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166 10 The Final Years in Italy As Edwards looked to the postwar period to continue her efforts on behalf of civil rights, labor, and women’s rights, she at long last received a correct diagnosis of the health problems that had plagued her for nearly ten years. In 1946, a specialist in New York diagnosed her condition as arthritis deformans, or rheumatoid arthritis. When told by the doctor that there was no cure for the illness, Edwards asked how to treat it. The doctor replied: “If you have money you go to thermal baths every year or two; you get some relief. That way you keep going as long as you can . . . 10, 15 years.”1 Shaken by the diagnosis, Edwards recalled the stunning change that had overcome her when the condition first reared its ugly head. One winter about a year before the condition hit her, she was returning from an assignment on the icy, snowy streets of Chicago. A companion who was about eight years younger than her had exclaimed with envy as Edwards was half-skipping, half-walking along the frozen street,“God you’re alive.”Reflecting on the crippling symptoms of her subsequent illness and the vast difference then in her vitality compared to that winter day, Edwards described it: “A year later my feet were weights, my legs collapsible, my head crowned the spinal column in pain and unease.”2  The Final Years in Italy 167 After the diagnosis, Edwards spent a few months getting chiropractic treatments . This therapy gave her enough relief that she was able to work at a desk again. At first, she focused on writing light fare for a popular audience. In the 1946 premier edition of John P. Davis’s magazine Our World, which featured singer and actress Lena Horne on the cover, Edwards wrote a very brief article in which she gave tips on hairstyling. “Coarse kinky hair is no handicap at all,” she argued. “Beauty experts insist that coarse hair stands up better than softer textures. It lends itself to fuller, richer styling. You can make your own hair just as lovely as you choose.”Edwards urged readers to“avoid the unskilled operator who scorches hair, the poorly manufactured gummy oils and hair setting fluids that eat through hair like lye.” For women who do their own hair, she recommended brushing it dry rather than using hot-air dryers. “Simpler styles—the page boy or for shorter hair, the feather bob—can be achieved with kid curlers,” she advised. “But the croquinole and finger wave are skilled operations which should not be attempted at home.”3 As Edwards regained strength, she continued her publicity work for the National Maritime Union, and she worked with a coalition of peace and women’srights activists to lay the groundwork for an American branch of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF). The WIDF, created in late 1945, was explicitly antifascist. Its founding leaders were Eugenie Cotton and MarieClaude Vaillant Couturier, both of whom had been Communist members of the French Resistance. The organization, which banned women who had belonged to fascist organizations, aimed to promote world peace and defend the economic, social, legal, and political rights of all women.4 On March 8, 1946 (International Women’s Day), the founding conference of the WIDF-affiliated Congress of American Women (CAW) took place in New York City. Edwards was elected recording secretary of the new organization. Other officers included Dr. Gene Weltfish, a Columbia University anthropologist , president; Muriel Draper, vice president; Josephine Tims, secretary; and Helen Phillips, treasurer. Several other black women joined the new organization , including Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown, president of the Palmer Institute; Thelma Dale, field secretary of the National Negro Congress; and Vivian Carter Mason, of the National Council of Negro Women.“Whatever we may have suffered as a group here in the United States,”Brown emphasized,“is nothing compared to what the women and children of Europe have suffered under fascism. . . . We must speak out, reach the hearts of the American people, and with their help wipe out fascist types from public office in the U.S.A., if our children are to be secure.”5 In the Cold War political atmosphere, the interracial CAW quickly came under fire for its pro-labor, pro-Soviet sympathies. Edwards was one of the members singled out by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as 168 Thyra J. Edwards an alleged Communist. HUAC blasted the CAW as a...

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