List is partial to books that explore questions of race, freedom, equality and justice. The firebrand the firebrand and the first lady has it all. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] good evening everyone. Good evening. I am Harold Holzer director and its always a pleasure to the first of our evening Public Program to mark womens History Month. March is womens History Month and these remember that part of the celebration is the opportunity for you to have another look or perhaps your first look at the exhibition of womens suffrage material that we have on view upstairs. I was going to say only through the end of the month. We will be announcing the extension but dont let that deter you from seeing it soon again and often. Tonight we are going to welcome two extraordinary women who will be speaking about two extraordinary women and its a real pleasure to welcome both of them to the home of Eleanor Roosevelt who played such a big role in Pauli Murrays courageous thing groundbreaking activism. As the book we are gathered here to discuss the firebrand and the first lady has really made clear for the first time. Its a particular pleasure to welcome everyone here to Pauli Murrays alma mater hunter college. Pauli murray was hunter class of 1933. That was one of the many milestones and i like to hear about this evening. As i think you know and as the book shows sub 13 played a hugely significant role in the life of Eleanor Roosevelt that had an intellectual and put a glee and tense friendship that lasted from 1930s until mrs. Roosevelts death in 1962. You will hear all about pauli murray and her activism pushes the cofounder of the National National and really led an extraordinary life. I will leave the rest of the story to our guest and a particular story about pauli murray mrs. Roosevelt had her guest Patricia Bellscotts professor america of womens studies and Human Development and family science at the university of georgia and a major chronicler of black womens lives including her book double, black women write about mothers and daughters which one the leticia which brown memorial book price. I hope some of you saw the book review, the New York Times book review a couple of weeks ago in which carmona who some of your member came to css hunter a few months ago the author they notorious rbg the coauthor had high praise for the firebrand and the first lady. She noted that nothing was ever easy for pauli murray a black woman born in 1910 at woman attracted to women and the poet memoirist and episcopal priests priests. More than 300 cards and letters the rich earths Patricia Bellscott toga the firebrand and the first lady a tremendous book that its been 20 years in the making. I think thats what we authors call a rave. And the value of the time she spent shines on every page. Professor thank you for your book and thank you for being here today to celebrate the publication in the home of one of your protagonists. In conversations with professor Patricia Bellscott is Nell Irvin Painter the edwards professor of American History at Princeton University and one of the most esteemed historians of recent decades. She has written many books that have shaped our understanding about American History since she published her first book in 1976. Her most recent book the history of white people was published in 2010 and its influence was immediate and has only been growing. I met her kesser painter just a few years ago but im told authoritatively that it was 19 years ago when she and i, she is still young. Im a wreck but when she delivered her lecture on Abraham Lincoln at gettysburg college. It was a while ago. Since i have to note since her retirement from princeton now has embarked on a post historian as an acclaimed visual artist. As far as i know has been equaled by only a couple of people that i can think about, Winston Churchill may be and george w. Bush. The second acts in american art but you should know that on our web site this great historian now identifies herself as Nell Irvin Painter the historian formerly known as nell painter. Please welcome professors Patricia Bellscott and Nell Irvin Painter. [applause] would you like to Say Something about pauli murray before we start . I would like to say how pleased i am to be here at this event hosted by an institution as part of her alma mater. Hunter was very important to her. She came here in 1928 after having graduated from a Small High School in the south and all they went to the 11th grade which meant she had to come to new york and earn a Second High School diploma so she could be admitted into hunter and if you have read her autobiography what you know is that hunter of all the institutions she approached during the weekend here was the one place where she found acceptance and encouragement, so she did come to hunter. Pauli had all kinds of financial trouble so she did drop out after her sophomore year but she eventually returned and one of the things that she always remembered and would credit hunter for were her relationships with two professors here. One was Catherine Reinhardt who was an english professor who encouraged pauli to write a pauli had always wanted to write as i was saying to my colleague here now that we no pauli primarily as an activist and the first africanamerican woman to be ordained as an episcopal priest but the thing she wanted to be known as primarily first and foremost i should say was as a writer it was an thick and tainted seeds of the family memoir. She would always be grateful for that professor for encouraging her. She also made lifelong friends here with whom she maintained contact throughout her life so is it very important experience to her to come to hunter. So i am grateful that she came because itd help make pauli who she became. All right, hello. Its nice to see you all. Thank you. I have several questions so i will post these questions to professor bell scott and she will talk to them or ignore them if she prefers and then as we get toward the end there will be time for you to ask some questions as well. This is an extraordinary book of two extraordinary women and when you think about the times we are in now and you think about those two women we kind of want things to get better as they go along. Im not sure that is what has happened but i think we are in a time that asks us to keep both in mind, our own time and their time. But the first question was how is it that the daughter, granddaughter from north carolina, and a woman whose ancestry entitled her to membership in the daughters of the american revolution, what drew them together . I was curious about this unlikely friendship. So that got me started. And then once i opened that door, i became interested in the relationship long term. I wanted to know what were the dynamics and what did each bring to the relationship and because it was a long relation ship. A. If we are looking at the depression. We are looking at several major historical events and movements. Each of these women had a role to play in all of those movements and each was affected as an individual by these historical moments, so i was trying to look at each individual over time and then as i continued with the project it occurred to me that it would be useful to readers for me to try to make some sort of an assessment about the impact of the friendship for the cause of social justice which was the cause of social justice and human rights. So i ended up with four questions. What drew these unlikely women together in friendship, what was the nature of the friendship, what was the chemistry, how did they sustain the relationship and how did they change over time and what significance did it add to the social justice and human rights . How many of you have had a chance to read the book . Just one heroine so you will have to answer the question. One of the first things i learned is despite the fact they came from different backgrounds and that he was 26 years junior to Eleanor Roosevelt they have more in common than you would imagine. First of all, they were both child orphans and lost their parents when they were very young. They were both raised by elderly and had a personality characteristic in common. People are often shocked to hear me say that they were shy because they seemed bigger than life. When you see Eleanor Roosevelt, if you know anything about paulie you tend to think and see her as a brave woman and she was but they were both innately shy and they had Tremendous Energy and they would wear out their best friends. However they both suffered from low moods and anxiety, feelings of insecurity. They were people for whom their overall sense of wellbeing depended on large measure having what they consider to be meaningful work. So it was important for their sense of wellbeing as well as with their cherished friends. And that included their dogs. There was a scottish dairy air, and you know that there were others she had. Paulie had a soft spot for strays and bots. They were a lifelong episcopalian, and i think it is important not to discount the terminology. And paulie come even though he had challenges and left briefly at least twice because she was upset with the treatment of women and always came back and paulie was the sixth generation episcopalian so this was an important connection they have to. They were both avid readers and love to write. They loved poetry and loved reading poetry out loud to friends. So, there was a tremendous amount of commonality in the years when and where it isnt apparent what one thinks of them. So i was surprised and interested to learn how much they have in common. I also, the second question had to do with how did they sustain this relationship and they sustain it through letters primarily. However they supplemented the letters with candy, they sent each other flowers when one was sick or feeling low, and they did get together from time to time. Paul the first sol Eleanor Roosevelt in the fall of 1934 and it was a very dramatic experience because eleanor showed up behind the wheel of her convertible coupe. A man that was taken to be the secret Service Agent though it was suggested eleanor didnt like having secret service around. So she showed up at this camp that was the first camp for unemployed when infamous for a female version however eleanor was determined i like the camps in this particular camp wouldnt be segregated. That was important to her. Since it was a project of hers and it wasnt located very far from her home, it was in the Mountain Area of new york. She would go periodically unannounced to inspect the camp to see how things are going so she drives up in this convertible coupe, get out of the car and immediately starts going through the premises. The residents are excited and following her about paulie, who is shy and stunned about this unannounced appearance about the first lady and she hadnt been the first lady very long, sitting in a corner in the social hall which is the dining area, and shes too shy to speak and to introduce herself, so there isnt a direct interaction but i want to believe that eleanor saw her because they made a practice and number so she would periodically count and make a number at whatever she thought wasnt right. Four years later, pauli applied to the university of north carolinas graduate school. Within weeks of her application, the president Franklin Roosevelt went to the campus to speak and his address shortly after the Midterm Election it was a widely anticipated address. People were excited to broadcast the speech internationally. Franklin roosevelt held all kinds of praise for its progressive attitude on all fronts. Paulie was decided herself because she knew they didnt accept black students that she hoped that her application would be accepted anyway and it was not. When she read the transcript of the president s speech she was living in new york at harlem at the time. She just couldnt sit still so she with her trusty typewriter began a three page single spaced wider which she sent to the president calling him to task for his praise at the universitys policies that forbade the emission of black students for the high hearing of black professional staff in any capacity. She sent this letter to the president but as she was getting it ready to go, she thought he has a base as th as a secretaryo they may not make it through. Perhaps i am i to send a copy of this with eleanor on the cover which is what she did. Ththe president s office forwardd the officto the office to the dt of education and if they responded about a month later. She wrote back over her own signature and in that letter she said it and i understand im paraphrasing but she said that i understand your concerns but i wanted to know the great change is coming and its best to fight in conservatory ways. But dont push too fast. There was a caution dont push too fast. Paulie was happy to get this letter however, she was not about to accept the advice that she needed, so this was symbolic of the relationship in the early stages when that relationship first began. Paulie was unwilling to compromise in very anxious for the change and Eleanor Roosevelt first lady of the nation feeling very much that her role was to be supportive of her husbands measuremeasuredapproach on the d so this tension of lets go, lets get moving and they said lets not move too fast. This is a 1938 so by the time paul e. Is also very suspicious and unwilling. By the time the eleanor is in her final year, this tells you a little bit about the dramatic impact of the friendship. She moves from being someone who could never vote for Franklin Roosevelt who is suspicious of the twoparty system to become a registered voting democrat and eleanor moves from taking the position of one who says you dont push too fast and you need to work within the system and it must require the segregated accommodations until those half past. She moved from that position to actively supporting the activism or disobeying the code in the southern south. So, what finally happens, i cant say that she moved to the center. She moved towards the center and eleanor speranza a little to the left. So we see the converging politically. That was one example of how that relationship changed over time. Now the question of what impact did it have for the nation i dare to say had it not been for that relationship i dont know if paulie, this may be too strong for this is my speculation, would have been willing to work within the system that allowed her to work with the founder of the National Organization for women. Paulie agreed to serve the commission for the status in 1961 where she worked with a group that was looking at a question and then became someone who decided that it was worth the discomfort to learn to try to work within the bureaucraci bureaucracies. Bureaucracies always tried her. She had a really hard time and the people who were the mainstays of the bureaucracies always found her difficult right for example, the naacp. And i also think that is another reason why we dont know as much about her, because often when people write the history of the various movements, they write a history of those organizations which have been at the forefront of the movement. So we have histories of water right and thurgood marshall, people that worked within the bureaucracies. Theres a tendency to see the leaders as the most important people. So, what im hoping is that this will get people interested because i could possibly cover all facets of her life. That is a long response. I was going to ask what i thought your book would contribute when you began. And i think you may have answered that. Let me ask you anyway. If you were just starting out thinking about these women it sounds like as you wrote, you brought them closer together on personal terms perhaps, less on their sociological trappings but more on the personal and psychological like this is. So i am guessing that when you began to me you thought this was going to be a book about activism and women working together as activists. Now that youve finished the book after such a long time and since youve gotten such a forward response, what do you think the book is doing . Thats an interesting question. One of the things i hope the book does is added to the interest in the field to look at womens friendships. I think one of the reasons why is because the documents have been there. Its not like i found the documents. There is a huge archive. The roosevelt historians can even those that looked at the paulie i mean eleanor have only mentioned the friendship in passing. And i felt like it deserved more attention than the previous historians and biographers have given it. And its also been my experience that women who are as complex and complicated raised such a challenge for us as scholars. As historians, i wear the cap of someone that has a good grounding in the social psychology and other disciplines. And its taken all of that to try to look at this relationship because paulie is africanamerican. She was a political radical and a woman whose primary affection was with women and she was a religious progressives always a religious progressives. She was an aspiring writer and i think that her writing needs to be evacuated. So it was an interdisciplinary complicated story more than i had anticipated and i think that is something i would like other historians to consider. Why do you think it was more complicated than you expected . The professor is the psychologist that worked on womens studies and you were part of all of the [inaudible] so, you know at least on some level that this was going to be a complicated story yet as we were getting into it, you were surprised. Is that because of the way that we grow up in the United States thinking about ourselves, is it because it is hard to think of a person who is a feminist having so much psychological baggage, so much psychology . Yes is the answer to all of that in addition to the fact this is a brilliant woman and in sociological terms it is a data overload because she made meaning out of her life through writing. Whether she was writing poetry or just writing notes about her life there is a huge amount of material when one is trying to access with her thinking was at a particular moment in life. So theres a huge amount of da data. Also, for me even though she was born in 1910 and i was born in 1950, theres a difference in historical moments. So here i am trying not to bias the word only by looking at the lens of my life. It wasnt even though iv i have read and studied mccarthyism it wasnt until i began to read the journal entries into her fear that mccarthyism i feel like i remember reading a letter that she wrote to a friend where she had learned members of the fbi had been looking for information about her. And this is in the 50s. She was just petrified. And she was right about this. She knew frequently the information was incorrect so she wrote a j. Edgar hoover letter and send a resume in the recent photograph. In the letter she sent ive heard from the library that you have been looking for information about me because i know and have learned from others the information you have is correct, this would be after Langston Hughes was called before the committee. She said i want you to have the right information and she described walking to the post office buying the postage to send the return receipt signature and she described how her knees almost buckled under when we put the package in the mail box. She was afraid that she felt this was important for her to do. I just remember it felt different for me. And of course director hoover wrote back and said no, we were not looking for you. That may have been some other agency. I have seen the final. They knew who they were. They were keeping records since her days at howard. Most was incorrect and she suspected or one agent would write something and then a couple years later they would say they could verify if so just the experiences that were not accessible before my time challenged me to. Eleanor roosevelt is a wellknown public figure of enormous importance. What did you learn about her . You probably know more about roosevelt going into this project. I had always heard that she was a compassionate person and the depth of her acceptance struck me. I asked her friends, one in particular who sold them together hell did they deal with paulie because as i said, she was a patient and said what she thought and later said polly could be embarrassingly direct by credit to Eleanor Roosevelt with hanging in there with her and being unwilling to allow them to buy out alone crying in the wilderness so that was one of the first interviews that gave me a window into the patients with young people, paulie in particular and her willingness to listen. That was the other thing. She appears to be in social psychology when we talk about making the relationships work you couldnt find a more active listener than Eleanor Roosevelt. She really opened her home. They invited her to lunch with eleanor, so her openness i was also interested in her growth as. This friendship was a place of growth for her so she moved for a being a cautious woman who was trained and socialized to obey the rules and wait your turn and work with institutions to become someone willing. So i was impressed with her growth and theres a couple instances where it was clear that relationship had made the discrimination wasnt just an abstract concept for her. This has become personal for h her. It was clear that it became a personal issue, so i was very pleased to learn about her compassion not just from a personal level but what she did on the political front. Survey related to each other as activists and also friends. Pally refer to it as confrontation. It moved from a confrontation to one where they became allies to work around issues together and then it moved particularly after fdr died in 1945 and she was no longer the first lady and was free to the obligation of having to be careful about what she said and advocated because of her responsibilities to the administration. It turned into a genuine friendship. I want to ask you about something before and this will come out of left field. Were there other similar relationships in either womans life . I will start with eleanor. Pauly was ipauly wasnt the onld that she had. The friendship with mary mcleod 50 yuan was better and she was friends with walter white the executive of the naacp but paulie argues that her relationship with eleanor was different. She was a young upstart and so they wanted things from her. These are institutional leaders, president of the national council, walter white is president of the executive of the naacp. So in their dealings, they are thinking about the constituencies. Pauly represented no one other than young people like herself. The dom and walter white could. They all apparently were afraid to go very far because they were thinking about the political consequences. So paulie believed and was writes that her relationship was different because in some ways she felt like she had nothing to lose and could speak her mind. There were other young people, africanamericans that eleanor had a relationship with and one is harry belafonte. He wanted to buy or rent an apartment in new york city because he was africanamerican and she was so upset she wrote about it in my day and said why dont people just come an you ae in with me. I need to fight this. I think of two friendships with women that were significant. One is the writer lillian smith. A native southerner born in georgia who wrote killers of the dream which is perhaps the most important work and ally of Martin Luther king and the civil rights of the young generation in that era in the 50s and 60s. Never left the south, started a literary journal that published one of the first journals, not journals the first problems and was an important mentor and supporter and was one of the persons that read various chapters and was encouraging so she was important. The second person who comes to mind is a professor of history at caroline who taught it was a white woman a social historian. She is another person. She became a friend of paulies when they enrolled in high wall school and they became fast friends and this person also was a cofounder now. She also read various segments of how in the draft. I want to ask you one last question before we open. What did you want to learn for your self personally . History is always with us. Pauly was one of those people that carried history around with her so when she was writing letters she was forever writing letters to people and it might start the letter saying today, 70 years ago she will tell you what happened and tell you why in terms of the particular moment. So, i found myself taking on that habit. Its a habit that reminded me of things they have gone through and there was a case in the book of the virginia sharecropper that was executed and while i was working on the book, there was a case of a man that was executed and was recanted. The pope had gotten involved but he was still executed. I wasnt thinking about it as i was advocating and lobbying in the board to try to grant clemency. I had a sense of their presence in she was worrying out of franklin to get him to establish the commission and she got in that terrain and rode out to explain to the governor privately to try to get him to grant clemency. So the notion of history being with us could have been written by some of the black lives matter. But because she burned candles at both ends of her life, she always struggled with this issue of activism and wanting to be an artist and writer, poet and also, i didnt notice this, dabbled in photography. Thiit was kind of an interesting photography. From studying her life i liked to try to define my activism because i was a lot like paulie as a younger woman redefined to include writing so i learned that. She worked so hard and her health suffered so i tried to learn a lesson about that from selfcare. I remember them going back to that passage when i was dealing with my own fathers passing i found comfort in that. When i started the book i was 41 or something and now im 65. I tell everybody i have my medicare card. And i have looked at how she and eleanor dealt with aging. Theyve been in my examples to learn from. [applause] first of all, thank you very much, both of you. You have done Something Special for me. I did read the book and you really talk about both of those things. You will have fun reading this book. He said he felt like a man at the first because he was now a person but i want to ask the question which i think youve already answered. In the book, you talk about her shoulder to shoulder with byron rustin. They never mention pauline murray. You mentioned she is right there in the strategy and a shoulder to shoulder but i would like you to tell her why she isnt mentioned. I think some of it is because she is a woman and some of it is because she was one who found it so trying she wouldve been achieved on to the next thing. Whats interesting about that is people were quite willing to who take the contribution and ideas but not always credit her so that is part of it. I also think that the fact of trying to deal with her isnt easy because she is brilliant and complex. For some people it seems like a conundrum in the sense that she is so radical that appellee and. They said that when they decided to go into the priesthood they were stunned and that had always been there and they had only spent about. I try to do shall summon the book on the case and she wrote him regularly and with talk about the scripture and as a child would accompany her uncle and would visit church and she would go with him and when they were not available, she would play the oregon. People tend not to see that part of her so that is her personality and some of it is sexism, some of it is prejudice against her sexuality so it is a combination of things and what is interesting, you bring up byron rustin, paulie helped plan that bus ride to the south. We hear about the work but paulie may not get mentioned in you mentioned mary mcleod feared who first came to the house, franklin, eleanor and sarah. Obviously the generation before. What you say that she laid out the groundwork of a friendship between an africanamerican woman and a white elite family such as the roosevelts so that when paulie came along they were already on the path and able and certainly encouraging the Higher Education of young women that the friendship mary mcleod feared took away from the relationship . I would definitely think so because eleanor did stay at their home and the circumstances were always precarious. During eleanors lifetime, never owned a home and so there was never an invitation to go and visit. Paulie always went to eleanors place. I have no doubt she would have gone. I cant remember where it is but she writes about how it was a Major Development for her in terms of her ability. She crossed a barrier and im sure that made it possible to have intimate friendships with other people do they challenge on any other issues that were important to the africanamerican population do you have the documents were letters that show showed there was a direct connection on these africanamerican issues. It was the silence on the issue of lynching and eleanor eventually made a statement about how she was against lynching. When she graduated at the top of her class, like her peers that have expected him to go to harvard, she wasnt about to go because she was a female and she didnt directly ask, she just told her how unfair this was and eleanor leaned on franklin who was a graduate of Harvard College to inquire and he did. Its not clear to me if you see the letter it isnt clear that he cared about this as much as eleanor. In fact i think he said Something Like i dont want you to speak when you get the chance could you get one of them to write me about the situation. He was going through the motions because eleanor was leaning on him and her behalf. She did act. She tried to move things. There is another case of 50 c. Scheme then feeding eleanor materiel about it and eleanor was pressing fdr to do something. Another place where they interact with one another that has to do with crossing between civil rights and human rights because in some way they shaped the civil rights struggle were legally and eleanor likewise both of them used to the others language. They often talked about the human rights beginning at home and in the same way this was the first person in the government to do an assessment of the compliance domestically and that was 1947 or Something Like that. The two of them i wonder did you find this a space where they were both working in between everybody else that gave them a way that i can remember your question makes me think of this. I dont know if this is an answer to a. Some radicals from the law school are delegates and eleanor is determined that the students from the allied nations field welcomed and supported and they get special treatment in the white house but in her group there are other radical and progressive working with them to raise issues about the analyzed the ap ran other places in the world. In her group they are upset about what is happening. They are worried about what the russians are doing if they want to raise these questions. Its so interesting to me that they develop a list of resolutions that speaks years later but at this particular moment, eleanor is rounding up and corners paulie to try to convince her not to move forward on these because it would upset the analyzed. The resolution doesnt go forward. The group stays together and told her one of the things they are worried about is the students will leave but it doesnt. Thats an important moment because what it says is and this is another important part of the story, the notion of civil dialogue. Whether we are talking on a nationstate level or institutional. So i began to see this rehearsal between the two of them how to deal with differences and in the questions its the young radicals they are not behaving well. One last question. Before i invite you all to come upstairs and buy this book and join us for a reception not to sound present this but wouldnt she have been thrilled with the discussion . [applause] please join us upstairs. [applause] that was Patricia Bell scott talking about the firebrand and first lady. One of the notable books of 2016. In july, 2012 in 82yearold vietnam veteran and house painter cracked security at the highly fortified facility in tennessee. The site is known as the fort knox of uranium. Inside the Steel Building by thousands of Nuclear Bombs and this incident has it the centerpiece of frightening yet dispassionate look of a Nuclear Armed world in the curren and tt state of the Nuclear Security and diplomacy. He follows the trials of the three nuclear protesters and makes a point by exploring the impact of the Nuclear Weapons testing in the Marshall Islands where the largest Nuclear Bombs were tested and by checking in on the people that lived downwind from the sites of where the book conveys the fear and danger of the Nuclear Weapons in the discussion of proliferation. This pretty well understood as long as some nations have Nuclear Weapons, other nations will want them. And thats where things become terrifying. President of bob put it best when he said if we believe the spread of Nuclear Weapons is inevitable in some way we are admitting that the use is inevitable. By probing the questions of the humankinds possible selfdestruction, its on the washington posts list of notable books. [applause]