Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray Pt. 1

It's been a weird time to be alive as long as I can remember. These unprecedented times are starting to feel pretty precedented. Hello, precedent, And I don't really feel unprecedent anymore. It just feels pretty normal. Oh, another big old thing. Yeah, but y'all have heard about that plenty. You don't need to hear about that from us. Came to hear fun stories, Yeah, totally. We're here to distract you from that and think about other things for a

few minutes at a time. I like also that this conversation we're having is totally evergreen, because we could be talking about anything. We're just gonna distract you from the horrible thing that's going on insert here. You know what it is. Yeah, God. So I hope everybody's uh doing well, staying in high spirits and taking care of yourselves. That's importantly, definitely, and those around you and strangers in far off lands.

I don't care to take care of somebody, you know. Yeah, But we do have a really awesome episode for you guys today. I'm so excited about this one. As soon as I learned about this person, I was saying, I'm diving in immediately doing an episode definitely UM about you. But first we wanted to reach in the old mail bag and read one of these letters from our listeners. So how about a good old mail call awesome? All right?

So this email came from Laura Shape and she said that you guys are awesome, which was so nice to hear. I've never shied away from being called awesome. That's a always one of my favorite things to be called. Um. She said that she had just finished listening to the Christo and Jean Claude episode. If you haven't heard that, please go check it out. It's beautiful. I love that story, and Laura liked it too. She said, I was a graphic design major in the early nineties and watched a

movie on this pair for art history class. I don't remember which of their artworks it was about, but I do remember thinking it was pretentious and stupid, and she was definitely his assistant. But now I realized that was probably just my shitty teacher, and I wish I could go back and tell him what a jerky was I feel you, Laura, I have several teachers I wish to go back tell him what i'd jerke I thought they were.

She goes on, you two have made me see it in a completely fresh, fun and beautiful way, and I'm truly grateful for it. I wish you had been my teachers. No, you don't. This is this is about the extent of what I would be capable of doing as a teacher. Right many you'll ask a question, I'd be like, oh, was I not just talking? I don't know what I would do. I feel like, well, that's a very interesting point.

Let's talk about it for another forty five minutes. Laura says, I have always struggled with my own desire to create art, but I have a lack of personal message or gravitas. I'm generally pretty light and cheerful, and while I know heavy people don't create better art, there's always a part of me that felt insecure about not having deep, meaningful why. I've always just made stuff because it made me happy to make and I thought it would look cool. But

that has made me feel somehow less than as an artist. Now, I'm in my early fifties and have started pursuing art full time as a second career, and this podcast just helped fill a hole I didn't realize I had. I will now more confidently pursue my bliss and love of beauty joyfully and playfully without feeling the need to justify it. Thank you, thank you for saying that. I mean, that's yeah. Taking that lesson from John Claude and Christo I took

that lesson from them. I think we all can that you don't have to go out and have some sort of like like you said, heavy, you know, introspective, meaningful thing like you don't need a reason to make art. Yeah, especially if you're just making something pretty, I mean and nice. So you know, I think a lot of art with a point can be ugly on purpose, and that can have a good point to it. But yeah, if you I'm like, I just want to make things look nice. It's something I want to make. I feel good when

I make it. Is that not enough? You don't need more? I'd even say it doesn't even have to look nice, Like if you just want to create something, if you just want to take your hands and something didn't exist and now it does, I don't care. What would be better be a mishmash of slop and like, great, you brought something into existence, and that that's cool enough for me. It's very cool. Yeah, that's awesome. I'm so glad that that podcast meant so much to somebody. Very awesome. Thank

you so much, Laura, and just for us. She goes on to say, also, I've been meaning to write to you the rest of the time to say I just adore you as a couple. Your enjoyment of each other shines through, and that makes you a delight to listen to. Also, I love your choice of topics and your quickie take on history. It's a wonderful show, and I have told many people about it. Yea, Laura, tell many people, tell many people, tell many people. The best thing anybody can do,

I know, huge compliments. Thank you. I mean, you didn't have to write in anything to us, but you did, and you didn't have to tell anybody about our show, and you did that too, So double thank you to Laura. Oh yeah, I forgot about that part. Nice. Yeah, that's nice. Well, come come spend some time on a on a on a spring cleaning day. How ugly it gets around here, That's true, it does get ugly. Um well, thank you so much Laura for writing in, and wonderful to everyone

who writes in. Um. We we do read every message we get. Sometimes our episodes just feel a little too long to throw an email on the air, but when we feel like we get a chance, we definitely will read them out and so keep them coming. It keeps us going, that's for sure. It does. Very true. So Polly Murray is a true unsung hero. She was so far ahead of her time that she was always behind the scenes. Fifteen years before Rosa Parks, she was arrested

for refusing to change seats on a segregated bus. She placed a bet that pless c V Ferguson would be overturned, and not only did she win that bet, it was overturned using the argument she made in law school. She inspired a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg, had a decade long friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, and helped start the National Organization for Women. I've only done half of those things, um. And she also struggled with her sexuality and her gender identity.

And she's just truly a trailblazer and a certified badass. So let's talk about Anna Pauline Murray. Let's go, hey, their French, come listen. Well, Elia and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking, a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships, a love. It might be any type of person at all, and abstract cons at a concrete wall. But if there's a story where the second

plants ridiculous roles. A production of iHeart Radio. So. Anna Pauline Murray was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on November nineteen, but her mother died suddenly when she was only three of a massive cerebral hemorrhage, so her father sent her to live with her maternal aunt, Pauline Fitzgerald, for she was named, and also her maternal grandparents, Cornelia and Robert, in Durham, North Carolina, shout out, I have some family and Durham. If you're listening, hope you're well. Love you.

But three years after she was sent to live with her family in Durham, her father was committed to an insane asylum, where in a racist white guard screamed slurs at him, dragged him into the basement, and beat him to death with a baseball bat. God. In her memoir song in a Weary Throat, Polly remembers attending his funeral at the age of twelve, seeing him laid in an open casket, his skull quote split open like a melon

and sewed together loosely with jagged stitches. Terrible. And again she hasn't seen her dad since she was three, so that's her second memory of her father. Basically horrible. Uh. She called her family a united nation in Minister because her maternal grandmother, Cornelia, had been born enslaved. She was the daughter of an enslaved woman who was frequently raped

by her enslaver. Her grandfather, Robert, had been raised free in Pennsylvania, attending anti slavery meetings with Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman. She also had Native American ancestry Her relatives ranged from rich to poor, fair skinned with blue eyes, too dark skinned with four sea curls. From Episcopalians two Quakers. She grew up, as she said quote, a thin, wiry,

ravenous child. She was willful but eager to police. She devoured snacks and books with equal enthusiasm, and by the time she graduated high school at only fifteen years old, she was editor in chief of the school newspaper, president of the literary society, class secretary, member of the debate club, a top student, and a forward on the basketball team. What do any of those things? I mean? I was president of the drama club. You're still president of the

drama never left. Yeah, she would have been one of these kids who got like six hundred scholarships to like every school in the world, just like her choice anywhere she wanted to go right wrong. Because, of course, after the Civil War ended and slavery was outlawed, white people immediately did everything we could to keep black people from progressing. In America, Laws deciding where formerly enslaved people could work and exactly how much they could earn were passed in

many states. KKK violence surged like astronomically and by eighteen ninety six, the Supreme Court upheld the right of white people to segregate public and private spaces. I mean, as long as there were equal facilities available for black citizens, right, So of you, you could have a bathroom for white people only as long as you also had a bathroom for black people. Who right. And that was in the plus c v. Ferguson decision, more commonly known as Separate

but Equal. And Polly hated segregation. And this is probably because, you know, she's grown up surrounded by a family that is so full of variety. So she's like, this is bullshit. You know, if we can all live together, what the fun is going on? So even as a kid, she walked everywhere rather than ride in segregated street cars. She boycotted movie theaters instead of sitting in balconies reserved for

black audience members. And so she was kind of like, I don't want to go to the segregated North Carolina college for black students. I don't want to go there. She has set her sights up north and decided to enroll at Columbia in New York because she deserves the best. Unfortunately, while Columbia University was fine, with her being black, they did object to her being a woman, so she was welcome to attend their women's college, Barnard, but she couldn't

afford the tuition. The all women's school, Hunter College, was free for New York residents, but she didn't live there. Another problem was that black high schools in North Carolina ended in eleventh grade, so she would have to re enroll in high school in New York to get her

high school diploma first. So she had to move in with a cousin and Queens to become a New York resident, and she completed her senior year as the only black student in a high school of four thousand students, and she finally entered Hunter College, one of four black students. Instead of staying with her sister in Queens, she lived at the Harlem y m c A. And there she became friends with Lankston Hughes, and she met W. E. B. Dubois.

She heard lectures from activist Mary mclaude Bethune, and she went to the Apollo to see Duke Ellington and Cab Callaway, and she worked towards becoming a writer. He is living it up like the height of the Harlem Renaissance. Definitely a place I would go as a time traveling tourists, a place to pick that would be really dope. You would get some eyes I would not blend in. Yeah, and you know rightfully, so I think they would be worried to see you, and yeah, they would hopefully, you know,

hopefully for the future. It is not great, but better not talking. I'm not telling anyone anything. But then the giant crash of October. Polly had been making a living waitressing, but soon lost all her customers and then her job due to the depression, and became so impoverished that she

ended her second year of college sick with malnutrition. Like that's how hungry she was, and maybe that's part of the reason that she married a man named William roy Wynn known as Billy Wynn in secret on November However, You're an awkward two day honeymoon at a cheap hotel. Polly realized this whole thing was a big mistake. She wrote years later that she was repelled by the act of sexual intercourse. She wrote, quote, why is it when men try to make love to me? Something in me fights?

And after a couple of months they separated and Billy left town and she did not contact him again until they annulled their marriage in now Okay. These days, some scholars have said that Polly would identify as a transgender male, but of course she didn't have that language available to her at the time. Reminds me of Lily Elbe. We talked about her experience. A lot of things remind me of Lilian, right, and it's a similar era, I mean,

early twentieth century. Actually, Lily would pass away from her second surgery only a year later after this marriage. That was that. But whatever the case, it's clear that she strug gold with her gender identity and her sexuality. She thought of herself as a mixture of genders, or more often, quote one of nature's experiments, a girl who should have been a boy. She wore her hair short, and she preferred wearing pants skirts. She had a pretty slight frame,

so she sometimes was mistaken for a teenage boy. After her brief marriage, she shortened her name from Pauline to Polly, though she also experimented with the names paul and Dude, which is a great name. Love. It just went by dude, like hey, hey, dude, dude. Good to meet you, dude. Also, it's like if your name is guy, you know, like I'll never forget because if I do, I'm just gonna

say hey guy, like wow, you remembered. Yeah. I totally says that at some point in the nineteen thirties, she asked doctors for exploratory surgery to check for quote secreted male genitals, and she tried to convince them to give her hormone treatments. This is something that reminds me a

lot about Lily that Lily. If you remember episode on lilyan gerda Um, Lily had talked a lot about how justified she felt in her gender struggles when the doctors found out that she had like an underformed ovaries, and I feel like Polly was looking for the same, a similar justification for for how she was feeling internally. She couldn't find a reason for it, and she really wanted a reason. But actually the doctors were like, you actually

have less testosterone than most women. You have no nothing going on interest, just who she was. She also acknowledged the term homosexual describing others, but with herself she preferred saying that she had a quote inverted sex instinct that caused her to behave more like a man. But New

Yorker points out that quote. By way of explaining why she believed she was a head real sexual man, Marie noted that she didn't like to go to bars, wanted a monogamous relationship, and was attracted exclusively to extremely feminine women. All of that is less a convincing case for her convoluted heterosexuality than for her cultures harsh assessment of the possibilities of lesbianism. So, yeah, she was just like lesbians like to sleep around and go out drinking, and they're

all real butch looking. I guess there's a thing. But that's definitely more of a stereotype that existed at that time she could have maybe today might more freely accept the term lesbian than at that time. Maybe. I mean, we see this, I feel like pretty regularly too. If people who lack the modern language that we have to explore gender and sexuality, still some of that stems from

their own predisposed ideas about what these identities mean. And so it's sort of like rooted in stereotype just because they they're uneducated on yeah, because it didn't exist yet. Well, and sometimes they were pointing out that she was being brave, really brave by looking into it and like researching it and trying to find anything written about you know, quote unquote sexual deviance. Um, but there it is, you know, right there. You have to look in a book that

says your sexual deviance. That makes it really hard, I think to like try to absorb that into yourself and as you're part of your identity, let me learn more about myself from this paper that talks about what trash I am? Hey, you are you a piece of ship? Read this book? Like no one wants to read them. No one wants to identify with that, you know. Um So anyway, yeah, that's I did laugh though that she was saying that, Oh, I'm I'm like a heterosexual man because I don't like to go to bars or like

sleep around. Come on, now, have you met a heterosexual man? Maybe going to bars? More like heterosexual man because I exclusively believe in monogamy. What I'm sorry, I'm trying to think of a man, right, But anyway, you can see where she was just really coming up against walls trying to,

you know, understand this about yourself throughout her life. So she graduated from Hunter College with a degree in English in nineteen thirty three, probably the worst year in American history to be entering the workforce unless you invested in like a chain of kissing booths in January, that's the second worst time to get into a workforce. Specific things went downhill for you. Yeah, I'll tell you, it's gonna be all the rage inw just free love. Everybody's just

gonna be mashing their naked faces together. Sounds bad, even pre pandemic, honestly, if I could be honest. So Pouli found a job selling subscriptions to the Opportunity, which was an academic journal of the civil rights organization National Urban League. But eventually she became too unwell to continue like walking around selling subscriptions, and she was diagnosed with pleurisy, and her or advised her to find a healthier climate, you know,

recover your strength. I wish doctors would prescribe that. I wish a doctor would tell me, you know what, for your own health, you should probably move to Tuscany. I don't know if you say so. Doctors going to cover that? Can you write me a note? Now? It is no. But fortunately that same year President Roosevelt authorized the funding for She She She camps thanks to the urging of

his wife Eleanor Roosevelt. So again, unemployment was so terrible during the Depression that Roosevelt established nationalized voluntary work programs called the Civilian Conservation Corps or c c C. And these were this was for like young, married, unemployed men to come and have some work doing some government infrastructure jobs like creating man made lakes, building damns, fighting wildfires, and other conservation work like that, and they got paid

a wage of thirty dollars per month, twenty two to five dollars of which had to be sent back to their families. So just to put that in a context, I think I'll pull out our calculators. Let's see, that would be six hundred and fifty eight dollars today, So five hundred and forty of that had to be sent home, So you were left with a hundred and eighteen dollars

for the entire month in today's money. In today's money, eighteen dollars barely gets me through a day, you know, I mean, what's a copp of coffee now, like it's just a banana. Michael. Yeah, it was so cool. I remember learning about the c c C. When we did our camping trip in Utah, of we got to drive through State Route twelve, which is this amazing scenic road that kind of winds through the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, which is one of the coolest places I've ever been.

It's like going to Mars, so awesome, and there's all these stops along where you can kind of get these incredible scenic views. And there was a lot of signs up about how Zavelt had the c c C come out there, and uh, a lot of men were given jobs sort of like uh, cultivating this landscape and helping

build the national parks. It's super awesome stuff. Yeah, it's kind of a cool like two birds with one stone program because it was like, let's employ some people, which is desperately needed, and also improved the infrastructure of the country at the same time. And I was like, oh, that seems smart. Yeah, it seems smarts, Like that would be a real good idea. I think another bridge just crumbled something anyway, But Eleanor thought it wasn't very fair

to leave unemployed women out of this program. Again, this is just for young married men. And she's like, actually, women have been hit hardest by this depression, UM, and they're being left out of all these programs meant to address what's going on. UM and she knew that there were women in America who were willing to work in forestry and conservation if they were getting money to send

back to their families. So the first she she she camp was born Camp Tara, or Temporary Emergency Relief Assistance. I know, she she is that would never fly to you know, it's like you if it's I know. I was like, Okay, I don't know if that would work out. I mean, I don't know. We got, she sheds. We did get, she showed, but that was also laughed at. True, So I don't know. And so Camp Tara is where Polly ended up at the end of nineteen thirty three

to recover her health. Let's find out about her time there after a short break. Sounds good, welcome back campers, okay, So Polly regained her health there at Camp Tera. She she she camp, and she actually got to meet Eleanor Roosevelt at one point, but she clashed with the director of the camp, who was a bit of an authoritarian.

It seems she ran it in kind of a semi military fashion, which this is a little ironic because Fdr always made sure that the c C C camps were never military at all, because he desperately did not want them to resemble the Hitler youth program in any way. It's like, this is this cannot look like the American version of Hitler Youth. This is a totally different thing. Do not run this like a drill sergeant. But that's

exactly what this director seemed to do. She didn't really like Polly's attitude when she met the first lady because Polly didn't stand up when they were introduced. All that mean, but she was there like for literally a medical diagnosis of being exhausted, sod a medically tired. Okay, I'm sitting down. Oh lord, my doctor said I should go live in Tuscany.

You're lucky I'm even here, if only. And then this director found a copy of Dust Capital by Karl Marx and Polly's stuff, which Polly just had from a college course at Hunter. But this director is like communists. But most of all, this director disapproved of Polly's relationship with her fellow ounceler, a white woman named peg Holes First Love.

So the director kicked them both out of the camp, and Paulin and Peg just sort of like hoboat around for a while, just hopping on freight trains, hitchhiking, you know, bindles, the cooking a can of beans under a bridge, over a bucket fire. I imagine. Yeah, I wonder if she knew about hobo signs, the little put up like a secret code, like this bridge is safe. Careful, there's a patrol around here. If you see a little squiggle, it means certain things. Yeah, you can sleep here and the

owner won't won't run you out or whatever. Right, they had little little codes, so I imagine she picked up on those pretty cool. And during this time Pauline actually traveled disguised as a man. New Yorker writes that quote, she learned all about the labor movement, stood in her first picket line, joined a faction of the Communist Party USA, and then resigned from that party a year later because she found the party's discipline irksome. I get it. She's

not one to take to get pushed around by nobody. No, she does not like constraints, right, but yeah, that while while she's riding the rails is when she was sort of saying, I'm Paul, I'm dude, I'm Steve, Like she's trying different names out, and yeah, wearing pants, wearing her hair short, you know, wearing a men's hats and stuff. So I wonder if that was also for safety of travel, like two women traveling together. I was going to ask

that couple, I feel like a couple. Yeah, And I do think it's interesting because, for example, um, I'm looking back our Elagablus story, because she said her whole life, I am the Empress, you called me your empress, you will address me as such. So it became very clear that even though Alcabilis didn't have the sort of modern conversations and dialogue and and education, we could still glean from that very clearly that she wanted to use she

pronounced she wanted to go by the name Algablus. Like with Polly, we definitely kind of have been trying to sort of figure that out. Is different, takes some different articles, but we can only kind of assume what Dr Murray might have wanted today, right, So honestly, really it just kind of points to the sort of complexity and the fluidity of gender and conversations around gender, which are both quite fluid and change all the time. Yeah, yeah, totally,

much like gender itself, very fluid. Yeah, um, yeah, we we saw some. There are some scholars who who have have retroactively applied he him, and some use all pronouns throughout,

just depending what part of her life therein. And for example, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture says that for their exhibit about Dr Murray quote, throughout both the physical and online exhibition, the museum has decided to use she her pronouns, keeping with historical precedent, and have identified Murray as she identified herself in accordance with

our language guide. So yeah, they all kind of each source kind of takes their own stance on it, I guess, and chooses their own their own way of going forward. But they kind of all acknowledge that it is a conversation that's ongoing and that's very fluid, and that they'll probably update as they go. I mean, we don't have that luxury, I guess, but as as it evolves, they can, you know, evolve the way they talk about Polly. Yeah, I mean yeah, especially when we get into Police's future.

As the episode goes on, we'll learn that her experiences as a woman in the world really kind of define her legacy. And of course, again this is at a point in time where you know, if she were to identify as trans today, that would be a big part of her experiences back then. They weren't talking to her

like that. She wasn't speaking like that. She was speaking largely, especially as she moved forward in her professional career, about her experience in the world as a woman surrounded by all these CIS men like that are constantly challenging her in both black and white spaces. Um, she's she's having she's up against the wall of these guys a lot. So we, like you said, like, we don't particularly feel confident on this show sort of making that decision for

her posthumously. Uh, we're kind of taking the Smithsonian's angle here and saying, you know, she wrote in her books about herself using she her pronouns. Yes, things might have been different where she around today. Um, but it really, ultimately it just us bring up that same thing that

the conversation around gender gender itself both very complex issues. Uh. And what's kind of cool about it is that we're living in the middle of this conversation right now, right, it's happening all around us in all kinds of different places. Is I'm fascinated by it and I love to just listen to it, and kind of I feel like I'm just at a movie sometimes, just like watching the story unfold, Like, well, I'll just sit here and listen to the story. Cool,

let me know what's happening next. Yeah, that's awesome to me. I don't get why people are like so resistant to these these cultural conversations happening. I'm like, let it play out. Get I'm not getting involved. It's got nothing to do with me. They just think it's kind of cool to see happen. Well, maybe they don't want to change the behaviors that need to be changed. Well yeah, I mean that people, But it is so weird to be like, well, I think about chromosomes all the time. Come on, you

don't give any of that exactly. You know you don't. You only just started care for some fucking reason, right, because you want to be contrary and I guess, or make your decision whatever, get real stuck in it for some reason. I don't know why people do that, but

people do do that. People do do that. Yeah, but but and that again, it just comes back to that it's a complicated issue and there's a complex thing and uh, and all we can do is kind of keep listening, um to what's going on, take part if it involves you, and and sit back and listen if it doesn't, because it is complicated. And yeah, the expiration of gender is a complicated issue. Um, but using someone's correct pronouns when they ask you to is not complicated. All it is,

super uncomplicated, is extremely fucking easy to do. Actually, Um, so yeah, don't don't I mean, don't be like, oh, it's very complicated, just so you don't change your behavior because that's the thing that's making it difficult now exactly, you know. Yes, So in she applied to go to graduate school for sociology at the University of North Carolina. Now, they didn't accept black students, but Polly had family ties.

Two of her Enslaver relatives had attended, another had been on the board of trustees, and another created a permanent scholarship. So she was kind of like, I think I have a right to be here, and I love that. I really love that. Let me tell you about my great, great grandfather. Oh you want a legacy candidate, I'll tell you about some of my family. But six days after she applied, the letter came, quote, dear miss Murray, I write to state that members of your race are not

admitted to the university. And I'm just going to pull into speculation station and say that. The letter went on to say, because we all have a big, fat, poopy diapers that are really taken up all of our time right now. Yes, I think that's probably accurate. I think

that's accurate. So what's ironic is that in this instance, separate but equal should actually have worked in Polly's favor, because only two days before she got her rejection letter, the Supreme Court had said that segregated rules had to admit black students if they did not have an equivalent available, and they did not in in North Carolina. But the legislature of North Carolina got around this whole thing by promising to set up a college for black students just

as soon as we can, we swear promise. Wow, And they went for that. They said, Okay, I know. Supreme Court was like, we trust you. Your records pretty good, North Carolina. Okay, come on racial equality and instead. You know, obviously they slashed its budget by two thirds and completely ignored it and did nothing. So they just got away with it. But we're getting to it eventually. Yeah. Yeah.

At some point, so Pauli asked then Double A CP to help her sue U n C, but the Double A CPS said no because they thought that her being a New York resident was going to hurt the case. Isn't that ironic? She couldn't go to school in New York because she was a resident of North Carolina, So she became a resident of New York and then could not sue North Carolina because she wasn't a resident of her home state. I'm just like, she must have been like, God,

damn it, We're not a United States so frustrating. Dr Patricia Bell Scott has argued that it was also because of Pauli's openly queer life. So yes, So bell Scott is some one of these scholars who is talking talks a lot about her sexuality, her gender identity, and it's her opinion that the n Double A CP was maybe engaging in a little bit of respectability politics this time, because of course, obviously, first of all, they want cases,

they can win. So if they feel like they can't win, they're not going to take the case no matter how good it is. And secondly, they want the person the defendant to be the quote unquote right type of black

person to kind of further the cause. I think it's like now when we talk about immigration, you have to talk about the doctors and lawyers that come from other countries and like, but also there's people who just they just work a normal, like an everyday job, but they go home and they do normal ship and they're not like I also think they should be allowed to live. Um.

So I think it's something like similar to that. You know, in that time period, they were like, we just need you to be a nice, straight, well dressed, educated, well spoken person so that you don't look like a scary black person or something to all the crazy white people were dealing with, right, because they were dealing with such crazy white people, you know, like you've got to kind of you understand where they're coming from, because it's like, look who we have, look at the assholes we have

to impress you. They'll use they are yeah, they'll use literally and they go, you you tied your left shoe before your right shoe. No, I don't think so pretty much close, yeah, and when we still see that, so you know, I can see why it feels itchy. But it's also like I can see why where the logic is for it, even though it's not like emotionally nice, you can see why they might have just been like,

you're not the right kind of candidate for us. Um. How for all everything written down, all the evidence that's written that you can look at, is because she was not a resident of the stage. That's the official reason. Gotcha. So Polly also wrote both of the Roosevelt's, asking them to denounce You and See and criticizing FDR for accepting an honorary degree from them, but nothing ended up working.

She did not attend You and See at any point. However, this was the beginning of her lifelong correspondence with the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. She responded to Polly's letter with

an invitation to tea. According to Kenneth mac and The Boston Review, in an article titled Polly Murray Eleanor Roosevelt's Beloved Radical, their relationship was remarkable for the way Polly could get under Eleanor's skin, Eleanor once called a letter from Paully quote one of the most thoughtless I have ever read, to which Polly replied, quote, you have been utterly frank with me, and I should like to be equally frank with you. So don't start, man, won't be Eleanor.

I'm just gonna say it like it is. I love Eleanor's like, you didn't have a lot of deference in that letter, and She's like, I'm sorry, what's deference? I don't have that for anyone? I don't think like. No, she definitely they both were like pretty close for years, and they both cited one another as big inspirations for quite a lot of things. So yeah, a productively contentious relationship,

I saw it. But Polly experienced an emotional breakdown when her relationship with Peg ended again her first love, this woman she had rode the rails with and done all this stuff with, defied that shitty director of the crap camp and everything. Unfortunately, I can't find anything about Peg herself, so we can't say much about who she was as a person or anything. But probably was pretty cool. I'm just going to decide that regulation she was awesome, kicked,

pretty cool, lady homes. But yeah, Polly had like just a total breakdown when they broke up, and she ended up going to the Bellevue Hospital in New York for psychiatric treatment. When she left, she was with her hospital roommate and new girlfriend, Adeleine McBean, which is just an amazing name. Children about Kane. I love it. I mean, I'm getting big Amelia Badelia vibes Satelene McBain. Hopefully she wasn't as dumb as Amelia Badelia, literature's dumbest character. I know.

The only thing I remember from an Amelia Badelia book was somebody asked her to draw a bath, and you know that she pulled out a sketch pad. Do you know what she did drawing a bath? I know, it's it's a It's a shock that she was still employed by the end of that amazing, I mean it really should. You just actually had a lot of respect for her employers, very patiently and alright, look, she's incredibly literal. So everybody think about drags from Guardians, Yes, Amelia, but deal, it

was the original drags and I love that. Oh lord. So anyway, she's with her Amelia Badelia Adeline McBean, and they boarded a public bus to get back to Polly's family in Durham for the Easter holidays. Even though Polly hated taking segregated transit, it was really her least favorite thing. She wrote that the intimacy of the space quote permitted the public humiliation of black people to be carried out in the presence of privileged white spectators who witnessed our

shame and silence or indifference. Well, that just lays it out so clearly, Yeah, what was wrong with Oh my god, that's like I literally have to get into this tiny space and squeeze my ass past all you jerks and all the empty seats available and go sit in the worst section. Well, and more than that, it just points out, like why it's so much more than just me having

to sit in the back of the bus. This is every time I get on the bus, it's further reinforcing this idea that we are less than that all these white people already believe and even even I would think less directly racist white people who might not think twice about it, and they're not not really care who's on the bus, where subconsciously are getting reinforced with this idea constantly, Well you're better, so you can seat at the front of the bus. Like, yeah, that's that's such a brilliant

way to put it. Yeah, she's good at that. She's very good at that. So when they had to change buses in Virginia, of course that was the South, so they had to move to the back of the bus where black people are mandated to sit, but all the seats reserved for the black passengers were broken, so they were like, well, we're gonna move to ones in the white section. They sat down, and they had been talking about Gandhian civil disobedience like you do with your lover.

Oh yeah, whenever we're on a bus together. First, I love it. I love They're just like staring into each other's eyes, like I love non violande, I love john violence. You know what I'm thinking about next summer hunger strike. I was thinking about a hunger strike. Perfect, You're so beautiful. So this was not a planned thing, but when they were they had just been talking about, you know, non

violent forms of protest. They sat in the white section, and so when they were asked to move and move into sit in those broken as seats, they politely refused and continued to sit where they were sitting, and of course the cops were called. They were arrested and thrown in jail. Now, the N double A CP was interested this time, but Virginia knew the issue of segregation was heating up and they didn't want to call down the thunder.

So instead of charging Paully and Adeline with breaking segregation laws, they only charged them with disorderly conduct and they were fined about forty five dollars, which, just checking again, transfer rate is over eight hundred dollars today. That's a lot. That's a lot of money for sitting on the bus, you know, And it's that same they're like, oh, well, it's not it's not a racial issue. It's just like you should have you should have listened to that police officer. Boy,

isn't that always the case? Polly had been presenting as male while traveling with Adeline, and she'd even given her name as Oliver when she was arrested, so Dr Bell Scott has argued that possibly the N double A CP was again like, you know, let's not put a spotlight on this case, particularly this one, not the right. So instead the Workers Defense League came in and paid their fine, and a few months later they gave Paully a job.

And it was through this administrative position that she got involved in the case of Odell Waller, who was a black Virginia's sharecropper who had been sentenced to death because he killed his white landlord during an argument, and the Workers Defense League was arguing that he had been in legitimate fear for his life, that they had been like really going at it. He thought his at landlord was going to kill him, he killed him in self defense.

So Polly was traveling around raising money for Odell's defense, and she wrote to her friend Eleanor Roosevelt on his behalf, and Eleanor actually reached out. She personally asked the governor of Virginia to ensure that Odell got a fair trial, pretty telling that the first lady has to ask for that sort of I think a thing that we already

expect in this country, but anyways, sort of in the constitution. Um. And then she she also privately asked her husband, the president, to commute his death sentence as well, but ultimately Odell was executed in ninety two. After all that, Polly got

very interested in a career in civil rights law. She became a passionate orator, and after a speech she gave at a w D. L rally, a young lawyer named Third Good Marshall wrote her a letter of recommendation to Howard University School of Law, where he was an alumnus. She was awarded a scholarship, and she said she went in why the one thing on her mind, overturning Jim Crow laws. Now, Howard wasn't all black school, so finally she was in a class surrounded by black people, but

she still stood out. She was the only woman. On her first day. One of her law professors said in front of her entire class that he quote didn't understand why a woman would want to go to law school. Uh wow, I mean it's still appointed to be the only woman in the room and have him just generally tell the whole room like, why would a lady want to be here? Also, my answer to that would be, Uh, the reason is exactly what you just said. That's exactly

what I thought. I was like the thing that women have gotten fucked over so many times in history for not understanding the law and how they're protected by it. And of course women should go to law school? Are you kidding? I want to go to law school because you think I shouldn't. How about that? How about that? Now? She was obviously humiliated by this comment open in class to everyone, but also, as she said it quote, guaranteed that I became the top student's pistols like oh you bitch,

watch me. She referred to this type of discrimination as Jane Crow and as the Smithsonian Rights. She quote subsequently became an active member of the Congress of Racial Equality or CORE, and contributed to the growing dialogue on the intersection of racial and gender based discrimination. She also participated in sit ins at restaurants with discriminatory seating policies in Washington, d C. Years before the prevalence of those sit ins in the fifties and sixties. It was at Howard that

she would place her bet about Plessy versus Ferguson. And we'll hear more about that right after this commercial. Yeah, all right, and welcome back to the show. Okay, So it's Polly's and Howard University, and she and her classmates are having a spirited discussion about how to bring about the end of Jim Crow laws. Now Ever, since the

landmark Separate but Equal decision in civil rights. Lawyers had been questioning the equal part, so they were kind of trying to chip away at it by being like, Okay, here's a specific white school up against a specific black school, and they don't quite measure up to the same quality of facilities or whatever, in order to kind of say this law is not not great. It's not you're not doing what you say is supposed to do. Um. But

that wasn't really working. Again, it was really small gains, if any, from that argument, and so Polly said, why not challenge the separate part instead? And the response was quote hoots of derisive laughter, as she wrote in her memoir.

But she bet her professor Spotswood Robinson ten dollars that PLUSY would be overturned within twenty five years, and her thesis, her senior thesis paper, formalized her argument that separate but Equal violated and fourteenth amendments of the U. S. Constitution. So she was just straight up like, forget that, it doesn't even matter if they're equal. The thing is we

should not be separate by race. That's ridiculous. Now. PAULI graduated, of course, at the top of her class, just like she said she would, and she was elected Chief Justice of the Howard Court of Peers, which normally would have resulted in a scholarship to Harvard, But Harvard didn't accept women, even one who had a recommendation letter from the Ding

Dang President of the United States, like PAULI did. Now imagine that you applied to a school and the President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has written a recommendation letter for you, and they're like, still not good enough. If we lead one woman in, what's next? Two women? I would a woman even want to go to law school? They gave her the Jane Crow version of her old U n C Letter, saying, quote, you are not of the sex

entitled to be admitted to Harvard Law School. So she wrote back, quote, gentlemen, I would gladly change my sex to meet your requirements, but since the way to such change has not yet been revealed to me, I have no recourse but to appeal to you to change your minds on this subject. Are you telling me that one is as difficult as the other? Damn tell him? Tell them? Oh, I'm sorry. Is it harder for you to change your minds than it is for me to change my holding.

Dang gender. Okay, I can't find a penis to attach, right or trust me? I would have is stand Sorry, I also love You're not of the sex entitled to be admitted. That's such a choice of words. Oh yeah, they said what they meant. Oh yeah, their lawyers they chose that word very specifically, and I hate it. But it didn't work. She never did get in. Yeah. I think Harvard was really busy at that time where their

balls were shrinking back into their bodies. So after that, we're just like withdrawing away from the ground into their bodies. So they were like, oh no, you know, and they were really worried about that. Right. So she went to Berkeley instead, and she wrote a paper arguing for equal opportunity in employment, and after graduation, she was named the first black district attorney in California. The next year, she was named Woman of the Year by Mademoiselle magazine, and

she was approached by the Methodist Church. They opposed segregation, and they wanted to be able to give out some information about how it negatively impacted their mission, and in the thirty one states where they had parishes, could Polly write up a little pamphlet for them explaining the segregation laws in America. Well could Polly, ever, because in response, Polly published a seven hundred and seventy six page book in nineteen fifty called States Laws on Race and Color.

So she walked into the Methodist church, it was like, on their desk, here's that pamphlet you asked for two years ago. They're like, oh my god. And it was so comprehensive that the a c LU distributed copies to

law libraries, black colleges, and human rights organizations. Third Good Marshall kept stacks of them around in the n double a c P offices and famously called it the Bible of the civil rights movement because, as Smithsonian rites quote, the book skillfully illustrates the social implications and unconstitutionality of

segregation laws. And the social implications parts really important, because she got made of in law school for wanting to include in her arguments about how unconstitutional segregation was the fact that it had this heavy weight, this heavy social emotional psychological weight to it. It wasn't, as you said, it wasn't just sitting in the back of the bus. It's all the rest of it. It's very invisible and you can't look at it, and I can't. You can't

experience it. I can experience it. I can tell you about it. But that's it. That. But there's so much more to it than you understand. You're doing so much more damage than you even understand. And they laughed at her about that. They were like, they ain't gonna care about that. But he and his team used her book extensively to craft their arguments in Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case that overturned plus C v. Ferguson in

nineteen fifty four. New Yorker writes, quote, in this way, to Murray's immense gratification, the book ultimately helped render itself obsolete. That's also but that is not her only contribution. Old Spotswood Robinson was also on the team Brown v. Board of Education, And when they got together, you know, convenient to figure out their arguments, he remembered Polly's senior thesis paper that she had placed her bet on back in Howard,

and he pulled it out. He showed it to them, and they used her paper as a guide to strategize their arguments. And it was the social implications thing that was the reason it got overturned. Incredible, but apparently they didn't bother to tell her how much she contributed to the case until Spotswood ran into her randomly at Howard ten years later. Oh my god, I would have been like, what use this girl's paper? But let's not tell her.

We're just won't write, or like what the I hope she was immediately like, Okay, where's my ten dollars that I opened that wallet? Spotswood laughing at me. Who's laughing? Now? Look but this only scratches the surface of Polly's life. She does so much more. She's about to get so pissed at the civil rights movement for neglecting women in their leadership, and she's about to go Hella bested at the women's rights organization she helped start for sidelining minorities.

She's about to integrate the church. She's about to meet the love of her life, and she's about to inspire Ruth Bader Ginsburg to argue the case of her life. Paully had so much and she turned out to be such an incredible character that, of course we had to split this into two parts, so you know, We're going to come back with the rest of her story next time,

which will does involve like her actual romance. I think that's one of the things with this story that we were looking at is there's too much to tell about

her and this show. I think we've learned over the close to a year that we've been doing it now that it it's not always a specific romance that we're looking at, but rather UM, someone's unique experience with attraction UM who or sometimes what they're attracted to UM and and that in and of itself is as much of a story as you know, a love story between two people. Definitely UM and that's such a big part of her life.

But we do get to meet her romantic partner in part two, person that she really fell for, and that's very exciting too. Yeah, she's just PAULI is inspirational person. I'm like a little fucking mad that I've never heard of her before now, Yeah, because she's just in every

facet of of everything. She has so much to offer, you know what I mean, Like someone who I was very interested in feminism from high school and I even remember being like feminism is like so awesome because women are are everything women are gay, women are black, women are indigenous, women are are not Western there from other countries. Like if you want to care about if you want to work towards equal rice for women, then you have to work towards so many other movements, you know what

I mean. Women are disabled and women you know what I mean. But of course that was before I learned how much feminism was sidelining so many other identities, um in within the movement in favor of specifically white women and even more specifically white women with a certain amount of money. Um So, it's very interesting that in all of these intersections of class, of race, of gender, identity, of sexuality, she just has so much to say. Yeah, yeah,

and it's not just inspirational, but she's so educational. And I think that's one thing I'm really excited for in part two is we will get what's much more into the intersectionality arguments that like, for me, it's always just like, okay, intersectionality. Of course, yeah that sounds right, I'll go for it. But just because it seemed like the right thing, or the people I know who are smart are telling me,

this is what you should concern yourself with. She puts it into words that just makes it all click where you're like, oh, that's why, of course, Like she really contextualizes things in an incredible way. Um that that's a that's a really challenging skill. Even for some of the greatest leaders in these movements. It's still difficult to really explain. But why does this matter so much? I can see, you know, someone like me might say like, oh, I could see that it matters to you, and that's enough

for me. But to really have someone explain it in a way that just like, oh my god, I get it now. I think it's so powerful. Yeah, And and it's like nice too, because she was so ahead of her time that she must have felt even a little bit of like impotence in all her words, because she she's sort of yelling into this void, like it must have felt a lot of her life that no one was really listening or just like oh Polly again with

her crazy stuff. But then years later it would be the thing that did everything that she ever wanted it to do. And you know, it sucks that she didn't get the credit and the flowers at the time, but it didn't seem to be the main thing for her. She's just like, as long as the thing happens, I don't really care if my name is attached to it. And so I just think that's that's really cool to to learn, just like little moves. Now they do build,

they do build. Yeah, it's equally frustrating and awesome to see how long things take sometimes because that can that's very frustrating and it shouldn't be like that. And I never settle for the excuse of well, it takes a while to change people's minds and stuff like screw that. That's obnoxious. But it does also emphasize the fact that it can feel like you're spinning your wheels, but the work matters and it and these things often will pay

off later than you think they do. Sometimes it takes generations. Hopefully as our technology advances, our communication technology advances, the things can take less and less time. Um, but I think that's truer now than it used to be. But you do see, I think that, like you said, these these little actions are what makes mountains move, you know. Yeah, And I just love this shoes out there being undeniable,

like he could not sideline her. She's so important to all these movements too, that it was just like, well, we might not like what she's saying, but there's no need. We gotta have her here. She's got to be on my side because she's killing it. So yeah, I hope you love this story. You know there's so much more. Please join us for part two. There's just so much more to come, right, It's going to be good and we will catch you all at the next episode. Don't

forget to shoot. Does an email give us your thoughts? Romance at iHeart media dot com right or we're on social media on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dynamite Boom and I'm at Oh Great. It's Eli and the show is at ridic Romance. We can't wait to bring you the rest of the story too, and in and out We'll see you then. I love you so long. Friends, It's time to go. Thanks for listening to our show. Tell your friends neighbor's uncle indance to listen to a show Ridiculous roll Dance