{"id":46469,"date":"2016-04-03T02:40:21","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T02:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=46469"},"modified":"2016-05-01T01:01:12","modified_gmt":"2016-05-01T01:01:12","slug":"the-firebrand-and-the-first-lady-by-patricia-bell-scott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=46469","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Firebrand and the First Lady,\u2019 by Patricia Bell-Scott"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018The Firebrand and the First Lady,\u2019 by Patricia Bell-Scott<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Sunday Book Review<\/a>
\nThe New York Times<\/a>
\n2016-02-19<\/p>\n

Irin Carmon<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nPauli Murray<\/a>, in 1946, and Eleanor Roosevelt<\/a>, circa 1943. Credit Left, Bettmann\/Corbis; right, Stock Montage\/Getty Images<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Patricia Bell-Scott, The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice<\/a><\/em> (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The February 1953 issue of Ebony<\/a><\/em> included an article entitled \u201cSome of My Best Friends Are Negroes<\/a>.\u201d The byline was Eleanor Roosevelt\u2019s<\/a>, though the headline, apparently, was not. \u201cOne of my finest young friends is a charming woman lawyer \u2014 Pauli Murray<\/a>, who has been quite a firebrand at times but of whom I am very fond,\u201d Roosevelt wrote. \u201cShe is a lovely person who has struggled and come through very well.\u201d Indeed, nothing was ever easy for Murray, a black woman born in 1910, a woman attracted to women and also a poet, memoirist, lawyer, activist and Episcopal priest. But her tender friendship with Roosevelt, sustained over nearly a quarter-century and more than 300 cards and letters, helped. It is the rich earth Patricia Bell-Scott<\/a> tills for \u201cThe Firebrand and the First Lady<\/a>,\u201d a tremendous book that has been 20 years in the making.<\/p>\n

You could say Pauli Murray was born too soon, and saying so captures the essential injustice of her life, but it would also rob her of credit for making her own time the best she could. \u201cI\u2019m really a submerged writer,\u201d Murray once told her friends, \u201cbut the exigencies of the period have driven me into social action.\u201d The granddaughter of a woman born into slavery and a mixed-race Union soldier, Murray was arrested for refusing to sit in the colored section of a bus 15 years before the Montgomery bus boycott<\/a> and for participating in restaurant sit-ins in the early 1940s, long before the 1960 sit-ins at Woolworth\u2019s lunch counter. She led a national campaign on behalf of a black sharecropper<\/a> on death row…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018The Firebrand and the First Lady,\u2019 by Patricia Bell-Scott Sunday Book Review The New York Times 2016-02-19 Irin Carmon Pauli Murray, in 1946, and Eleanor Roosevelt, circa 1943. Credit Left, Bettmann\/Corbis; right, Stock Montage\/Getty Images Patricia Bell-Scott, The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,5,459,8,20,25],"tags":[4179,22915,23426,2640,22914,4178,2327],"class_list":["post-46469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-anna-pauline-murray","tag-eleanor-roosevelt","tag-irin-carmon","tag-new-york-times","tag-patricia-bell-scott","tag-pauli-murray","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46469","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=46469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46470,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46469\/revisions\/46470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}