PROGRAM

Join us at Roosevelt House as we welcome historian Patricia Bell-Scott to mark the publication of The Firebrand and the First Lady, her groundbreaking book about the enduring and consequential friendship between Pauli Murray, a brilliant writer-turned-activist, granddaughter of a mulatto slave-and member of Phi Beta Kappa at Hunter College, class of 1933-and Eleanor Roosevelt, the first lady of the United States, whose ancestry gave her membership in the daughters of the American Revolution. Patricia Bell-Scott, professor emerita of women’s studies and human development and family science at the University of Georgia, will be in conversation with Nell Irvin Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita Princeton University, and author of Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol.

Pauli Murray graduated at the top of her 1944 class at Howard University School of Law, was named Mademoiselle Magazine’s “Woman of the Year” in 1947 and wrote States’ Laws on Race and Color, which Thurgood Marshall called “the Bible for civil rights lawyers.” She was appointed to President John F. Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women in 1962, was a co-founder of the National Organization for Women, and was the first African American woman to be ordained as the Episcopal Priest. And yet few today know her who she is.

In 1938, Murray, then 28, wrote a letter to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt protesting racial segregation in the South. The President’s staff forwarded Murray’s letter to the federal Office of Education. The first lady wrote back. So began a friendship that would last for a quarter of a century, until Mrs. Roosevelt’s death in 1962.

Patricia Bell-Scott’s conversation with Nell Painter inaugurates Roosevelt House’s commemoration of Women’s History Month. 


Patricia Bell-Scott – “The Firebrand and the First Lady, Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice” | Posted on January 27th, 2016 | Public Programs