The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice by Patricia Bell-Scott Page B

refugee children” to the NPC.
    Looking to capitalize onER’s special interest in refugee children, Murray forwarded an information packet, a thank-you letter for the “mention” of Barthé’s gift, and a news clipping featuring photos of four-year-oldAguileo Sardo Alejo and ten-year-oldRosa Marin Gonzalez, whom the NPC had adopted with the proceeds from the sale of the sculpture. Murray was also concerned about the growing number ofEthiopian refugees displaced by Italy’s invasion of their homeland. Since the NPC had no resources to help them, she asked ER to bring the “Ethiopian question” to the attention of the American public and theIntergovernmental Commission on Refugees.
    Although the first lady acknowledged receipt of Murray’s material, she did not explicitly refer to the NPC again in “My Day.” She did call, to Murray’s satisfaction, for greater coordination in war relief.
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    DURING THE FIRST WEEK of December, Murray wrote to the White House twice.Her first communiqué, dated December 2, went to Franklin Roosevelt, who was considering a replacement for the recently deceased AssociateSupreme Court JusticePierce Butler. Murray’s goal was to persuade FDR to name “a qualified Negro” jurist to the high court. Having watched the president’s proposal to expand the number of justices go down in defeat, Murray sought to assuage the loss with a missive that bore no resemblance to her testy statement about his UNC speech. She waxed eloquent about the president’s charisma and the country’s affection for “the second Roosevelt.” She suggested, somewhat tactlessly, that there was an upside to Butler’s death: “It might be a miracle of history that what you could not gain through personal influence and intelligent persuasion has been achieved for you through what some would be prone to call ‘acts of God.’ ”
    White House press secretaryStephen T. Early promptly acknowledgedMurray’s letter, but her wish for a black Supreme Court justice was not to be. FDR nominated Attorney General Frank Murphy, and the Senate would confirm him in January.
    Murray’s second letter, dated December 6, went to Eleanor Roosevelt, and it addressed a personal concern.Murray had left the NPC after only three months. She found it nearly impossible to raise funds from blacks, and the effort was exhausting. And her disagreements with theCommunists associated with the NPC reached a breaking point when theSoviet Union signed a nonaggression pact withNaziGermany and thenHitler invadedPoland, as did the Soviet Union. Not only did Murray “disapprove of the Soviet Union action,” she told a board member, she did not “believe in any form of totalitarian government be it nazi or communist,” and she had “absolutely no respect for the Communist Party and its tactics.”
    The stress Murray felt over having to quit her job was exacerbated by the unexpected arrival of her aunt Sallie’s seventeen- and twenty-year-old sons, Joshua and James. Their father, the Reverend John Ethophilus Gratten Small, had died of a stroke, leaving thefamily with no support. The boys were heartbroken, and their mother, awash in her own grief, sent them to Murray. Being unemployed again and unable to provide for her nephews and herself was devastating.
    Murray described hersituation in an opinion that she sent to several newspapers. Attributing its authorship to a friend, she asked ER to read it “with the hope that you can find some space in yourcolumn, ‘My Day,’ to comment upon the reaction such a letter inspires.”
December 6, 1939
To the Editor:
…Our family of three has just been subjected to the degrading experience of re-application for relief after four years of WPA, odd jobs and whatever we could turn our hands to. The fact that we prefer to make our way on a combined income of $13.00 weekly from employment at lower wage standards than WPA, is irrelevant.
We say degrading experience, not because the techniques of