{"id":45554,"date":"2016-02-06T21:17:20","date_gmt":"2016-02-06T21:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=45554"},"modified":"2017-04-12T21:04:56","modified_gmt":"2017-04-12T21:04:56","slug":"the-firebrand-and-the-first-lady-portrait-of-a-friendship-pauli-murray-eleanor-roosevelt-and-the-struggle-for-social-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=45554","title":{"rendered":"The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Alfred A. Knopf<\/a>
\n2016-02-02
\n480 Pages
\nHardcover ISBN: 978-0679446521
\neBook ISBN: 978-1101946923<\/p>\n

Patricia Bell-Scott<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of Child and Family Development and Women’s Studies
\nUniversity of Georgia<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray<\/a>, Eleanor Roosevelt<\/a>, and the Struggle for Social Justice<\/em><\/p>\n

A groundbreaking book\u2014two decades in the works\u2014that tells the story of how a brilliant writer-turned-activist, granddaughter of a mulatto <\/a>slave, and the first lady of the United States, whose ancestry gave her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution<\/a>, forged an enduring friendship that changed each of their lives and helped to alter the course of race and racism in America.<\/p>\n

Pauli Murray<\/a> first saw Eleanor Roosevelt<\/a> in 1933, at the height of the Depression<\/a>, at a government-sponsored, two-hundred-acre camp for unemployed women where Murray was living, something the first lady had pushed her husband to set up in her effort to do what she could for working women and the poor. The first lady appeared one day unannounced, behind the wheel of her car, her secretary and a Secret Service <\/a>agent her passengers. To Murray, then aged twenty-three, Roosevelt\u2019s self-assurance was a symbol of women\u2019s independence, a symbol that endured throughout Murray\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

Five years later, Pauli Murray, a twenty-eight-year-old aspiring writer, wrote a letter to Franklin<\/a> and Eleanor Roosevelt protesting racial segregation in the South<\/a>. The president\u2019s staff forwarded Murray\u2019s letter to the federal Office of Education<\/a>. The first lady wrote back.<\/p>\n

Murray\u2019s letter was prompted by a speech the president had given at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill<\/a>, praising the school for its commitment to social progress. Pauli Murray had been denied admission to the Chapel Hill<\/a> graduate school because of her race.<\/p>\n

She wrote in her letter of 1938:<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes it mean that Negro students in the South will be allowed to sit down with white students and study a problem which is fundamental and mutual to both groups? Does it mean that the University of North Carolina is ready to open its doors to Negro students . . . ? Or does it mean, that everything you said has no meaning for us as Negroes, that again we are to be set aside and passed over . . . ?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to Murray:<\/p>\n

\u201cI have read the copy of the letter you sent me and I understand perfectly, but great changes come slowly . . . The South is changing, but don\u2019t push too fast.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So began a friendship between Pauli Murray (poet, intellectual rebel, principal strategist in the fight to preserve Title VII<\/a> of the 1964 Civil Rights Act<\/a>, cofounder of the National Organization for Women<\/a>, and the first African American female Episcopal priest) and Eleanor Roosevelt (first lady of the United States, later first chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights<\/a>, and chair of the President\u2019s Commission on the Status of Women<\/a>) that would last for a quarter of a century.<\/p>\n

Drawing on letters, journals, diaries, published and unpublished manuscripts, and interviews, Patricia Bell-Scott gives us the first close-up portrait of this evolving friendship and how it was sustained over time, what each gave to the other, and how their friendship changed the cause of American social justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1245,11,459,12566,8,17,23674,20,25],"tags":[22913,22916,4179,22915,22914,4178],"class_list":["post-45554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-books","category-history","category-letters","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-social-justice","category-usa","category-women","tag-alfred-a-knopf","tag-anna-eleanor-roosevelt","tag-anna-pauline-murray","tag-eleanor-roosevelt","tag-patricia-bell-scott","tag-pauli-murray"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45554"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53452,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45554\/revisions\/53452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}