Pauli Murray & Caroline Ware

Description

"In the fall of 1942 a young black law student at Howard University visited a class in constitutional law taught by one of the nation's leading historians: so began the decades-long friendship between Pauli Murray, the student, and Caroline Ware, the historian. This collection of their letters begins in 1943 and continues (with few interruptions) until Murray's death in 1985. The correspondence illuminates a significant period in what is now labeled the "long civil rights movement" as well as the early days of second wave feminism." "Ware (1899-1990) was a Boston Brahmin, an accomplished social historian, a consumer advocate, and a community development specialist who worked in Asia and virtually every Latin American country. Among Ware's other activities, she edited the final volume of UNESCO's History of Mankind. Murray (1910-1985), raised in North Carolina, became a labor lawyer, a teacher, and a lifelong political and social activist. As a writer, she is best known for her family memoir Proud Shoes and her epic poem Dark Testament. Murray also was the first African American woman ordained an Episcopal priest." "The wide-ranging topics of their correspondence include civil rights, electoral politics, the labor movement, the debate about the Fair Employment Practices Committee, McCarthyism, feminism, and the National Organization for Women (of which both were founding members), as well as personal and private concerns. Their words capture the unguarded thoughts and reactions of two highly intelligent women - one white, one black: one a northerner, one a southerner - both dedicated to the cause of human rights. In the process, the letters paint compelling self-portraits."--Jacket.

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