Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you from how stupp
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Christen and I'm Caroline. And Caroline, I'm so excited to
Speaker 1: talk about the woman we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 1: Me too. She has been on my mind all week,
Speaker 1: ever since we started reading about her. I can't get
Speaker 1: her out of my head. That just made me start
Speaker 1: thinking of that Kylie Minogue song. But yes, you're right,
Speaker 1: I know I can't stop thinking about her either. And
Speaker 1: Polly Murray, who is this incredible trail blazer. But what's
Speaker 1: so fascinating and heartbreaking and impressive all at the same
Speaker 1: time about her story is that she managed to accomplish
Speaker 1: so much in in a single lifetime and push against
Speaker 1: standard and norms of her day. But she did it
Speaker 1: all from this almost personal place, this drive that comes
Speaker 1: from how she was raised, the environment she grew up in,
Speaker 1: and the discrimination that she herself faced. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: first ran across her name, probably a few years ago now,
Speaker 1: where she was simply cited as the first African American
Speaker 1: episcopal priest. And when I saw the photo in the caption,
Speaker 1: and I thought, oh, that seems really neat okay, and
Speaker 1: then sort of put her out of my mind, And
Speaker 1: then much more recently ran across an article talking about
Speaker 1: this entire life that she had before she entered the
Speaker 1: episcopal priesthood. And while her story doesn't begin in nineteen one,
Speaker 1: I feel like that's a good place for us to
Speaker 1: sort of kick off our conversation about her and her
Speaker 1: life and her significance because she has a very close,
Speaker 1: uh legal street bond to one of our faith's Ruth
Speaker 1: bader Ginsburg. Yeah, and this is an excellent example of
Speaker 1: a woman paying tribute and giving credit to one of
Speaker 1: her predecessors, not just taking this woman's ideas and using
Speaker 1: them as her own, but really giving credit where credits due.
Speaker 1: So well in the story also highlights to the disparity
Speaker 1: between and Polly Murray's forgotten legacy and the an understandable
Speaker 1: notoriety of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, partially due to her, you know,
Speaker 1: being a Supreme Court justice. But in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: Ruth Bader Ginsburg argues on behalf of the A c.
Speaker 1: L U, a landmark equal protection case Read v. Read.
Speaker 1: And the quick background of this case was that, uh,
Speaker 1: this couple that really wasn't together anymore. I think they
Speaker 1: were estranged. Their adopted son died, and the father, according
Speaker 1: to an Idaho state statute maintaining that males must be
Speaker 1: preferred to females as administrators of the states, was automatically
Speaker 1: granted their deceased son's estate. But Mrs Reed in this case,
Speaker 1: UM wanted rights to the estate, and so they brought
Speaker 1: this equal protection case UM that ended up going all
Speaker 1: the way to the Supreme Court. And it was the
Speaker 1: very first time that the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause
Speaker 1: had been used to argue gender discrimination as unconstitutional as
Speaker 1: opposed to racial discrimination. And so this whole case at
Speaker 1: a legal precedent against gender discrimination purely out of administrative convenience.
Speaker 1: So in this Idaho case, just being like, you know what,
Speaker 1: We're just going to give it to the dudes. They
Speaker 1: can have the rights, and we just don't even have
Speaker 1: to worry about this right. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who
Speaker 1: at the time was an a c l U volunteer attorney,
Speaker 1: in her legal brief, named two co authors who actually
Speaker 1: didn't play a direct role in the case, and those
Speaker 1: were Judge Dorothy Kenyon and the topic of today's episode,
Speaker 1: and Polly Murray, who's Jane Crow, and the law legal
Speaker 1: theory in the nineteen sixties pioneered this whole idea of
Speaker 1: the equal Protection Clause applying to sex discrimination in the
Speaker 1: same way as raised discrimination. And so Murray's entire motivation
Speaker 1: for Jane Crow, which will get into more, is the
Speaker 1: idea that it would not only protect black women hence
Speaker 1: the Jane Crow that is, the you know, feminized version
Speaker 1: of Jim Crow, but lift everybody up by bridging the
Speaker 1: gap between civil rights and the women's movement. And if
Speaker 1: that sounds a lot like intersectionality, it is, I mean
Speaker 1: in so many ways, and Polly Murray is the godmother
Speaker 1: of intersectionality. And also if this sounds a lot like
Speaker 1: Ruth Bader Ginsburg paying symbolic homage to amazing women, which
Speaker 1: other guys who had relied on that legal theory of
Speaker 1: Murray's as well in the past did not do, um,
Speaker 1: it totally is. And it just makes me love Notorious
Speaker 1: RBG even more. Yeah, well, so we need to now
Speaker 1: dive into Polly's story. Yes, her name is Anne Paulina Murray,
Speaker 1: but she opted together by the name Polly, So let's
Speaker 1: dive into her complex and multifaceted past. So to kick
Speaker 1: things off, why don't we reference her own description of herself,
Speaker 1: which kind of gets at the internal struggles that drove
Speaker 1: her public work. So, for instance, in a nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven letter to the National Organization of Women, she wrote,
Speaker 1: I hold the staff of multiple minorities. I can't allow
Speaker 1: myself to be fragmented into negro at one time, woman
Speaker 1: at another, or worker at another. I must find a
Speaker 1: unifying principle in all of these movements to which I
Speaker 1: can adhere. So from that we can hear that struggle
Speaker 1: that she really wrestled with her entire life between all
Speaker 1: of these identities and intersections that she embodied. She's African American,
Speaker 1: she's a woman, she's a gender questioning person who is
Speaker 1: attracted to women. Um she has experiences in poverty and
Speaker 1: income instability. Um so. And she even in her younger years,
Speaker 1: she gave names to her various identities of sorts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she had the crusader, the imp, and the dude, not
Speaker 1: to mention the priest, which is an identity that came later.
Speaker 1: But I mean, also, this is a woman who's an
Speaker 1: incredible legal scholar. She's a feminist, a poet, a workers
Speaker 1: rights activist, which her political leanings and her work for
Speaker 1: labor rights actually tripped her up politically later in her
Speaker 1: life a little bit. And of course, you know the
Speaker 1: whole priest thing. She became an episcopal saint in she's
Speaker 1: a saint. She's a saint. The more I've found out
Speaker 1: about her, the more astonished and kind of upset I
Speaker 1: got that I was only just now learning about her, right,
Speaker 1: And I mean that's in a lot of the that
Speaker 1: sentiment is in a lot of the articles that you
Speaker 1: will read about Polly these days, because there is this
Speaker 1: attitude of like, where have you been my whole life?
Speaker 1: And she's always been there. She always was there, but
Speaker 1: her legacy has for so long just been buried and
Speaker 1: kind of forgotten. And so it's it's now that we're
Speaker 1: starting to see more attention paid to just how important
Speaker 1: she is to this country legal history. Well, and I
Speaker 1: think that we are starting to recognize her more because
Speaker 1: our society has finally caught up to up to her exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, but in the meantime, while she was alive,
Speaker 1: she was trailblazing left and right, I mean, stood aside,
Speaker 1: she was the first woman of color to serve as
Speaker 1: California's Deputy Attorney General. She was the first African American
Speaker 1: to earn a doctorate from Yale, and the first black
Speaker 1: female episcopal priest. So, I mean, we just talked about
Speaker 1: how she's been sort of sidelined from history, and that
Speaker 1: question of why comes up a lot in any kind
Speaker 1: of scholarly writing about her, and clearly, as we'll explain more,
Speaker 1: there is the issue of society just you know, being
Speaker 1: too slow. I mean, she was a woman in so
Speaker 1: many ways ahead of her time, but it was also
Speaker 1: because she wasn't satisfied with only fighting for civil rights
Speaker 1: or women's rights or labor rights. She wanted to bridge
Speaker 1: all of the gaps. Yeah, well, she wanted to bridge
Speaker 1: all of the gaps because they were all aspects of her.
Speaker 1: I mean, she, like Kristen has said, really struggled early
Speaker 1: on with bits and pieces of her identity which society
Speaker 1: was telling her either weren't right or they were at
Speaker 1: odds with each other. You know, she wrote in her autobiography,
Speaker 1: in a world of black white opposites, I had no
Speaker 1: place being neither very dark nor very fair. I was
Speaker 1: a nobody without identity, so let's look at her childhood.
Speaker 1: She was born in nineteen ten in Baltimore as Anna Paulina.
Speaker 1: She was the fourth of six children to mother Agnes
Speaker 1: Fitzgerald and father William Murray, but she was orphaned very early.
Speaker 1: Her mom died when she was four, and at twelve,
Speaker 1: her father was actually murdered by a guard at the
Speaker 1: Crownsville State Hospital where he was a patient undergoing treatment
Speaker 1: from major depression. Not after her mother died when she
Speaker 1: was four, she was sent from Baltimore to Durham, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: where she was raised largely by her maternal grandparents, who
Speaker 1: encouraged her to be as educated and as exemplary as
Speaker 1: possible for both racial and familial uplift. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a family of middle class African Americans living in
Speaker 1: the Jim Crow South um, so that's where the idea
Speaker 1: and the need for that racial uplift comes from. And
Speaker 1: in terms of familial uplift, her maternal grandmother, who was
Speaker 1: helping raise her Cornelia, was born a slave, and Cornelia's
Speaker 1: mother was also a slave who was raped by her
Speaker 1: white slave owner. So her grandmother was actually raised by
Speaker 1: both her paternal aunt and owner right, and so that
Speaker 1: side of the family tree is something that Polly really
Speaker 1: struggles with in her autobiography, where she talks a lot
Speaker 1: about the genealogical process of going back through a family
Speaker 1: history and how it puts so much of herself and
Speaker 1: her family into the context of the time. She really
Speaker 1: had to come face to face with those ugly facts
Speaker 1: that she talks about how a lot of African American
Speaker 1: families at the time weren't willing or ready or very
Speaker 1: eager to sort of dive back into that's that's an
Speaker 1: open wound, it's a lot of pain. And so she
Speaker 1: talks about how she had to come face to face
Speaker 1: to that with that because just as she had been
Speaker 1: so proud and ready to accept the branch of the
Speaker 1: family tree that we're freedman her one of her grandfather's,
Speaker 1: for instance, was emancipated and then fought for the union. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she had a really strong attachment to her grandparents um,
Speaker 1: but tragically, again it was like she was orphaned a
Speaker 1: second time because both of her grandparents by the time
Speaker 1: she was thirteen, and she kind of considered that the
Speaker 1: end of her childhood. I mean, Polly grew up very fast.
Speaker 1: It seems like, well, she went to live with her aunt,
Speaker 1: who was her namesake, and this is the aunt who
Speaker 1: she credits so much. Yes, she found so much inspiration
Speaker 1: in her all of her grandparents and great grandparents, but
Speaker 1: it was her aunt who she says, really encouraged her
Speaker 1: to be herself and be sort of fulfill her destiny
Speaker 1: as the amazing child that she was. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: first step along the way to fulfilling her destiny and
Speaker 1: she really did have a sense of destiny, was attending
Speaker 1: Hunter College. So she heads up to New York in
Speaker 1: nine and she graduates in nineteen thirty three, and college
Speaker 1: is incredibly difficult for her financially. I mean, she's struggling
Speaker 1: to make ends meet to the point that she suffers
Speaker 1: malnutrition and like the illness that she and during college
Speaker 1: because she's so poor and can't feed herself very well.
Speaker 1: I mean, it kind of haunts her for the rest
Speaker 1: of her life. It leaves her rather frail, although you
Speaker 1: would not know it by the legacy that she leaves
Speaker 1: behind um. But after graduation, she finally finds some teaching
Speaker 1: work with the Works Progress Administration and as an activist
Speaker 1: for the Workers Defense League. But it's this whole time
Speaker 1: that she's also questioning both her gender identity and her
Speaker 1: sexual orientation. She really struggled with feeling like she was
Speaker 1: a man trapped in a woman's body her words, but
Speaker 1: also struggling with this attraction to feminine women. She wrote
Speaker 1: to her doctors saying, I've got to find a solution,
Speaker 1: like I don't know why I feel this attraction, because
Speaker 1: you've also got to keep in mind at the time
Speaker 1: that being gay was considered a psychiatric disorder. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: in a no to her doctor that she wrote in seven,
Speaker 1: she said, why do I desire monogamous married life as
Speaker 1: a completion? Because she's you know, she's struggling with her
Speaker 1: same sex attraction to women, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: because of that desire to succeed professionally but also have
Speaker 1: the quote unquote normal family life was something that was
Speaker 1: also very much ingrained in her and very important to her.
Speaker 1: Clearly a point of personal conflict for her, and I
Speaker 1: think it's important as um. There was one academic we're
Speaker 1: reading who pointed out that while today she might have
Speaker 1: identified as transgender or a lesbian, she never labeled herself
Speaker 1: as such back then. I mean, well, for one, reason
Speaker 1: the term transgender didn't even exist in the nineteen thirties. UM.
Speaker 1: But she she knew that something was up and she
Speaker 1: really wanted a biological explanation for it. UM. In her
Speaker 1: twenties and thirties, she was really enamored with new research
Speaker 1: on hormones and glands and part of why she was
Speaker 1: so compelled. UM and and even at one point requested
Speaker 1: an exploratory surgery to see if she had a male
Speaker 1: genitalia like secreted inside of her. As she put it,
Speaker 1: was because of the specter of mental illness within her family.
Speaker 1: I mean you have like you mentioned, Caroline, at the time,
Speaker 1: homosexuality was considered a psychiatric disorder and that was terrifying
Speaker 1: for her, considering how her dad was murdered when he
Speaker 1: was in a psychiatric hospital, and there had been other
Speaker 1: mental health issues in her family. Yeah, and so she
Speaker 1: did seek both psychiatric and hormonal treatment, but doctors refused
Speaker 1: to give her male hormones, simply telling her to conform
Speaker 1: to female expectations. U. UM, that doesn't mean she didn't experiment.
Speaker 1: She there's lots of pictures of her, and she talks
Speaker 1: about how she explored gender identity and presentation particularly in
Speaker 1: her younger years in her twenties and thirties, by wearing
Speaker 1: men's clothing. And this is around the time when she
Speaker 1: also opts to start going by the name Polly instead
Speaker 1: of Anne. Yeah. And if we look back at her
Speaker 1: one autobiographical photo album, The Life and Times of an
Speaker 1: American called Polly Murray, Um, the image of the dude
Speaker 1: is clearly the uh, the identity within her that's questioning
Speaker 1: gender and what it means and how it applies to her.
Speaker 1: And she in one of the photos she has sort
Speaker 1: of she has men's clothes on and a men's style,
Speaker 1: hey do um. But you can see as she goes
Speaker 1: to law school and her legal career picks up in
Speaker 1: public profile increases, you see her dressed in more traditionally
Speaker 1: feminine ways. Yeah. I think there there's one picture that
Speaker 1: we saw of her, was it from law school or after?
Speaker 1: Where it's one of those like very old school, you know,
Speaker 1: from the side kind of pictures where she's looking off
Speaker 1: into the distance and the caption on the back of
Speaker 1: the photo was first and last up swept hair do
Speaker 1: So I mean, I you know, she kind of like
Speaker 1: those doctors when she was in her twenties and thirties, said,
Speaker 1: you know, they told her to conform to female expectations.
Speaker 1: I think she did feel like she had to for
Speaker 1: a lot of her early public presentation and persona. You know,
Speaker 1: you you see her exclusively in dresses in those early years,
Speaker 1: especially like in pictures where she's with Betty for Dan
Speaker 1: in a picture with the early founding staff of Now
Speaker 1: and in law school, she's wearing all of those dresses
Speaker 1: and those hair dues. But as you get old, as
Speaker 1: she gets older, I should say, uh, you start to
Speaker 1: see her, Oh yeah, this is the woman who said
Speaker 1: she prefers pants to dresses. Like, you start to see
Speaker 1: hers almost just sort of start to look more like herself. Well,
Speaker 1: and there was one anecdote from when she was in
Speaker 1: the priesthood of her being delighted that she would sometimes
Speaker 1: get mistaken for a guy, partly because she had short,
Speaker 1: cropped hair and glasses and she even had rocked a
Speaker 1: little lady mustache in her old age, and obviously, like
Speaker 1: priestly clothes are gender ambiguous, and being the first female
Speaker 1: priests would kind of just expect it to be a guy.
Speaker 1: And she was like, oh, I loved it. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: because yeah. I mean, like you said, transgender wasn't a
Speaker 1: term in use yet, but I'm sure it must have
Speaker 1: felt great for someone to look at you and identify
Speaker 1: you as the way that you and I know, not
Speaker 1: that I want to put words in anyone's mouth, but
Speaker 1: the way that you have felt inside. Yeah, I'm but
Speaker 1: I I well. And I also think it's interesting that
Speaker 1: part of her concern over how she felt was not
Speaker 1: just her attraction to women and her discomfort in uh
Speaker 1: with feminine gendered clothing, but also she felt like her
Speaker 1: ambition and drive was also highly masculine, in a sign
Speaker 1: that something wasn't entirely right and part of why she
Speaker 1: wanted to fight for women's rights because she was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't this womanhood is is holding me back. Like
Speaker 1: I know I'm a woman, but I don't feel like
Speaker 1: I I should be because of all of this stuff
Speaker 1: that I want to accomplish. Yeah, so many layers to
Speaker 1: gender identity. Who's surprised, No, No one well. And she
Speaker 1: carried on though open romantic relationships though with a number
Speaker 1: of women um and in her later life she forged
Speaker 1: a seventeen year relationship with a woman named Irene Barlow
Speaker 1: whom she met at a law firm in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: six and it lasted until Barlow's death, and they're buried
Speaker 1: under the same headstone in New York. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think she because I think when Barlow died at the time, UM,
Speaker 1: Polly was teaching at brand Ice and she ended up
Speaker 1: leaving her position because she was so heartbroken that she
Speaker 1: felt like I can't I can't go on. But then
Speaker 1: in her posthumously published autobiography Song and a Weary Throat,
Speaker 1: there's no mention whatsoever of same sex relationships. So clearly
Speaker 1: there are lots of intersections happening within this one person
Speaker 1: and in the next phase of her life and career.
Speaker 1: Because we're going to get into this is when we
Speaker 1: see all of her brain power then being applied to
Speaker 1: all of her identities and struggles and how she applied
Speaker 1: that to empowering marginalized groups. And we're going to get
Speaker 1: into that when we come right back from a quick break.
Speaker 1: So there's one big thing that Pauly Murray understood ahead
Speaker 1: of her time was now discrimination cuts across identities, um
Speaker 1: and and we might take that so for granted today,
Speaker 1: but that was a revolutionary concept, not so long ago
Speaker 1: um and, speaking to The Washington Post in nineteen seven,
Speaker 1: Pouli said, this society is not hospitable to persons of color,
Speaker 1: women or left handed people. Ain't that the truth? Congress, Well, listen,
Speaker 1: as a lefty, I agree, And well, I do appreciate
Speaker 1: her humor. That should not indicate that she was anything
Speaker 1: other than deadly serious about the discrimination that she and
Speaker 1: others around her were facing. Uh, In, let's let's just
Speaker 1: go through basically the history of what she overcame that
Speaker 1: ended up contributing to the person that she Well, I
Speaker 1: want to say the person that she became, but I mean,
Speaker 1: she already was this person, she was this fighter. So
Speaker 1: we've got to give this backstory though, so you know
Speaker 1: exactly what she went through. She was denied graduate school
Speaker 1: admission at u NC Chapel Hill because of her race,
Speaker 1: and she knew this was wrong. She knew this was ridiculous.
Speaker 1: She knew she was up against a discriminatory machine. So
Speaker 1: she launched a letter writing campaign that attracted the attention
Speaker 1: and the friendship of one Eleanor Roosevelt, and she actually,
Speaker 1: through correspondence with Eleanor, became a personal advisor to her
Speaker 1: on civil and human rights issues. Well, the UNC president
Speaker 1: at the time knew Murray was qualified enough to gain entrance,
Speaker 1: and he even consulted the U. S. Senate on this.
Speaker 1: I mean, and this is incredible to me. Already at
Speaker 1: this point in her life, she's like, oh, like sounding
Speaker 1: the alarm all the way up to the White House. UM.
Speaker 1: And later in life though, when UNC Chapel Hill tries
Speaker 1: to grant her an honorary degree, Murray says, oh, no,
Speaker 1: things stuck to her guns, that woman did. But the
Speaker 1: thing is like, that's y eight. I feel like this
Speaker 1: sounds like, oh, yeah, of course, something like that must
Speaker 1: have happened in the sixties, people pushing back against UH
Speaker 1: segregation and racism and discrimination. This is this woman's ahead
Speaker 1: of her time. She's also ahead of her time because
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty, fifteen years before Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama,
Speaker 1: Polly and her lady friend Adeline mcbreen were arrest did
Speaker 1: in Virginia for refusing to move to the back of
Speaker 1: a Greyhound bus. And so what possibly contributed to this
Speaker 1: contentious UH conflict scenario was the fact that she was
Speaker 1: actually dressed in men's clothes at the time and Uh,
Speaker 1: that could have contributed to antagonizing the police toward her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a headline though from the time reporting on
Speaker 1: the incident it was Jim crow bus dispute leads to
Speaker 1: girls arrest, and the news article describes her as a
Speaker 1: honey tongued legal mind. Don't mess with her, I mean,
Speaker 1: even then, honeytongue legal mind. In the same year, her
Speaker 1: honey tongue legal mind was hired by the Workers Defense
Speaker 1: League to pardon a black sharecropper who was convicted of murder,
Speaker 1: and she returns to Virginia to raise money and meets
Speaker 1: prominent civil rights lawyers, which inspires her to start Howard
Speaker 1: Law School with the aspiration of becoming an inn double
Speaker 1: a CP lawyer. So she starts law school in n one,
Speaker 1: but law school going to Howard, where race is no
Speaker 1: longer the discriminatory issue sex discrimination comes to the forefront. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's during this time that she coins that term Jane
Speaker 1: Crow to describe her experience of the double race and
Speaker 1: sex based discrimination, and one source we read described it
Speaker 1: as a theory born from her own struggles with categories
Speaker 1: that seem to do violence to Murray's own sense of self.
Speaker 1: Sometimes black and white, but far more often men and women.
Speaker 1: And she's still active in civil rights protests. It's during
Speaker 1: these years at Howard that she also participates in silent
Speaker 1: demonstrations and sit ins at a Washington, d c. Cafeteria. Again,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, as woman's ahead of her time. It's
Speaker 1: the forties. I feel like school children today tend to
Speaker 1: think of the civil rights movement as like a sixties thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and her graduating thesis from Howard was titled to
Speaker 1: the civil Rights cases and PLUSY be overruled. And she's
Speaker 1: referring to plus C v. Ferguson the case which upheld
Speaker 1: separate but equal, and she's arguing obviously that plus C
Speaker 1: should be overturned. This is ten years before Brown versus
Speaker 1: the Board of Education case would overturn that separate but
Speaker 1: equal clause. But when Polly first suggests this, all the
Speaker 1: guys in her class laughed at her. She described it
Speaker 1: as hoots of derisive laughter. But Polly would get the
Speaker 1: last laugh sort of when Brown v. Board of Education
Speaker 1: took place because n Double a CP Chief Counsel third
Speaker 1: Good Marshal, used Murray's thesis as a strategic guide to
Speaker 1: argue the case But the thing is all of this
Speaker 1: was unbeknownst to Murray for years because he never gave
Speaker 1: her credit for it. M Like, come on, man, come on,
Speaker 1: they're good. We could all stand to learn a little
Speaker 1: something from RBG. I know Ruth Bader Ginsburg hashtag shine
Speaker 1: theory knows how to attribute. So uh. Polly graduates as
Speaker 1: the valedictorian of her Howard University class, naturally, which typically
Speaker 1: would have parlayed into a scholarship to get a Masters
Speaker 1: in law at Harvard. However, she was not a man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Harvard Admissions wrote back to Polly saying, quote, your
Speaker 1: picture and the salutation on your college transcript indicate that
Speaker 1: you were not of the sex entitled to be admitted
Speaker 1: to Harvard Law School. Come on a drag. And and
Speaker 1: here's the whole Jane Crow thing too coming into play,
Speaker 1: because she writes about how her male civil rights comrade
Speaker 1: really sympathized with her race based U n C rejection
Speaker 1: years earlier, but when it came to her being rejected
Speaker 1: by Harvard, they were simply amused at the idea that
Speaker 1: she wanted to go there anyway. So there was none
Speaker 1: of that support, that community support rallying around her for
Speaker 1: for this particular rejection, it was more of like a oh,
Speaker 1: you silly woman. Well, that silly woman decided to take
Speaker 1: herself to get her Master's of Law degree at UC
Speaker 1: Berkeley instead, and she graduated in and then became the
Speaker 1: state's first black Deputy Attorney general. A few years later,
Speaker 1: she pens the State's Laws on Race and Colors, which
Speaker 1: was a compilation of all race related state level laws.
Speaker 1: And this might sound like an insignificant detail. Why are
Speaker 1: you telling us about this directory that this woman wrote, essentially, Well,
Speaker 1: because yet again she is writing what would essentially become
Speaker 1: no own as the Bible of civil rights law. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: She had compiled it at the request of the Methodist
Speaker 1: Churches Women's Division, which I love. I'm like, who, but
Speaker 1: uh so, working very closely with women from a church,
Speaker 1: and it just became this critical piece of writing for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. Yeah, I mean, and just again
Speaker 1: and again and again. She's laying all of this legal foundation,
Speaker 1: doing all of this leg work for these you know,
Speaker 1: landmark cases and desegregation that will happen many years later. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean she but all of this is driven by
Speaker 1: her her personal convictions. I mean, she writes about how
Speaker 1: segregation places a badge of inferiority on black children, and
Speaker 1: and so it was it was looking into her past,
Speaker 1: seeing her own and experiences with discrimination, and and looking
Speaker 1: at the community around her that drove her to try
Speaker 1: to make this world a better place well, and also
Speaker 1: to going back to her family tree, that duality of
Speaker 1: blackness and also the violent whiteness that was in there
Speaker 1: with um, you know, the rape of her great grandmother Um.
Speaker 1: And she spends a lot of time after nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: she spends four years actually going back to North Carolina
Speaker 1: and researching all about her family, and she ends up
Speaker 1: publishing sort of like a familial autobiography called Proud Shoes,
Speaker 1: The Story of an American Family. And Caroline, I gotta
Speaker 1: say this reminded me a lot of you, because genealogy
Speaker 1: is a hobby of yours. Oh my god, I know
Speaker 1: I've lost so much sleep since the holidays because I've
Speaker 1: been on a total family research kick. But did you
Speaker 1: feel at least a little bonda to Well? I did.
Speaker 1: I did, because um, just her passion for it and
Speaker 1: and seeing her give voice to a lot of the
Speaker 1: same things that I feel in terms of the importance
Speaker 1: of kind of figuring out where you come from, because
Speaker 1: it's no small, it's no small and significant thing to
Speaker 1: figure out who your people were. She writes, the conviction
Speaker 1: grew in me that one of the best ways to
Speaker 1: incorporate social and political history into one's experience is to
Speaker 1: embark on a search into one's family history. These ancient
Speaker 1: documents spoke to me of a common humanity and narrowed
Speaker 1: the distances between races, classes, and political positions. And I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a woman who had to come to terms
Speaker 1: with her multi racial, as she put it, past and origin,
Speaker 1: someone who had to embrace both the amazing freedmen in
Speaker 1: her tree, but also the slave ancestors who she writes about,
Speaker 1: who didn't have They did have a complicated relationship, obviously
Speaker 1: with the white people who owned them, But she writes
Speaker 1: about having to come to ter terms with the complexities
Speaker 1: of realizing that her great grandmother didn't hate these people.
Speaker 1: She was quite friendly and intimate with the white women
Speaker 1: of that family. So, as you might imagine, it's that
Speaker 1: dual heritage that had a huge effect on her and
Speaker 1: gave her a strong sense of personal identity. She writes
Speaker 1: about it as the tangled roots from which I sprang,
Speaker 1: and said she felt it was part of her destiny
Speaker 1: to counteract the effects of stereotypes that black people had
Speaker 1: played no significant role in US history. And that's what's
Speaker 1: so addictive about family research and genealogy. It's it's digging
Speaker 1: into the past and realizing that whether you're at the
Speaker 1: top of the socioeconomic heap or at the bottom, all
Speaker 1: of these people played such an important role in the
Speaker 1: foundation of this country. And so that really played a
Speaker 1: role in helping her define who she was. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: the more she learned about herself often where she came from,
Speaker 1: and the more deeply embedded she became in the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement, motivated by those tangled roots that she wrote about.
Speaker 1: It also fueled her feminism because as we move into
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies, particularly when the black power movement arises,
Speaker 1: she becomes really uncomfortable with the power structures that she
Speaker 1: sees emerging in it. And for instance, I'm jumping ahead
Speaker 1: a little bit, but just to give you a sense
Speaker 1: of where we're going. In the nineteen seventy essay, she wrote,
Speaker 1: the main thrust of black militancy is a bit of
Speaker 1: black males to share power with white males in a
Speaker 1: continuing patriarchal society in which both black and white females
Speaker 1: are relegated to a secondary status. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: this is where it's important to remember her push for
Speaker 1: um both protect action for both sex and racial discrimination,
Speaker 1: because her attitude was that if you protect for both,
Speaker 1: then you uplift everyone. Like we mentioned earlier, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: if we go back to nineteen sixty one, she's a
Speaker 1: big deal. JFK appoints her to the President's Committee on
Speaker 1: the Status of Women as well as the Commission on
Speaker 1: Civil and Political Rights. And the more immersed she gets
Speaker 1: in the civil rights movement, the more she starts to
Speaker 1: see and call out sexism within the movement because of
Speaker 1: its avoidance of appointing women to visible leadership roles and
Speaker 1: tacitly endorsing gender segregation by, for instance, appearing at the
Speaker 1: National Press Club, which enraged her because at the time,
Speaker 1: the National Press Club excluded women. So she's like, what
Speaker 1: are you doing, you'r you can't stay in this one
Speaker 1: space that doesn't allow these people in while you're advocating
Speaker 1: for were the rights of more people. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: interesting because you've also got to keep in mind that
Speaker 1: there were a lot of civil rights leaders who saw
Speaker 1: women's rights as a completely separate issue, which echoes back
Speaker 1: to our episodes that we've done on suffrage and black
Speaker 1: women in the abolition and suffrage movements, because it was
Speaker 1: sort of the other side of the coin back then,
Speaker 1: all of these women pushing for suffrage and women's rights
Speaker 1: were like black issues are totally separate things, stopped distracting
Speaker 1: from the cause. Yeah, I mean, and in a way
Speaker 1: like her biography does echo a lot of the women
Speaker 1: that we talked about. Um I T. B. Wells comes
Speaker 1: to mind of someone straddling both suffrage and abolition and
Speaker 1: often being caught at those intersections. Um So, N four
Speaker 1: is a pivotal year, not only for Polly but also
Speaker 1: for the US because this is when the Civil Rights
Speaker 1: Act is enacted, and this is the year her that
Speaker 1: she co authors her landmark paper, Jane Crow and the
Speaker 1: Law Sex Discrimination, entitled seven, published in the George Washington
Speaker 1: Law Review. And this was a really radical idea, this
Speaker 1: whole Jane Crow of crystallizing that double discrimination of being
Speaker 1: not only African American but also female because as Harvard
Speaker 1: Law Professor Kenneth W. Mac points out, this is the
Speaker 1: early nineteen sixties. You still have laws on the books
Speaker 1: excluding women from certain jobs like like bartending for instance. Um,
Speaker 1: you have all male juries going on. Um, and we
Speaker 1: even have in nineteen sixty one scoutis Justice John Marshall
Speaker 1: Harlan writing, woman is still regarded as the center of
Speaker 1: home and family. That's where she belongs. I added that
Speaker 1: last bit of that's where she belonged. Well, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: that idea of benevolent sexism, that women must be protected
Speaker 1: from certain dangerous or unsavory situations, whether it's being a
Speaker 1: bartender or being a juror Yeah. And so she publishes
Speaker 1: this paper in the same year. I mean, she's so busy.
Speaker 1: I want to know it's also her secret to productivity.
Speaker 1: That's another episode, I guess, um. But the same year
Speaker 1: she individually lobbies congressmen and even Lady brig Johnson to
Speaker 1: include sex the word sex in the Civil Rights Act
Speaker 1: to make sure that it not only protects against racial
Speaker 1: discrimination but also gender based discrimination. And she was able
Speaker 1: to convince congressmen to include it because she was the
Speaker 1: first one to argue not that it would benefit solely
Speaker 1: white women, or that it would pass ssibly um negatively
Speaker 1: impact black men. But she raised the issue of its
Speaker 1: impact on black women. I mean, that's another thing. An
Speaker 1: undercurrent to all of the stuff that's going on is
Speaker 1: the complete invisibility of black women in our society for
Speaker 1: so long. Yeah, well, she writes, I mean, speaking about herself.
Speaker 1: She read about being a minority of a minority, of
Speaker 1: being a woman who was also black, and the hardships
Speaker 1: that come along with that. Yeah. And so she was
Speaker 1: able to make the convincing argument that you must include
Speaker 1: that sex clause because if you don't, you will leave
Speaker 1: out this entire population of black women and only increase
Speaker 1: the social burden that they're bearing. And meanwhile, the next year,
Speaker 1: she becomes the first African American to earn a JSD
Speaker 1: from Yale, and her dissertation is Roots of the Racial
Speaker 1: Crisis Prologue to Policy. And I note all these things
Speaker 1: that she's writing, because again, how is she doing all
Speaker 1: of this? How does she? How does she do it? Caroline?
Speaker 1: I have no I have no idea. And and she
Speaker 1: wanted to add to it because she also wanted to
Speaker 1: get a law school teaching job after she graduated. But
Speaker 1: no one would hire her, and there have been questions
Speaker 1: about whether that distancing from her as successful as she was,
Speaker 1: as prominent as she was at the time, that her
Speaker 1: outward queerness possibly um alienated her from certain employment. Interesting. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so we mentioned the whole jury thing earlier about benevolent
Speaker 1: sexism and women at the time being exempt from jury
Speaker 1: service unless they volunteered. Well, that whole idea comes up
Speaker 1: again in nineteen sixty six when, along with the a
Speaker 1: c LU legal team, Paully co writes the brief in
Speaker 1: the case Why v. Cook, which struck down the constitutionality
Speaker 1: of all white, all male juries. This gets rid of
Speaker 1: all of those quote unquote protections for women. She had
Speaker 1: wanted it though, to reach the Supreme Court and serve
Speaker 1: as women's brown versus Board of Education. And speaking of women,
Speaker 1: the same year she becomes a founding member of the
Speaker 1: National Organization for Women. She had suggested, actually to Betty
Speaker 1: for Dan that there needed to be some sort of
Speaker 1: n double a c P for women. Um. And I mean,
Speaker 1: by this point it makes total sense that she's so
Speaker 1: engaged with the feminist movement because of all the groundwork
Speaker 1: that had been laid going back to her sexist treatment
Speaker 1: at Howard being on the President's Commission on the Status
Speaker 1: of Women. Researching this and also, of course it's embedded
Speaker 1: in her Jane Crow theory and her personal repulsion at
Speaker 1: the anti feminism of some civil rights leaders as well
Speaker 1: as UH leaders of the Black power movement. But I
Speaker 1: mean she didn't, she didn't entirely find a home, not
Speaker 1: surprisingly in in second way feminism, which was largely led
Speaker 1: by middle and upper class white women. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: she said that she did feel more comfortable within feminism,
Speaker 1: but she quickly took issue with now's sidelining of civil
Speaker 1: rights leaders. So it's that back and forth of like,
Speaker 1: over here they don't want this aspect of me, and
Speaker 1: over here they don't want this other aspect of me.
Speaker 1: So she ends up leaving, joining the a c l U,
Speaker 1: and from there is instrumental in a c l U
Speaker 1: adopting women's rights as a key priority. And from there
Speaker 1: she finally gets the teaching job that she had so
Speaker 1: long been wanting. She becomes a tenured professor at brandeis
Speaker 1: UM and she ends up developing some of the first
Speaker 1: black women's studies courses as an American Studies professor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean she's not a two dimensional person by any means.
Speaker 1: I mean her one of her original interests on her
Speaker 1: way to grad school with sociology, but she you know,
Speaker 1: didn't go to you and c took the law route thankfully. Um.
Speaker 1: But I mean, this is a woman with so many
Speaker 1: different interests. Like, you know, I'm reading all of this
Speaker 1: stuff about her and then it's like, oh yeah, And
Speaker 1: I mean she started all of these black women studies
Speaker 1: classes and You're like, how how did who has the time?
Speaker 1: This woman? Like she's this is the most driven woman
Speaker 1: I think I've ever read about. Oh and not to
Speaker 1: mention Caroline, she was publishing poetry too all the while
Speaker 1: because she I think her father wrote poetry and she
Speaker 1: always felt that was a connection to him, you know,
Speaker 1: because she lost him when she was twelve. I mean,
Speaker 1: although she was obviously separated from him before that. But
Speaker 1: if we jump forward, she's sixty two. She's done so
Speaker 1: much you think that Polly would like kick up her
Speaker 1: feet and just chill out for the rest of her life. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: she has one more first to accomplish. At sixty two,
Speaker 1: she enters episcopal seminary. Despite the church not yet ordaining women.
Speaker 1: Apparently in nineteen seventy four seven women had been sort
Speaker 1: of like casually or day and they're like, we're like
Speaker 1: kind of priests, but it's not really official. But Polly
Speaker 1: Murray was like, no, no, no, this is nonsense. The
Speaker 1: sexism is ridiculous, and I love this faith. I'm going
Speaker 1: to seminary. And in nineteen seventy seven she became the
Speaker 1: first black female episcopal priest. And fascinating detail, she leaves
Speaker 1: her first Eucharist in the same North Carolina church where
Speaker 1: her grandmother, Cornelia, had been baptized one d and twenty
Speaker 1: three years earlier as a slave. I mean full circle.
Speaker 1: Polly took it full circle. It almost Her bio almost
Speaker 1: reads as if she had some kind of blueprint she
Speaker 1: was following, because it's like, how else could you accomplish
Speaker 1: so much in so many different corners of our society? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean she also writes in terms of entering
Speaker 1: the seminary, she writes about how Irene Barlow's death sort
Speaker 1: of sparked something in her that was undeniable. It was
Speaker 1: this she had always sort of had a connection with Christianity,
Speaker 1: but something in her was driven to dedicate her life
Speaker 1: to it instead of just you know, belonging to a
Speaker 1: church or going to a church. She just felt it
Speaker 1: in her being that she had to do this, pursue
Speaker 1: this path, and it was she writes about how it
Speaker 1: was fulfilling a different part of her. Obviously, all of
Speaker 1: her legal work, her women's studies work, all of that
Speaker 1: had fulfilled very specific and large parts of her and
Speaker 1: serve the community. But it time to serve at this age.
Speaker 1: It was time to serve a different part of herself
Speaker 1: and a different portion of the community. Well, and I
Speaker 1: love how yet again, her priesthood is an example of
Speaker 1: that personal drive being the compulsion to have that outwardly
Speaker 1: manifested into something to enrich the world outside her. Because um,
Speaker 1: it was also with Irene Barlow that she um became
Speaker 1: more immersed in the church. They would go to church
Speaker 1: together and it was you know, a significant part of
Speaker 1: their relationship. And so I like thinking of her going
Speaker 1: to seminary as um, I don't know, it is almost
Speaker 1: an homage to Irene and that love that they had,
Speaker 1: which I couldn't find out much about, especially because it's
Speaker 1: not really documented in her personal papers or her autobiographies. Um,
Speaker 1: there's there's not much out there about Irene. So after
Speaker 1: such a rich and accomplished and sometimes highly conflict life,
Speaker 1: she dies and her autobiography, Song and a Weary Throat
Speaker 1: comes out two years later. And it's not until two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve that the General Convention of the Episcopal Church
Speaker 1: makes her a saint. I we want a fitting end
Speaker 1: to this saint hood. Yeah, you know, I'm picturing because
Speaker 1: there's this great picture of her where she's close up
Speaker 1: and she's wearing her collar and she's smiling into the
Speaker 1: camera where her glasses on, and I just imagine a
Speaker 1: little halo going above her head like ding. I mean,
Speaker 1: the things that this woman contributed to our world and
Speaker 1: our society are incredible. She broke so many barriers and
Speaker 1: and she meant to. I mean, this is a woman
Speaker 1: who meant to break these freaking barriers. Like she knew
Speaker 1: what she was up against, she knew what she was doing,
Speaker 1: and the very life, her very existence was against the
Speaker 1: norm and breaking barriers. And I mean, you know, talk
Speaker 1: about a a heroine for for for all of us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean that was her goal to embody intersectionality,
Speaker 1: even though that word had not been coined yet by
Speaker 1: yet another female legal scholar down the road and bridging
Speaker 1: gaps and uplifting marginalized people because of all of the
Speaker 1: different layers of identities and experiences that she had, And
Speaker 1: you're so right about the intentionality of all of it.
Speaker 1: Even when she applied to grad school at U and see,
Speaker 1: she knew she wasn't going to get in. She knew
Speaker 1: that they had a policy um barring people of color
Speaker 1: from admissions, but she didn't care, you know, she wanted
Speaker 1: to make a point. Well, I just I am so
Speaker 1: fascinated to look at modern uh feminism and politics in
Speaker 1: light of Polly Murray's life because you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know how many times we can say that she was
Speaker 1: ahead of her time, because we need so many more
Speaker 1: minds like hers that worked to incorporate all of these
Speaker 1: different layers of yes, gender and sexuality but also race
Speaker 1: and uh socioeconomics. I mean, this woman tried to incorporate
Speaker 1: and did incorporate all of us into her life's work. Well,
Speaker 1: and it makes me so curious to know what she
Speaker 1: would say about intersectionality today if she was sitting here
Speaker 1: with us, and what she would undoubtedly be seeing as
Speaker 1: the next step she would because you know, of course
Speaker 1: she would be if she were alive today, she would
Speaker 1: already be like twelve steps ahead of us. So I
Speaker 1: almost wish that she were still around to tell us
Speaker 1: what to do next. But listeners, I hope that Paully
Speaker 1: Murray's legacy has resonated as much with you as it
Speaker 1: has with us. Caroline, I've been telling so many people
Speaker 1: about her by the way, um, and I'm curious to
Speaker 1: know from from folks whether they had heard of her before.
Speaker 1: Mom Stuff at house stuffworks dot Com is where you
Speaker 1: can send us your letters, and if there are other
Speaker 1: unsung trailblazers that we should look into, please let us know.
Speaker 1: You can also tweet us at Mom's stuff podcasts or
Speaker 1: messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages
Speaker 1: to share with you right now. Why have a letter
Speaker 1: here from Elizabeth, She says, I just listened to the
Speaker 1: episode on feminist marriages, and like everyone their mom, their dog,
Speaker 1: and they're downstairs, neighbor, I have a couple since I
Speaker 1: want to throw in about last names. I've heard a
Speaker 1: lot of women talk about how it's a feminist wind
Speaker 1: to keep their own last name after getting married. Some
Speaker 1: women get pretty smug about this, which is obnoxious to
Speaker 1: say the least. But what nobody seems to mention about
Speaker 1: this is a hymn. A woman's maiden barf last name
Speaker 1: is uh, her dad's name. More likely than not, a
Speaker 1: woman who is us born to an English speaking family
Speaker 1: and plenty of other backgrounds have their dad's name. Dads
Speaker 1: are almost always men, and fatherhood is a concept and
Speaker 1: social familial structure that is at the very root of patriarchy,
Speaker 1: quite literally, if we look at the root of the
Speaker 1: word patriarchy. So I'm not married and probably will never
Speaker 1: make that choice for myself, but it drives me nuts
Speaker 1: to hear the fact that an unmarried woman's last name
Speaker 1: is probably her dad's last name, who's also a man
Speaker 1: who is or was also a perceived authority figure. I
Speaker 1: say all this to say women are kind of screwed
Speaker 1: on this front, so we should just do whatever we
Speaker 1: want with our last names and not feel compelled one
Speaker 1: way or another by patriarchy or feminism to change or
Speaker 1: keep it. In the seventies and earlier, it was definitely
Speaker 1: super subversive and radical, but these days I think people
Speaker 1: need to chill out a little before they start asking
Speaker 1: for medals for keeping their dad's name instead of taking
Speaker 1: their male spouses. Anyways, have been am currently and will
Speaker 1: remain a huge fan of the cast to keep it up. Well,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Elizabeth, loved your letter. I've got a letter
Speaker 1: here from Carrie also about our Feminist Marriage podcast, and
Speaker 1: she writes, I've been married to a wonderful feminist dude
Speaker 1: for eight years now and it's been wonderful. Congratulations, Scary.
Speaker 1: We took each other's names because we viewed marriage as
Speaker 1: emerging of our two lives. As a consequence, we are
Speaker 1: the only Holly Hurts in the world, and that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed Meg Keane's view of marriage, especially what she
Speaker 1: said about household duties being a negotiation. I completely agree
Speaker 1: with that. Although our system is a little less formal.
Speaker 1: We both take on chores we have time for or
Speaker 1: we're better at, so I cook and he cleans the kitchen.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to things neither of us wants
Speaker 1: to do, like changing a dirty diaper, we go toe
Speaker 1: to toe in a rousing game of rock paper scissors.
Speaker 1: It's the perfect way to get things done without either
Speaker 1: of us feeling like we're doing more than the other.
Speaker 1: But Carrie, what if one of you is just like,
Speaker 1: really really good at rock paper scissors? Just wondering. She
Speaker 1: goes on to say, though marriage takes work, but I
Speaker 1: imagine it's a hell of a lot easier when you
Speaker 1: have a partner that respects you and gets it. We're
Speaker 1: just doing this thing and clinging on to each other
Speaker 1: for dear life. So thank you, Carrie, and um, I'm
Speaker 1: wishing you the best of luck with some rock paper
Speaker 1: scissors victories and friends. Keep your letters coming, Moms. Sabit
Speaker 1: housetot works dot com is where you can send them
Speaker 1: and for links to all of our social media as
Speaker 1: well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts with
Speaker 1: our sources. So you can learn more about Holly Murray,
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff Works dot com