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

Chapter 1. The Correspondence Begins

1 1 the correspondence begins In 1942 the country was at war, and victory was by no means certain. War production was barely under way, though President Roosevelt assured citizens that they could do what was necessary. They could indeed, and in a very short time the needs of the war would take over the economy , with attendant disruptions to the accustomed way of doing things. For black citizens, war brought opportunities for work in defense plants or in service jobs hitherto filled by white people. It also brought army service and overseas experience to many young black men. These changes would bear directly on the concern for human rights shared by Pauli Murray and Caroline Ware. It was in this wartime context that the two became friends. Ware was forty-two, Murray ten years younger. They began with something of a teacher-student relationship. In the ensuing year the two met often, in class and out, and became well acquainted. Murray drew Ware into the student protest movement she had helped to organize seeking to end segregation in Washington, D.C. Ware introduced Murray to The Farm and to Gardiner, of whom Murray soon spoke as a friend. The two women responded in various ways to the events of the 1940s. Ware served on the National Defense Advisory Commission, wrote The Consumer Goes to War, worked in her garden, and taught history to soldiers-in-the-making. Murray, whose focus was on the struggle for human rights, was engaged in active protest and in the study of law. She argued vehemently in many venues that the United States could not claim to be fighting for freedom as long as it permitted discrimination against black citizens. Whatever the two women may have discussed or thought in other settings, their letters exhibit no interest in the military situation that filled the headlines. In the summer of 1943, at the end of her second year in law school, 24 the correspondence begins Murray went o√ to New York to earn a little money during the summer vacation, and the correspondence began. Like most professional women of her generation, Lina Ware was deeply involved in the work of several voluntary associations. The American Association of University Women was her longest-running volunteer base.∞ Within that organization she supported racial integration long before the membership as a whole was ready for such a change. She promoted the idea of consumer protection within the organization as well and often represented the aauw before congressional committees and various governmental bodies. Planting potatoes and corn was, possibly, a response to wartime need; however, a large vegetable garden continued for many years to be characteristic of the Ware-Means ménage, and Lina Ware always found that gardening restored her after hard work in other dimensions of her life. Vassar, of which she was a loyal alumna and former faculty member, was one of her frequent ports of call. She often went to spend time with her close friend of many years, Helen Lockwood, a member of the English Department, with whom she shared a deep interest in what was going on at the college. Next to Gardiner Means, Lockwood was her closest intellectual companion. 1 Vienna, Virginia 14 July 1943 Dear Pauli: [The letter begins with advice about training a Sheltie puppy given Pauli by the Ware-Means family.] I have a reprieve on teaching for which I am thoroughly glad. The summer school enrollment is so small that I had no classes. That let me replant corn, and finish the potatoes last week. Then, when I called to find my schedule for army classes, I managed to 1. The aauw began in 1881 as the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, at a time when fewer than 2 percent of all college graduates were women, with the purpose of expanding opportunities for women scholars. In 1921 the name was changed to the present one, and by 1940 more than 12 percent of all American women were college graduates. See the excellent book by Susan Levine, Degrees of Equality: The American Association of University Women and the Challenge of Twentieth-Century Feminism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995). the correspondence begins 25 arrange not to start with the first batch of boys who came in today but to start with the batch that comes in the middle of July. So I can go to Vassar for a couple...