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1 a personal postscript What, my friends ask with some insistence: what did you learn from this enterprise? The answer is: a great deal that I did not guess at the outset. Yet, in the end I am left with many questions. About Pauli Murray and her forty-three-year friendship with Lina Ware, I had everything to learn. As I re-read Murray’s two autobiographies and read and re-read the extraordinary correspondence between the two women, I realized more and more the challenge it is for any outsider to understand what it means to be black in American society. Extraordinary though Murray was, her life was shaped by her acute sensitivity, first to segregation and then to numerous other discriminations to which all people of color were subject. She felt a need to deal with every case of injustice that came to her attention. Her life was also shaped by uncertainties about her sexual nature and fears of hereditary insanity. She herself speculated that these ‘‘terrors’’ had something to do with her energy for protest. Combined with her high intelligence and her insatiable ambition for achievement and recognition , the fears somehow also contributed to her almost endless capacity for hard work. Doubtless they also had something to do with the volatility of her spirit. All that is only part of the story. Many people testify to Murray’s charm and warmth, indeed to her magnetism. When she lectured to diverse audiences, she was often able to endear herself to whole groups of people. She did great kindnesses for friends who were in trouble or unhappy. She had a constant concern for Maida Springer’s well-being. She gave money she could not a√ord when friends needed help. At the same time, she could move from unusual self-confidence to devastating self-analysis in a single day. She was out front on issues that later became central to the great national movement for civil rights. Her challenges to the University of North Carolina, to the courts in the Waller case, to Washington restaurants , to the state of Virginia in the bus incident, to Cornell University, and to any individual or group she perceived as discriminating against 182 a personal postscript African Americans prefigured the more familiar challenges of the 1960s. The energy and time she devoted to challenging every example of discrimination she observed are astounding. Her letters, and even more her journal notes, reveal a complex inner life. The public persona, depicted in many of her letters and in her autobiographical writing, was quite di√erent from the private one. She had a hard time working at the direction of another person, many times seething in private while in public doing a fine job. She was hypersensitive to slights, yet could examine her own failings. Letter writing was often therapy. My husband, Andrew Scott, who was until his death a collaborator in most of my scholarly endeavors, read the correspondence between Lina Ware, whom he knew, and Pauli Murray, whose books he had read, and o√ered the following observations: Hers [Murray’s] was a passionate voice, an angry voice, sometimes an imploring voice as she called on her nation to complete its work, to live up to its principles . . . Was she often hard to have around? Believe it. If you didn’t accept her position she would want to know why. If you did accept them, why were you not out there protesting as she was? Pauli was not your quiet do-gooder. She would not let you go to church on Sunday and live a normal life the other six days. She wanted you to be out there every day. He described the hurdles that faced her as a woman and a black woman and then went on: She might plead ‘‘I am human. I demand justice and equality.’’ But the answer would come back: ‘‘My dear, you are human to be sure, but you are a black, female human.’’ . . . Pauli was a warrior. She fought for changes all her life and e√ectively. But, paradoxically, she was vulnerable and uncertain inwardly . . . Anyone who wants to understand her must see her as a warrior whose own, internal fortifications were often shaky . . . I think he had it right. About Caroline Ware I came to learn more than our friendship, intermittent visits, and joint e√orts on behalf of women had revealed. In retro- [3.129.211.87] Project MUSE (2024-04-19...

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