The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (23 page)

The first lady rarely finished her rounds before midnight. She typed “My Day” on her portable typewriter between appointments or just before bed. She came home from the Pacific thirty pounds lighter,
physically exhausted, and depressed by what she’d seen of war.

On January 14, 1944, ER was between tours when she joined a
student panel sponsored by the
Freshman Advisory Committee at Howard University.
The Engineers, a contingent of soldiers in training, met her and stood guard outside Cook Hall. Inside, half a dozen students flanked the first lady at the speakers’ table. HU president
Mordecai Johnson and several members of his staff took seats in the audience.

Among the topics the panel addressed was the role of education in promoting better race relations. To ER’s delight, the students led the way, hashing out how to
combat prejudice and discrimination through job preparation and by monitoring their own behavior. At the close of the meeting,
Leon Petty, chairman of the Freshman Advisory Committee, presented the first lady with a bouquet of roses. She graciously accepted the flowers and issued a challenge: “
I know that this will be a difficult thing for you to do, but it is necessary for you as Negroes to excel other people, for you are always on the spot.”

· · ·

THE NOTION OF USING EXCELLENCE
as a weapon was not a new idea for
Murray. Her personal motto was “
Don’t get mad, get smart.” Getting smart, by acquiring the legal skills to destroy segregation through the courts, was the reason she had come to law school.
Her answer to the sex prejudice that threatened her
ambition was to earn the highest grade point average in her class, thereby persuading her classmates to elect her—a
woman—class president and
chief justice of the Court of
Peers, which was the governing body of the Law Students’ Guild and a quasi–honor society.

Even as Murray battled sexism in the classroom, she fought racial
segregation in the community, co-organizing a second student boycott in the spring of 1944. The target this time was the
John R. Thompson
Restaurant, a “
moderately priced” eating place in downtown
Washington, at 1109 Pennsylvania Avenue. Unlike
Little Palace, the cafeteria near Howard that Murray and the students had picketed the year before, Thompson’s was close to the White House. Such a location increased the risk of an altercation with the police and a political backlash.

In preparation for the boycott,
Murray and Powell mobilized the campus chapter of the
NAACP and the support of other student organizations. Those who participated underwent “
rigorous” training in “picketing and public decorum” and signed a pledge Murray and Powell drafted, agreeing not “
to indulge in retaliatory remarks or actions.” Those who felt they could not withstand the hazards of a picket line volunteered to stay home and do other jobs, “
such as making signs and posters.” Only Murray, the group’s legal adviser and designated representative, was authorized to speak.

Using the meticulously scripted Little Palace boycott as a model, well-dressed students in preselected groups of “
twos and threes” entered Thompson’s at “ten-minute intervals” starting at four o’ clock on Saturday afternoon, April 22, 1944. They requested service and took seats at empty tables when denied. While they silently read and did homework, another group picketed outside. Their signs said, “We Die Together—Why Can’t We Eat Together?” and “Are You for Hitler’s Way (Race Supremacy) or the American Way (Equality)? Make Up Your Mind!”

The demonstration produced mixed responses from passersby. One woman spat at the picketers. Some white soldiers shouted their disapproval. Members of the
Women’s Army Corps and the
Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service cheered. When white customers were asked if they were willing to eat in the same restaurant with blacks, seven out of ten were in favor or indifferent.

There was a startling turn of events when six African American soldiers, “
smartly dressed and wearing corporals’ and sergeants’ stripes, filed into the restaurant, requested service, were refused, took seats at empty tables, pulled out
PM
newspapers, and began to read.” Their silent presence was a stark contrast to the white
military men eating and socializing at nearby tables. It was a scene so disconcerting that a couple of white military policemen asked the black soldiers to leave. The men did not
budge. The soldiers brought the number of protesters inside Thompson’s to fifty-six. The police came to monitor the situation, but they made no arrests.

The military policemen left and returned with a white lieutenant, who pleaded with the black soldiers to vacate the premises “
as a personal favor so the Army won’t be embarrassed.” Overhearing his appeal, Murray interjected, “
If the Army was afraid of being embarrassed, it should request
all
military personnel to leave.” In the face of this unseemly standoff and the weight of Murray’s argument, the MPs ordered all uniformed personnel to leave Thompson’s. By eight o’clock that evening, the restaurant had lost 50 percent of its customers, and the manager got permission from corporate headquarters to serve everyone.

The students were jubilant. They had begun with the goal of forcing Thompson’s to open its dining room service to blacks. They achieved that
and
pressured the army to remove all its personnel, not just blacks, from a segregated establishment.

This “
victory,” as Murray described it, did not allay her apprehension about her relationships with university officials. This was her second stint as co-organizer of a student boycott, and the demonstration had taken place near the White House. While she had won the admiration of fellow students, school administrators believed she was wasting her talents.
They also saw her propensity to challenge authority, her budding feminism, and the whispers about her sexuality as negative influences on the other students, in particular the
women.

Matters reached an impasse when President Johnson, a Baptist minister known for his powerful oratory and uncharitable treatment of those who disagreed with him, ordered the students to “
suspend all activities” until he and his cabinet could clarify school policy on student boycotts. Murray admired Johnson. The first black president of Howard, he was highly regarded as a civil rights spokesman and had been educated at Morehouse College, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University. But his directive stunned her. Two days after the initial demonstration, when Thompson’s refused to serve a black student, she thought it imperative to return. Furthermore, she and the students were planning to target other restaurants as well.

Murray soon learned that the protest had raised the ire of the
District of Columbia Appropriations Committee in the
Senate, which was responsible for 60 percent of the university’s funds.
At the reins of this committee was Mississippi senator
Theodore G. Bilbo, an avowed segregationist who advocated the deportation of blacks to Africa, opposed
anti-lynching legislation, and applauded
Hitler’s
racial views.
Johnson understandably feared Bilbo’s wrath.

Murray was at a crossroads. She was as committed to desegregating Thompson’s as she was to the well-being of Howard. Uncertain as to the best course of action, she sent ER a detailed narrative of the events leading up to the students’ disagreement with President Johnson. Murray also enclosed a copy of the student pledge and various clippings. “
Since I count you a real friend,” she wrote to ER, “I thought it wise to be as open and frank as possible.”

Murray had heard “
second-hand,” most likely from
Howard Thurman, of the first lady’s concern about the demonstration, and she urged ER to talk with campus leaders, such as HU Student Council president
Jane Bowles and NAACP Campus Chapter president
Ruth L. Harvey. “
Freedom of action for student groups without Administration approval or interference, so long as such action is conducted in a lawful and proper manner and the proper safeguards have been taken to effect good public relations” was analogous, Murray insisted, with the faculty’s right to academic freedom. She wanted desperately to resume the boycott, yet the potential damage to Howard’s budget and its reputation gave her pause.

Despite Murray’s determination, the campaign fizzled and end-of-the-semester requirements took precedence. The first lady did not meet with the students; however, she did invite Murray and her
aunts Pauline and Sallie to tea at the
White House on May 30. When Aunt Sallie fell ill,
Murray asked permission to bring her sister Mildred in Aunt Sallie’s place. Murray wanted Mildred to accompany Aunt Pauline, who was seventy-four and arthritic. Murray also requested that
Ruth Powell be added to the guest list.

With arrangements for her next White House visit and graduation confirmed, Murray felt as if she were walking on air. That she had earned a law degree was more than a personal triumph. Her graduation marked the centennial year of
Grandmother Cornelia’s birth as
“a
slave in a small southern village.” Murray also had sharper tools with which to battle
discrimination.

19

“The Flowers Brought Your Spirit to the Graduation”

I
n the weeks before Pauli Murray’s
White House visit, she wrestled with whether to ask Eleanor Roosevelt for help with a personal matter. Murray had applied for a
Rosenwald fellowship to pursue graduate study in labor law at
Harvard Law
School. The faculty at Howard University School of Law had a “
tradition” of sending their best students to Harvard for advanced study, and Murray assumed that she, the top student in her class, would go to Harvard as others had done. Furthermore, Dean
Hastie, who’d suggested she apply for the Rosenwald, had indicated that he expected her to join Howard’s law faculty upon completion of her studies at Harvard.

Murray knew Harvard admitted African Americans to its law school on a token basis. Its black alumni dated back to the 1860s, and nearly half of the law professors at Howard were Harvard graduates. Murray was astonished to find that Harvard’s centuries-old admissions policy barred women of any race as students. Still, she applied anyway, buoyed by Hastie’s faith in her ability and the challenge of breaking precedent. She was encouraged even more after notice of her Rosenwald award arrived. Previous Rosenwald fellows included such distinguished scholars, artists, and writers as
W. E. B. Du Bois,
Marian Anderson, Langston
Hughes, and
Zora Neale Hurston.

Murray’s joy at being named to the 1944 fellows class was squashed by twenty-five words in a letter from Professor
Thomas Reed Powell, who chaired the Harvard Law School Committee on Graduate Studies: “
Your picture and the salutation on your college transcript indicate that you
are not of the sex entitled to be admitted to Harvard Law School.” Murray brooded for weeks, enduring the “
stinging gibes” of her classmates who saw her predicament as “
a source of mild amusement rather than outrage.” She envied a former classmate, now at Harvard, whom she had bested several times in courses they took together. Howard University School of Law founder
Charles Hamilton Houston, SJD ’23;
Hastie, SJD ’32; and
Ransom, SJD ’35 were the only African Americans who held this particular Harvard degree. She ached for the opportunity to become the first woman to earn the doctorate of juridical science from Harvard.

Unable to let the matter rest, Murray contacted Malvina
Thompson ten days before the
White House tea. “
There’s a limit to the demands or requests, or appeals that one can make on kind people, and the President and Mrs. Roosevelt are extremely kind people,” Murray wrote. “Thus I don’t have the nerve to send either of the enclosed notes to them directly. I’m sending them to you, because if I should be lucky enough to come to the White House on May 30th, I don’t want to come battering Mrs. R. with problems—I just want her to feel free from racial requests, or any other kind.”

Murray’s packet included a letter to ER, indicating that she had won a Rosenwald fellowship for
graduate work in labor studies at Harvard and that its law school had rejected her application because she was female. “
Seems to me I’ve done nothing but worry you since you’ve been in the White House, but that’s my history,” Murray offered in apology. “Dean Hastie and Dean Ransom are kidding me to death about it, but down underneath all the kidding, it hurts not to be able to go to Harvard,” she conceded. “I’m not expecting any answer, but I just thot [
sic
] that you’d like to know what I’ve been doing all this three years and why it is such a keen disappointment.”

Murray saw Tommy as an ally. And Tommy, as Murray anticipated, gave the correspondence to ER, who passed it on to the president. While the first lady had not attended college, she knew from professional women friends and visits to campuses across the country that many schools denied women opportunities they rightfully deserved. ER nudged her husband, who’d graduated in 1904 from Harvard College, to write
Harvard University president
James B. Conant about the law school’s admissions policy on Murray’s behalf. FDR obliged his wife again.

“
Dear Jim,” FDR wrote in the cover note, to which he attached Murray’s correspondence, “Here is a letter that I really do not know how to answer. Wholly aside from
Radcliffe College, I always had an idea that women were admitted to many courses. Or perhaps this young colored
lady wants to become an undergraduate freshman. I do not want to start you on a new dormitory program but perhaps you might ask one of your Deans to drop me a line.”

FDR frequently employed humorous remarks and anecdotes as diversionary tactics when faced with difficult issues. Whether he or Harvard officials took the matter seriously, ER and
Murray were grateful for his inquiry.

· · ·

ON MAY
30, Murray took her sister Mildred,
Aunt Pauline, and
Ruth Powell to the
White House.
The black servant who ushered them into the Blue Room was as excited as they were about their get-together with the first lady. Murray made sure they arrived on time and were “
in position” before ER walked in. They were anything but calm. Ruth and Mildred “
gawked” at the elegant chandelier hanging over the marble-topped table in the center of the oval-shaped room. Aunt Pauline “
tried to re-copy the poem she had scribbled…but was so nervous she gave up.” Murray “
got caught feverishly writing” a request for the first lady’s
autograph for a niece.