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Eleanor Roosevelt’s Camp Tera,
nestled near New York’s Hudson River, was initially meant to
be a temporary, leg-up place for Depression-era women who
were destitute and totally without resources. Though she was
young, educated and married, Pauli Murray was there because
of ill health.
Recovery-time aside, Murray’s
tenure at Camp Tera was beneficial: a friend had told her
that Roosevelt answered all correspondence, and Murray took
that to heart. In 1938, a few years after she was kicked out
of Camp Tera for “disrespecting the first lady,” she wrote a
protest letter to Roosevelt, requesting intercession in
FDR’s stance on anti-lynching laws. Activism was Murray’s
passion and the answer she got wasn’t what she’d wanted but
it did, as promised, come from Roosevelt.
Murray was born in 1910, the
feisty granddaughter of a mulatto slave whose stories of
injustice she grew up hearing. Murray lost her mother when
she was just three. A few years later, her father was
institutionalized, then murdered and her brother was
lobotomized. She, herself, had health problems and was often
severely underweight; during one of her hospitalizations,
she finally admitted that she was attracted to women, which
was then considered to be a mental health issue.
It took awhile for Murray to
tell Roosevelt all that. Before she did, and because of that
first protest note, the two corresponded for years in
letters that offered guidance, outrage and rebuttal. The
women didn’t always agree, but they always seemed to attempt
to understand one another’s take on issues. Murray supported
Roosevelt in her widowhood. Roosevelt encouraged Murray in
her activism.
It was a support that Murray
imagined she felt long after Mrs. Roosevelt’s death.
I would not, under the broadest
of terms, call The Firebrand and the First Lady a
pleasure read.
That’s not to say that this book
isn’t a pleasure – it’s just not something you’d pick
up to relax with. Author Patricia Bell-Scott goes deep into
the politics and work of both Roosevelt and Murray (more the
latter than the former) and that can be very dry. It’s
informative – Bell-Scott tells a story that’s been largely
hidden for decades, about a woman who left her mark on
social issues in many ways – but it’s far from lively.
Adding more details of Murray’s personal life might’ve
helped; that’s what I was hungriest for, but didn’t get
enough of.
I think this is an important
work of history and definitely worth reading but you’ll want
to be in the mood for it, particularly if you usually like
lots of energy in your stories. If you’re a scholar or
historian reading The Firebrand and the First Lady,
though, the pace is something you probably won’t mind.
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