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PART THREE Drawing Board CHAPTER 7 THE WINDY CITY AND WINNIE JIM, FOR GOD'S SAKE turn on your radio," the shrill voice of Bernice Fisher screeched over the phone. "The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor! We're going to war!" I slammed down the receiver and nearly broke the knob off the radio turning it on. The following day, the president addressed the nation: "December 7, 1941, a day that will live in infamy ..." The sonorous voice of Franklin Delano Roosevelt slowly hammered that date into history. We were at war. Bernice, a white student at the University of Chicago Theological School, was a passionately committed religious pacifist and a Norman Thomas socialist. She called me as soon as the speech was over. "My God, Jim, what does it mean? Does this kill the nonviolence movement before it gets started?" "No!" I shouted in a voice of protest, not confidence. "We can't let it stop us!" cried Bernice. I removed the receiver from my ear and could almost see her gritted teeth and tiny, clenched fists, remnants of chewed fingernails biting into palms, as she hissed the words into the phone. I had met FDR six months before. In April, a letter had come on White House stationery: For a long time, I have thought that it would be a good idea for some of the leading young people of the country to meet with the President to discuss a number of matters of mutual concern. I am, therefore, inviting you and about thirty other national youth leaders to have a buffet supper with me at the White House at 5:30 P.M. on June 5th, 1941. 68 LAY BARE THE HEART Afterwards, you will have three hours with the President. He will speak briefly, after which you will be free to raise any questions you wish. R.S.V.P. It was signed by Eleanor Roosevelt. I went. What twenty-one-year-old wouldn't have? Especially if he were, as I was, national chairman of the Youth Committee Against War at a time when war was imminent. On the portico of the White House, there were card tables, each with four folding chairs, arranged for the supper. I sat at one with two other youths, both white, whom I did not know. Mrs. Roosevelt took the fourth seat. I had seen her picture many times in papers and newsreels, but I'd never seen her in person. She was a tall, large woman, broad-shouldered but not fat. Her teeth protruded slightly, forcing her lips out when she closed them. Eleanor Roosevelt was homely, but magnificently homely. She brought to mind the great black woman Mary McLeod Bethune, who also lacked physical attractiveness. Ugliness has its own splendor when it houses a soul of beauty. She looked tired, drained, and unhappy, but radiating from her was a ferocious dedication. She and I monopolized the conversation at our table. I think there were no other blacks there, and she moved toward me to prevent me from feeling strange and uncomfortable. I was flattered and immediately felt at ease with her. I liked her. There was no subterfuge , no patronizing. She listened to my views with seriousness and responded as an equal. I was being accepted as a peer, not an inferior, by a person of supreme importance in the scale of things: the wife of the most powerful man in the world. It was, therefore, with excitement but also some regret that I heard the announcement that the president was ready to receive us and we should proceed into a designated room. I hated to leave her. We went to the room and took seats. Mrs. Roosevelt sat in a front seat. I sat in a middle row. The door at the back opened, and all our heads turned. There sat the president, paralyzed by polio, in a wheelchair; that seductive smile, his trademark, electrified his face; a long ivory cigarette holder tilted upward in uneven teeth. We rose, and suddenly all of us were paralyzed, too. An aide rolled the wheelchair down an aisle and behind a table in the front of the room and secured the brakes. The frozen smile thawed and drained from his face as his gaze moved from one side of the room to the other, eyes pensive. Harry Hopkins, adviser and assistant to the president, announced that we should file by the president and shake his hand and tell him...

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