"The First Ladies" by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

The battle for civil rights in the United States has always involved people willing to stand up and be passionate about what they believe. Two of those people were Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt. The alliance between the two women forms the basis for “The First Ladies” by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, a work of historical fiction that allows the reader to better understand what racial conditions were like in the 1930s and 1940s.Mary McLeod Bethune was born in Mayesville, S. C. in 1875, the 15th child of former slaves Patsy and Sam McLeod, the first child in the family to be born free. Young Mary got to attend school even though her father had initially wanted her to join her brothers and sisters in the fields. After learning to read, Mary received the opportunity to attend the Scotia Seminary in Concord, N.C. and then the Moody Bible College in Chicago. She made the most of it, pledging to encourage education.After marrying Albertus Bethune in 1898, she heard that there was no school for black children in Daytona Beach, Fla. She decided to start one. She opened the school in 1904 with five students. A year later the school had 100 students and three teachers. Later that school turned into Bethune-Cookman College.Before FDR became president, Eleanor Roosevelt was impressed with Bethune the activist and educator. Roosevelt was drawn into a friendship with someone who shared the same beliefs in women’s rights and the power of education. The two women become fast friends, Benedict and Murray told Steve Tarter, confiding their secrets, hopes and dreams with each other.   When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president, the two women began to collaborate more closely, particularly as Eleanor moved toward her own agenda separate from FDR, a consequence of the discovery of her husband’s love affair with a member of his staff. Eleanor became a controversial First Lady for her outspokenness, particularly on civil rights.While Eleanor Roosevelt blazed a trail for equality at the highest levels of government, Bethune worked on the job front. Franklin Roosevelt appointed her to the National Youth Administration to help promote promote employment during the Depression. As a result she became the first African-American woman to hold such a lofty position in Washington.“I think about the things that Mary went through,” said Murray. “Here she was one of the most powerful black Americans in the country but when she went to visit Eleanor Roosevelt and FDR in the White House she had to ride in the colored car on the train from Florida to Washington, D.C. She lived in both worlds.”Benedict and Murray, both accomplished writers, collaborated last year on “The Personal Librarian” and have a third book of historical fiction planned together for release next year.