The First Ladies

by Marie Benedict

“I was invited. And even though I anticipated their reaction, their racism isn’t my problem. Racism belongs to the people who are racists.”

“When will the people realize the president is not God?”

“No matter how many jobs are created, no matter how strong the economy, discrimination will remain, because it’s in the fabric of this country; it’s systemic. Negroes aren’t hired because we’re colored; Negroes aren’t rented apartments because we’re colored. Negroes can’t go to certain schools, cannot eat at certain restaurants or stay in certain hotels not because of any economic conditions.

“Oh, that is funny. Can you imagine? A female Supreme Court justice? I cannot wait to see that.”

That bill is dead, but I am not. As God is my witness, I will continue this fight until an anti-lynching bill is passed through Congress. Whether it happens with President Roosevelt, or the next president, or the next, “Strange Fruit” will play in my home until lynching is no longer in the fabric of America.

“I’m a colored man in America, and at any time, I’m very likely to end up on the wrong end of a white man’s bad day.

“I think I know what’s brought you here today,” I say. “You mean beyond our usual plans to utterly alter the country through equality for all?” Mary says,

“The melancholy doesn’t care if you’re colored or white, at war here or abroad. It takes hold when it feels like it, not when we believe it’s justified.”