cbr16bingo pride
Decca, AKA Jessica Mitford, was one of the younger of the six notorious Mitford sisters. Their parents, a pair of very conservative British aristocrats, raised quite a brood. There was also a son, but he does not factor much into the account. Her mother decided that girls had no need for schooling (the boy, of course, went to college), and only allowed them to learn to read. But that’s all it took. They came into adulthood in the 1930s, and the oldest, Nancy Mitford, became a well-known author (Love in a Cold Climate, The Pursuit of Love).The next sister, Pamela (known to her sisters as Woman) kept to herself, but the next two, Diana and Unity, were quite a pair. Diana married Sir Oswald Mosley, and the three were ardent admirers of Adolf Hitler, spending a good deal of time in Germany with him in the lead up to WWII. When Britain entered the war against the Nazis, Diana and Oswald ended up in a British prison for the duration, and Unity tried to shoot herself. She was not immediately successful, and ended up dying several years later from the extensive brain damage. That left the two youngest, Decca and Deborah. Deborah married into money and helped restore one of England’s greatest stately houses, Chatsworth House, her husband’s home. And Decca? She ran as far from the rest of the family as she could get.
Eloping at 19 with her Canadian cousin, they joined the rebel forces fighting the Spanish Civil War. From there, they made their way to the United States where they joined the communist party fighting for civil rights (at this time, the communist party was far more supportive than either of the two major political parties). Her husband was killed by a U boat attack as he was returning to Britain to fight in the war, and Decca ended up marrying a Jewish civil rights lawyer, Robert Treuhaft. They eventually moved to Oakland where she lived for the rest of her life. She remained active in civil rights and union causes for the rest of her life, but also was attracted to related causes, such as the, at the time, funeral industry. Using her proper British lady persona, she conducted numerous interviews and as they say, did her research. The result was The American Way of Death, a huge best-seller and an eye-opening reveal of a secretive industry. Other topics for the books that followed included matters where she perceived injustice, such as the prison business and the Congressional trials of Dr. Spock, as well as family memoirs.
This book itself is a voluminous collection of her letters to a wide range of correspondents. And fun fact: she and Maya Angelou were close friends over several decades based on their work together on civil rights. But they were estranged for a few years over their disagreement regarding the character of Clarence Thomas. Maya thought he was a fine pillar of the black community, but Decca had no use for him whatsoever. Hmm. Look who was right.