BackStory; Fighting Jane Crow: The Multifaceted Life and Legacy of Pauli Murray

major funding for backstory provided by an anonymous donor in the shutdown for the canaries and josephine robert cornell memorial foundation welcome to back story the show that looks at the history behind the headlines i'm going freeman and i made errors if you're new to the podcast each week along with our colleagues nathan connelly and brian balogh we explore a different aspect american history twenty nine year old polly marie got on a greyhound bus with a friend in washington dc mary was headed south to durham north carolina murray's hometown to spend time with relatives for the easter holiday the boss we started out on those along very nice was plenty of room and we probably set

somewhat to the reality of the center of the bus having plenty of room for whites victims that's a nineteen seventy six recording of polly conducted by the southern oral history program and call a friend or both african american so riding the bus and nineteen forty meant in during segregation laws and being forced to sit in the back section reserved for black folks marianne being got on the bus in washington with no problem it was a very crowded and as mary said they sat close to the center but everything changed in virginia when they switched to buses and so we got in and search again slightly re are a side somehow the way in which the us population she brought on a considerable a number of white people wouldn't have been in the camps

and so the time came when the fire came back and ask us to get that when i'm looking out the window and saying that when those negroes get on the caribbean of negroes to take your wall that back so there's no reason for me to vote mary told the driver they were going to move but as the driver pressed kerry ended being on it they looked at some open seat behind them was broken there was no way i could sit there but the driver still expected them to at this point is they go out and get the cops and a restless so it really has nothing to do with breaking the segregation law it really has nothing to do with creating a disturbance and so it was simply the old southern trust and that must be satisfied and you simply cannot break the taboos go

and they charged us with breaking the segregation law by elaine segregation law and creators share again keep in mind this is nineteen forty it's fifty years before rosa parks refused to give up her seat on a move that helped kick start the montgomery bus boycott while mary's act of civil disobedience was similar in practice it didn't create the same ripple effect reality is arrested petersburg caught the attention of the end all a cpa the organization was hoping to use the case to challenge the law and segregated interstate travel but the state of virginia wanted to avoid a big trial so they dropped most of the charges and you're left with one violation of disorderly conduct they convicted made at the end of la city could not afford to appeal the case and therefore we would have to you know you that if i go to jail and we

refused to pay the fine be wednesday the us never became a landmark court case that may not be in most history books but for polly marie it was the beginning of something a year later in nineteen forty one paul me marry enrolled at howard law school immediately larry began tackling the big question that had marked that fateful bus trip to virginia how do you prove segregation is unconstitutional see we need to tax segregation should be cherished a bit more than a head on fashion than wise invoke at that time there's a serena my hairy she's a long history professor at the university of pennsylvania so what murray wanted to see happen wise to challenge separate but equal directly as thurgood marshall in the end only seeking legal defense funds eventually did in brown vs board of

education a decade later and when they did decide to do that murray later found out that they looked back at this paper that she had written in law school and two drew from it and preparing their briefs and brown which of course was the case ultimately did declare separate but equal to be inherently unequal i have led to see the basis upon which i was operating the medicaid and when i say they're often is that legacy by lost was five but this law school paper wasn't the only documentary wrote that influence their commercial and the end of a lacy peas lawyers a few years after graduating from howard bury delivered another major step on civil rights history what it was was the state's laws on race and color was a research job i did for the

women's division of the methodist church it was originally meant to be just a little pamphlet that she really cataloged every single law having to do with race at the state level in the united states at the time which was that i really it herculean undertaking they published it and that sort of thurgood marshall that became the bible for the civil rights lawyers than they were fighting these segregationist he obtained a copy of the book for every lawyer on his staff through all this work it's safe to say that mary was essential in helping to outlaw segregation but to say marry only worked with in the world of civil rights would be a major understatement she was really grappling with a lot of the complexities of

racial identity of gender and sexual identity both as they manifested in life and also in the law itself i am saying that we must accept the challenge of our existence our existence being that all rejected unwanted persecuted minority and that in a sense we cannot accept this we must make our contribution to history today you can see the effects or polymerase achievements in american law politics and culture so for that reason and need more this week on backstory we're

devoting the entire episode to the aspiring a little known life and legacy of paul murray will discuss more of murray's work in the legal world and how larry help secure equal rights for women and you'll hear about version was this thing and how marie became the first african american woman or gain as sophisticated priest and on top of everything else murray was so throughout the show you'll hear folk sharing some memories poetry and reflecting on what it means to them and just a quick note about some of the language was when he's this episode paul murray office of identified as a woman and the sheep and her pronounce you could see this in public riding slight breeze autobiography but in private very grappled with a nuanced and complicated gender identity they said that it was often at odds with this trip gender and sexual constructs of the twentieth century there was often influx and other words very defined categories of all kinds for that reason the question of pronounces a copper cable in the

case of polymer so after careful consideration we decided to opt out of using any pronounce when different polymer throughout this episode instead lawyers say voluntarily or sometimes just politics so you hear i guess an alternate between different from those each guest has sought to themselves which pono they think this fits in talking about politics but first we want to get some background to mary's upbringing to the roots that help establish various a champion of civil rights and to help us with that we have our producer charlie sheldon woman with us in the studio by charlie a julian yes to really get a full picture of polly marie's life it's important issa about murray's origins to nowhere or started and to do that i recently visited murray's childhood

home in durham north carolina state barbara lau is the director of the polymer project in europe and she's leading the restoration the house to turn it into the polly murray center for history and social justice well says the center's mission is to preserve murray's memory but once you walk in the house you can already feel murray's presence in the woodwork when i come here i always know an almost dizzying politic because her spirit is in this house people feel that when they come here so literally when you look around and you look at the staircase and you look at the railing and you look at their windows and the doors and these are things that were here and polly was here well give me a quick to her but even though it's two stories it's not a big house we think is with our within the

floor and it's all we're walking on the force that she walked on it catches makes being here even more moving because it was in this house that paul ii became the freedom fighter the justice lover that she was under orders the house was built in a teen ninety eight by pauli murray grandfather robert fitzgerald who was originally from pennsylvania today it's known as a poly murray family home actually not where most of murray's immediate family lived murray was born in baltimore in nineteen ten and just three years old murray was sent to durham to live with murray's it pauline and robert and cornelia fitzgerald murray's grandparents this happened after maria's mom die from a cerebral hemorrhage and race father found himself unable to care for the couple's six children

during collins' childhood in durham the family home in a city's west end neighborhood it was always buzzing with the relatives and neighbors today the house is joined by other old homes of various shapes and sizes lining the street right behind the family home is a cemetery or some of polymers relatives are buried inside the house the spirit of murray's family history swirls around you even though there isn't too much to look at the interior it lays bare as last team continues to renovate but on the outside it pops with a light blue coat of paint and a brain newport stretching across the front the exterior evoke the days when the young hollywood there in the nineteen tens and twenties running drought the house but while polly was surrounded by the fitzgerald side of the family ali was also separated from

siblings who've lived with other relatives i lived in grandfather's house which meant more or less that i was a very small child growing up with four to five very subtle adults living in grandfather's house and being a part of a larger than an extended thing most days this charles and there can't really too gave me i think a sense of real roots and security on the un than i had a different name i get my own family of which i was very conscious and in some ways i was a not very much on a house that was made to feel part of the family i knew that i was at the chair of the stand and yet there was always this lonnie for my my brothers and sisters and a kind of a sadness about that

this place was the one in which i think she felt she was most attached to lao says restorations on the home it will take a while but they have some good momentum that's because in twenty sixteen the house was named a national historic landmark we are north carolina's only national historic landmark focused on the woman and we're the only national historic landmark that were aware of in the united states focused on a woman of color who was also lgbt q in just like well mentioned it was here in this house where the foundations of polly murray's social activism were born for evidence of this that look no further than murray's memoir proud shoes in a poly murray remembers seeing family members support each other as well as the entire neighborhood they really the fitzgerald's help to create your own certainly created this west and community this black community

inside a family home as people like and pauline and grandfather robert fitzgerald who empowered murray to pursue a life of rigorous academics and activism in other words to study hard and stand up for what's right she witnessed and heard stories from her grandfather of fighting in the civil war about coming south afterward to fight what he called the second great war the war against ignorance and being a teacher being i'm someone who ran for office being someone who encouraged people during the reconstruction era the vote and then he has four daughters and his oldest daughter are ponying up becomes a teacher and really feels committed to that next generation preparing them preparing them to be well rounded away or later it active citizens and so paul is growing up in the

midst of this and understanding their commitment in light of the fact that this isn't a huge house this was not a rich households this was a household that really did struggle to get by sometimes and so she got to cebu that it was so important to them that they would dedicate themselves to those efforts first to say something that was just about a career or making money i had not grown up in a family where limitations were placed upon when my whole family tradition have been self sufficient women my grandfather patriarch though he was the leading historians being self sufficient independent and so it just simply was not a part of my family tradition to expect any limitations a point where a woman to do what he couldn't do it that never bought myself in terms of woman i thought of myself in preparing to be a civil rights lawyer you know for this this caucus

so charlie a question that must occur to people listen this episode is with all the things it paula marie accomplished or was a part of why haven't more people heard about murray was barbara lau thinking that yeah wow says people like polly you were always working behind the scenes what we really couldn't be the face of the movement whether civil rights or gender equality they didn't conform to what we imagined was a civil rights leader or a women's liberation leader or a labor organizer so she wasn't really willing to change herself to fit into those stereotypes and she ran up against those boundaries over and over and over in her life she were a great letter to the president of the board of now in the nineteen sixties they were trying to get her to join their board and she said you know i can't be a worker one day a neighbor one day a woman the next i have to find the

unifying principles under which you know i can operate she said now for you this might be good politics for me this is the price of survival so i think it's not so much why haven't we heard about calling merry we weren't ready for calling merry now today's politics today's reality today's conversations now we're ready for some of what hallie murray's wisdom teaches us hey have for error in london this is key the pictures you know i'm a

poet and i live in charlottesville virginia dark testament verse eat by pauli murray hope the crust stark between clenched fingers hope is a bird's wing broken by stone hope is a word a word whispered with the wind i dream of forty acres and a new cabin of one's own and a moment to rest a name and place for one's children and children's children at last hope is a song in a wee reese throat given me a song of hope in a world where i can sing it give me a sign of faith and people to believe in it gave me a song of kindness and a country where i can live it give me a song of hope and love and brown girls hard to hear it

for me pauli murray is a poet of crete wisdom encourage and also a poet of great intellect this section of dark testament has a deceptively simple service it starts out as a series of definitions of what hope is and it elegantly turns into a prayer give me a song of hope she says give me a song a face it seems that the intended audience for her prayer as much as any divine and it is really fast the reader america as a whole we have the power to bring a quality into our world and to make this place they're all people in nineteen forty one

calling merry entered howard law school with and marries words the single minded intention of destroying jim crow but soon after he started classes another problem arose this one wasn't found within the logbooks of the united states but the halls of howard university there was a notice on the bulletin board that are surely maybe two three weeks after that school because all male members are the first year's class are invited to the moon so and so's for a smoker there were only two females in the entire school which was my son and i'm so smart all this so what i'm really saying is that removing the racial fact howard university being a suit with a racial factors probably immediately the sex factor as isolated and so my whole experience was that it was an experience of learning really

for the first time what a giveaway of crude kind of sexism kidney larry came up with a name for this kind of prejudice chain crowell and this jump quickly became more than just a name it turned into a framework for the way mary pursued legal equality here is a story in syria my area again use that car sector jane crowd to it an analogy between greece and sacks that analogy ways in many ways a rhetorical move designed to persuade skeptics that sex inequality was an injustice worthy of redress in the same way that jim crow was an injustice i must always be concerned not directly but i must be involved with in necessarily concerned with racial the bridge

but i must also personally be concerned with sexual liberation because the two as i often say to me you need to me in any individual who is both woman and a member of an oppressed minority group in particular she saw how women of color especially black women experienced intersecting forms of oppression and discrimination that are often overlooked or ignored by on the one hand male dominated civil rights organizations and on the other hand the white dominated feminist organizations anything return jane crow in her arm few places african american women at this center rather than at the margins of both of those movements and other broader movement for universal human rights thank you

gary stein and howard was by no means the first time or had encountered discrimination within the world of academia three years before attending howard bury applied to the university of north carolina chapel hill for graduate school but mary was rejected because the school did not accept african americans marry a peeled the rejection and was unsuccessful but the story still made it into the headlines it has a burst out of the radio and became sort of national news but it was this unidentified male us states is an ally and identify the grass larry graduate of howard at the top of the class for most students a city that was followed by a prestigious fellowship to harvard summary applied but this time and race wasn't the issue she received a letter from harvard stating that quote your picture in the citation on your college transcript

indicate that you are not of the sacs entitled to be admitted to harvard law school well again mary did not take this lying she enlisted a number of very powerful supporters including eleanor roosevelt and her husband the president answered marie wrote a letter to the faculty of harvard law school requesting today we consider and the closing line of her letter was really telling she wrote a gentleman i would gladly change my sax to meet your parents but since the way to such a change has not been revealed to me i have no recourse to appeal to you to change your minds on the subject are you to tell me that one is as difficult as the other in the end these rejections did

little to dissuade marie marie continuing to work tirelessly to fight against not only jim crow but also jim crow and over time really started to gain the platform needed to spark real systemic change in nineteen sixty one president kennedy appointed married to a government group focused on improving women's equality it was called the president's commission on the status of women this was very published a memo that tackle jim crow head on so mertz memos proposed a new constitutional strategy based on an analogy between sex and race discrimination the idea was that sacs like the race was a used to lament and oppress individuals for reasons that were unrelated to their ability or their human works serena mary says this memo was big for a couple of reasons it helped unite the women's rights movement the civil rights movement

and it also heal divisions over another controversial measure that was up for debate the equal rights amendment so instead of becoming bogged down in debates about the proposed dr ray murray argued in her memo that have it's for women should use the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment to challenge laws and policies that discriminate against women in areas like jury service hire a pay education and these are issues that were largely uncontroversial among advocates for women and in addition to overcoming these divisions over the ear a murray's fourteenth amendment strategy attempted to bridge gaps between the civil rights and women's rights movement so by analogy icing sachs to race and by proposing as she did in this memo a litigation strategy modeled on the end of a lacy pete legal defense fund's successful campaign against

racial segregation murray really hoped that she could tie together these sometimes diverted movements in a common cause now i understand that that linking of those things and i'm generally this memorandum of various had some influence on ruth bader ginsburg's work a decade later yes it most certainly dead set against berkes strategy in writing for example the first it's sometimes called the grandmother brief a brief that was used in the first successful constitutional sex discrimination case brought to the supreme court in nineteen seventy one that brief relied heavily on murray's strategy that she had laid out and in fact to ruth bader ginsburg cried a poly murray on their grandmother brief though they weren't directly involved she and still to this day will always mention the influence of murray when talking about

her early litigation strategy now we've been talking about this strain of influential writings and there is yet another one and this is mary's very influential memo having to do with title seven of the nineteen sixty four civil rights act and in this case near east tackling the debate that surrounded a proposed amendment prohibiting employment discrimination based on sex so give us a little bit of context both to the amendment and what mary was advocating so when congress was debating title seven which is the employment discrimination provision of the civil rights act of nineteen sixty four finalists in the national woman's party persuade aid a segregationist congressman howard smith of virginia to introduce an amendment banning discrimination based on sax as well as race color religion and national origin of the other categories i wish scott

there's this cooper knishes smith that the sec's amendment to tie or seven was kind of a joke or a fluke in fact it was the product of deliberate effort by advocates for women but when the sex amendment was introduced to be in the house of representatives find the amendment in a very problematic way if amy amendment as necessary to protect what one proponent called white christian women of united states origin and other words women who would not be able to claim discrimination based on race or religion or national origin to protect white women essentially from discrimination the idea in other words was that if only race discrimination were prohibited white women would be as one congresswoman said last hiring get to this kind of rhetoric which paid presumptive we white women

against presumptive we may all black workers made proponents of the civil rights bill understandably nervous citizens when polly mary's upset with i'm brilliant and strategically savvy memo very argued that the sec's amendment wise in fact crucial to racial justice not antithetical to act without an amendment prohibiting sex discrimination she's sad both black and white women would suffer what she called a common fate of discrimination and this was a time when like the title seven delayed up to the plane debate over equal employment opportunity often really a race to african american women there's a memo in contrast placed black women at the center she argued that without the sex amendment fully half of the black workforce would have no protection from discrimination and given black women's really central role in supporting their families many more black women were in the workforce than white women as sex

discrimination prohibition was really crucial to racial and economic justice so why and transformative a facts of title seven ways that i could mean both race and sex discrimination together into a single statutory prohibition calle seven essentially tied to gather the fates of racial justice and salmon as an errant cemented what would become a crucial ally in sometimes a fragile alliance but a crucial alliance between the civil rights and women's movements that more or less completely replaced disorder coalition between segregationists and the national woman's party let me step back and take a broad view here we've really been focused on the range the scope the influence of berry's work during the time that that work was happening but in what ways would you say we still feel the effects of mary's work today i think calling merry deserves credit as a key architect

possibly be key architect of twentieth century american feminist legal and constitutional strategy so her intervention in the debate over adding a sex amendment to tie all seven was crucial even though it's pretty under recognized and while that story is now well known to historians it's not very well known to the courts or the public and to this day statistics show that what are sometimes called complex claims of discrimination claims that are based on more than one category such as race and saks are even more difficult to win and other types of employment discrimination claims and indeed today there are two cases before the supreme court testing whether discrimination on the basis of facts and campus is discrimination based on being gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender and i think one of the most crucial ways that marie's legacy is still wet nurse is her strategy of centering feminist activism on

african american women which has a tremendously rich legacy murray was an early theorists of what we all start really crunch earlier called intersection how it ends black women have been at the forefront of almost every major feminist to be hanssen a lot over the past several decades you think of issues like sexual harassment pivotal figures including eleanor holmes norton who was a protege of polymerase of course india hell and many other extraordinary and courageous women whose names are not widely known if you think about social movements such as me too the movement for black lives say her name for her protection after its reproductive justice activism prison in foster care abolitionism criminal justice reform organizing on behalf of low wage and domestic workers all of these continue what's really a century's long tradition of black women's leadership that polly marie personified and put into action

with serena my areas of professor of law and history at the university of pennsylvania i do many was destiny had an open country or south carolina and this was my favorite pot and lay on this roosevelt regrets detroit ryan nineteen forty three by pauli murray upon reading pm newspapers account and mr roosevelt

statement on the recent race conscious quote i share your filling that the recent outbreaks of violence and while they spare parts of the country in danger of national unity and pump their enemies and share that every true american regret status did you get a black boy and they kept your teeth now and they broke its call the clubs and they bashed your stomach and what you get when the police shot you in the back and they change you to the barracks but they like the blood off when she get me cry out of the top man we caught on the man next to god so you guard and asked him to speak out to save you but at the time and say black boy mr rose about regrets i think there's only been a palm tree lately sophia how adequate the state

is aimed at just saying much less reach us st that is a call metaphysical battle stations and anti black violence in the rhetorical questions that there are pauses i really thought agency to look beyond the mechanisms of the state in order to reach us and jess those manifestations of violence mood in two years once i open the folder and just saw these photographs and these personal diaries i fell again seen something very familiar they are

for years simon fisher has been researching the history of lgbt q activists he's been looking specifically at its presence in the early civil rights movement i read about holy mary kind of on the side and didn't really think that much about it but then i i got the opportunity to gold simply marries personal papers we did some and found himself tapping into a whole new perspective on paula marie slaughter and more specifically murray's gender identity identify as transgender i self and just this sort of light expressions of masculinity and kind of heard in the pictures and he sort of custer nations and worries about gender and identity in medical tree manson and things like that that i really saw something that spoke to me and it's not to say that you know the same things are happening then as were happening now but there was a resonance an nfl like i just had to keep learning

as your earlier in the episode polymers gender and sexual identity were fluid but didn't really talk about this in public or write about her memoirs so to fill in the blanks historians like simon have relied more on murray's private archive and they'd use resources like the collection of photographs that murray took the late nineteen twenties and early thirties when murray was a young adult what we see is this very clear or i like to say joy and pleasure in that self documentation of marie to pictures of them south as a kid you know male masculine really really happy person on the words climbing trees playing sports dressing up dreaming with their partner and to include that in one's archive is really rainier so historians put a lot of pieces together because those very stark images are often not held onto are not made

public but it gave me a thrill and so it's it's a very rare or find and it helps historians draw a lot of very kind of clear conclusions i think about what was going on for them even from an early age polly knew something was different and symes says that was ok with close family event from polly's uniqueness was welcomed with open arms lee both of their aunts who they you grew up with were schoolteachers polymer excels at school when they were yeah but that also played sports but then also wanted to write but then also really wanted to read and so the way that that plane moore eats files this the story about their gender as a young person is also wrapped up in this they wanted to wear a bike boys' clothes and but also wary with these weird dresses and sort of like this story is wrapped up in a larger

that feeling of being really supported which i really like it's kind of like a sweet spy in a story that i really like so polymer grows up in this found surprisingly supportive environment and yet still goes to harlem but what's that migration like what does that mean for paula marie i think for me and i liked my comment what i do quote unquote with polly marie stories i really try to locate it in a larger afghan american history sexuality gender history and for me to answer the question is well everybody went to harlem that go into harlem was such a normal by this period by the mid nineteen twenties you know young african american educated cates who were too smart for quote unquote their own good meaning that their displeasure with jim crow racial norms

was going to get them in trouble with the white establishment be that violence economic reprisal lack of opportunity many may maney educated african americans left the south we never hear from murray same oh i'd love to migrate to harlem because it's like the the gayest queer thing happening in the whole of american history but i can't help but wonder if there was a bit of a drop is you know i will never know by i believe that we can't forget about what was going on in harlem at that time when we look at murray's traced my day but it is in the thirties right that murray's gender identity and sexuality and began to cause some intense emotional distress right yeah in the early

thirties the photographs from that period in their writing their diaries really eggs you just sort of like you all sense of possibility with the generals a trolley stuff and then my hypothesis is that they start to really get more in false amy activism what i think might be happening is that they start to get the pushback from this standards of respectability and maybe start to feel like that their sort of like honest expression and isn't gonna really do them any favors if they want to get ahead as a sort of race leader and murray resist the label thomas sexual right yeah there's a bit of that of that history is actually a lesson in this because i think what happens is people see a loon their archive in their history that they resisted the label of homosexuals so therefore they must be

internally hum a fallback just a minute china like reels out to lego the church bob lobel i totally disagree with our interpretation the cat is being this historical moment what we're starting to get in a broader american history of sexuality is that the splitting off between homosexuality as that issue of sexual desire that scene is a psychological quote unquote problem or a psychological deviant see we seem to see that separate head from gender or like their cross gender identification what we would now call kind of transgender rights which was seen at the time especially in that in the black intellectual community as being a problem the body of actually a glandular disorder now that we think about testosterone estrogen like those are hormones in it so the making of a medical understanding of transgender as happening right

at this moment and so when we look at murray's archived as all of these handwritten questions for these doctors and so many of them run fall of a brand these questions of clams and i when i was doing my research i looked at that house the wife pauli murray so obsessed with clients a hands one of the historians that that has just written russell rosenberg who recently wrote an amazing biography of pauline marie sees that this discussion of gender variance as a glandular disorder is science that's unlike the nineteen tens and nineteen twenties but if you look at the black press that the newspapers that are written and read within the black community in harlem in philadelphia and baltimore gender nonconformity is still being seen as a glandular issue and so my interpretation of this murray didn't want

because i'm a sexual is because prior to displacing of homosexuality and gender nonconformity the idea that invert this is like an old fashioned term but still have a lot of syrians for a lot of people not medical people but for a lot of other folks where why use sort of same sex desire was part and parcel of one's cross gender identity so while murray identified as someone who's really masculine so of course it made sense that they were attracted to feminine when an that was part of the identity package and so i think that murray's sort of distaste for the label of homosexuality with the kaiser that infer identity really worked for them and so to splice of homosexuality in college a psychological disorder really did not resonate as you pointed out were you wrote a lot of their most doctors and was hospitalized quite often didn't tell us about that it's pretty much like every time a relationship crashes and

burns the really lose at the real each challenge and really devastated and what seems to happen is that they're not taking care of themselves not eating enough messaging enough they're overworked as the depression rail a case it's a stressful time you know to be a black members of the world but they're distressed seems to stem for what they call quote my conflict which my understanding of it is that it's a conflict between their desire for famine women their female assigned sachs and their masculine gender identity and then the conflict of the package against sort of social norms both with a man outside of the black community yeah they keep talking about my conflict with what's the source of my conflict what's the way out what's kind of ease my conflict and so a lot of the things that they ask are with well what medical interventions will ease my conflict can you do some surgical investigation

what if i haven't and descended testy white if i have like a glandular disorder and so all of these questions are pointing to an understanding of quote this conflict with iain and discourse our conversation around glands a glandular problem is the cause of cross gender identification was clear that murray had bought a lot about this in and research the law and to have so many questions and even suggestions for idea of what the diagnosis should be a right yeah and it also points in fact and then and so what i do when i saw this these lines of questions i started looking at newspapers like newspapers that that everybody you know in harlem they're reading public was consuming because employers archive and i think this is this is the key document that really to me was like ok i need to apply a certain transgender understanding of cross gender identification is going on here so what what did the conclusion for me

was there is an article clay at in murray's archive rates here like flipping through the fold erin here is this a yellowed newspaper like i'm a historian i was right it's basically a headline that appeared on a five page of the new amsterdam news the front page is basically about one of the first testosterone troubles were way air these little white pills i did all the research on the doctor and white what the experiments were and they took these little crystal lean testosterone tablets and they actually sewed been under the skin services of these quote unquote the feminine man and lo and behold they got muscles and they got facial hair and some were eclipsed the newspaper and mentally marie takes that information about the testosterone trial goes to the clinic where they're holding the disaster and trial and is it okay how do i get it pauli murray is not the only person thinking about this is on the front page of the artist red black newspaper in harlem

like this is a big issue on people's minds not just marginalize you know clearance and gender non conforming people but it's that issue to the general public and i think that that's so interesting in a really really overlooked part of their story you know you got a story of a lonely transsexuals drug evidence also you know i don't think that that's but there's a lot of evidence that they were really distressed in a lot of ways but the conversation around gender nonconformity aiming especially big urban more than black neighborhoods is not unique it's not rare it's not it's not only projects so later in life it seems that radio five more closely with being female in terms of gender identity what was that the case i take my cue from bradley cooper's work on primary here and i think we could work

documents really well is in this sort of the nineteen forty three forty four arrow two things to really big things happened one is that murray's sort of like three year effort to get into this to stossel on trial to sort of lake provide an answer for this conflict so i think what's happening is mari sees these testosterone trials as a resolution to quote my conflict and they try and try and try and try and effectively all of the medical x spurred say basically like can't you just accept that your homosexuals like marijuana man you're attracted to women we have a word for that you can get help in these other ways or you could try female hormones that might you know help you feel less conflicted as well and murray totally rejects both of those options and i think it'll actually moves on figures other that they just have to move on and at the same time they start to go to law school ends the sexism may experience just seems to really change the way they think about

themselves the race the way that black activism should happen and i think that it makes a lot of sense for them to i don't see identify with but joined the project of black women's empowerment with a non racial activism i don't know if it means that they started identifying as the recipient of that work but they definitely that was how the deed all of their activism from there on out this sort of mid forties moment is when they start beginning to understand gender as a sock social construction and races us construction and where jane crow the term becomes the way that they see things to social analysis so your issues of pronouns come up in polymer is life and nobody cares how you think about that george has that you've made and why you think

people make other choices yeah you know i have i published too academic articles on pauli murray and the first one i ate used this very awkward ass slash h e n every instance of pronouns in the paper a hands in between there was a map a prayer and publishing alaska paraded two years ago russell is bare came out with this biography and has this beautiful introduction about her own server journey of chinese poetry is pronounced because it's important to really balance contemporary notions of trans awareness and us backed with historical accuracy ray and it's a balancing mean it's definitely i don't know whose what's right what i do you as a trans person in nineteen eighty which is not representative but as my experience it can be used the most recent

prom our available so if someone goes by he and so they're forty am and goes by sea you call them she even if you're talking about their childhood i say and so if one were to apply that's from marie's life the last front on that mowry went by and as we understand a sort of closest thing became intuition identification of a singular gender was them being a woman and using she and her pronouns and so out of respect for that lasts two ways they switched and i and i used she for the last article and i have gotten some questions and some pushback about whether that was right and so i think i'm not sure if the jury's out about how to do this i think that as more chance history is written they will become a sort of academic or social norm about what we do with pronounced for people who didn't have access to gender variant pronounce it you know it'll a trans identity how are you

surprised that mr reagan everybody they would've or we can achieve balance so i think that that norms will be established as more amorphous trees get written about but for now i feel comfortable calling marie c four the glass now even some talk with a use it or they're all april eight at an image as prisons still feels really awkward you know i think they had a respect for the last pronounce it you see that i don't know if i'm ready history at our restaurant miami is dr parker to hurley and i live in durham north

carolina and this is prophecy which is one of my favorite poems of polymers from the park the smell icing avenue american separate from all others yell large been diminished by all others i am first child of kings and serves free men and slaves having me their superiors your inferiors progeny of all colors all cultures all systems all beliefs i've been enslaved yet my spirit isn't bound i've been cast aside by sparkle in the darkness i've been slain the late on in the rivers of history i seek no conquest know well no power no revenge i seek only discovery of the element of all heights and depth of my own being this poem in particular really highlights same hallway as being very prophetic airways think of ham and i say to him because we know historically that the identity of a rounding or woman really didn't flinch actually

is experiencing of himself liked to play with pronounce and those ways that i think this poem in general really speaks to his prophecy around what i would think of like a transformative healing justice with what it means to reconcile with the multitudes of us as people so how can we think of ourselves as oppressor and oppressed and recognizing that it's really we're really kind of transformation as possible at first just thinking about how to hold all these multitude within ourselves and i think that probably to get the best chose the poem a particular also as a non binary black trans man with twenty one inch also reconciling my own power and privilege and multitude of history's and i really feel that paul ii more so than many of their ancestors really good light and power to my own

kitchen honey man today show was an extremely accomplished person and that continued to be the case even into mary's golden years in nineteen seventy seven larry became the first african american women ordained as an episcopal priest one months later ray celebrate eucharist at the church in chapel hill where his grandmother and great aunt had attended producer ramona martinez picks up the story from there and everyone in attendance at chapel of the cross that sunday understood that this was a homecoming an extremely poignant moment in world history probably mary read the gospel from a nineteenth century bible that

belong to cornelia fitzgerald mary's grandmother it was a gift from the people who had saved her they brought cornelia to be baptized at the church in eating fifty for free in the eyes of god or recorded as a slave in the church records the fact that murray was presiding over a service at all was testament to the power of faith any more ways than one when mary entered seminary at the age of sixty two women were not permitted to be priests in the episcopal church whether or not you're pretty east is between you and god god called huge the church may or may not recognize that kelly brown douglas is the dean of the episcopal divinity school at union theological seminary in new york so it seems to me that from paul e mar at all whether or not at this point the church recognizes that call she could do no other but to begin to live into it and to pursue that aspect of herself douglas says that long

before seminary murray was an active participant at episcopal convention it's fighting for women's ordination and equality and black ministry during the church's nineteen sixty nine annual fund raising campaign murray wrote that asking women to support the church financially was like taxation without representation i knew her as a rabble in the church are who indeed fought for the equality of women just as she of course our fault for the equality of women and civil society so she was are allowed voice and a rebel and she tried to open the lawless camps of the church up pauli murray entered seminary three years after the governing body of the episcopal church voted down women's ordination and four years before they approve it by mary didn't seek ordination simply to prove a point from earliest childhood i have always been a part of the church

there have been times when i have left that i have always more or less been in some way involved with the church reason a churchgoing family murray was confirmed at age ninety by henry beard delaney one of the first black disc bull bishops in the united states later when delaney was on his deathbed he pronounced the young calling murray was a child of destiny marie's life bore out that prophecy immense contributions to civil rights and the fight for equity are proof of that the racism and sexism remained on vanquished in nineteen seventy three and murray began to consider these problems in a different way basically at all of these problems of human rights in which i had been involved for most of my adult life sex race will of the day the problems of human

rights but basically these are old spiritual felt that we had reached that point we alone could not get us the answers already believed america and the world was suffering because it had not reconciled itself in the spiritual realm i began to realize that universally woman is constantly slowing down from these high ideals which we have set that racism and sexism actually sense the sickness said that human beings are not reality in in harmony in relationship to

to their creator and since they are not they are not able to be in harmony in relationship and two love it she really believed that faith meant partnering with god and mending the earth and ending world from that which divided people one from another and hints from god and that's to work sea did dean deblois says the becoming a priest was a natural extension of murray's work towards justice when we looked at her life through the lens of who she was as a priest we do see that it was a journey that she was on throughout her life but seem to me that it came out my writings and it came up in my speeches that came out

in july rather stage there's a devotion to the notion of reconciliation as well as liberation and i asked myself what do you want to sing polly mary's theology like mary is not what you'd expect many would suggest that paul imari was a proto woman as theologian that is some laundry i was really talking about this theology that has emerged from the intersecting realities of what it means to be black and female exposed to sexism in the black power movement and racism in the feminist movement murray rejected was suspicious of categorization often because no category was completely inclusive pauli murray was before her time as a queer theologians

clearing the boundaries of human construct they did not allow us to appreciate the diversity of god's creation mary's main goal was the reconciliation of humanity and i think grilled theology flowed from who she was and how she tried to reconcile her womb being and felt that she was living in a world that didn't allow her the room to be herself and for her that's what reconciliation i think was all about if we understand it from the inside out for pauli murray just trying to create a world where she could be a peace with before polly murray gave the sermon that sunday

in chapel hill the coming in saying a mighty fortress is our got married told the congregation those of you who are as old as i am or remember that that was the funeral hymn of franklin d roosevelt and it was a funeral hymn of my best friend whose death was the catalytic agent had sent me into the ordained ministry that friend was rene barlow where his companion who had died from cancer the year mary entered seminary as barlow was dying murray stood by her bad reading the twenty third song murray with leader right our by her life her love for example and her death when he committed towards this road is that sunday murray preached true community as a struggle we may not live to see its victories but struggle on maps this to me is the most remarkable thing about polymerase faith how could someone believe america could live up to its

values when they had spent a lifetime witnessing its blatant hypocrisy when i think of pulling worry i think of the fact that these four men never lost to hold the nablus as that faith in the possibility of a better world is what cameron going and she'd never to the bitter end last toehold in a world that would indeed allow for all of god's diverse creation in all of their rich complex the intersection allocates to live into the fullness of who they were and so i think of pauli murray and i see for myself and say to myself no no matter even in this current situation in climate in which we find ourselves and you never have an excuse or reason to give up

hope he's been the pay a peak that piece was produced by ramona martinez special thanks to dean kelly

douglas and sara as a rusty whose book by pauli murray the dreamers freedom inform the segment we want to end this week's episode with one last poem written the paula marie who died in nineteen eighty five years murray resign the final verses of dark testament then let the dream linger on let it be the test of nations let it be the quest of all our days the seabird pounding of our blood and the measure of our souls that none shall rest in any land and non return to dreamless sleep no heartbeat quietly no tongue be still until the final man may stand in any place and addressed his shoulders to the sky friend and brother i do it for me but you

can see the conversation going online to let us know he thought of the episode or to ask questions about the finest backstory really the sport we're sending emails and factory in virginia that we're also on facebook and for an extremely special thanks this week to sell the oral history professor at the university of north carolina chapel hill back stories produced at virginia humanities majors or is provided by anonymous donor who joseph it was the moral foundation of the johns hopkins university and the national endowment for the humanities review's findings conclusions are recommendations expresses podcast do not necessarily represent those of the national endowment for the humanities additional support provide another clarified cultivate fresh ideas and farts humanities and brian balogh is a professor of history at the university of virginia this is professor of the humanities and president emeritus of the university of richmond john freeman is professor of

history and american studies it invested nathan connolly is that about saddam's associate professor of history at the johns hopkins university says that story was created by andrew went to virginia humanity