Invisible by Stephen L. Carter

Author:Stephen L. Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Eunice, probably in the 1940s, with Mary McLeod Bethune (far right), Daisy Lampkin (second from left), and Ella Moten (left). Lampkin was a suffragist and fellow member of the National Council of Negro Women. Moten was a groundbreaking singer and actress, who in 1934 became the first African American woman to perform at the White House.

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE COUNCIL HOUSE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE, NATIONAL ARCHIVES FOR BLACK WOMEN’S HISTORY, MUSEUM RESOURCE CENTER, LANDOVER, MARYLAND

These distinctions, to be sure, should not have affected the relationship between Eunice and her surrogate mother. The larger fissure was political—and, like so much in Eunice’s life, it involved Alphaeus. In April 1944, Eunice had represented Mrs. Bethune and the National Council of Negro Women at a Pan-Africanist conference organized by her brother for the Council on African Affairs and held in New York City. By this time, Alphaeus had decided to remain at the CAA for the long term, even if it meant giving up his position at Howard University, which he ultimately would. Already he had become one of the organization’s leading lights, with a rising profile (at least in radical circles) that excited jealousy from Max Yergan, the group’s founder. Alphaeus and his third wife, Dorothy, found a place in Brooklyn, at 257 MacDonough Street. As it happened, Alphaeus was once more under FBI surveillance, and the information about his new address was duly recorded in his file. The agents did not mention that his new address was just around the corner from the townhouse at 93 Bainbridge Street, where his mother had lived out her final years. But the irony was unlikely to have been lost on Eunice.

So brother and sister were both in New York City full-time now, but their paths did not cross. Not socially. Eunice resided in Harlem and worked downtown at the municipal building on Leonard Street. Alphaeus resided in Brooklyn and worked on West Twenty-sixth Street. Neither their homes nor their offices were in close proximity. The siblings were distant now, and not only from each other. They had grown more remote from their relatives as well. When their Uncle Alexander—Addie’s younger brother—died in Norfolk, neither attended the funeral.

The separation between Eunice and Alphaeus, however, could not be complete. Bethune served on the board of the Council on African Affairs, a choice that must surely have left her protégée rankled. To be fair, the CAA was at this time attracting significant support from a wide variety of the influential organizations of the darker nation. These included not only the NAACP and the National Urban League but even the venerable National Association of Colored Women. A few months later, in July of 1944, Bethune would sponsor the National Non-Partisan Political Conference in Chicago to demand the participation of the Negro leadership in structuring the postwar order. Delegates also agreed to call a future meeting of the “Darker Peoples of the World” to fight for the end of racism around the globe. But even as Bethune,

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