Speaker 1: Hey, this is Adding and Samantha. I'm welcome to stuff.
Speaker 1: I've never told you a protection of I heart radios
Speaker 1: how stuff works. For today's classic episode, we wanted to
Speaker 1: bring back one Christen and Caroline did on Polly Murray,
Speaker 1: who is one of my absolute favorite historical people. I
Speaker 1: remember when I learned about her, I was angry. I
Speaker 1: hadn't known about her, right right, She's a literal saint.
Speaker 1: She's amazing. She did so much. She was one of
Speaker 1: the first real women to talk about intersectionality in a way,
Speaker 1: in almost a legal way that we hadn't been doing before.
Speaker 1: So hugely important into feminism and a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that we talked about on this very show. And
Speaker 1: kind of I guess not kind of like a coincidence,
Speaker 1: but we have an upcoming episode with the creators of
Speaker 1: unladylike also the people whose voices you'll hear in this
Speaker 1: here'sening Caroline, uh, and they bought up Polly Murray, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, hey, perfect timing, perfect timing, So
Speaker 1: to get you already for that upcoming episode and to
Speaker 1: just learn more about this amazing person, here's a classic
Speaker 1: episode on Polly Murray. Welcome to Stuff. Mob never told you.
Speaker 1: From how stupp Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And Caroline, I'm
Speaker 1: so excited to talk about the woman we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about today. Me too. She has been on my
Speaker 1: mind all week, ever since we started reading about her.
Speaker 1: I can't get her out of my head. That just
Speaker 1: made me start thinking of that Kylie Minogue song. But yes,
Speaker 1: you're right, I know I can't stop thinking about her either.
Speaker 1: And Polly Murray, who is this incredible trail blazer. But
Speaker 1: what's so fascinating and heartbreaking and impressive all at the
Speaker 1: same time about her story is that she managed to
Speaker 1: accomplish so much in in a single lifetime and push
Speaker 1: against standards and norms of her day. But she did
Speaker 1: it all from this almost personal place, this drive that
Speaker 1: comes from how she was raised, the environment she grew
Speaker 1: up in, and the discrimination that she herself faced. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I first ran across her name probably a few
Speaker 1: years ago now, where she was simply cited as the
Speaker 1: first African American episcopal priest. And when I saw the
Speaker 1: photo in the caption, and I thought, oh, that seems
Speaker 1: really neat okay, And then sort of put her out
Speaker 1: of my mind, and then much more recently ran across
Speaker 1: an article talking about this entire life that she had
Speaker 1: before she entered the episcopal priesthood. And while her story
Speaker 1: doesn't begin in nineteen one, I feel like that's a
Speaker 1: good place for us to sort of kick off our
Speaker 1: conversation about her and her life and her significance because
Speaker 1: she has a very close, uh legal history bond to
Speaker 1: one of our faith's Ruth bader Ginsburg. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is an excellent example of a woman paying tribute and
Speaker 1: giving credit to one of her predecessors, not just taking
Speaker 1: this woman's ideas and using them as her own, but
Speaker 1: really giving credit where credits due. So well in the
Speaker 1: story also highlights to the disparity between and Polly Murray's
Speaker 1: forgotten legacy and the n understandable notoriety of Ruth bader Ginsburg,
Speaker 1: partially due to her, you know, being a Supreme Court justice.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen seventy one, Ruth bader Ginsburg argues on
Speaker 1: behalf of the A c l U, a landmark equal
Speaker 1: protection case. Read the read and the quick background of
Speaker 1: this case was that, uh, this couple that really wasn't
Speaker 1: together anymore. I think they were estranged. Their adopted son died,
Speaker 1: and the father, according to an Idaho state statute maintaining
Speaker 1: that males must be preferred to females as administrators of
Speaker 1: the states, was automatically granted their deceased son's estate. But
Speaker 1: Mrs Reid in this case um wanted rights to the estate,
Speaker 1: and so they brought this equal protection case UM that
Speaker 1: ended up going all the way to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: And it was the very first time that the Fourteenth
Speaker 1: Amendment equal protection clause had been used to argue gender
Speaker 1: discrimination as unconstitutional as opposed to racial discrimination. And so
Speaker 1: this whole case set a legal precedent against gender discrimination
Speaker 1: purely out of administrative convenience. So in this Idaho case,
Speaker 1: just being like, you know what, We're just going to
Speaker 1: give it to the dudes. They can have the rights,
Speaker 1: and we just don't even have to worry about this right.
Speaker 1: And Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who at the time was an
Speaker 1: a c l U volunteer attorney, in her legal brief,
Speaker 1: named two co authors who actually didn't play a direct
Speaker 1: role in the case, and those were Judge Dorothy Kenyon
Speaker 1: and the topic of today's episode and Polly Murray, who's
Speaker 1: Jane Crow, and the law legal theory in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties pioneered this whole idea of the equal Protection Clause
Speaker 1: applying to sex discrimination in the same way as raised
Speaker 1: discrimination them And so Murray's entire motivation for Jane Crow,
Speaker 1: which will get into more, is the idea that it
Speaker 1: would not only protect black women hence the Jane Crow
Speaker 1: that is, the you know, feminized version of Jim Crow,
Speaker 1: but lift everybody up by bridging the gap between civil
Speaker 1: rights and the women's movement. And if that sounds a
Speaker 1: lot like intersectionality, it is, I mean in so many ways,
Speaker 1: and Polly Murray is the godmother of intersectionality. And also
Speaker 1: if this sounds a lot like Ruth Bader Ginsburg paying
Speaker 1: symbolic homage to amazing women, which other guys who had
Speaker 1: relied on that legal theory of Murray's as well in
Speaker 1: the past did not do, um, it totally is. And
Speaker 1: it just makes me love Notorious RBG even more. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: so we need to now dive into Polly's story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: her name is Anne Paulina Murray, but she opted to
Speaker 1: go by the name Police. So let's dive into her
Speaker 1: complex and multifaceted past. So to kick things off, why
Speaker 1: don't we reference her own description of herself, which kind
Speaker 1: of gets at the internal struggles that drove her public work. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, in a nineteen sixty seven letter to the
Speaker 1: National Organization of Women, she wrote, I hold the status
Speaker 1: of multiple minorities. I can't allow myself to be fragmented
Speaker 1: into negro at one time, woman at another, or worker
Speaker 1: at another. I must find a unifying principle in all
Speaker 1: of these movements to which I can adhere. So from
Speaker 1: that we can hear that struggle that she really wrestled
Speaker 1: with her entire life between all of these identities and
Speaker 1: intersections that she embodied. She's African American, she's a woman,
Speaker 1: she's a gender questioning person who is attracted to women.
Speaker 1: Um she has experiences in poverty and income instability. Um so.
Speaker 1: And she even in her younger years, she gave names
Speaker 1: to her various identities of sorts. Yeah, she had the crusader,
Speaker 1: the imp, and the dude, not to mention the priest,
Speaker 1: which is an identity that came later. But I mean, also,
Speaker 1: this is a woman who's an incredible legal scholar. She's
Speaker 1: a feminist, a poet, a workers rights activist, which her
Speaker 1: political leanings and her work for labor rights actually tripped
Speaker 1: her up politically later in her life a little bit.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know the whole priest thing. She
Speaker 1: became an episcopal saint in she's a saint. She's a saint.
Speaker 1: The more I've found out about her, the more astonished
Speaker 1: and kind of upset I got that I was only
Speaker 1: just now learning about her, right, And I mean that's
Speaker 1: in a lot of the that sentiment is in a
Speaker 1: lot of the articles that you will read about Polly
Speaker 1: these days, because there is this attitude of like, where
Speaker 1: have you been my whole life? And she's always been there.
Speaker 1: She always was there, but her legacy has for so
Speaker 1: long just been buried and kind of forgotten. And so
Speaker 1: it's it's now that we're starting to see more attention
Speaker 1: paid to just how important she is to this country's
Speaker 1: legal history. Well, and I think that we are starting
Speaker 1: to recognize her more because our society has finally caught
Speaker 1: up to r caught up to her exactly. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but in the meantime, while she was alive, she was
Speaker 1: trailblazing left and right. I mean, st hood aside, she
Speaker 1: was the first woman of color to serve as California's
Speaker 1: Deputy attorney general. She was the first African American to
Speaker 1: earn a doctorate from Yale, and the first black female
Speaker 1: episcopal priest. So, I mean, we just talked about how
Speaker 1: she's been sort of sidelined from history, and that question
Speaker 1: of why comes up a lot in any kind of
Speaker 1: 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 were 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: for major depression. Now, 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 were 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 died by the
Speaker 1: time she was thirteen, and she kind of considered that
Speaker 1: the end of her childhood. I mean, Polly grew up
Speaker 1: very fast. It seems like, well, she went to live
Speaker 1: with her aunt, who was her namesake. And this is
Speaker 1: the aunt who she credits so much. Yes, she found
Speaker 1: so much inspiration in her all of her grandparents and
Speaker 1: great grandparents, but it was her aunt who she says,
Speaker 1: really encouraged her to be herself and be sort of
Speaker 1: fulfill her destinies. The amazing child that she was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the first step along the way to fulfilling her destiny,
Speaker 1: and she really did have a sense of destiny, was
Speaker 1: attending Hunter College. So she heads up to New York
Speaker 1: in nine and she graduates in nineteen thirty three, and
Speaker 1: college is incredibly difficult for her financially. I mean, she's
Speaker 1: struggling to make ends meet to the point that she
Speaker 1: suffers malnutrition and like the illness that she encounters during
Speaker 1: college 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 re really struggled with feeling like she
Speaker 1: was a man trapped in a woman's body her words,
Speaker 1: but also struggling with this attraction to feminine women. She
Speaker 1: wrote 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 note 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
Speaker 1: were reading who pointed out that while today she might
Speaker 1: have identified as transgender or a lesbian, she never labeled
Speaker 1: herself as such. Um back then. I mean, well, for
Speaker 1: one reason, the term transgender didn't even exist in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties. Um. But she she knew that something was up,
Speaker 1: and she really wanted a biological explanation for it. UM.
Speaker 1: In her twenties and thirties, she was really enamored with
Speaker 1: new research on hormones and glands and part of why
Speaker 1: she was so compelled. Um and and even at one
Speaker 1: point requested an exploratory surgery to see if she had
Speaker 1: a male genitalia like secreted inside of her. As she
Speaker 1: put it, was because of the specter of mental illness
Speaker 1: within her family. I mean you have, like you mentioned, Caroline,
Speaker 1: at the time, homosexuality was considered a psychiatric disorder, and
Speaker 1: that was terrifying for her, considering how her dad was
Speaker 1: murdered when he was in a psychiatric hospital, and there
Speaker 1: had been other mental health issues in her family. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so she did seek both psychiatric and hormonal treatment,
Speaker 1: but doctors refused to give her male hormone, simply telling
Speaker 1: her to conform to female expectations. UM. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: she didn't experiment. She there's lots of pictures of her,
Speaker 1: and she talks about how she explored gender identity and presentation,
Speaker 1: particularly in her younger years in her twenties and thirties
Speaker 1: by wearing men's clothing. And this is around the time
Speaker 1: when she also opts to start going by the name
Speaker 1: Polly instead of Anne. Yeah. And if we look back
Speaker 1: at her one autobiographical photo album, The Life and Times
Speaker 1: of an American called Polly Murray Um, the image of
Speaker 1: the dude is clearly the uh, the identity within her
Speaker 1: that's questioning gender and what it means and how it
Speaker 1: applies to her, and she in one of the photos
Speaker 1: she has sort of she has men's clothes on and
Speaker 1: a men's style hay do um. But you can see
Speaker 1: as she goes to law school and her legal career
Speaker 1: picks up in her public profile increases, you see her
Speaker 1: dress in more traditionally feminine ways. Yeah, I think there
Speaker 1: there's one picture that we saw of her, was it
Speaker 1: from law school or after? Where it's one of those
Speaker 1: like very old school, you know, from the side kind
Speaker 1: of pictures where she's looking off into the distance and
Speaker 1: the caption on the back of the photo was first
Speaker 1: and last upswept hair do So I mean, I you know,
Speaker 1: she kind of like those doctors when she was in
Speaker 1: her twenties and thirties said, you know, they told her
Speaker 1: to conformed female expectations. I think she did feel like
Speaker 1: she had to for a lot of her early public
Speaker 1: presentation in persona. You know, you you see her exclusively
Speaker 1: in dresses in those early years, especially like in pictures
Speaker 1: where she's with Betty fred Dan in a picture with
Speaker 1: the early founding staff of Now and in law school,
Speaker 1: she's wearing all of those dresses and those hair dues.
Speaker 1: But as you get old, as she gets older, I
Speaker 1: should say, uh, you start to see her, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the woman who said she prefers pants to dresses.
Speaker 1: Like you start to see hers almost just sort of
Speaker 1: start to look more like herself. Well, And there was
Speaker 1: one anecdote from when she was in the priesthood of
Speaker 1: her being delighted that she would sometimes get mistaken for
Speaker 1: a guy, partly because she had short, cropped hair and
Speaker 1: glasses and she even had rocked a little lady mustache
Speaker 1: in her old age, and obviously, like priestly close, our
Speaker 1: gender ambiguous, and being the first female priests, would kind
Speaker 1: of just expect it to be a guy. But she
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I loved it. Yeah. Well, because yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like you said, transgender wasn't a term in
Speaker 1: use yet, but I'm sure it must have felt great
Speaker 1: for someone to look at you and identify you as
Speaker 1: the way that you. I don't know that I want
Speaker 1: to put words in anyone's mouth, but the way that
Speaker 1: you have felt inside. Yeah, I mean, but I I well.
Speaker 1: And I also think it's interesting that part of her
Speaker 1: concern over how she felt was not just her attraction
Speaker 1: to women and her discomfort in uh with feminine gendered clothing,
Speaker 1: but also she felt like her ambition and drive was
Speaker 1: also highly masculine, in a sign that something wasn't entirely
Speaker 1: right and part of why she wanted to fight for
Speaker 1: women's right because she was like, oh, I can't this
Speaker 1: womanhood is is holding me back. Like I know I'm
Speaker 1: a woman, but I don't feel like I should be
Speaker 1: because of all of this stuff that I want to accomplish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so many layers to gender identity. Who's surprised, no one?
Speaker 1: No one well, and she carried on though open romantic relationships,
Speaker 1: though with a number of women um and in her
Speaker 1: later life she forged a seventeen year relationship with a
Speaker 1: woman named Irene Barlow, whom she met at a law
Speaker 1: firm in nineteen fifty six and it lasted until Barlow's death,
Speaker 1: and they're buried under the same headstone in New York. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think she because I think when Barlow died at
Speaker 1: the time, um, Polly was teaching at brand Ice and
Speaker 1: she ended up leaving her position because she was so
Speaker 1: heartbroken that she felt like I can't I can't go on.
Speaker 1: But then in her posthumously published autobiography Song and a
Speaker 1: Weary Throat, there's no mention whatsoever of same sex relationships.
Speaker 1: So clearly there are lots of intersections happening within this
Speaker 1: one person and in the next phase of her life
Speaker 1: and career. Because we're going to get into this is
Speaker 1: when we see all of her brain power then being
Speaker 1: applied to all of her identities and struggles and how
Speaker 1: she applied that to empowering marginalized groups. And we're going
Speaker 1: to get into that when we come right back from
Speaker 1: a quick break. So, if there's one big thing that
Speaker 1: poly Murray understood ahead of her time, was now discrimination
Speaker 1: cuts across identities, um and and we might take that
Speaker 1: so for granted today, but that was a revolutionary concept
Speaker 1: not so long ago um and speaking to The Washington
Speaker 1: Post in nineteen seventies seven, Pouli said, this society is
Speaker 1: not hospitable to persons of color, women or left handed people.
Speaker 1: Ain't that the truth? Congerss well listen as a lefty,
Speaker 1: I agree, and so well. I do appreciate her humor.
Speaker 1: That should not indicate that she was anything other than
Speaker 1: deadly serious about the discrimination that she and others around
Speaker 1: her were facing. Uh. In, let's let's just go through
Speaker 1: basically the history of what she overcame that ended up
Speaker 1: contributing to the person that she Well, I want to
Speaker 1: say the person that she became, but I mean, she
Speaker 1: already was this person, She was this fighter. So we've
Speaker 1: got to give this back story though, so you know
Speaker 1: exactly what she went through. She was denied to a
Speaker 1: school admission at UNC 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, and the UNC
Speaker 1: president at the time knew Murray was qualified enough to
Speaker 1: gain entrance, and he even consulted the U. S. Senate
Speaker 1: on this. I mean, and this is incredible to me.
Speaker 1: Already at this point in her life, she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: like sounding the alarm all the way up to the
Speaker 1: White House. Um. And later in life though, when UNC
Speaker 1: Chapel Hill tries to grant her an honorary degree, Murray says, oh,
Speaker 1: no things and finds it stuck to our guns that
Speaker 1: woman did. But the thing is like, that's ninety eight.
Speaker 1: I feel like this sounds like, oh, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: something like that must have happened in the sixties, people
Speaker 1: pushing back against UH segregation and racism and discrimination. This
Speaker 1: is thirty eight. This woman's ahead of her time. She's
Speaker 1: also ahead of her time because in nineteen forty, fifteen
Speaker 1: years before Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama, Polly and her
Speaker 1: lady friend Adeline mcbreen were arrested in Virginia for refusing
Speaker 1: to move to the back of a greyhound bus. And
Speaker 1: so what possibly contributed to this contentious UH conflict scenario?
Speaker 1: Was the fact that she was actually dressed in men's
Speaker 1: clothes at the time, and uh, that could have contributed
Speaker 1: to antagonizing the police toward her. Yeah, there was a
Speaker 1: headline though from the time reporting on the incident it
Speaker 1: was Jim Crow bus dispute leads to girls arrest and
Speaker 1: the news article just scribes her as a honey tongued
Speaker 1: legal mind. Don't mess with her, I mean, even then,
Speaker 1: honey tongue legal mind. In the same year, her honey
Speaker 1: tongue legal mind was hired by the Workers Defense League
Speaker 1: 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 n 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 eerie born from her own struggles with categories
Speaker 1: that seemed 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, some 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 Council third
Speaker 1: good Marshall 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: thur 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 comrades
Speaker 1: had really sympathized with her race based U n C
Speaker 1: rejection years earlier, but when it came to her being
Speaker 1: rejected by Harvard, they were simply amused at the idea
Speaker 1: that she wanted to go there anyway, So there was
Speaker 1: none of that support, that community support rallying around her
Speaker 1: for for this particular rejection, it was more of like
Speaker 1: a oh, you silly woman. Well, that silly woman decided
Speaker 1: to take herself to get her Masters of Law degree
Speaker 1: at UC Berkeley instead, and she graduated in and then
Speaker 1: became the state first black Deputy Attorney General. A few
Speaker 1: years later, in she pens the State's Laws on Race
Speaker 1: and Colors, which was a compilation of all race related
Speaker 1: state level laws. And this might sound like an insignificant detail,
Speaker 1: Why are you telling us about this directory that this
Speaker 1: woman wrote, essentially, Well, because yet again she is writing
Speaker 1: what would essentially become known as the Bible of civil
Speaker 1: rights law. Yeah, exactly. She had compiled it at the
Speaker 1: request of the Methodist Churches Women's Division, which I love.
Speaker 1: I'm like, who but uh so, working very closely with
Speaker 1: women from a church, and it just became this critical
Speaker 1: piece of writing for a lot of people. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and just again and again and again, she's laying all
Speaker 1: of this legal foundation, doing all of this leg work
Speaker 1: for these you know, landmark cases and desegregation that will
Speaker 1: happen many years later. Well, yeah, I mean she but
Speaker 1: all of this is driven by her her personal convictions.
Speaker 1: I mean, she writes about how segregation places a badge
Speaker 1: of inferiority on black children, and and so it was
Speaker 1: it was looking into her past, seeing her own experiences
Speaker 1: with discrimination and and looking at the community around her
Speaker 1: that drove her to try to make this world a
Speaker 1: better place. Well, and also to going back to her
Speaker 1: family tree, that duality of blackness and also the violent
Speaker 1: whiteness that was in there with um, you know, the
Speaker 1: rape of her great grandmother. Um. And she spends a
Speaker 1: lot of time after nine, She spends four years actually
Speaker 1: going back to North Carolina and researching all about her family.
Speaker 1: And she ends up publishing sort of like a familial
Speaker 1: autobiography called Proud Shoes, The Story of an American Family.
Speaker 1: And Caroline, I gotta say, this reminded me a lot
Speaker 1: of you, because genealogy is a hobby of yours. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I know I've lost so much sleep since
Speaker 1: the holidays because I've been on a total family research kick.
Speaker 1: But did you feel at least a little bonda to
Speaker 1: Well I did. I did, because um, just her passion
Speaker 1: for it and and seeing her give voice to a
Speaker 1: lot of the same things that I feel in terms
Speaker 1: of the importance of kind of figuring out where you
Speaker 1: come from, because it's no small it's no small and
Speaker 1: significant thing to figure out who your people were. She writes,
Speaker 1: the conviction grew in me that one of the best
Speaker 1: ways to incorporate social and political history into one's experience
Speaker 1: is to embark on a search into one's family history.
Speaker 1: These ancient documents spoke to me of a common humanity
Speaker 1: and narra the distances between races, classes, and political positions.
Speaker 1: And I mean, this is a woman who had to
Speaker 1: come to terms with her multi racial, as she put it,
Speaker 1: past an origin, someone who had to embrace both the
Speaker 1: amazing freedmen in her tree, but also the slave ancestors
Speaker 1: who she writes about who didn't have They did have
Speaker 1: a complicated relationship obviously with the white people who owned them,
Speaker 1: but she writes about having to come to terms with
Speaker 1: the complexities of realizing that her great grandmother didn't hate
Speaker 1: these people. She was quite friendly and intimate with the
Speaker 1: white women of that family. So, as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: it's that dual heritage that had a huge effect on
Speaker 1: her and gave her a strong sense of personal identity.
Speaker 1: She writes about it as the tangled roots from which
Speaker 1: I sprang, and said she felt it was part of
Speaker 1: her destiny to counteract the effects of stereotypes that black
Speaker 1: people had played no signific, vacant role in US history.
Speaker 1: And that's what's so addictive about family research and genealogy.
Speaker 1: It's it's digging into the past and realizing that whether
Speaker 1: you're at the top of the socioeconomic heap or at
Speaker 1: the bottom, all of these people played such an important
Speaker 1: role in the foundation of this country. And so that
Speaker 1: really played a role in helping her define who she was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the more she learned about herself and where she
Speaker 1: came from, and the more deeply embedded she became in
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement, motivated by those tangled roots that
Speaker 1: she wrote about. It also fueled her feminism because as
Speaker 1: we move into the sixties and seventies, particularly when the
Speaker 1: Black power movement arises, she becomes really uncomfortable with the
Speaker 1: power structures that she sees emerging in it. And for instance,
Speaker 1: I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but just to give
Speaker 1: you a sense of where we're going. In a nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy essay, she wrote, the main thrust of black militancy
Speaker 1: is a bit of black mails to share power with
Speaker 1: white males in a continuing patriarchal society in which both
Speaker 1: black and white females are relegated to a secondary status. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is this is where it's important to remember
Speaker 1: her push for um both protection for both sex and
Speaker 1: racial discrimination, because her attitude was that if you protect
Speaker 1: for both, then you uplift everyone. Like we mentioned earlier, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if we go back to nineteen sixty one, she's
Speaker 1: a big deal. JFK appoints her to the President's Committee
Speaker 1: on the Status of Women as well as the Commission
Speaker 1: on Civil and Political Rights, And the more immersed she
Speaker 1: gets in the civil rights movement, the more she starts
Speaker 1: to see and call out sexism within the movement because
Speaker 1: of its avoidance of appointing women to visible leadership roles
Speaker 1: and tacitly endorsing gender segregation by, for instance, appearing at
Speaker 1: the National Press Club, which enraged her because at the time,
Speaker 1: the National Press Club excluded women. So she was like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing. You're you can't stay in this
Speaker 1: one space that doesn't allow these people in while you're
Speaker 1: advocating for 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 Ida b Wells comes to
Speaker 1: mind of someone straddling both suffrage and abolition and often
Speaker 1: being caught at those intersections. Um So, N four is
Speaker 1: a pivotal year, not only for Polly but also for
Speaker 1: the US because this is when the Civil Rights Act
Speaker 1: is enacted, and this is the year that she co
Speaker 1: authors her landmark paper, Jane Crow and the Law Sex Discrimination,
Speaker 1: entitled seven, published in the George Washington Law Review. And
Speaker 1: this was a really radical idea, this whole Jane Crow
Speaker 1: of crystallizing that double discrimination of being not only African
Speaker 1: American but also female because, as Harvard law professor Kenneth W.
Speaker 1: Mac points out, this is the early nineteen sixties. You
Speaker 1: still have laws on the books excluding women from certain
Speaker 1: jobs like like bartending for instance. Um, you have all
Speaker 1: male juries going on. Um, And we even have in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one Scotus Justice John Marshall Harlan writing, woman
Speaker 1: is still regarded as the center of home and family.
Speaker 1: That's where she belongs. I added that last bit of
Speaker 1: that's where she belongs. Well, yeah, it's that idea of
Speaker 1: benevolent sexism, that women must be protected from certain dangerous
Speaker 1: or unsavory situations, whether it's being a bartender or being
Speaker 1: a juror Yeah. And so she publishes this paper in
Speaker 1: the same year. I mean, she's so busy. I want
Speaker 1: to know also her secret to productivity. That's another episode,
Speaker 1: I guess. Um. But the same year she individually lobbies
Speaker 1: congressmen and even ladybroog John's them to include sex the
Speaker 1: word sex in the Civil Rights Act to make sure
Speaker 1: that it not only protects against racial discrimination but also
Speaker 1: gender based discrimination. And she was able to convince congressmen
Speaker 1: to include it because she was the first one to
Speaker 1: argue not that it would benefit solely white women or
Speaker 1: that it would possibly um negatively impact black men, but
Speaker 1: she raised the issue of its impact on black women.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's another thing. An undercurrent to all of
Speaker 1: this stuff that's going on is the complete invisibility of
Speaker 1: black women in our society for so long. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: she writes, I mean, speaking about herself, she read about
Speaker 1: being a minority of a minority, of being a woman
Speaker 1: who was also black, and the hardships that come along
Speaker 1: with that. Yeah, And so she was able to make
Speaker 1: the convincing argument that you must include that sex clause
Speaker 1: because if you don't, you will leave out this entire
Speaker 1: population of Black women and only increase the social burden
Speaker 1: that they're bearing. And meanwhile, the next year, she becomes
Speaker 1: the first African American to earn a JSD from Yale,
Speaker 1: and her dissertation is Roots of the Racial Crisis Prologue
Speaker 1: to Policy. And I note all these things that she's writing,
Speaker 1: because again, how is she doing all this? How does she?
Speaker 1: How does she do it? Caroline? I have no I
Speaker 1: have no idea. And and she wanted to add to
Speaker 1: it because she also wanted to get a law school
Speaker 1: teaching job after she graduated, but no one would hire her.
Speaker 1: And there have been questions about whether that distancing from
Speaker 1: her as successful as she was, as prominent as she
Speaker 1: was at the time, that her outward queerness possibly um
Speaker 1: alienated her from certain employment. Interesting. Well, okay, so we
Speaker 1: mentioned the whole jury thing earlier about benevolent sexism and
Speaker 1: women at the time being exempt from jury service unless
Speaker 1: they volunteered. Well, that whole idea comes up again in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six when, along with the a c LU
Speaker 1: legal team, Polly co writes the brief in the case
Speaker 1: White v. Cook, which struck down the constitutionality of all white,
Speaker 1: all male juries. This gets rid of all of those
Speaker 1: quote unquote protections for women. She had wanted it though,
Speaker 1: to reach the Supreme Court and serve as women's brown
Speaker 1: versus Board of Education. And speaking of women, the same
Speaker 1: year she becomes a founding member of the National Organization
Speaker 1: for Women. She had suggested, actually to Betty for Dan
Speaker 1: that there needed to be some sort of double a
Speaker 1: CP for women. Um. And I mean, by this point
Speaker 1: it makes total sense that she's so engaged with the
Speaker 1: feminist movement because of all the groundwork that had been
Speaker 1: laid going back to her sexist treatment at Howard being
Speaker 1: on the President's Commission on the Status of Women. Researching
Speaker 1: this and also, of course it's embedded in her Jane
Speaker 1: Crow theory and her personal repulsion at the anti feminism
Speaker 1: of some civil rights leaders as well as UH leaders
Speaker 1: of the Black Power movement. But I mean she didn't,
Speaker 1: she didn't entirely find a home, not surprisingly in in
Speaker 1: second way feminism, which was largely led by middle and
Speaker 1: upper class white women. Yeah, I mean she said that
Speaker 1: she did feel more comfortable within feminism, but she quickly
Speaker 1: took issue with now's sidelining of civil rights leaders. So
Speaker 1: it's that back and forth of like over here they
Speaker 1: don't want this aspect of me, and over here they
Speaker 1: don't want this other aspect of me. So she ends
Speaker 1: up leaving, joining the a c l U and from
Speaker 1: there is instrumental in a c l U adopting women's
Speaker 1: rights as a key priority. And from there she finally
Speaker 1: gets a teaching job that she had so long been wanting.
Speaker 1: She becomes a tenured professor at Brandis Um and she
Speaker 1: ends up developing some of the first black women's studies
Speaker 1: courses as an American studies professor. Yeah, I mean she's
Speaker 1: not a two dimensional person by any means. I mean
Speaker 1: her one of her original interests on her way to
Speaker 1: grad school with sociology, but she you know, didn't go
Speaker 1: 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's studies
Speaker 1: classes and You're like, how how does 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 were like, we're
Speaker 1: like kind of priests, but it's not really official. But
Speaker 1: Polly Murray was like, no, no, no no, this is nonsense.
Speaker 1: The sexism is ridiculous, and I love this faith. I'm
Speaker 1: going to seminary. In the nineteen seven she became the
Speaker 1: first black female episcopal priest, and fascinating detail, she leads
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: Probably 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 was time to serve at
Speaker 1: this age. It was time to serve a different part
Speaker 1: of herself and a different portion of the community well,
Speaker 1: and I love how yet again her priesthood is an
Speaker 1: example of that personal drive being the compulsion to have
Speaker 1: that outwardly manifested into something to enrich the world outside her.
Speaker 1: Because it was also with Irene Barlow that she um
Speaker 1: became more immersed in the church. They would go to
Speaker 1: church together and it was you know, a significant part
Speaker 1: of their relationship. And so I like thinking of her
Speaker 1: going to seminary as Um, I don't know, 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 conflicted 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. But we want to 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 with her glasses on, and I just imagine a
Speaker 1: little halo going above her head. Thing. I mean, the
Speaker 1: things that this woman contributed to our world and our
Speaker 1: society are incredible. She broke so many barriers and and
Speaker 1: she meant to. I mean, this is a woman who
Speaker 1: meant to break these freaking barriers. Like she knew what
Speaker 1: 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 the different
Speaker 1: layers of identities and experiences that she had. And you're
Speaker 1: so right about the intentionality of all of it. Even
Speaker 1: when she applied to grad school at you 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 this 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: at 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. Well, 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 Stupp 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 Stuff podcast or
Speaker 1: message us on Facebook. And we've got a couple of
Speaker 1: messages to share with you right now. Why have a
Speaker 1: letter here from elizabe It, She says, I just listened
Speaker 1: to the episode on feminist marriages, and like everyone their mom,
Speaker 1: their dog, and their downstairs neighbor, I have a couple
Speaker 1: since I want to throw in about last names. I've
Speaker 1: heard a lot of women talk about how it's a
Speaker 1: feminist wind to keep their own last name after getting married.
Speaker 1: Some women get pretty smug about this, which is obnoxious
Speaker 1: to say the least. But what nobody seems to mention
Speaker 1: about this is, ahem, a woman's maiden barf last name
Speaker 1: is her dad's name. More likely than not, a woman
Speaker 1: who is us born to an English speaking family and
Speaker 1: plenty of other backgrounds have their dad's name. Dads are
Speaker 1: almost always men, and fatherhood is a concept and social
Speaker 1: 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 it with our last names and not feel compelled
Speaker 1: one way or another by patriarchy or feminism to change
Speaker 1: or keep it. In the seventies and earlier, it was
Speaker 1: definitely super subversive and radical, but these days I think
Speaker 1: people need to chill out a little before they start
Speaker 1: asking for medals for keeping their dad's name instead of
Speaker 1: taking their male spouses. Anyways, have been am currently and
Speaker 1: will remain a huge fan of the cast. Keep it
Speaker 1: up well, Thank you, Elizabeth, loved your letter. I've got
Speaker 1: a letter here from Carrie, also about our Feminist Marriage podcast,
Speaker 1: and she writes, I've been married to a wonderful feminist
Speaker 1: dude 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, mom. Stab
Speaker 1: at Housettworks 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 Polly Murray,
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com.