Pauli Murray and Caroline Ware: Forty Years of Letters in Black and White

Chapter 4. Ghana, UNESCO, and Beyond

1 4 ghana, unesco, and beyond By 1959 Pauli Murray was once again restless. Maida Springer, who had had a long association with what had been the Gold Coast and was, as of 1957, the newly independent nation of Ghana, sent her an advertisement for a lawyer who could teach in the new University of Ghana Law School. Murray applied for the job, and when the Ghanian government expressed interest but said it had few resources, she negotiated an agreement with the Ford Foundation for a grant that would enable her to accept the opportunity. Lloyd Garrison helped arrange for some refresher lessons at the Columbia University Law School, and her friends at the law firm rounded up books to donate. In January of 1960, thanks to a loan from Ware, she set sail on a Norwegian freighter, along with dog and books and things she might need. This adventure led to a flurry of letters. Ware realized that this move was a major undertaking for a person who had never before left the country and who had very little knowledge of the realities of life in a newly freed African country. As a consequence she sent o√ letter after letter, beginning even before the ship arrived in Africa. Her concern was more than justified. Murray’s first contact with Ghana was traumatic. She was almost immediately homesick, the tropics were bad for her collection of health problems, and she su√ered from culture shock. She was dismayed by the accommodations at first provided by the university. She has been warned that they would not be luxurious, but apparently the reality was a shock. In her journal she writes that she had expected people to make more fuss over her and to provide more gracious living. For a while she found it impossible to write letters, yet in her journal she castigates friends at home who fail to write as often as she would like. 114 ghana, unesco, and beyond After the initial adjustment, Murray worked hard at teaching and at learning about Ghana, but she was always on the edge of depression. When the first shocks subsided a bit, she began writing fairly positive letters to Ware and other friends, while at the same time pouring out her unhappiness in journal notes. As long as Murray was in Ghana, Ware kept up a steady stream of encouraging notes. On February 3, 1960, having just seen Pauli o√ on the freighter, Lina writes urging her to see this assignment as a great adventure. Again on February 11, an enthusiastic letter says that she is expecting a visit from Pauli’s two closest friends, Maida Springer and Renee Barlow. Six days after that an air letter goes o√ to Monrovia, Liberia, where the freighter is to land, and then another, with notes from Gardiner, Mary Gresham, Renee Barlow, and Helen Lockwood, as well as Ware. 1 March 11, 1960 [. . .] One observation and suggestion: you are an American. Period. Not a Negro American, or an American Negro, or an Afro-American or anything else with an adjective or a hyphen. You can do more to clarify yourself and to clarify the usa and further relationships all the way around by maintaining a firmly American—period—stance. [. . .]∞ She adds that she and Gardiner have been invited to the Salzburg Seminar in Austria. Pauli responds that she has walked into a challenging situation since the Ghanians are about to write a constitution. At this point Ware’s letters begin to indicate that her enormous undertaking for unesco is drawing to a close. A paragraph in the Author/Editors’ Preface to the volume shows just how challenging the project had been: This volume, which deals with the twentieth century must, by the nature of the subject, be more tentative and more varied in the range of materials than those which treat earlier periods. For it has been written in the midst of the events and trends to which it refers and it 1. Kevin K. Gaines devotes chapter 4 of his American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006) to Pauli Murray and especially her reaction to the Congo Crisis. He is critical of Murray’s approach to Africa. ghana, unesco, and beyond 115 deals with the many facets of contemporary life for which only the perspective of time can provide...