The Firebrand and the First Lady

This is the riveting history of how Pauli Murray—a brilliant writer-turned-activist—and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt forged an enduring friendship that helped to alter the course of race and racism in America.

In 1938, the twenty-eight-year-old Pauli Murray wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, protesting racial segregation in the South. Eleanor wrote back. So began a friendship that would last for a quarter of a century, as Pauli became a lawyer, principal strategist in the fight to protect Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and a co-founder of the National Organization of Women, and Eleanor became a diplomat and first chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.