Of the womens suffrage material that we have on view of the stairs. I was going to say to see only through the end of the month we will be announcing an extension but dont deter you. Tonight we are going to welcome two extraordinary women who will be speaking about two extraordinary women and it is a pleasure to welcome both of you to the home of Eleanor Roosevelt to have played such a big role in the courageous and groundbreaking life of activism as the book we are gathered here to discuss the firebrand and the first lady has made clear for the first time, and its a particular will pleasure to welcome everyone here to the college. She was Phi Beta Kappa of 1933, january 1933. She couldnt wait and that is one of the many milestones in the life that we will hear about this evening. As the book shows she played a significant role. It lasted from the 1930s until mrs. Roosevelt death in 1962. You will hear about all of us were activism later she was the cofounder of the National Organization for women and really an extraordinary life and we will leave the rest of the story to the guests. Our guests, patricia is the emeritus of womens studies and Human Development and family science at the university of georgia and a major chronicler of womens black lives including her book double stitch which won the memorial book prize. Some of you saw the review at the boat years ago in which some of you remember the author of the notorious high praise for the first lady and knew that nothing was ever easy for polly murray a black woman born in 19 tens. A woman attracted to women and also a poet of memoirs come activists and priests. But her friendship with roosevelt sustained over nearly a quarter century and more than 300 cards and letters helped. Its for the firebrand into the first lady a tremendous book that has been 20 years in the making. I think that is what we call the rave and we thank you for your book and for being here today to celebrate its publication in the home of one of your protagonists. In conversations with professor bell scott is Nell Irvin Painter the edwards professor of American History at Princeton University and one of the most esteemed historians in recent decades. Shes written many books that shaped the understanding of history since she published her first book black migration to kansas after reconstruction 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 the professor a few years ago but im told authoritatively that it was 19 years ago when she and i, while she is still john but when she delivered the fourth lecture on Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg College a while ago. Since the retirement from princeton has embarked on a post historian career as an acclaimed visual artist got as far as i know has been the cool by only a couple of people i can think about, Winston Churchill may be and george w. Bush, the second acts in american art. You should know that on her website this great historian now identifies herself as the painter formerly known as the historian nell painter. Thats pretty good and i rehearsed a lot. We were able to bring her here from princeton to the roosevelt house. Please welcome professors Patricia Bell scott and Nell Irvin Painter. [applause] would you like to Say Something about paulie merry before we start . I would like to say how pleased i am to be here at this event hosted by an institution that is part of the alma mater and. She came here in 1928 after having graduated from a Small High School in the south and only went to the 11th grade which meant she had to come to new york and earned a Second High School diploma so that she could be admitted. And if you read her autobiography, what you know is hunter of all the institutions he approached during the weekend here is the one place she found acceptance and encouragement and so she did come to hunter. She had all kinds of financial trouble associated 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 one was with a guard who was an english professor. As i was saying to my colleague we know her primarily as an activist and the first africanamerican woman to be ordained but the first thing she wanted to be known as was a writer and she wrote an essay that contained the seeds of the crowd she was abused and she would always be grateful to professor for encouraging her. She also made lifelong friends who with whom she maintained contact with out her through her life so it was an important experience to come to hunter so im grateful she came because it helped make her who she became. Hello. Nice to see you all. Thank you. I have several questions so i will pose these questions to professor bell scott and she will talk to them or ignore them as if she prefers. [laughter] and then as we get to the end, there will be time to ask some questions as well. This is an extraordinary book of extraordinary women. When you think about the times that we are in now and about those women, we want things to get better as they go along. I am not sure thats whats happened but i think that we are in a time that has asked us to keep both times in mind, our own time and their time. You worked on this book for a very long time. So im going to ask you about your involvement as a writer, as a scholar coming as a person attracted to these women as human beings. If you have any idea of what you would be see finding when you began this project . I began with one question which led to several but the first was how is it that the daughter of a grand daughter of a mixed slave from North Carolina and a woman whose ancestry and titled her to the daughters of the american revolution, what drew them together . I was very curious about this unlikely friendship so that got me started and then i became interested in the relationship longterm. I wanted to know what were the dynamics of this friendship and what did included bring to the relationship and because it was a long relationship i wanted to know how did it change over time i wanted to look at the historical backdrop was not only was i looking at what was happening with each women individually, i was looking at them in Historical Context so the curtain behind which the story come in behind which the story unfolds that we are looking at the depression, we are looking at world war ii, mccarthy several major historical events and historical movements can early civil rights, the beginning of the modernday more contemporary version of the womens movement. And each of these women had a role to play in all of those movements. In the Historical Context i was working overtime and then as i continued with the project it occurred to me that it would be useful for me to try to make an assessment about the impact of this friendship for the cause of social justice which was the passion that they shared, the cause of social justice and human rights and so i ended up with the questions of what drew these women together in friendship, what was the nature of the friendship of what friendship, what was the chemistry, how did they sustain the relationship and how did it change over time and what significance did have the cause of social justice and human rights. But im going to ask the audience how many of you have had a chance to read this book yet . One of the things i learned this despite they came from very different backgrounds and the fact that she was 26 years junior to Eleanor Roosevelt they had a lot in common, more than you might have imagined. First of all that they were both child Orphans Committee posts lost their parents what they were very young. They were both raised by elderly can. They had some personality to the personality characteristics in common. People are often shocked to hear me say that they were shy because they have seen bigger than life. When you say it when our roosevelt people think of a courageous woman and if you know anything about her, people tend to think that she was a great woman and she was the were both shy. They both had tremendous energy. They would wear out their best friends. However they both suffer from anxiety, feelings of insecurity, they were a people who are overall sense of wellbeing depended in large measure having what they considered to be meaningful work so the work was important for their sense of wellbeing as well as company with their cherished friends, and that included their dogs. So for eleanor, she had a preference but we knew that there were other areas that she had. And polly had a soft spot so they always had dogs. They were lifelong episcopalians in the think its important not to discount that commonality in terms of their faith. They were devoted lifelong episcopalians. And even though she had the challenges in the church and left briefly from time to time she looked twice because she was upset with the treatment of women and polly was the sixth generation episcopalian so this was an important connection they had. They were both avid readers. They love to write, they love poetry, they love reading poetry out loud to friends. The commonality that isnt apparent when one thinks of them so i was really surprised and interested to learn how much they have in common. I also the second question have to do with had to do with how did they sustain this relationship and they sustained it through the letter is primarily, however, they supplemented them with candy, send each other flowers when one was sick or feeling low and david get together. It was a dramatic experience because eleanor showed up behind the wheel of the coop. Shes the driver. The passengers of the private secretary, a man that she took to be a secret Service Agent though my research suggested this was probably tommys husband. Eleanor didnt like having secret service around, and so she showed up at this camp which was the first camp for unemployed women. It was sort of a female version of the camp however eleanor was determined that unlike the camps for men this particular camp wouldnt be segregated. That was important to her. It was in the Bear 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, gets out of the car and immediately starts going through the premises. The residents are really excited and they are following her. But polly who is shy and stunned by this unannounced appearance of the first lady and she hasnt been first lady that long is sitting in a corner of the dining area of the camp and peering at eleanor behind a newspaper, shes too shy to speak and introduce herself so there isnt a direct interaction but i want to believe that eleanor saw her because eleanor made a practice of counting the number of women of color she saw. She was determined that the camp would be integrated into so she went periodically count and make a note and whenever she thought she saw something that wasnt quite right she would write to the camp director. Four years later, she applied to the university of North Carolinas graduate school and within weeks of her application, the president Franklin Roosevelt went to the campus to speak in his address was after the midterm elections a wisely anticipated address people were excited. Arrangements were made to the speech internationally, and Franklin Roosevelt had all kinds of praise on the university for its liberalism, for its faith in youth and progressive attitude on all fronts and polly was beside herself because she knew that they didnt accept black students that she but she hoped her application would be accepted anyway, and it was not. When she read the transcript of the president s speech in the new york times, she was living in harlem at the time she just couldnt sit still so with her trusty typewriter she began a three page single spaced letter which she sent to the president calling him to task for his praise of the universitys policies that forbid the emission of the students for hiring of black professional staff in any capacity and she sent this to the president as she was getting the letter ready to go she thought they may not make it through. Perhaps i would like to send a copy of this which is what she did. Now the president s office forwarded the letter to the office of indication and they responded about a month later but eleanor wrote back promptly over her own signature and in that letter she sent i understand, and im paraphrasing but she said i understand your concerns but i want you to do with the greatest change is coming and its best to fight in conservatory ways but dont push too fast. That is the caution dont push too fast. And she was happy to get this letter however, she was not about to accept the advice that she needed to slow down or be more patient so this was more symbolic of the relationship in the early stages when the relationship first began to. She was unwilling to compromise and Eleanor Roosevelt first lady of the nation feeling very much that her role was to be supportive of her husbands measured approach on the question of civil rights so there was a tension of wanting to let go, lets get moving and eleanor saying lets not move too fast. This was 1938. By the time that eleanor and i is guys come and polly is very suspicious and not willing to vote for Franklin Roosevelt by the time the eleanor is in her final years this tells you a little bit about the dramatic impact of the relationship, she moves from being someone who can never vote for Franklin Roosevelt who is suspicious of the twoparty system to become a registered voting democrat and eleanor moved from taking the position of one who says you dont push too fast and you need to work within the system and you must obey the law that requires segregated seating and accommodations until theyve passed. She moved from that position to actively supporting civil rights activists who were disobeying the code in the southern south so i cant ever say that she see that she moved to the center. She moved towards the center and eleanor moved from the middle of little to the left so we see them converging politically. So, that was one example of how the relationship changed over time. The question of the impact for the nation i dare to say had it not been for that relationship i dont know if pally and this may be too strong but thats my speculation, would have been willing to work within the system that allowed her to work to counter the National Organization for women she agreed to serve on the commission for the status of women in 1961 where she worked with a group looking at the question of equal rights and then she became someone who decided that it was worth the discomfort to learn to treat to work within the bureaucracies and they always try to hurt. She had a really hard time and the people who were the mainstays of the bureaucracies always found her difficult like for example the naacp. And i think theres another reason we dont know as much about her because often when people write the history of the various movements, they write the history of those organizations which have been at the forefront of the movement so we have nice histories of water right and we have the book about Thurgood Marshall and people who worked within the bureaucracies and theres a tendency to see the institutional leaders is the most important people and hoping is that this will get people interested because i could cover all facets of her life but to open that door. That is a long response. I was going to ask you when your story began but i think yo may have answered that. You are thinking about these women you thought of as different and it sounds like you brought them together on personal terms less on the sociological trap but more of a psychological likenesses so im guessing that when you begin you thought that this was going to be a book about activism and women working together as activists. Now that you have finished and youve gotten a warm response would be using this book is doing . One of the things i hope the book does is added add to the interest and the fuel to look at womens friendships. I think one of the reasons is because the documents have been there. Its not like i found new documents. There is a new archive at the roosevelt historians mentioned this friendship in passing and i felt like it deserved more attention than the previous historians and biographers have given it. Its also been my experience that the women who are as complex and complicated raise such a challenge for us as scholars. I wear the cap of someone that has a good grounding in social psychology and other disciplines and it has taken all of that to look at the relationship because paulie is africanamerican. She was a political radical, she was a woman whose primary infection was with women, she was a religious progressive always a religious progressive. She was and aspiring writer and i think her writing needs to be evaluated. So it was an interdisciplinary and much more complicated story than i had anticipated and thats something i would like other historians to consider. Why do you think it was more competed then you expected . She worked in womens studies and you were part of all of the give me the proper title so you knew at least on some level that this was going to be a complicated story yet as you were getting into it, you were surprised. Is that because of the the way that we grow up in the United States thinking of ourselves and boxes . Is it because its hard to think of a person who is black or is a feminist having so much a psychological i was going to say baggage that so much psychology, hows that . And yes is the answer to all of that admission to the fact this is a brilliant woman and in sociological terms. Data overload she always kept journals so whether she was writing poetry or notes about her life, there was a huge amount of data primary sources when one is trying to access the thinking was at a particular moment in life