The Firebrand and the First Lady

In this engaging read, Patricia Bell-Scott explores the close relationship shared between Black feminist activist, lawyer, and writer Pauli Murry and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. This is a story of two divergent lives becoming intertwined as both women fought for self-definition and for their respective causes. One of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century, Murray did not hesitate to criticize the Roosevelts. Nonetheless she was not only able to secure support from Eleanor Roosevelt for civil rights causes but also transform, in many instances, the First Lady’s thinking on racial affairs. This book takes us beyond FDR’s death… show more.

Patricia Bell-Scott’s study of Eleanor Roosevelt and the fiercely driven civil rights activist Pauli Murray is a captivating portrait of two social justice warriors who by all the logic of time and place should never have met, much less produced changes neither one could have accomplished alone. Roosevelt is rendered with deftness and fresh insight, but it’s Bell-Scott’s unforgettable depiction of the lesser-known figure of Constitutional lawyer, NOW founder, and groundbreaking Episcopal minister Pauli Murray which, for me, sets this book apart. Having first learned of Murray in my interviews with her legal protégé, Dovey Johnson Roundtree, I was hungry… show more.