The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (11 page)

Eleanor Roosevelt (center) inspects a migrant farmworkers’ camp in Visalia, California, April 3, 1940. While she found adequate conditions at this government-run facility, what she saw at other camps disturbed her.
(Bettmann/CORBIS)

6

“It Was the Highest Honor…to Meet and Talk with You”

I
n December 1939, Pauli Murray went to work for
National
Sharecroppers Week. NSW was an annual event cosponsored by the
Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, an organization founded to combat the exploitation of farmworkers, and the
Workers Defense League, an advocacy group formed to protect workers’ civil rights. Both the STFU and the WDL had ties to the Socialist Party, and Murray, whose political sentiments leaned in that direction, was more comfortable at NSW headquarters than she had been at the
Negro People’s Committee. Her assignment as executive secretary brought her to a confluence of the
labor
and civil
rights movements. The
letterhead that bore her name and title, along with a logo by artist
Rockwell Kent, carried an impressive list of liberal sponsors that included noted educators
John Dewey and
W. E. B. Du Bois, women’s rights and antiwar activist
Carrie Chapman Catt, and Murray’s previous opponent
Frank Porter Graham.

Poor farmers were in desperate straits, and Murray poured herself into her new job. Nearly half a million
sharecroppers and tenant farmers were reportedly homeless and unemployed.
In January, thousands of black and a few white sharecroppers set up camps with their families along 150 miles of two
Missouri interstate highways. They did so to protest eviction notices from their landowner-employers. Because sharecroppers and tenant farmers worked land and lived in shacks owned by their employers, to whom they paid crops or cash in lieu of rent, an eviction notice meant they had no job and no place to live.
The sight of displaced farm families huddling in the snow and freezing rain on makeshift beds and in ramshackle cars along some of the nation’s most trafficked highways attracted national attention.

Ironically, the
Agricultural Adjustment Administration, a
New Deal agency created to stabilize falling crop prices, encouraged the evictions by paying landowners to take land out of production. Sharecroppers and tenant farmers were already losing jobs to drought, increased mechanization, and crop rotation. Although the AAA contract provided that workers get a portion of the landowner’s payment, landowners subverted this stipulation through their alliance with AAA officials.

Within weeks of joining the staff, Murray sought the first lady’s support for National Sharecroppers Week. This year’s plan called for a week of consciousness-raising activities in more than twenty cities. The “
objectives,” as Murray outlined in her letter, were “to raise funds for organization, education and amelioration of conditions among sharecroppers, but particularly to focus public attention on the farm tenancy problem.” To accomplish this, the campaign needed ER’s “active interest.” Murray requested a meeting to explain how the first lady could help.

Murray’s timing was perfect. ER was following reports of farmworkers’ problems, and she worried about the Missouri roadside encampments, especially the children who were without shelter, adequate food, clothing, or “
a chance for education.”
She and the president had met with Reverend
Owen Whitfield, the black sharecropper who organized the Missouri protest, and representatives of the STFU. ER had visited scores of rural communities, and she had seen how hard life was for families, like the
Tennessee farm mother of eleven who “
broke off one
of her chrysanthemums” as a gift for her esteemed guest. Reading
The Grapes of Wrath
,
John Steinbeck’s novel about the migration of the Joads, a poor Oklahoma farm family, to
California, had filled the first lady with “
dread.” Yet she could not “
lay the book down or even skip a page.”
After she finished, she visited migrant farmworkers’
camps in the San Joaquin Valley and confirmed to the press that Steinbeck had told the truth.

ER sent word to Murray through Tommy that she would forward information about NSW “
to any of the government groups you might think could help you.” The first lady also agreed to meet with Murray and two of her colleagues on January 15, 1940, at the apartment she kept in Manhattan. Once news of the scheduled
meeting with ER spread through NSW headquarters, the
three-person delegation doubled in size. When they arrived, an understandably “
flustered” ER said, “
Oh, dear, I thought only three were coming.” She “
had prepared tea and cakes for three,” not six.

At twenty-nine, Murray was the youngest of the group. Still, they all “
stammered like schoolgirls.” When they stood to introduce themselves, one almost lost her balance. Another tried to curtsy. Murray, who probably wore a dress or skirt because this was a special occasion, “
got up and bowed so awkwardly that Mrs. Roosevelt had to suppress a smile.” No one touched the refreshments.

It had been nearly six years since Murray first saw ER at
Camp Tera. This time, Murray did not shrink behind a newspaper, avoiding eye contact, afraid to speak. Instead she perched on a stool directly facing the first lady’s chair. As ER listened, her blue eyes alert with interest, Murray had the sense that she was “
talking with an affectionate older relative.” Only from Aunts Pauline and Sallie did Murray expect and receive the acceptance she now felt. She also noticed that ER, who was said to be plain, “
radiated an inner beauty” that was not obvious in news
photographs.

ER was apparently impressed by this diminutive woman with a penchant for penning spirited letters about injustice.
The first lady agreed to present the NSW’s prizes for the best high school essays on “
the conditions of sharecroppers in America.” And she signed on to speak at the NSW banquet.

Murray left the gathering “
giddy with success.” The next day, she apologized for the size of the delegation in a thank-you note, adding, “
It was the highest honor of my career to meet and talk with you.” Of the issues raised in the meeting with the NSW committee, ER said in “My Day,” “
We should surely make every effort to have people in the cities understand the problems of their country neighbors.”

· · ·

LESS THAN TWO WEEKS AFTER
the meeting at Eleanor Roosevelt’s apartment, Pauli Murray cocked her pen again. The trigger was a column the first lady had written after she’d crossed a picket line to attend the premiere of
Abe Lincoln in Illinois
at the
Keith Theatre, on January 22, 1940. This premiere, a film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize–winning play by
Robert Sherwood, was a benefit sponsored by the Newspaper Women’s Club. A line of protesters, which the first lady and everyone else had to pass to enter the theater, marred the event for Washington society.

ER loved the film as much as she had loved the original play.
Raymond Massey’s portrayal of Lincoln, on the screen and the stage, as a person who stood up for his beliefs when there was little evidence that his “
beliefs would be accepted” never failed to move her. Having to walk by the protesters made the first lady uneasy, and she discussed her feelings with readers the next day.

“
I reached the theater last night to find it picketed by the colored people, who are barred from all District of Columbia theaters except their own,” she wrote. “It may not have been quite fair or wise to picket this particular show, because the house had been taken over by an organization for a charity and the organization had a right to sell its tickets to whomever it wished.” Yet she hated the idea of crossing a picket line. “Though this was not a strike where any question of unfair labor conditions was involved,” the first lady had a sense that this was “unjust discrimination,” and it made her “unhappy.”

ER may not have known that the prohibition on black patrons was not the only insult that angered protesters. The other snub had to do with a Lincoln look-alike contest launched to boost attendance. When theater management learned that the judges had inadvertently selected the photograph of
Thomas P. Bomar, a “
tall, lanky” fair-skinned African American postal worker, they refused to acknowledge him at the premiere as planned.

For Murray, the first lady’s attendance at an event that honored Lincoln and, at the same time, discriminated against blacks was a contradiction made worse by the prospect that ER did not understand how humiliating the situation was. Murray “
stewed over it for a week” and then shot off a response.

I was disappointed when I read…that you crossed a picket line against your deeper feelings.…

The continual day-to-day embarrassment of a group is a greater hardship than the momentary embarrassment of the individuals who attended the Keith Theatre performance of
Abe Lincoln in Illinois.…

Your article, even though it reflected some indecision, was a most effective result of that demonstration. Sympathetic editorial writers have done yeoman service in building public sentiment for the rights of labor. The rights of minority groups are equally important.

There can be no compromise on the principle of equality.

7

“When People Overwork Themselves,…They Must Pay for It”

P
auli Murray launched
National Sharecroppers Week at the close of February 1940.
In Washington, D.C., plans called for a mass meeting, a number of teas, and a dinner at the
National Press Club.
In
New York City, the week opened with more than a hundred events at labor halls, churches, and civic organizations, as well as a theater benefit with performances by fifty celebrities and a dinner forum at the
Hotel Commodore.
More than 550 supporters came to the March 4 banquet, and $4,052 was raised. By all accounts, NSW was on the road to success. Unfortunately, the young dynamo responsible for the project was unable to witness the fruits of her labor.

The week before the dinner forum, Murray had been admitted to the psychiatric unit at
Bellevue
Hospital, where she remained for a few days before transferring to a private facility and the care of Dr.
Helen Rogers. From there, Murray read with interest the
New York Times
story about the banquet. She was gratified by
Franklin Roosevelt’s telegram to the organizers and
John Steinbeck’s tribute to the “
migrant Okies and Arkies in California” that was recited by actor
Ruth Gordon.

Murray was especially delighted with the first lady, who told the audience that she “
had talked at first hand with many sharecroppers and discussed their
problems with Dr.
Will Alexander, head of the
Farm Security Administration.” The “problem,” as she had come to understand it, was not regional. It was linked to the economic and social woes of the entire nation. Sharing the podium with ER were Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union president
J. R. Butler, Raleigh
News & Observer
editor
Jonathan W. Daniels, Socialist Party spokesman
Norman Thomas, and NAACP assistant executive secretary
Roy Wilkins.

Although Murray felt a “
quiet joy” about the job she had done, she was worried about her
health.
Unable to sleep for long stretches, she propped up in bed with her typewriter and notepad. Hoping to make sense of her condition the best way she knew how, she began writing down her troubles and sorting through her thoughts. She had several concerns. One had to do with the pressures of her job and her uncertain employment status. At NSW headquarters, Murray ran a national project without adequate staff, money, or time. She would finish the job in a week or so and then be unemployed again.

Another concern had to do with
“
family matters.” Her closest kin were in distress.
Aunt Pauline was on leave from her teaching post because she had broken her leg. Aunt Sallie was unemployed and caring for Aunt Pauline. Aunt Sallie’s sons, now in Murray’s custody, were jobless, grieving the death of their father, and finding life in
New York difficult.
As an unmarried daughter, Murray was expected to help
financially and, if necessary, return to Durham to care for her maternal aunts. As much as she wanted to be a good daughter, Murray loathed the idea of giving up life in New York for the restrictions of the
segregated South.

Work demands and caring for her cousins made it hard for her to take care of herself. Irregular eating and sleeping habits weakened her immune system. She was plagued by viral infections. She suffered from anxiety and mood swings. The lack of time and resources to nurture her fertile creativity made her unhappy. She yearned to write, to try “
experimental theatre,” and to pursue photography.

Another issue had surfaced on a regular basis since Murray had turned nineteen. That issue, she typed in bold honesty on the page, involved “
either falling in love with a member of my sex, or finding no opportunity to express such an attraction in normal ways—sex life, marriage, dating, identification with the person and her environment.” In fact, a week before the NSW banquet, a
Rhode Island police officer had found Murray walking along the highway in Providence. She was distraught over the “
disappearance”
of a female
friend, possibly Peg
Holmes, after what may have been a breakup. Murray was not arrested. However, the officer who took her back to New York reported, according to the FBI, that she “
was dressed in men’s clothing” and had said “she was a homosexual and was taking treatments at
Bellevue
Hospital.”