All language subtitles for My.Name.is.Pauli.Murray.2021.1080p.WEBRip.x264-RARBG

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Mm-hmm.

-(dog barks)
-Lie down.

Sit down. Lie down.

-Lie down.
-(others laugh off screen)

My name is Pauli Murray,

and my field of concentration
has been human rights.

My whole personal history
has been a struggle

to meet standards of excellence

in a society which has been
dominated by the ideas

that Blacks were inherently
inferior to whites

and women were inherently
inferior to men.

♪ ♪

RUTH BADER GINSBURG:
Pauli Murray was a person

way ahead of the times,

saying and doing things
that others were not,

until much later.

PATRICIA BELL-SCOTT:
Pauli had the nerve

to confront discrimination

at a time when there was
great risk in doing so.

PAULI: Incident after incident
piling up

meant that sooner or later,
I would either go berserk

or I would find a way
to protest.

SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES:
Pauli was the writer,

the lawyer, the priest,

the poet.

-(typewriter keys clacking)
-(Pauli reading):

(crowd chanting)

BRITTNEY COOPER:
Pauli has been so critical

to so many of the rights
and freedoms that we all enjoy.

DOLORES CHANDLER:
Pauli Murray was not just

an amazing lawyer
or a badass feminist,

but also a queer,
nonbinary person.

COOPER: And most of the time,
my students are like,

"Why don't we know about
Pauli Murray?"

♪ ♪

COOPER:
How can one person be so pivotal

and yet their name is just one
that we never learn?

(typewriter keys clack)

(pen scratching on paper)

(respirator whooshes
rhythmically)

KAREN ROUSE ROSS:
My great-aunt Pauli

called me and said...

she wasn't gonna make it
through the night.

She said,
"You've got things here

that you'll need to do for me."

And she died
a couple hours later.

I found out I was
the executrix of her estate,

so I had to gather
her belongings.

File cabinets lined the rooms,

and then the bookcases
sat on top.

Boxes, folders,
letters to the government.

She saved everything.

Pauli's will was very clear

she wanted her papers to be
at Schlesinger Library,

one of the places where
women's historical papers

are housed.

Aunt Pauli did not share
a lot about her life with me.

I knew she was a priest.
I knew she had been a lawyer.

But she never, ever mentioned
any of her accomplishments.

I went and read
what I hadn't read,

and then I realized,
"Oh, my God."

"Petersburg, bus incident,
March 1940."

♪ ♪

PAULI: I did not start out to--
deliberately contest

the Virginia
segregation statutes.

As so often happened
in those early days,

an incident would arise

where there was just nothing
you could do but fight back.

My friend and I were traveling
from New York

down to Durham to visit
my two aunts for Easter.

My friend's name
was Adelene McBean.

Mac, we used to call her.

MARGHRETTA McBEAN:
For my mother, it was

her first introduction to what
was a pretty common situation

in many parts of the South.

When you crossed
the Mason-Dixon Line,

you were expected
to move to the back.

PAULI:
The bus was the quintessence

of the segregation evil,
the intimacy of the bus interior

permitted the public humiliation
of Black people

to be carried out
in the presence of

the privileged white spectators
who witnessed our shame

in silence or indifference.

McBEAN:
When they got to Virginia,

the Black people got up
and moved to the back,

and then more white people
came on.

♪ ♪

PAULI:
The bus driver insisted

that we move, and the next seat
had this broken seat,

and we refused to sit on that.

McBEAN: The bus driver said
he wasn't gonna drive anymore

until she moved back.

PAULI: And the police came in
and arrested us.

Mac and I were hungry and cold
but were afraid to go to sleep

because the mattresses
were alive with bedbugs.

When I protested,
the surly night jailor shouted,

"If you don't shut up, I'll
shut your ass in the dungeon.

"Time them rats
get through with you,

you'll wish you'd kept
your damn mouth shut."

The reality set in.

The reality set in, and, uh,

I think it was very scary.

BELL-SCOTT:
Pauli reached out

to the NAACP, hoping that

they could get a ruling
that declared, um,

segregated seating
unconstitutional.

♪ ♪

PAULI:
Mac and I did a report,

a summary,
of the case, the facts.

After we were released on bond,

we were invited to meet
with NAACP lawyers

Thurgood Marshall,
Judge William H. Hastie

and Dr. Leon A. Ransom.

It was my first exposure

to a team of able
civil rights lawyers in action,

and I sat enthralled
for several hours.

What they were fighting for was
the right of Black people

to easily assimilate into
the whole of American life.

But the judge knows that
this is becoming a big deal,

and so, ultimately,
they get outmaneuvered.

-(gallery chattering)
-(gavel banging)

The judge drops the segregation
statute here that's at play

and just says, "Y'all were
disturbing the peace."

So they are not able
to reframe legal precedent.

They serve a small sentence,
uh, and they're let go.

PAULI:
At the time, I felt only

the bitter disappointment
of a personal defeat.

But I began to sense

that we were a small part
of a teamwork effort

which envisioned
the ultimate overthrow

of all segregation law.

The thought was stupefying.

(low conversations)

COOPER:
So, today,

we have this
really cool opportunity

to learn about
Dr. Anna Pauline Murray.

Pauli Murray is just
so spectacular that I literally

cannot cover all her firsts
and all her dopeness.

Think about if you're a Black
person in the 20th century

and you're trying to make
the argument

that your humanity
should be respected.

And you live in a world where
people already don't like you

because you're Black.

I want to give you
a little sense of-of

what informed Murray's life.

(recorder clicks)

PAULI (over recorder):
This is chapter one,

page one... (clears throat)

of an autobiography
in manuscript.

(typewriter keys clacking)

In a study published in 1910,
the year of my birth,

Dr. Howard W. Odum,

a sociologist then working
at Columbia University,

asserted that "the races have
different abilities

and potentialities."
Close quote.

And that those who wish to help
the Negro should, quote,

"not expect too much of him.

"He has little conception
of the meaning of virtue,

"truth, honor,
manhood, integrity.

"The best education
for the Negro child

"would lead him toward
the unquestioning acceptance

"of the fact that he is
a different race

from the white,
and properly so." Close quote.

-(children shouting playfully)
-I can remember this today,

and I-I can see
that old school building.

It was a rickety old
wooden building.

No swings.

You know, nothing to play with
when you went out.

And of course,
the white kids' school...

sitting in a lawn,

surrounded by a fence,

it was the contrast between
the treatment we got

and the treatment
the white kids got.

And you sense those things.
You feel them.

(children chattering)

I come from a very proud people.

They were stubborn.
They swam against the stream.

This is the house.

This is Pauli Murray's
homeplace.

When she came to this house,
she was three years old,

and she came as a result
of a tragedy.

Her mother died
of a cerebral hemorrhage,

and eventually
her father was committed

to a mental hospital.

Even though she was born
in Baltimore,

this was really her home.

♪ ♪

PAULI:
When I came to Durham,

the household included
Aunt Pauline and Aunt Sallie

and my Fitzgerald grandparents.

ROSS: The Fitzgeralds are
very well known in Durham

and pretty prestigious
with the Black community.

The family going back
was mixed with Cherokee, Irish,

African American.

It was a family where
there were some members

who looked so white
that they passed,

and Pauli was
somewhere in between.

There was prejudice
based on complexion

from the white community

and from the Black community.

And so they were
an entity all to themselves.

Pauli was the joy of the house.

Aunt Pauline didn't have any
children, so she doted on her.

PAULI: Aunt Pauline taught
in the local public schools,

and when I was around four,

she decided to bring me
with her every day.

I was permitted to sit
with the older children

and to look on
while they recited.

Toward the end
of the school year,

Aunt Pauline was surprised
when she heard me say,

"I can read, Aunt Pauline."

I seized the book
of the child next to me

and began to read out loud.

All the time
I had been in her class,

I was learning whatever
she taught the others.

From then on, the classroom
was my second home.

ROSS: She was allowed to ask
anything she wanted to ask.

She was allowed to have
an opinion.

But Pauli did not want
to wear dresses...

...and Aunt Pauline used to make
her go to church every Sunday,

so they made a deal.

She said, "You can wear pants
all week long,

"but when it comes time
to go into church,

you got to put on a dress."

PAULI: I had a certain kind
of protected life.

The point at which
life became...

unbearable

was in the contact
with the white world.

People addressing,
uh, adult Negroes

as auntie and uncle, boy.

You get maybe 50, 60 people
a year being lynched.

I don't remember lynchings

being prominently portrayed
in the newspapers,

but we would hear about them
by word of mouth.

(whispering): It was,
"Somebody got lynched over in...

in so-and-so county last night."

The awareness of
the Ku Klux Klan

was always in the background.

This awareness
to a child of my generation,

uh, grows with you just like...

...almost a part of your body
and your being.

♪ ♪

MALE STUDENT:
"We shall endure

"To steal your senses

"In that lonely twilight

Of your winter's grief."

What is Pauli's awareness
of her place in history?

Pauli's in this scope
to sort of fix these issues

that have been created
from the institution of slavery.

I just think that's so powerful.

And Pauli's claiming that
and being like,

"Well, this is my, like, space
and this is my time

to, like, do this work."

So she takes up the typewriter

and writes
to express herself fully.

It's left there permanently
so that maybe future generations

like us
can better understand it.

Well, I suppose
back of all writing

is a desire to communicate.

In other words, you want
to share with other people

some of the insights
or some of your feelings

or some of your emotions.

My story is
much more difficult to write

then writing about
somebody else.

-Mm-hmm.
-Yeah.

PAULI: Chapter six,
manuscript page 120.

After my school,

I did not want to attend
any more segregated schools.

This I was determined not to do.

So Aunt Pauline took me
to New York.

♪ ♪

I was astounded
by almost everything I saw:

the skyscrapers, Coney Island,

the Statue of Liberty,
the Broadway Theater District.

The Automat, where one could
put nickels in a slot

and get out dishes of hot food.

Most of all, I was impressed

because one could sit
anywhere one wanted

in the subway trains,
buses and streetcars.

At Hunter College,
I was one of four Negroes

in a group of 247 women.

I took all of the courses
that dealt with literature:

creative writing, short stories.

Now, remember,
I'm a little Southern child

with atrocious grammar
and constantly feeling the gap

between my educational level

and that of these bright kids
at Hunter College.

And so, way back in the back
of my mind was always,

"Have I got it?"

♪ ♪

I graduated from Hunter College
in the class of 1933.

MAN:
The Great Depression.

Long lines of waiting men,

waiting for a free bowl of soup,

waiting for jobs.

PAULI: It was the worst possible
time to begin one's career.

In the mornings,
I went through the ritual

of a futile search
of help wanted ads.

♪ ♪

Despite those hardships,

being without a job permitted
a freedom of movement

to travel about in ways

that were not otherwise
socially acceptable.

♪ ♪

I was about to join
an estimated 300,000 homeless,

unwanted boys,
and a scattering of girls,

who rode freights or hitchhiked

from town to town
in search of work.

I wore my hitchhiking garb--

scout pants
and a leather jacket--

and carried a small knapsack
with minimum camping equipment.

I also had a boyish bob
and had a slight figure,

flat in the obvious places,
which at first sight

made me appear to be
a small teenage boy.

COOPER: Pauli revels in
being masculine presenting.

There are these
great pictures of her

in these different kind
of very male-centered poses,

and she gives herself
different names.

And so she calls herself Pete.

She calls herself The Dude.

Now, when she writes about this,

she essentially says
that she does it

to protect herself,
because she can't be

a single Black woman
riding the rails, uh, illegally

without fear of being harassed
or sexually assaulted.

I pledge myself to a New Deal

for the American people.

(chattering)

PAULI: I became one of
the hundreds of jobless women

who participate in Camp Tera,

one of the 28 women's camps
established by the New Deal.

♪ ♪

I immediately hit it off
with Peg Holmes,

who was a hiking counselor

and had
an intellectual curiosity

which struck sparks from my own.

ROSALIND ROSENBERG:
Peggy Holmes was the daughter

of a conservative banker,

radicalized by
the Great Depression.

PAULI: Peg seemed utterly
without racial prejudice.

She read some of my poetry
and then said to me,

"How can you write
with such compassion?

I would be bitter
if I were a Negro."

That spring, Peg and I took
a five weeks' hitchhiking trip

to Nebraska and back.

A new person
who thinks as you do

and will lunch
on an empty beach at dusk.

These are the small,
everyday joys of life.

(low chattering)

Peg and I became interested in
industrial and labor problems,

and I was introduced
to my first picket line.

CROWD:
♪ Solidarity forever ♪

♪ Our union makes us strong. ♪

PAULI: One encountered
in the labor movement

an almost religious fervor.

We threw ourselves into

the Automobile Workers'
general strike in early 1937.

I was catapulted into
a radical stance...

...and I am now beginning
to relate this,

this whole concept
of freedom and dignity,

to being a Negro in America.

I don't think I'll try to record
the next chapter

until another sitting.

You-you can imagine this is
an emotional, uh, uh, drain.

But in any event,
I hope the reader is intrigued.

ROSENBERG:
Pauli Murray had a sense

of being a historical figure.

The Schlesinger Library

has a 135 boxes
of Pauli Murray's papers.

Some of it had not been included

in any of Murray's
published work.

I came across a folder
that was marked "sexuality."

♪ ♪

Murray told doctors
that she appeared to be a woman

but was really a man.

Pauli hoped that
a relationship with Peggy

would be a normal relationship,

by which Pauli meant
that Pauli would be the man

and Peggy would be the wife.

And Peggy could not
bring herself

to see Pauli as a man.

And eventually
their relationship ended.

The time that Peggy Holmes
disappeared from Murray's life

led to an emotional meltdown
that ended

with Pauli being hospitalized
at Bellevue Hospital.

Pauli's notes
while, uh, under observation

in psychiatric hospitals
were very detailed.

COOPER: Pauli is depressed,
asking doctors,

"Why am I dealing
with these attractions?"

♪ ♪

RAQUEL WILLIS: These experiences
have always existed.

Pauli's historical records
allow us to consider

the humanity of someone
who was Black

and gender nonconforming in
the time that Pauli was living.

DOLORES CHANDLER:
Sitting in front of Murray's

medical records and notes,

as a trans, gender
nonconforming, queer person

of mixed race myself,

I thought, mm...

"This is a feeling I know well."

We've been taught to believe
that people like us don't exist.

So when I came to know
and learn about Pauli Murray,

I was so amazed
and wanted to, like,

hold it so tightly,
and also I was angry.

I was so angry

that I felt, in some ways,

that I had been robbed of
a part of my history.

I identify

with the turmoil of someone

who was trying to live life
as a complete being

with an integrated body,
mind and spirit.

If Pauli Murray
were sitting here today

and I said,
"You know, Pauli, what...

what pronouns do you use?"

I don't know what Pauli Murray
would... would say.

WILLIS:
Being Black and queer myself,

I refer to Pauli
as "they" or simply "Pauli"

to acknowledge their
expansive gender experience.

CHANDLER: Scholars who have
written about Pauli

largely still use
feminine pronouns,

use she/her pronouns.

Friends and family refer
to Pauli with feminine pronouns,

but I think that we likely
will see more of people

referring to Pauli Murray
with gender-neutral pronouns

as opposed to feminine pronouns.

♪ ♪

ROSENBERG:
Murray never wrote about

her gender struggles
in her published work,

and she rarely talked about it
even with friends.

She found herself in this place

that was, uh, completely foreign
to everyone she...

she cared about,
except Aunt Pauline.

Aunt Pauline called Pauli
my "boygirl"

and always was supportive
of Pauli.

Aunt Pauline
allowed Aunt Pauli

to be exactly
who she needed to be.

We don't often get
that kind of unconditional love.

But when she tried
to find that in other places,

it was really hard.

She was always on overdrive.

She would drink coffee
all night long.

(typewriter keys clacking)

She could be impatient.

Most of her life was,
"You will see me.

You will hear me."

♪ ♪

PAULI: At that point,
the University of North Carolina

was developing courses
in race relations.

So I thought,
well, maybe they are now ready

to accept a Negro.

They send me
an application blank

and they have written in
"Race" and "Religion."

I think I answered it
but may have said,

"But what difference
does it make?"

I got back a letter
from the president

of the University
of North Carolina saying...

♪ ♪

MAN: The President
of the United States,

on his way home
to the nation's capital,

pauses at the University of
North Carolina in Chapel Hill

to receive the honorary degree
of doctor of laws

from the university.

ROOSEVELT: I am happy
and proud to become an alumnus

of the University
of North Carolina,

typifying as it does
American liberal thought

through American action.

BELL-SCOTT: Pauli heard
this speech on the radio

and decided to write
Franklin Roosevelt a letter.

It was a typical hot protest
letter from Pauli Murray.

(typewriter keys clacking)

COOPER: He had been
praising UNC at the same time

as they're not allowing Pauli
to come to school there.

And so you have
a Black person writing brashly

to the president in the 1930s,

demanding that he not be
a hypocrite.

PAULI:
I was increasingly dismayed

over his silence on civil rights

and his refusal
even to speak out publicly

for a federal
anti-lynching bill.

(typewriter keys clacking)

BELL-SCOTT:
Pauli decided to send a copy

to Eleanor Roosevelt.

Mrs. Roosevelt answers
fairly quickly,

and the letter comes
with her personal signature.

"I've read the copy
of the letter you sent me,

"and I understand perfectly,

"but great changes come slowly.

The South is changing,
but don't push too fast."

COOPER: This confrontational
posture that Pauli had

with UNC was indicative
of this thing

that she would come to call
"confrontation by typewriter."

Pauli wrote letters

which were published,
uh, in the Black press,

so there was
a lot of attention there.

PAULI: And it suddenly
burst out over the radio,

"An unidentified Negress

makes application to the
University of North Carolina."

It became sort of national news.

This was met with consternation
by my family,

primarily because they were
afraid they would be lynched.

The University
of North Carolina,

that was one defeat.

And the arrest on the bus,
plus a whole lifetime

of seeing the indignities
handed out not only to me

but to poor, rural Negroes--

all of this culminated
in my recognition

that if I were going to fight
this battle of segregation,

I needed a weapon,
I needed a skill.

And it was then I decided
to go to law school.

(chuckles)

COOPER: Pauli arrives at Howard
in the fall of 1941,

and many of the civil rights
cases of that day

are being theorized
in the halls of Howard.

You know, Thurgood Marshall
and, uh,

you know, William Hastie
and Leon Ransom,

they're just rolling
through the halls there.

PAULI:
For my first two years,

I was the only woman
in the law school.

They didn't even let me
talk in class.

And I would raise my hand.

Nobody would pay
any attention to me.

My professor said,

now, he don't know why women
come to law school, anyway.

And I was so stunned.

They're talking about
what they're calling Jim Crow,

which we all know is a system
of racial segregation,

and she says, what I'm
experiencing is Jane Crow.

To be a Black woman
is not just to have to deal

with the question
of racial segregation but also

to have to deal with the
question of sex discrimination.

PAULI:
I had not grown up in a family

where limitations were placed
upon women.

And at the end of the year,

they ranked the students
and publicized their marks.

Murray, Murray, Murray, Murray,
Murray, top of the list.

Second year, they let me talk.

COOPER:
Murray becomes the advisor

to the student chapter
of the NAACP.

♪ ♪

INEZ SMITH REID: Any time
you went to Downtown Washington,

there were places
that you could not go.

I remember
Garfinckel's Department Store,

you couldn't go into.

Um, restaurants downtown,
you couldn't go into.

The... The National Theatre,
you couldn't go into.

PAULI:
I began to experiment more

with nonviolent direct action.

We started at Fourteenth and U,

a restaurant called
Little Palace Cafeteria.

Now, this was
right in the middle

of the Negro neighborhood,
but it served only white.

And we walked in there
one Saturday afternoon,

they refused to serve us.

We took our empty trays
and sat at the tables,

opened our books
and began our lesson.

We filled up that little place.

And it worked.

COOPER: What's amazing
is that they succeed.

They actually succeed
in desegregating U Street.

PAULI: The time had come
to make a frontal assault

upon the constitutionality
of segregation.

(angry shouting)

(gavel banging)

I chose for my senior paper,

"Should Plessy v. Ferguson
Be Overruled?"

Plessy v. Ferguson
is a Supreme Court case in 1896

that said that it was okay
to separate Black people

in public accommodations,
like transportation or school,

as long as the accommodations
were separate but equal.

Essentially Thurgood Marshall

and the NAACP had said,

"Okay, if Plessy says
separate but equal,

"our problem with the law
is that Black institutions

"aren't being treated equally,

"they're not being given
the same amount of money,

and so we'll be separate,
but we want equal resources."

Pauli Murray says

the whole logic of that
is wrong.

Discrimination is
inherently immoral

and what it does is
it reduces Black people's sense

of their own dignity
and their own character.

(Pauli reading):

COOPER: The entire thing
should be overturned.

Y'all need a bigger, bolder,
broader strategy.

PAULI:
My classmates laughed at me.

Spottswood Robinson,
the young faculty member

who inspired awe among students,

not only pooh-poohed my idea

but good-naturedly accepted
my wager of ten dollars

when I said, "Plessy would be
overturned within 25 years."

Exactly ten years later,
in 1954, this is precisely

the strategy that Marshall
and his legal team pursue

in the Brown v.
Board of Education decision.

MAN: The Supreme Court
has rendered a momentous

and historic decision.

There shall be equality

in educational facilities
for all people.

PAULI:
I returned to Howard to visit,

and Spotts Robinson said
very casually,

"You know, Pauli,

you remember that
civil rights paper you wrote?"

I said, "Sure."

And he said, "You know, in 1953,

"I took out this paper,
and it was very helpful to us

in our preparation."

He tells me that,
in anonymous form,

my little argument went
to the Supreme Court.

Look around the room.

Turn your head
and look around the room.

Y'all see all of the different
folks that are in this room?

That is made possible
by this decision.

And yet,
when we tell that story,

with that iconic picture
of Thurgood Marshall

standing on the steps
of the Supreme Court,

Pauli is nowhere in view.

♪ ♪

It had been tradition
that the top graduate

in the Howard Law class would
get an automatic opportunity

to go to Harvard to do
additional graduate work in law.

Pauli Murray graduates
at the top of the class.

PAULI: The chairman
of the graduate committee

wrote back and said,
"Dear Miss Murray,

"The salutation on your
transcript and your picture

"indicate that you are
not of the sex

entitled to be admitted
into Harvard."

COOPER:
Every part of her identity

is keeping her out
of the institutions

that she wants to be a part of
and, more to the point,

that she's earned the right
to be a part of.

Pauli goes on to Berkeley,
gets a master of law,

and that's essentially the
beginning of her legal career.

♪ ♪

BELL-SCOTT:
Despite being one of the most

highly trained lawyers,

Pauli can't get in the door
in a New York law firm.

Pauli was being
discriminated against

on the basis of both
race and gender.

She finally set up her own firm,

and one of the most
painful experiences

was her going into court
to represent a client

and having a witness
identify Pauli

as the prostitute.

Because of course she couldn't
possibly be the lawyer.

Pauli was barely
making ends meet.

COOPER: Pauli had also been
in and out of the hospital,

dealing with depression.

ROSENBERG: Murray suffered
emotional breakdowns

pretty much on a yearly basis.

The turmoil
and the-the suffering.

This is a person
who kind of just needed

doctors to help
in some capacity.

ROSENBERG: Pauli went to doctor
after doctor after doctor

seeking testosterone.

COOPER:
Pauli is imploring doctors,

"Do I have
undescended testicles?"

WILLIS: That would take
an immense amount of bravery

to speak on an experience

that you can't even quite
put in words.

ROSENBERG:
Doctors examined Pauli.

They did X-rays.

Once, Pauli was thrilled to, uh,

be able to undergo
exploratory surgery

because Pauli was sure
that the surgeon

was going to be able
to find undescended testis.

And the surgeon found
an inflamed appendix,

which he removed,

but nothing else
out of the ordinary.

"What does it mean to make
a person's turmoil irrelevant?

"What does it mean to claim

"so many of
a person's accomplishments

"and to write books
about so many aspects

"of a person's existence
in this world,

"only omitting the one aspect
that we don't understand

or that makes us uncomfortable?"

ROSENBERG:
I hesitated

about including
Murray's gender struggles

in my biography of her.

Other scholars said,
well, you know,

that was her private life,

but I came to, uh, believe

that you couldn't
really understand

why Murray was so far
ahead of her time

without understanding that
her sense of in-betweenness

made her increasingly critical
of boundaries.

And that allowed her to make
one of the most important ideas

of the 20th century:
that the categories of race

and gender
are essentially arbitrary

and not a legal basis
for discrimination.

(typewriter keys clacking)

♪ ♪

BELL-SCOTT: When Pauli wrote
these hot letters

to the White House,
Eleanor wanted to understand

what was driving
this young woman.

PAULI: I had been corresponding
with Mrs. Roosevelt,

peppering her,

since the University
of North Carolina incident.

(crowd cheering)

The fact that she was
the First Lady of the land

did not awe me to the extent
that I pulled my punches.

This is what made our friendship
such a great one.

Pauli takes her friends
and relatives to lunch

at Eleanor's New York apartment.

Eleanor becomes
a mother surrogate.

Pauli and Eleanor had
this tremendous difference

in social background, in status,

but they have a lot in common.

They were orphaned as children,

reared by elderly kin.

They were both
veracious readers.

They loved to write.

Dogs gave them tremendous joy.

This is not
a romantic relationship.

It becomes truly a friendship

with discussions about, um,

things beyond just politics.

PAULI: I think we were
kind of kindred souls,

if I dare say this now.

But I had no difficulty
relating to her.

She could be
deeply compassionate...

...but she couldn't
possibly feel

the intolerable burden of racism
that would make us scream.

(crowd shouting)

PAULI:
Few Negroes were surprised

when the Detroit riot broke out,

since the racial tensions
which produced it

had been building steadily
throughout the war.

♪ ♪

President Roosevelt
was strangely silent.

His comment came more than
a month later.

(Pauli reading):

PAULI:
Close quote.

It seemed so mealymouthed

that I sat down immediately
and wrote an angry poem.

What'd you get, black boy

When they knocked you down
in the gutter

And they kicked your teeth out

And they broke your skull
with clubs

And they bashed your stomach in?

What'd you get when
you cried out to the Top Man?

What'd the Top Man say,
black boy?

"Mr. Roosevelt regrets..."

-(distant siren wailing)
-(horns honking)

After years of scrabbling
to earn a living,

Lloyd K. Garrison,
who I met at Howard,

called with the startling news

that his firm, Paul, Weiss,
Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison,

needed extra help
in their litigation department.

This was a-a job
that provided Murray

with more income than
she'd ever earned in her life.

PAULI: This amazing good fortune
filled me with anxiety.

I was now a middle-aged woman

reentering
a highly competitive profession,

one of three women at the firm

and the only Negro
among the 65 attorneys.

My most persistent problem
during those years

was handling the loneliness
of the woman professional.

Fortunately, Irene Barlow,

the office manager-personnel
director,

shared my token status
in a male domain.

Renee carried herself with
an air of quite self-assurance.

Her strong, attractive face
and blue-green eyes

radiated generosity
and kindness.

(indistinct chattering)

Renee invited me to lunch

as a courteous gesture
to a new employee.

Our conversation
was tentative and formal.

But our discovery that we were
both worshiping Episcopalians

was the beginning
of a spiritual bond,

using lunch hours to attend
the Wednesday services

at Saint Bartholomew's Church
on Park Avenue.

Renee just took Pauli
under her wing

to help her to say,
now, don't wear that

and do do this,

and they became
the closest of friends.

PAULI:
Although Renee and I

were very different
in our personalities,

the chemistry of our friendship
produced sparks of sheer joy,

and we gravitated toward
one another for mutual support.

MAN:
On the afternoon of May 4th,

Mack Charles Parker's body
was found floating

in the Pearl River
near Poplarville.

Parker had been dragged
from his jail cell

by a band of masked men.

He had been awaiting trial on
charges of raping a white woman.

♪ ♪

PAULI: For a man to be lynched
as late as 1959

seemed to symbolize

the barbarity
of the American system.

This was following all
of the violence of Little Rock,

the integration
of Central High School.

There had just been
nothing but violence

and violence and violence
in the South,

and then Mack Parker
just seemed to...

just to cap the climax.

PAULI: This was written
on the occasion

of the lynching
of Mack C. Parker.

I am an Episcopalian, and I use
this prayer deliberately.

♪ ♪

♪ Just another day... ♪

PAULI: Lighten our darkness,
we beseech thee, O Lord;

♪ That the Lord ♪

Teach us no longer to dread
hounds yelping in the distance,

the footfall at the door,

the rifle butt
on the window pane.

♪ Just another day... ♪

Defend us from all perils
and dangers of this night.

♪ ♪

PAULI: Everybody has
his breaking point.

My breaking point came
with Mack Parker.

I had had it,

and I felt I needed to get
away from the United States.

ROSENBERG: Pauli gave up
this very prestigious position

at Paul, Weiss

and applied for, and was
accepted, to be a law professor

at the newly created law school
in Ghana in Africa.

♪ ♪

(ship's whistle blares)

♪ ♪

PAULI:
I stayed in Africa 18 months,

studied it just the way I
studied law in my graduate work.

(cheering)

BELL-SCOTT:
Pauli's there

in the midst of these
independence movements,

and this is exciting
but also problematic.

PAULI:
It soon became clear to me

that the president of Ghana
had dictatorial instincts.

Suppressing freedom of speech.

I was a person committed
to human rights

whether I was in North Carolina

or whether I was
in Accra, Ghana.

BELL-SCOTT:
The government is concerned

about what Pauli
is teaching the students

about the American Constitution.

Independence, democracy.

PAULI:
My time in Africa

only confirmed in me

that I was a product
of the New World.

I feel as fully an American
as anyone else.

♪ ♪

Black Americans go back
to the very beginnings.

Our blood and our sweat
and our tears and our memories

are built into the country.

We were very intrigued
by Pauli Murray.

Here was this older woman.

I think she probably
could have been our mother.

(crowd singing)

Most of the Black students
were involved

with the civil rights movement.

I don't think I knew at the
time she came to Yale Law School

that Pauli had been involved
in protests

and-and sit-ins in D.C.

As far as we were concerned,
we began the protests

with the sit-in movement
in the 1960s.

We didn't know anything about
the very brave African Americans

whose work is lost
often with history.

Pauli Murray
was so ahead of her time

that she was about the daily
work of uncovering new issues.

This is a matter
of great national concern.

BELL-SCOTT:
When Murray was at Yale,

John F. Kennedy established

the Commission
on the Status of Women.

The head of
the overall commission

was Eleanor Roosevelt.

I want to see women used

to the very best,
uh, of their ability.

BELL-SCOTT:
Eleanor made sure that Pauli

was appointed to the study group

that looked at women's
civil and political rights.

♪ ♪

PAULI:
If you rip away everything,

the business of oppression

is the business of not
respecting one's personhood.

All women understand
what it means

to have a diminished sense
of personal dignity and worth

because of one's sex.

MAN: What exactly was
your part in the origin

of, uh, the National
Organization for Women?

PAULI:
I was one of the founders.

REID:
Pauli met with Betty Friedan.

Betty and Pauli

and about 30 or so other women

determined that it was important
to have a new organization.

SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES:
At a luncheon,

Betty took out a paper napkin

and began to write
that we are forming NOW

to bring women
into the mainstream

of American life now.

28 women signed.

REID: And that's how the
National Organization for Women,

or NOW, was born.

BELL-SCOTT: Pauli was
trying to come up with

a new strategy that would move

the efforts for
women's rights forward.

And she did.

♪ ♪

REID: The 14th Amendment
had led the way

for fighting discrimination
on the basis of race.

COOPER: And so Pauli Murray's
making an argument

that the 14th Amendment
could actually be used

to defend women's rights
as well.

ROSENBERG:
That was a radical idea.

For those of us
who were from the era

of the civil rights movement,
that seemed a bit curious,

and please understand
the background.

First and foremost on the minds
of African Americans

was discrimination against
people of color.

I have to ask myself,

"Eleanor, why weren't you
a feminist then?"

But nobody was a feminist then
except Pauli Murray. (chuckles)

♪ ♪

BELL-SCOTT:
In the mid-1960s,

Pauli was on the board
of the ACLU.

The American Civil Liberties
Union brought suit today

to force a Saint Louis suburb
to accept

an integrated, low-income
apartment housing project.

BELL-SCOTT:
The ACLU was already doing

quite a bit of work
around civil rights cases,

but on women, they were like
any other institution

in our society at the time.

Women were not
well represented on the board.

Pauli was pushing,
pushing them to move.

She wrote a letter arguing
that Ruth Bader Ginsburg

should be a member of the board.

Pauli was a feisty woman.

Pauli had definite ideas,
sometimes...

ideas other people
disagreed with.

Pauli prodded the ACLU
into taking on differentials

based on gender.

STRANGIO: It's always the people
who are experiencing

the most forms of discrimination

who have the most insight into
how to build the solutions,

and Pauli was that person.

BELL-SCOTT: In one of
the ACLU cases in the South,

Blacks were being excluded
from the jury.

Murray's argument was, well,

at the same time we're arguing

Black men should not
be excluded,

women should not be excluded.

PAULI: This is a violation
of their rights

under the equal protection,

a violation
of the 14th Amendment.

The court came
right down the line

actually using our language.

After so many losses and
so many failures in a lifetime,

this was my sweetest victory.

REID: What she did became
very important.

So important that when, uh,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, um,

was called on to work
on a later Supreme Court case,

Reed v. Reed,

she used Pauli's work
and then credited her.

Justice Ginsburg
relied on the analysis

that Pauli had developed.

GINSBURG: We were not
inventing something new.

We were saying the same things
that Pauli had said

years earlier at a time

when society was not prepared
to listen.

PAULI:
What I say very often is

that I've lived to see
my lost causes found.

CROWD (chanting):
Pro-life, that's a lie.

They don't care if women die.

-♪ ♪
-(crowd chanting)

(typewriter keys clacking)

(crowd chanting)

I think we're in a time
of very... radical change.

I have not had
the additional responsibilities

of husband, household, children.

Uh, for me, it has been
very important to have privacy.

You have to understand
that Pauli was kind of

a circumspect person,
kind of a private person.

INTERVIEWER:
Did you know anything about

Pauli's personal life
at that time?

I had absolutely no clue.

ROSENBERG: Pauli and Renee
were very close.

They never lived together,

but Renee Barlow was the love
of Pauli Murray's life.

("Symphony No. 4 in E Minor"
by Johannes Brahms plays)

♪ ♪

ROSENBERG: They would meet
each other in hotels

and then worry about the money
that they had wasted.

But they were as close
as a married couple

in the way that
they supported each other.

♪ ♪

Renee, for years,
was Murray's rock,

and allowed her to accomplish

more than she'd ever been able
to accomplish before.

ANNOUNCER: This is WGBH-FM
public radio in Boston.

HOST: Our guest tonight
is Dr. Pauli Murray,

a lawyer, a leader
in civil rights movement,

and now she has turned poet.

PAULI: Well, I want to reverse
what you said.

I'm a poet turned lawyer
rather than lawyer turned poet.

HOST: Now, I think this would be
a good time for you to read

"Dark Testament."

PAULI: I was a Negro slave
following the North Star,

I was an immigrant
huddled in ship's belly,

Always the dream was the same--

Always the dream was freedom.

♪ ♪

PAULI: Martin Luther King
stood for the possibility

of reconciliation
between people.

JESSE JACKSON:
Dr. King has been a buffer

the last few years
between the Black community

and the white community.

(angry shouting)

PAULI: My feeling is that
if this country is to survive...

MAN:
We want Black Power!

-We want Black Power!
-(crowd chanting)

PAULI: ...we must
live together in harmony.

(crowd chanting)

We must continue to push
for all of our demands.

COOPER:
Black students had started

to take over campuses
around the country,

demanding Black studies
programs.

So Brandeis invites Pauli Murray
to become a professor

as a symbolic act to say,
"See, we're being inclusive."

ERNEST R. MYERS:
I was walking around campus...

...and I saw
this little brown woman,

and I asked somebody
who she was.

They said,
"Oh, that's Professor Murray,"

and I knew I wanted to be
in this woman's class.

REGGIE SAPP:
We came to Brandeis

as a part of
the Transitional Year Program,

and we were also very poor.

We came from families

that didn't have books
hanging on the wall.

PAULI: I developed
a legal studies class

at the undergraduate level.

The 14th and 15th Amendments

have often tended
to meet the claims of Negroes.

This historical development

has had certain
unanticipated consequences.

She was dynamic, you know.

Um, and then the word "Negro"
keeps coming up.

PAULI:
It seemed to me, Negroes...

MYERS:
And you-you hear the...

the muffling through
the small Black section.

(scoffs softly)

-(chuckling)
-She's talking about, you know,

social change in the law
and the history of it.

You know,
"We're definitely gonna deal

with the Negro section."

(groans)

REID: Pauli went to Brandeis
intellectually sharp, but

fixed in her ways
in certain things.

She thought that we should

always be referred to
as Negroes.

PAULI: That's Negro
with a capital "N."

In the South,
it was always printed

with the ignominious small "N."

I was immediately attracted
to the capitalized version,

which seemed to give dignity
to my identification.

It remains my preference
for describing people of color,

and I am uncomfortable
with the lowercase "black."

CROWD:
♪ Black is beautiful ♪

Freedom!

♪ That I would agree ♪

Freedom!

♪ Black is beautiful ♪

Freedom!

REID:
And you can imagine in the days

of civil rights movement,
Black Power movement,

and here's this petite lady

teaching at Brandeis,
talking about Negroes.

-(shouting)
-(drums beating)

PAULI: I had fought
for opening up dormitories

and opening up restaurants
in the '40s.

The new breed who came along
in the '60s,

they come and they want
separate dormitories.

Almost as if they're gobbling up
the generation behind them.

Now, that's hard to take.

MAN:
Last January, Black students

at Brandeis University
occupied a building

and demanded
a Black studies program.

PAULI: The Black students
took over one of the buildings,

and my office
was in that building.

REID: Pauli thought
the students were out of step,

uh, with reality
and with history.

They, of course, thought
she was out of step.

SAPP: They distanced themselves
from her.

INTERVIEWER: Did Pauli ever
say anything about that?

Well, I think she was hurt.

You could see it.

COOPER:
Pauli just couldn't get it.

For all of her own
youthful defiance,

she really struggled
to understand

the spirit
of young people, who...

if she were mad 30 years ago

and they're still dealing
with the same challenges,

of course they're even angrier
30 years later.

MYERS: The Black students,
who wanted to be

like Black Panthers,
thought she was a Tom,

just by the way that, you know,

she didn't like the takeover,
she didn't like

the word "Black," um...

but if that's all they knew,

they were missing the point.

♪ ♪

For any Black kid on that campus

and any woman on that campus,

she was walking history.

We even went to her house,

and she opened the door...

...and every wall
of her house was books.

From top to bottom:
books, books, books.

To me, it was paradise.

And I think the first thing
I asked was,

"Have you...
have you read all of these?"

She said, "Yes.

The ones I haven't read,
I haven't put on the shelf yet."

SAPP:
We got to trust her

because we came from
educational situations

where people used to demean you

because you didn't
know something.

She always respected
who you were as a human being.

I remember feeling...

a little special.

She would have
that Camel cigarette

sitting on the end of her lip.

(chuckles)
Do you remember that?

-Yeah. -She would take
that cigarette and...

(laughs)

And it's almost like,

"You need to learn something,
Negro."

(laughing)

ROSENBERG: Murray was 60
and was very concerned

that she would not have
enough money in her old age.

So she demanded that
she be brought up for tenure.

♪ ♪

(typewriter keys clacking)

COOPER: "Lacks brilliance."
"Is not up to standard."

Pauli is denied.

It was completely absurd, um,
and so the battle was on.

ROSENBERG: Pauli said, "My
contributions have been in law.

"Many of the ideas
that you now take for granted

were radical
when I first proposed them."

Pauli conceptualized
so much of what

the legal architecture has been

for challenging
systems of discrimination.

We can't comprehend
legal movements for justice

without understanding
Pauli's role in them.

ROSENBERG:
And in the end,

the president of the university
granted Pauli tenure.

PAULI:
I'm gonna try to finish the book

in one more chapter.

And this is
my most difficult chapter

because it deals with
one of my best friends.

SAPP:
Renee took care of the house.

Renee catalogued all the books.

She took care of the dog.

She kept Pauli Murray's agendas.

You know, if she couldn't
find something,

"Oh, Renee,
you know where this is?"

You know, that kind of thing.

Most people did not know
that Pauli was gay.

And we all kept it
under the radar.

INTERVIEWER: How did you know?
Did Pauli talk to you about it?

No. I mean, I don't know
how to describe it,

but if you're around someone

-long enough...
-Long enough.

...you-you get a hint.

I mean, you just know.

Did Pauli talk about Renee?

She talked about--
Renee was her friend.

-That's the way she spoke...
-Mm-hmm.

-...to us about it.
-Always friend.

♪ ♪

ROSENBERG:
Renee gets sick.

She has a recurrence
of breast cancer.

She undergoes treatments
that are unsuccessful,

and she dies in 1973.

PAULI:
Most people who go through

the death and dying of cancer,

I say we're the walking wounded.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

PAULI: It seemed to me,
as I looked back over my life,

that all of these problems
of human rights

in which I had been involved

were moral
and spiritual problems.

And I saw that the profession

to which I had devoted
my life-- law--

could not give us the answers.

And I asked myself,

"What do you want to do
with the time you have left?"

I was being pointed
in the direction

of the priesthood or...

service to the church.

All of a sudden, she tells me

she's gonna be
an Episcopal priest.

I was stunned.

Pauli was deeply religious.

I must say
that I did not understand

that part of her, but she was.

Well, nobody could really
figure out what she was doing.

"You're gonna leave your job
and go where for four years?

Seminary school? Are you crazy?"

(bell tolling)

MAN: Today at the old
Chapel of the Cross,

at the very altar
where her grandmother

was baptized as a slave,

the Holy Eucharist
is to be celebrated

for the first time by
the Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray.

(congregation singing hymn)

ROSENBERG:
By the time Pauli graduates

from theological school,

on the basis of Pauli's efforts

and the efforts
of many other women,

the Episcopal Church
decides to grant women

the right to be ordained.

And Pauli Murray is
the very first Black woman

to be ordained
in the Episcopal Church.

The Holy Gospel of
our Lord Jesus Christ

according to Luke.

CONGREGATION:
Glory to you, Lord Christ.

The peace of the Lord
be with you.

CONGREGATION:
And also with you.

(indistinct chatter)

PAULI: What I was trying
to communicate

as I administered the bread

was a lovingness
for each individual.

(organ playing)

I think reconciliation
is taking place

between individuals,
groping out,

reaching toward one another.

It was not I as an individual,

it was that
historic moment in time

when I represented
a symbol of the past,

of the suffering,
of the conflict,

reaching out my hand
symbolically

and all of those behind me,
and they were responding.

ROSS: She wasn't a listener
when I was growing up.

She was a talker.

And after seminary school, um,

she became a listener.

As intense as she had been
in fighting

and struggling
and changing the world,

she was just as compassionate

as that when she was
mentoring to people

through the church.

(bell tolling)

She had written short stories.

She had written

Proud Shoes,
a family history.

She and James Baldwin

were the first
African American writers

to be colonists at the
prestigious MacDowell Colony.

By the early 1980s,

she had just about finished,
in her words,

"that dreaded autobiography."

♪ ♪

Also, there were signs

that she had pancreatic cancer.

MAN:
What do you fear most?

Just as a general question.

PAULI:
What do I fear most?

Probably dying without finishing

what I'm...
what I want to finish.

ROSS: It was important for her
to tell her story

the way she wanted it told.

I knew she was working
on-on another book,

a-a memoir,

and I knew she was kind of
racing the-the clock.

(typewriter keys clacking)

It was,
"Let's get this book done."

(typewriter keys clacking)

She could be impatient.

PAULI:
What I tried to do

was to give a picture
of Negro life

that reflects the fact

that we have lived
so much like other Americans

and that in spite
of all of the difficulties

and adversities,
there are these flashes

of-of, uh, joy and humor.

(typewriter keys clacking)

I'm very close to the end
of, uh,

of this, uh, manuscript,
page 504.

If there were moments
of deep despair,

there was
the sustaining knowledge

that in the quest
for human dignity,

one is part of
a continuous movement

through time and history,

linked to a higher
moral force in the universe.

♪ ♪

COOPER:
Pauli left a legacy,

so why would we leave it
on the table?

We literally live in
an architecture of the world

that Pauli Murray built.

BELL-SCOTT: There are
some scholars who now argue

that you cannot
teach American history

without teaching about
Pauli Murray.

♪ ♪

STRANGIO: When we were
presenting our case

before the Supreme Court
to ensure that LGBTQ people

are protected under federal laws
prohibiting sex discrimination,

it was impossible
to conceptualize

that work without Pauli.

WILLIS:
Pauli may not have realized

that they would be
a beacon of solace

for so many queer
and transgender

and gender nonconforming folks.

Generations down the road,
that's what they've become.

WOMAN: Today we're sitting
in Pauli Murray College.

Back then,
Pauli Murray would not have

even dreamed
of anything like this.

(applause)

CHANDLER: If Pauli had
been able to really

fully inhabit themselves,
I think that it only would've...

would've improved the
contributions that Pauli made

to the law or to religion,
writing or to poetry.

What kind of magic
would've happened?

(laughs)

TINA LU:
If you study the past,

you have to let go of the idea

that the people who become
well-respected and celebrated

correlate with the people

who deserve to be celebrated
and well-respected.

Pauli is somebody
whose time had not come.

Um, it might not yet come fully.

We have to work for a world
in which it does come.

♪ ♪

KELEONA JIMINEZ:
Give me a song of hope

And a world where I can sing it.

Give me a song of kindliness

And a country
where I can live it.

Give me a song of hope and love

And a brown girl's heart
to hear it.

Pauli Murray.

("This Train" by
Sister Rosetta Tharpe plays)

-♪ This train is a clean train ♪
-(rhythmic clapping)

♪ This train ♪

♪ This train is a clean train ♪

♪ This train ♪

♪ This train is a clean train ♪

♪ Everybody riding
in Jesus' name ♪

♪ This train is a clean train ♪

♪ This train ♪

♪ This train
is bound for glory ♪

♪ This train ♪

♪ This train, Brother Spann,
is bound for glory ♪

♪ You know this train ♪

♪ This train is bound
for glory ♪

♪ Everybody riding her
got to be holy ♪

♪ Because this train
is a clean train ♪

♪ This train. ♪

(song ends)

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

-(music ends)
-(typewriter keys clack)