Books
The friendship between a first lady and a ‘Firebrand’
Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt bonded during civil rights movement
Patricia Bell-Scott explores the friendship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Pauli Murray in her new book.
Most of us would be proud to have earned a degree, written an acclaimed book of poetry or memoir, worked tirelessly for civil rights and have been part of a friendship that fostered human rights.
Pauli Murray, the groundbreaking African-American activist, lawyer, writer and priest, who lived from 1910-1985 and was attracted to women, did all this and much more. For nearly 25 years, Murray the granddaughter of a mixed-race slave, was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, whose privileged background entitled her to belong to the Daughters of the American Revolution. (Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in 1939 when the group prohibited the renowned African-American singer Marian Anderson from performing at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.)
In her compelling new book “The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice,” Patricia Bell-Scott, editor of the anthology “All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave,” tells the story of this extraordinary relationship. Bell-Scott is professor emerita of women’s studies and human development and family science at the University of Georgia. Her previous books include: “Life Notes: Personal Writings by Contemporary Black Women” and “Double Stitch: Black Women Write about Mothers and Daughters,” which won the Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize.
From 1938-1962, their friendship was sustained by some 300 postcards and letters as well as personal visits. The relationship began when Murray, 27, working for the WPA, a New Deal agency, sent Eleanor Roosevelt a letter protesting a speech Franklin Delano Roosevelt had made at the University of North Carolina. (The university had refused to admit Murray as a student because she was black.) The friendship continued until Roosevelt, 26 years older than Murray, died in 1962.
Murray earned three law degrees, organized sit-ins in the 1940s while a student at Howard University against eateries that discriminated against people of color, participated in bus boycotts 15 years before Rosa Parks and created the legal strategy that ensured that sex discrimination was included in the Civil Rights Act.
A co-founder of the National Organization for Women, Murray wrote the memoir “Proud Shoes,” the well-regarded poetry collection “Dark Testament” as well as numerous essays and books. In 1977, she became one of the first women to be ordained as a priest by the Episcopal Church. Though Murray hadn’t been involved in writing it, in 1971 Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in an homage to Murray’s work, listed her as a co-author in her first brief before the Supreme Court.
Born in Baltimore, Murray didn’t use her given name “Anna Pauline.” Her father was a teacher and her mother was a nurse. At age three, after her mother died, Murray went to Durham, N.C., where she lived with her grandparents and two of her aunts, one of whom became her adoptive mother. In her childhood, Murray’s father, after contracting what was thought to be encephalitis, suffered from “unpredictable attacks of depression and violent moods.” Murray wasn’t ashamed of her sexual orientation and was in a long-term relationship with Irene, “Renee” Barlow. Yet, because of homophobia and her race, she was often denied employment in the government and the private sector.
It’s no wonder that it took Bell-Scott 20 years to write “Firebrand.” Recently, she talked with the Blade about the book and the friendship between Murray and the woman, who Murray called “Mrs. R.”
“This was not something I intended to do,” Bell-Scott said of “Firebrand.” “I was working on another project at the time.”
Then in 1983, Bell-Scott asked Murray to serve as a consulting editor to “SAGE: A Scholarly Journal of Black Women,” of which she was a co-founding editor. Though Murray couldn’t do SAGE, she wrote a letter of “encouragement” to Bell-Scott. “Pauli wanted to work on her autobiography,” she said.
In a follow-up to this letter, Murray wrote to Bell-Scott, “You need to know some of the veterans of the battle whose shoulders you now stand on.”
She didn’t say, “know me better,” Bell-Scott said, “but she did say she took great pride in her work as a member of the subcommittee on legal rights of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women. (President John F. Kennedy appointed Eleanor Roosevelt chair of the commission.)
Bell-Scott made notes of what she wanted to talk about with Murray when her writing project was finished. “But I didn’t get the chance —18 months later, she died of pancreatic cancer,” she said. “Her letter haunted me. Quite a few years later, I decided I was still so haunted by her comment about knowing the veterans on whose shoulders you’re standing on.”
After examining the collection of Murray’s letters at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University and the collection of Roosevelt’s letters at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Bell-Scott said, she “immediately recognized that their relationship deserved attention.” Their friendship is mentioned only briefly by historians and biographers.
Despite the fact that Murray and Roosevelt came from very different backgrounds, they had a lot in common, Bell-Scott said. “To begin with, Anna was the given name for both of them and they never used it,” she said. “They both lost their parents before their teens and were sent to live with elderly kin.”
They were sensitive kids who grew up to be compassionate women with a thirst for justice, Bell-Scott said. “Even though she was first lady, people made fun of Eleanor’s appearance and ridiculed her teeth,” she added. “Pauli was boyish looking. People poked fun at how she looked.”
Murray and Roosevelt loved their fathers who suffered from mood disorders and alcoholism respectively. Though they were outspoken and highly energetic in their quest for social justice, “people were often surprised to learn that Pauli and Eleanor were both shy,” Bell-Scott said. “It took them tremendous psychic energy to overcome their shyness.”
Both were voracious readers and avid writers. Though she was a committed social justice activist, lawyer and priest, writing was what was closest to Murray’s heart, Bell-Scott said. “Pauli couldn’t turn away from activism,” she said, “but if there were any regrets – she would have liked to have written more.”
Roosevelt, too, was committed to her writing, Bell-Scott said. “Eleanor wrote her ‘My Day’ column even when she was first lady,” she said. “After FDR’s death, she reported on Russia and pursued other writing projects.”
Their sense of well being was dependent on having meaningful work and exercise, Bell-Scott said. “They had a talent for friendship. And they loved dogs. Eleanor liked Scotties and Pauli liked mutts and strays.”
Murray would work herself into exhaustion and crash, Bell-Scott said. “She suffered from mood swings which weren’t properly diagnosed as a thyroid disorder until Pauli was in her 40s,” she said. “Eleanor suffered episodes of depression.”
Their friendship was the context that allowed Murray and Roosevelt to grow into the “transformative leaders that we know them as,” Bell-Scott said. “When they first met, Pauli was an impatient young radical … Eleanor felt it was important to always consider taking social justice action with great caution – to always follow the muted action on civil rights of the Roosevelt administration.” (FDR never publicly pushed Congress to speak out against lynching, Bell-Scott said.)
Later in their lives, Bell-Scott said, Murray had moved from radical left to left of center – voting for Lyndon Johnson as a registered Democrat after decades of voting for Socialist candidates. By the 1960s, Roosevelt had put her life on the line at civil rights workshops and demonstrations.
“When I look at the issue of Pauli’s sexuality, I think of the social context of the time. Here is a woman coming to adulthood in the 1920s, 30s and 40s,” she said. “Homosexuality is defined as a mental disorder until the 1970s. Pauli, a very bright woman, reads the scientific literature.”
Added to this, Bell-Scott said, was the homophobia of McCarthyism, which considered LGBT people to be a security threat. “Pauli was a black woman lawyer,” she said, “ that’s an unconventional career for a woman. There are rumors about her sexuality and her mental health. She is living with discrimination on so many fronts.”
But Murray wasn’t ashamed of who she was, Bell-Scott said. “She was raised as a child by elder kin with Victorian values. You didn’t talk about sexuality.”
From reading Murray’s letters and sermons from later in her life, “it seems to me that Pauli began to publicly embrace herself,” Bell-Scott said.
Books
Chronicling disastrous effects of ‘conversion therapy’
New book uncovers horror, unexpected humor of discredited practice
‘Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy’
By Lucas F. W. Wilson
c.2025, Jessica Kingsley Publishers
$21.95/190 pages
You’re a few months in, and it hasn’t gotten any easier.
You made your New Year’s resolutions with forethought, purpose, and determination but after all this time, you still struggle, ugh. You’ve backslid. You’ve cheated because change is hard. It’s sometimes impossible. And in the new book, “Shame-Sex Attraction” by Lucas F. W. Wilson, it can be exceptionally traumatic.
Progress does not come without problems.
While it’s true that the LGBTQ community has been adversely affected by the current administration, there are still things to be happy about when it comes to civil rights and acceptance. Still, says Wilson, one “particularly slow-moving aspect… has been the fight against what is widely known as conversion therapy.”
Such practices, he says, “have numerous damaging, death-dealing, and no doubt disastrous consequences.” The stories he’s collected in this volume reflect that, but they also mirror confidence and strength in the face of detrimental treatment.
Writer Gregory Elsasser-Chavez was told to breathe in something repellent every time he thought about other men. He says, in the end, he decided not to “pray away the gay.” Instead, he quips, he’d “sniff it away.”
D. Apple became her “own conversation therapist” by exhausting herself with service to others as therapy. Peter Nunn’s father took him on a surprise trip, but the surprise was a conversion facility; Nunn’s father said if it didn’t work, he’d “get rid of” his 15-year-old son. Chaim Levin was forced to humiliate himself as part of his therapy.
Lexie Bean struggled to make a therapist understand that they didn’t want to be a man because they were “both.” Jordan Sullivan writes of the years it takes “to re-integrate and become whole” after conversion therapy. Chris Csabs writes that he “tried everything to find the root of my problem” but “nothing so far had worked.”
Says Syre Klenke of a group conversion session, “My heart shattered over and over as people tried to console and encourage each other…. I wonder if each of them is okay and still with us today.”
Here’s a bit of advice for reading “Shame-Sex Attraction”: dip into the first chapter, maybe the second, then go back and read the foreword and introduction, and resume.
The reason: author Lucas F. W. Wilson’s intro is deep and steep, full of footnotes and statistics, and if you’re not prepared or you didn’t come for the education, it might scare you away. No, the subtitle of this book is likely why you’d pick the book up so because that’s what you really wanted, indulge before backtracking.
You won’t be sorry; the first stories are bracing and they’ll steel you for the rest, for the emotion and the tears, the horror and the unexpected humor.
Be aware that there are triggers all over this book, especially if you’ve been subjected to anything like conversion therapy yourself. Remember, though, that the survivors are just that: survivors, and their strength is what makes this book worthwhile. Even so, though “Shame-Sex Attraction” is an essential read, that doesn’t make it any easier.
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Books
How one gay Catholic helped change the world
‘A Prince of a Boy,’ falls short of author’s previous work
Brian McNaught, the pioneering gay activist and author of 1986’s “On Being Gay” and 1993’s “Gay Issues in the Workplace,” has written a personal account about his Catholic faith and homosexuality. It is a memoir without much substance.
“A Prince of a Boy: How One Gay Catholic Helped Change the World” (Cascade Books) is a strong personal statement by McNaught. He helped change family relationships. He helped change attitudes about homosexuality. He helped change workplaces, but the world?
In January 2023, the Catholic News Service reported that Pope Francis announced that, “being homosexual is not a crime.” In December 2023, NPR reported that Pope Francis approved “Catholic blessings for same-sex couples, but not for marriage.” Francis died Monday at age 88. Although Catholics may not see homosexuality as a crime, they see sex outside of marriage as a sin. They see same-sex marriage as a sin.
In 2021, Gallup reported that membership in the Catholic Church had declined 20 percent since 2000. In 2025, the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study found that nearly 40 percent of Americans identified as Protestant, while the same study found that only 19 percent identified as Catholic.
McNaught devotes much of his book to his life as a gay Catholic. It is challenging to read about his personal struggle. Some readers may find it interesting. Others might find it boring. Catholic readers may find it more compelling than Protestant readers.
As the above statistics prove, McNaught has much more work to do to change the Catholic Church’s views about homosexuality. We should be glad for his contribution to the debate within the Catholic Church. We should pray for full acceptance of gays in the Catholic Church.
“A Prince of a Boy” becomes more interesting when McNaught describes his work as an educator on LGBTQ issues. He has had an impact on workplace policies, academic programs, and public education, and his lectures, books, and other materials are widely used.
Based on my experience in the federal government and volunteering with LGBTQ organizations from the Bay Area to Washington, D.C., I believe McNaught’s work as an educator has improved LGBTQ lives, careers, and families. During the Clinton administration, I gave many copies of “Gay Issues in the Workplace” to personnel directors. I felt their staff could benefit from reading it. I thought it would help the lives and careers of my federal LGBTQ colleagues.
McNaught’s “A Prince of a Boy” was released in December 2024. Anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant died the same month. Bryant campaigned against a gay rights law in Florida. She began a national campaign against gays.
When Bryant successfully reversed a gay rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida, McNaught wrote the important essay “Dear Anita, Late Night Thoughts of an Irish Catholic Homosexual.” The essay is not in “A Prince of a Boy”; however, McNaught mentions Bryant.
In his training programs, McNaught describes homosexuals as journeying from confusion to denial to acceptance to pride. “Anita Bryant and AIDS brought Gay people to identity pride very quickly,” McNaught writes. San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk (1930-1978) and other activists reached similar conclusions about Bryant’s vicious anti-gay campaign.
McNaught helped change the LGBTQ world and brought pride to many people’s lives. McNaught walks in pride, works in pride, and educates others in pride.
“A Prince of a Boy” is a disappointing book. It provides small details about Brian McNaught’s large, proud life. A meaningful biography about this great gay leader is long overdue.
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Books
‘Pronoun Trouble’ reminds us that punctuation matters
‘They’ has been a shape-shifter for more than 700 years
‘Pronoun Trouble’
By John McWhorter
c.2025, Avery
$28/240 pages
Punctuation matters.
It’s tempting to skip a period at the end of a sentence Tempting to overuse exclamation points!!! very tempting to MeSs with capital letters. Dont use apostrophes. Ask a question and ignore the proper punctuation commas or question marks because seriously who cares. So guess what? Someone does, punctuation really matters, and as you’ll see in “Pronoun Trouble” by John McWhorter, so do other parts of our language.
Conversation is an odd thing. It’s spontaneous, it ebbs and flows, and it’s often inferred. Take, for instance, if you talk about him. Chances are, everyone in the conversation knows who him is. Or he. That guy there.
That’s the handy part about pronouns. Says McWhorter, pronouns “function as shorthand” for whomever we’re discussing or referring to. They’re “part of our hardwiring,” they’re found in all languages, and they’ve been around for centuries.
And, yes, pronouns are fluid.
For example, there’s the first-person pronoun, I as in me and there we go again. The singular I solely affects what comes afterward. You say “he-she IS,” and “they-you ARE” but I am. From “Black English,” I has also morphed into the perfectly acceptable Ima, shorthand for “I am going to.” Mind blown.
If you love Shakespeare, you may’ve noticed that he uses both thou and you in his plays. The former was once left to commoners and lower classes, while the latter was for people of high status or less formal situations. From you, we get y’all, yeet, ya, you-uns, and yinz. We also get “you guys,” which may have nothing to do with guys.
We and us are warmer in tone because of the inclusion implied. She is often casually used to imply cars, boats, and – warmly or not – gay men, in certain settings. It “lacks personhood,” and to use it in reference to a human is “barbarity.”
And yes, though it can sometimes be confusing to modern speakers, the singular word “they” has been a “shape-shifter” for more than 700 years.
Your high school English teacher would be proud of you, if you pick up “Pronoun Trouble.” Sadly, though, you might need her again to make sense of big parts of this book: What you’ll find here is a delightful romp through language, but it’s also very erudite.
Author John McWhorter invites readers along to conjugate verbs, and doing so will take you back to ancient literature, on a fascinating journey that’s perfect for word nerds and anyone who loves language. You’ll likely find a bit of controversy here or there on various entries, but you’ll also find humor and pop culture, an explanation for why zie never took off, and assurance that the whole flap over strictly-gendered pronouns is nothing but overblown protestation. Readers who have opinions will like that.
Still, if you just want the pronoun you want, a little between-the-lines looking is necessary here, so beware. “Pronoun Trouble” is perfect for linguists, writers, and those who love to play with words but for most readers, it’s a different kind of book, period.
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