Amendment to
State Laws and Practices Which Discriminate on the Basis of Sex Per Se,” was an in-depth analysis of women’s
constitutional rights. Murray was anxious for ER’s feedback.
ER had once opposed the
Equal Rights Amendment; however, her position had softened in recent years.

When Murray arrived for the meeting and learned that ER was in the hospital, she realized that the infections ER had dismissed, her weary appearance, and her request for a glass of lemonade were signs of serious illness. “
The important thing,” Murray wrote to ER the next day, “is that you take care of yourself and reduce, if not entirely eliminate, all pressures which retard your progress.”

ER could no longer answer mail. Her personal secretary, Maureen Corr, sent Murray a note that said, “
Mrs. Roosevelt is still in hospital but she read your letter and asked me to tell you how much she appreciated hearing from you.”

· · ·

MELANCHOLY HUNG OVER
the 250 attendees at the conference hosted by the
National Council of Women of the United States on October 11, 1962, at the
Waldorf-Astoria. It was ER’s seventy-eighth
birthday.
Murray, introduced as an author and a tutor of law at Yale, shared the dais with
Esther Peterson;
Rene Carpenter, the wife of astronaut
M. Scott Carpenter; and
Rachel Carson, the marine biologist and nature writer, whose latest work,
Silent Spring
, would help spawn the environmental movement.

Murray borrowed the title of her address,
“
Grace Under Pressure,” from
Ernest Hemingway, who had coined the phrase to explain what he meant by courage. It took grace under pressure, Murray said, waxing eloquent, for astronauts to brave the unknown and open a new frontier,
for James Meredith to enroll as the first black student at the
University of Mississippi under military guard, for
Rosa Parks to refuse to give up her seat to white passengers on a Birmingham bus, knowing she would be arrested, and for
Lillian Smith to write about the psychosis of white supremacy and align herself with the
civil rights movement. As
“women of conscience,” Murray told the audience, “we must reject both extremes of being put on a pedestal and of being downgraded so that in neither case are we able to fulfill our highest potential.” She closed her speech with a call to duty and an allusion to ER: “We have the responsibility for carrying on the great pioneering tradition of the valiant women who have gone before.”

Murray went back to
Yale and penned her last letter to ER the following day. It was part birthday greeting and part tribute to ER and their
friendship.

October 12, 1962

Dear Mrs. Roosevelt:

Congratulations on three-score-ten and eight! I did not send you a greeting or attempt to reach you yesterday because the women assembled at the All-Women Conference (included a number of foreign delegates to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women) sent you a joint greeting. Your spirit dominated our thoughts even though you were not there physically.

I know how difficult it is for you to have to stay in the hospital. Your life is and has been so filled with service to others that I suspect you are a most
impatient
patient (smile)!

Today is the 470th Anniversary of the discovery of our country. I realized what a young people we are when I stood on the shores of the Atlantic in Ghana, looking at Elmina Castle, built by the Dutch in 1481 (I believe). Your life span covers one-sixth of our history and the impact of your personality will be felt for generations to come. You have the gift in human relations which Marian Anderson has in vocal music—a gift so rare that it takes centuries to produce it.

For many years you have been one of my most important models—one who combines graciousness with moral principle, straightforwardness with kindliness, political shrewdness with idealism, courage with generosity, and most of all an ongoingness which never falters, no matter what the difficulties may be. Two generations of women have been touched by your spirit and, as Esther Peterson said yesterday, you are the very embodiment of a
woman of conscience
(the theme of our conference).

Yesterday was a red-letter day for me—marred only by your absence and that of Maida Springer (she was flying back from a conference in Costa Rica). It was the first time I have addressed a group of such distinguished women leaders, and remembering the long, stormy paths over which I have come, you more than most people can appreciate the growth from the “firebrand” days of the 1940’s.

You probably saw the news item in
The New York Times
yesterday from Durham, N.C. about quiet successful integration; also about the young woman from Pittsylvania County in Southwestern Virginia who is the first Negro to be admitted to a branch college of the University of Virginia. (You will recall that Odell Waller came from Pittsylvania County.) It must be so gratifying to you, as it is to me, to see the fruit of so many of your labors.

I enclose a copy of my remarks and am writing the National Council of Women to send you those of the other three speakers. All of these women have grown up under your influence, for while you have not kept school records for many years, the world has been your classroom and the United States your teacher’s desk and platform. You would have been proud of us all.

Know that while you are “laid up” we shall be working doubly hard to carry on, following in your footsteps, for you are our great pioneer of the Twentieth Century, linking us with the Nineteenth Century. I am presumptious [
sic
] enough to suggest that you amuse yourself by watching the “election returns” of your efforts, for almost every achievement of women active today is a spiritual vote for Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady of the World. I do not exaggerate. Don’t bother to answer—I know how burdened Miss Corr must be. My love…

Pauli

· · ·

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT KNEW
that she was dying, and she did not want to die in the
hospital. On October 18, doctors allowed her to go home, and photos of her frail, “
stretcher-borne” body appeared with news reports that she was suffering from fever, anemia, and a lung infection. She refused water and food. She secreted in her mouth the pills nurses tried to get her to swallow. To no avail, friends and family members attempted to engage her by reading the newspaper aloud.
The autopsy and later reevaluation of ER’s medical records would conclude that she had a highly drug-resistant form of
tuberculosis that had spread throughout her body.

“
It is just so difficult to conceive of Mrs. Roosevelt being ill,” Murray wrote to
Maureen Corr. “She has always been a tower of physical and spiritual strength to so many of us.… Those of us who have been privileged to be near her and to feel the greatness of her spirit, her courage, simplicity, humility and kindness must stand firm and,…in our small way,…carry on the things she has taught us.” Murray “
kept a private vigil.” With no way to communicate her love directly, she followed ER’s “
example of doing the things at hand.” The memorandum on
women’s constitutional rights for the PCSW became Murray’s personal memorial to her beloved friend.

On November 7, 1962, three days after a stroke that left her comatose, ER died at her
New York City residence. Word of her passing prompted tributes and condolences from Premier
Nikita Khrushchev, Queen
Elizabeth, United Nations acting secretary-general
U Thant, and other world leaders.
President
Kennedy ordered the Stars and Stripes to half-staff and issued a statement: “
One of the great ladies in the history of this country has passed from the scene. Her loss will be deeply felt by all those who admired her tireless idealism or benefited from her good works and wise counsel.”

Martin Luther King said in a telegram to ER’s children, “
Her life was one of the bright interludes in the troubled history of mankind.” The headline of the
Baltimore Afro-American
read, “
We Have Lost a Great Friend.” “
A hushed silence fell in Negro homes across the nation as families heard the sad but expected news that Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the World, had died quietly in her apartment,” wrote
Ernestine Cofield in the
Chicago Defender
.

On Saturday, November 10, the
funeral rites began with services in Hyde Park, at
St. James Episcopal Church. This centuries-old church where ER had been a devoted member could accommodate but 250 people. Murray,
Renee Barlow, and Renee’s sister Doris joined a gathering of six hundred for the two-thirty p.m. graveside service in the Rose Garden of the Roosevelt estate. Among the mourners were President and Mrs. Kennedy; Vice President and
Mrs. Johnson; President Dwight
Eisenhower; President and Mrs. Harry
Truman; U.N., New York municipal, and state government officials; members of Congress; Chief Justice
Earl Warren;
Marian Anderson; and many without portfolio or title.

Murray braced herself as the plain oak coffin, adorned with pine boughs from the nearby woods where ER had loved to walk, was brought into the garden. The “
low-hanging dark clouds and intermittent heavy rains” magnified the sadness of Reverend
Gordon L. Kidd’s words:
“
In the death of Eleanor Roosevelt, the world has suffered an irreparable loss” and “becomes one family orphaned.”

At the end of the ceremony, the haunting melody of taps pierced the air. The gray mist gave way to a downpour. Pauli Murray walked away carrying the candle Eleanor Roosevelt had lit in her heart.

PART IX

SPEAKING TRUTH TO THE END,
1963–85