(no subject)
May. 15th, 2016 04:25 pmI am briefly in DC for work this week, so it seems like a good time to write up Patricia Bell Scott's The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice, which ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nextian recced to me and which was everything she promised.
I didn't know much about Pauli Murray before reading this book, which is a crying shame because she was INCREDIBLE -- a queer disabled black scholar and activist, famous for (among many other things) being the first black deputy attorney general in California AND publishing the first full inventory and examination of segregation laws AND being one of the first people to criticize sexism in the civil rights movement AND being the first black female Episcopalian priest, who (understandably) spent much of her life embodying that tumblr meme of 'should I fight [x] famous person/institution? YES, DEFINITELY FIGHT THEM.'
In fact she met Eleanor Roosevelt while attempting to fight FDR.
PAULI MURRAY: Dear Mrs. Roosevelt, I am a law student with as of yet no fame, notoriety, or credentials whatsoever, and I have attached a letter for your husband in which I inform him about his failures in re: dealing with this country's ridiculous racism, could you please make sure he gets it? THANKS, PAULI MURRAY, A CRITIC.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: Dear Miss Murray, thanks for your critique, here are the ways in which I think you are a wildly misguided radical young person. But the feedback is appreciated! THANKS, ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, A PATRONIZING WHITE LADY.
Somehow -- amazingly! -- this began a regular correspondence and, eventually, a lasting friendship??
(PAULI MURRAY: You're an orphan? I'M an orphan!!!)
For the record, while Eleanor Roosevelt gets equal billing in the title, it's really Pauli Murray's book; Eleanor's life is only covered insofar as it relates to Pauli Murray's. This is as it should be, since there's approximately five bajillion books that relate to Eleanor Roosevelt and not nearly enough on Pauli Murray.
And, like. OK. This didn't really need to be a book about Eleanor Roosevelt as well as Pauli Murray at all, it could've just been a Pauli Murray bio with Eleanor Roosevelt sidenotes and in some ways maybe that would've been better because Pauli Murray certainly deserves to stand on her own -- but I also am glad, right now, to be reminded that friendship and respect can exist across very different political beliefs and states of awareness. Not that Eleanor Roosevelt and Pauli Murray's friendship was an easy or an uncomplicated one (oh man, Eleanor Roosevelt published an essay titled 'Some Of My Best Friends Are Negroes,' SHE WAS I BELIEVE THE TROPE NAMER ON THIS, oh god, Eleanor) but still: they disagreed, and valued each other anyway. And that's not nothing.
nextian recced to me and which was everything she promised.I didn't know much about Pauli Murray before reading this book, which is a crying shame because she was INCREDIBLE -- a queer disabled black scholar and activist, famous for (among many other things) being the first black deputy attorney general in California AND publishing the first full inventory and examination of segregation laws AND being one of the first people to criticize sexism in the civil rights movement AND being the first black female Episcopalian priest, who (understandably) spent much of her life embodying that tumblr meme of 'should I fight [x] famous person/institution? YES, DEFINITELY FIGHT THEM.'
In fact she met Eleanor Roosevelt while attempting to fight FDR.
PAULI MURRAY: Dear Mrs. Roosevelt, I am a law student with as of yet no fame, notoriety, or credentials whatsoever, and I have attached a letter for your husband in which I inform him about his failures in re: dealing with this country's ridiculous racism, could you please make sure he gets it? THANKS, PAULI MURRAY, A CRITIC.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: Dear Miss Murray, thanks for your critique, here are the ways in which I think you are a wildly misguided radical young person. But the feedback is appreciated! THANKS, ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, A PATRONIZING WHITE LADY.
Somehow -- amazingly! -- this began a regular correspondence and, eventually, a lasting friendship??
(PAULI MURRAY: You're an orphan? I'M an orphan!!!)
For the record, while Eleanor Roosevelt gets equal billing in the title, it's really Pauli Murray's book; Eleanor's life is only covered insofar as it relates to Pauli Murray's. This is as it should be, since there's approximately five bajillion books that relate to Eleanor Roosevelt and not nearly enough on Pauli Murray.
And, like. OK. This didn't really need to be a book about Eleanor Roosevelt as well as Pauli Murray at all, it could've just been a Pauli Murray bio with Eleanor Roosevelt sidenotes and in some ways maybe that would've been better because Pauli Murray certainly deserves to stand on her own -- but I also am glad, right now, to be reminded that friendship and respect can exist across very different political beliefs and states of awareness. Not that Eleanor Roosevelt and Pauli Murray's friendship was an easy or an uncomplicated one (oh man, Eleanor Roosevelt published an essay titled 'Some Of My Best Friends Are Negroes,' SHE WAS I BELIEVE THE TROPE NAMER ON THIS, oh god, Eleanor) but still: they disagreed, and valued each other anyway. And that's not nothing.
