The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (58 page)

Fueling her determination
: ER,
On My Own
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937), 107–9; Blanche Wiesen Cook,
Eleanor Roosevelt
, 1:135–36; and
Swain, Ellen S. Woodward
, 42–45.

“women had been neglected”
: “Civil Works Help Pledged to Women: Mrs. Roosevelt at Parley Says,”
NYT
, January 5, 1933.

Skeptics sarcastically dubbed
: Gersh, “She-She-She Camps,” 12–13, 20; and Waldver-Morgan, “Young Women and the New Deal Camps,” 56.

She was disappointed
: “Mrs. Roosevelt Disappointed in Women’s Camp,”
NYHT
, and “17 Jobless Women Enter New Camp,”
NYT
.

To be eligible
: Memorandum, “There Are Six Requirements for Women Going to Camp,” June 19, 1933, ERP; “Mrs. Roosevelt Disappointed in Women’s Camp,”
NYHT
; and “Recruiting Speeded for Women’s Camp: 65 to Be Enrolled by End of Week to Raise Total,”
NYT
, June 20, 1933.

Stirred by estimates
: “Civil Works Help Pledged to Women,”
NYT
, and “First Lady Calls on Leaders to Help Unemployed Women,”
WP
, November 21, 1933. For stories told by writer-activist Meridel Le Sueur and Hilda W. Smith, see Jane Kahramnidis, “The She-She-She Camps of the Great Depression,”
History Magazine
, February-March 2008, 13. See Mark Barron, “A New Yorker at Large,”
WP
, June 27, 1933, for a feature story on the hardships of Camp Tera residents. For accounts of unemployed homeless women, see Emily Hahn, “Women Without Work,”
New Republic
72, no. 981 (May 31, 1933): 63–65, and Thomas Minehan, “Girls on the Road,”
Independent Woman
13 (October 1934): 316–17, 335.

“There must be”
: “Mrs. Roosevelt Disappointed in Women’s Camp,”
NYHT
.

Within a month
: “Recruiting Speeded for Women’s Camp,”
NYT;
“30 More Jobless Women Off for Camp Today: ‘Mistaken Ideas’ About Project Cleared,”
NYT
, June 21, 1933; “Woman Camp Age Limit Is Raised from 35 to 40,”
NYT
, June 22, 1933; and “129 More Women in Camp: 89 Now Getting Aid at Centre Fostered by Mrs. Roosevelt,”
NYT
, June 24, 1933.

Native and immigrant
: The background of residents was often described in
TT
and news stories, such as “Government Camp a Lure to Women,” classified ad,
NYT
, July 30, 1933.

Camp Tera had twenty-six
:
The Palisades Interstate Park, 1929–1947
(Harriman, NY: Commissioners of the Palisade Interstate Park, 1947), 7, and ER, “The Camp for Unemployed Women: A Novel American Experiment Under the Relief Administration,”
World Today, Encyclopedia Britannica
1 (October 1933): 1.

Whatever residents and staff
: On ER’s financial and material support, see “Women to Get Aid All Winter at Camp Tera,”
NYHT
, October 19, 1933; “Turkey for Camp Tera Girls,”
NYT
, December 1, 1933; “Mrs. Roosevelt Aids Camp,”
NYT
, December 18, 1933; “Mrs. Roosevelt’s ‘Girls’ in Camp to Get Presents,”
NYT
, December 24, 1934; “First Lady Sends Check for Radio at Camp TERA,”
NYT
, December 26, 1934; “Mrs. Roosevelt’s Camp Goes in for Ice Sports,”
NYT
, January 28, 1935; “$3,300 Gift by Mrs. Roosevelt to TERA Is Revealed in Final Audit of the Books,”
NYT
, July 14, 1937; and Jessie I. Mills to ER, 11 July 1935, ERP. Appreciative mention of ER’s support regularly appeared in
TT
.

Kate Smith
: A photograph of Kate Smith and the radio she donated on June 21, 1933, can be found in the Bettmann/CORBIS archival collection as number BE083996.

This sensitivity
: Lash,
Eleanor and Franklin
, 522. ER discussed her friendships with Mary McLeod Bethune, Walter White, Pauli Murray, and others in “Some of My Best Friends Are Negro,”
Ebony
, February 1953, 16–20, 22, 24–26. ER’s friendship with Murray is also mentioned in Black,
Casting Her Own Shadow
, 94–96, 110–11, 116; Cook,
ER
, 1:7; Cook,
ER
, 2:90, 565; Doris Kearns Goodwin,
No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 441, 443; and Lash,
Eleanor and Franklin
, 523–24, 675.

Charismatic and very dark-skinned
: On Bethune’s background and political career, see Joyce Ann Hanson,
Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women’s Political Activism
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003); Ida E. Jones,
Mary McLeod Bethune in Washington, D.C.: Activism and Education in Logan Circle
(Mount Pleasant, SC: History Press, 2013).

“always went running down”
: J. B. West with Mary Lynn Kotz,
Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies
(New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1973), 31–32. See also Lillian Rogers Parks with Frances Spatz Leighton,
The Roosevelts: A Family in Turmoil
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981), 71, and ER, “Some of My Best Friends Are Negro,”
Ebony
, on ER’s affection for Bethune.

“Few heads of State”
: West with Kotz,
Upstairs at the White House
, 31–32.

White found an ally
: Walter Francis White,
A Man Called White: The Autobiography of Walter White
(New York: Viking, 1948), 169–70.

Their efforts
: Ibid., 179–80; Nancy J. Weiss,
Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 104–19; and ER to Walter White, May 8, 1935, ERP.

What ER learned
: ER, who had heard relatives refer to blacks as “pickaninnies” and “darkies” and had used these terms herself with affection, was stunned by the criticism of her language. See “Mrs. Roosevelt Refers to Triplets as Pickaninnies: First Lady Writes Letter to Virginian Who Named Boys for President,”
Philadelphia AA
, January 19, 1935, and “Mrs. Roosevelt’s Pickaninnies,”
Philadelphia AA
, January 26, 1935. She apologized and pledged to change her behavior; see Lash,
Eleanor and Franklin
, 522.

“One of the colored girls”
: ER to William H. Matthews, August 18, 1933, ERP.

the situation had “changed”
: Matthews to ER, n.d., ERP.

Two tragedies marked
: PM,
Song
, 11–13.

The second tragedy
: Ibid., 9–10, 42–45.

“unpredictable attacks”
: Ibid., 10.

“dapper gentleman”
: Ibid., 45.

Unfortunately, a burly white
: “Killing Insane Principal, Most Brutal in State’s History,”
Baltimore AA
, June 22, 1923.

“It was a common”
: “Slayer of Mad Teacher Gets Ten Years: Polish Guard Who Slew William Murray Is Tried at Ellicott City,”
Baltimore AA
, September 28, 1923.

“an irrational fear”
: PM,
Song
, 58.

“she might go berserk”
: Ibid.

“The best I can do”
:
The Eagle
(Hillside High School yearbook, 1926), 17.

Rather than ride
: PM,
Song
, 32.

“peanut gallery”
: Ibid.

Murray fell in love
: Ibid., 65.

Murray’s first choice
: Ibid., 65–70.

“yellow-brown skin”
: Ibid., 69.

She entered Hunter College
: PM, “A Working Student,”
Hunter College Echo
(Christmas issue 1932): 42–44; PM,
Song
, 71–76, 87.

“the delicate balance”
: PM,
Song
, 69.

She lived for a while
: Ibid., 74–77; PM, “A Working Student,”
Hunter College Echo
, 42–44.

“nervous breakdown”
: PM, “A Working Student,”
Hunter College Echo
, 43.

“It was a dreadful”
: PM,
Song
, 77.

“mutual loneliness”
: Ibid.

“Sexually inexperienced”
: Ibid.

Desperate for a change
: Ibid., 77–81.

“I am the Highway”
: PM, “Song of the Highway,” in
Negro: An Anthology
, ed. Nancy Cunard (London: Wishart, 1934), 93. This poem would be reprinted in PM,
Dark Testament
, 62–63.

“wanderlust”
: PM,
Song
, 82.

Murray’s exuberance was
: Ibid., 78–79.

Hundreds of thousands
: Ibid., 79–81; Errol Lincoln Uys,
Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression
(New York: Routledge, 2003);
Relief for Unemployed Transients: Hearings on S. 5121 Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Manufacture, January 13 to 25
,
1933
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office); Thomas Minehan, “Girls of the Road,”
Independent Woman
13 (October 1934): 316–35; and Thomas Minehan,
Boy and Girl Tramps of America
(New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1934).

“scout pants”
: PM,
Song
, 79.

Murray’s adolescent build
: In
Song
, 79, Murray suggests that she presented a male persona primarily for safety while riding the rails, but her private writings and photographs suggest that her clothing was an expression of identity. For further discussion, see Doreen Marie Drury, “ ‘Experimentation on the Male Side’: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in Pauli Murray’s Quest for Love and Identity, 1910–1960” (PhD diss., Boston College, 2000); Doreen M. Drury, “Love, Ambition, and ‘Invisible Footnotes’ in the Life and Writing of Pauli Murray,”
Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture & Society
11, no. 3 (2009): 295–309. On Murray’s childhood delight in wearing men’s caps, see PM, interview by Genna Rae McNeil, February 13, 1976, interview G-0044, transcript, Southern Oral History Program Collection, #4007, University of North Carolina. For photographs and stories of black and white homeless women who dressed in men’s clothing, see Minehan, “Girls of the Road,”
Independent Woman;
Minehan,
Boy and Girl Tramps of America;
and “Young Girls ‘Hobo’ Way from Alabama to Chicago,”
Chicago Defender
, September 21, 1929.