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My book club recently read “The First Ladies,” by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. It was published in 2023. The two also wrote “The Personal Librarian,” and their writing and research styles mesh together perfectly.
“The First Ladies” chronicles the friendship of Eleanor Roosevelt and the renowned educator and activist, Mary McLeod Bethune. She was an advocate for education, and possessed an uncanny ability to raise money for her causes (the chief of which is her school for girls in Florida) from her many wealthy contacts.
Eleanor Roosevelt first met her at a luncheon hosted by her mother-in-law before Franklin was elected governor. They developed a strong friendship due to the many similarities in their pasts and hopes for the future of the country. They both had troubled marriages and unhappy childhoods. They also both longed for equality, and equal access to education. Their stories are told in alternating chapters.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president, Eleanor and Mary worked behind the scenes to influence Franklin to shape a more equitable world: civil rights, an end to lynching and segregation, getting more people of color in the administration overseeing the New Deal programs that were created to alleviate poverty and end the depression.
My favorite scene is when Mary and Eleanor had lunch at a well known restaurant sitting together at a table near a window, where they could easily be seen from the street. They had set up a journalist to take a photograph of the two women eating together in public, something totally forbidden at the time.
These two women faced threats and opposition from their supporters. At the time Bethune initially was a Republican, the party of Lincoln. Throwing her support to Franklin Roosevelt was considered almost a betrayal, until her supporters saw the changes President Roosevelt was instigating.
The book ends with the first meeting of the United Nations in 1945.
This is definitely a good refresh on the very important history of a struggle which is still ongoing.
