0:05

Hey, this is Adding and Samantha. I'm welcome

0:07

to stuff. I've never told you a protection of I heart radios

0:09

how stuff works. For

0:19

today's classic episode,

0:21

we wanted to bring back one Christen

0:24

and Caroline did on Polly Murray,

0:27

who is one of my absolute favorite

0:29

historical people. I remember when I learned about

0:31

her, I was angry. I hadn't known about

0:34

her, right right, She's a literal

0:36

saint. She's

0:39

amazing. She did so

0:41

much. She was one of the first real

0:44

women to talk about intersectionality

0:47

in a way, in almost a legal way

0:49

that we hadn't been doing before. So

0:53

hugely important into feminism

0:55

and a lot of the things that we talked

0:58

about on this very show. And

1:00

kind of I guess not kind of

1:02

like a coincidence, but we have an upcoming

1:05

episode with the

1:07

creators of unladylike also the

1:09

people whose voices you'll hear in this here'sening

1:12

Caroline, uh, and they bought up Polly Murray,

1:14

and I was like, oh, hey, perfect

1:16

timing, perfect timing, So

1:19

to get you already for that upcoming episode

1:22

and to just learn more about this amazing

1:24

person, here's a classic episode

1:26

on Polly Murray.

1:31

Welcome to Stuff. Mob never told

1:33

you. From how stupp Works dot Com.

1:40

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen

1:42

and I'm Caroline. And Caroline,

1:45

I'm so excited

1:48

to talk about the woman we're going to

1:50

talk about today. Me too. She has

1:53

been on my mind all

1:55

week, ever since we started

1:57

reading about her. I can't get her

1:59

out of my head. That just made me

2:01

start thinking of that Kylie Minogue song. But yes,

2:03

you're right, I know I can't

2:06

stop thinking about her either. And Polly

2:08

Murray, who is this incredible

2:12

trail blazer. But what's so

2:15

fascinating and heartbreaking and

2:17

impressive all at the same time about her story

2:19

is that she managed to

2:21

accomplish so much in

2:23

in a single lifetime and

2:26

push against standards and

2:28

norms of her day. But she did it

2:30

all from this almost

2:32

personal place, this drive that

2:34

comes from how she was raised, the

2:37

environment she grew up in, and the discrimination

2:40

that she herself faced. Yeah,

2:42

and I first ran across her

2:44

name probably a few years

2:46

ago now, where she

2:48

was simply cited as the

2:51

first African American episcopal

2:53

priest. And when I saw

2:56

the photo in the caption, and I thought, oh, that seems

2:58

really neat okay, And then

3:00

sort of put her out of my mind, and then much

3:03

more recently ran across an article talking

3:05

about this entire life

3:07

that she had before she entered the

3:09

episcopal priesthood. And while

3:12

her story doesn't begin in nineteen one,

3:15

I feel like that's a good place for us to

3:18

sort of kick off our conversation about

3:20

her and her life and her significance

3:23

because she has a very

3:25

close, uh legal

3:28

history bond to one of our faith's

3:31

Ruth bader Ginsburg. Yeah,

3:33

and this is an excellent example of

3:36

a woman paying tribute and

3:38

giving credit to one

3:40

of her predecessors,

3:43

not just taking this woman's

3:45

ideas and using them as her own, but really

3:47

giving credit where credits due. So well

3:49

in the story also highlights to the

3:51

disparity between and Polly

3:54

Murray's forgotten legacy

3:57

and the n understandable

3:59

notoriety of Ruth bader Ginsburg, partially

4:02

due to her, you know, being a Supreme

4:04

Court justice. But in nineteen

4:07

seventy one, Ruth

4:09

bader Ginsburg argues on

4:11

behalf of the A c l U, a landmark

4:13

equal protection case. Read

4:16

the read and the quick

4:18

background of this case was that, uh,

4:21

this couple that really

4:23

wasn't together anymore. I think they were estranged. Their

4:25

adopted son died,

4:28

and the father,

4:31

according to an Idaho state

4:34

statute maintaining that males

4:36

must be preferred to females as administrators

4:39

of the states, was automatically granted

4:42

their deceased son's estate. But

4:45

Mrs Reid in this case um wanted

4:48

rights to the estate, and so

4:51

they brought this equal

4:53

protection case UM that ended up going

4:55

all the way to the Supreme

4:58

Court. And it was the very

5:00

first time that the

5:02

Fourteenth Amendment equal protection

5:05

clause had been used to argue gender

5:07

discrimination as unconstitutional

5:09

as opposed to racial

5:11

discrimination. And so this whole

5:14

case set a legal precedent against

5:17

gender discrimination purely out

5:19

of administrative convenience. So

5:21

in this Idaho case, just being like, you know what, We're just

5:23

going to give it to the dudes. They can have the rights,

5:26

and we just don't even have to worry

5:28

about this right. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg,

5:30

who at the time was an a c l U volunteer attorney,

5:33

in her legal brief, named

5:35

two co authors who actually

5:38

didn't play a direct role in the case, and

5:40

those were Judge Dorothy Kenyon

5:43

and the topic of today's episode and

5:45

Polly Murray, who's Jane

5:48

Crow, and the law legal theory

5:50

in the nineteen sixties pioneered this

5:52

whole idea of the equal Protection

5:54

Clause applying to sex

5:56

discrimination in the same way as

5:59

raised discrimination them And so

6:01

Murray's entire motivation

6:05

for Jane Crow, which will get into

6:07

more, is the idea that

6:09

it would not only protect black

6:12

women hence the Jane Crow that is, the

6:15

you know, feminized version of Jim Crow, but

6:17

lift everybody up by bridging

6:20

the gap between civil rights

6:22

and the women's movement. And if

6:25

that sounds a lot like intersectionality,

6:28

it is, I mean in so many ways, and

6:31

Polly Murray is the godmother

6:33

of intersectionality. And also

6:36

if this sounds a lot like Ruth Bader Ginsburg

6:38

paying symbolic homage to amazing

6:41

women, which other guys who had

6:43

relied on that legal

6:45

theory of Murray's as well in the past did

6:48

not do, um, it totally is. And it

6:50

just makes me love Notorious RBG

6:53

even more. Yeah, well, so we

6:55

need to now dive into

6:58

Polly's story. Yeah, her name is

7:00

Anne Paulina Murray, but she

7:03

opted to go by the name Police. So let's

7:05

dive into her complex and multifaceted

7:07

past. So to

7:10

kick things off, why don't we reference

7:12

her own description of herself,

7:14

which kind of gets at the

7:17

internal struggles that drove

7:19

her public work. So, for instance,

7:22

in a nineteen sixty seven letter to

7:24

the National Organization of Women, she

7:26

wrote, I hold the status of multiple

7:29

minorities. I can't allow myself

7:31

to be fragmented into negro at

7:33

one time, woman at another, or

7:36

worker at another. I must find

7:38

a unifying principle in all

7:40

of these movements to which I

7:43

can adhere. So from

7:45

that we can hear that struggle

7:48

that she really wrestled with her

7:51

entire life between all of these identities

7:54

and intersections that

7:56

she embodied.

7:59

She's African American, she's a woman,

8:01

she's a gender questioning person

8:03

who is attracted to women. Um

8:05

she has experiences in poverty

8:08

and income instability.

8:10

Um so. And she even

8:12

in her younger years,

8:15

she gave names to

8:17

her various identities of sorts.

8:20

Yeah, she had the crusader, the imp,

8:22

and the dude, not to mention the priest, which

8:25

is an identity that came later. But

8:27

I mean, also, this is a woman who's an incredible

8:29

legal scholar. She's a feminist, a poet,

8:32

a workers rights activist, which her

8:35

political leanings and her work

8:37

for labor rights

8:39

actually tripped her up politically later

8:42

in her life a little bit. And of course,

8:44

you know the whole priest thing. She became an episcopal

8:46

saint in she's

8:48

a saint. She's a saint. The

8:51

more I've found out about her,

8:53

the more astonished and kind of upset

8:57

I got that I was only just now learning

9:00

about her, right, And I mean that's in a lot of

9:02

the that sentiment is in a lot

9:04

of the articles that you will read about

9:06

Polly these days, because there

9:09

is this attitude of like, where have you been

9:11

my whole life? And she's always been there.

9:13

She always was there, but her

9:16

legacy has for so long just been

9:19

buried and kind of forgotten. And so

9:21

it's it's now that we're starting to see

9:24

more attention paid to just how important

9:26

she is to this country's legal history.

9:29

Well, and I think that we are starting to

9:32

recognize her more because our

9:34

society has finally caught

9:36

up to r caught up to her exactly.

9:39

Yeah, I mean, but in the meantime,

9:41

while she was alive, she was trailblazing left

9:44

and right. I mean, st hood aside,

9:47

she was the first woman of color to serve as

9:49

California's Deputy attorney

9:51

general. She was the first African

9:53

American to earn a doctorate

9:56

from Yale, and the first black

9:58

female episcopal priest.

10:01

So, I mean, we just

10:04

talked about how she's been sort of sidelined

10:06

from history, and that question of

10:09

why comes up a lot in any kind

10:11

of scholarly writing about her,

10:14

and clearly, as we'll explain

10:16

more, there is the issue of society

10:19

just you know, being too slow.

10:21

I mean, she was a woman in so many ways

10:24

ahead of her time, but it was also because she

10:26

wasn't satisfied with only fighting

10:29

for civil rights or women's rights

10:31

or labor rights. She wanted to bridge

10:33

all of the gaps. Yeah, well, she wanted

10:36

to bridge all of the gaps because they were all

10:38

aspects of her. I mean, she,

10:40

like Kristen has said, really

10:43

struggled early on with bits

10:45

and pieces of her identity which society

10:48

was telling her either weren't right or

10:51

they were at odds with each other. You know, she wrote

10:54

in her autobiography, in a

10:56

world of black white opposites, I had no

10:58

place being neither very dark were very

11:00

fair. I was a nobody without

11:02

identity, So let's look at her

11:04

childhood. She was born in nineteen ten in

11:07

Baltimore as Anna Paulina. She

11:09

was the fourth of six children to

11:11

mother Agnes Fitzgerald and

11:14

father William Murray, but she

11:16

was orphaned very early. Her mom died

11:18

when she was four, and at twelve, her

11:20

father was actually murdered by

11:23

a guard at the Crownsville State Hospital

11:25

where he was a patient undergoing treatment for

11:27

major depression. Now, after

11:29

her mother died when she was four, she

11:32

was sent from Baltimore to

11:34

Durham, North Carolina, where she was

11:36

raised largely by her maternal

11:38

grandparents, who encouraged

11:41

her to be as educated and

11:43

as exemplary as possible

11:46

for both racial and familial

11:48

uplift. I mean, this is a family of middle

11:52

class African Americans

11:54

living in the Jim Crow

11:56

South um. So

11:59

that's where the idea and the need

12:01

for that racial uplift comes

12:04

from. And in terms of

12:06

familial uplift, her maternal

12:08

grandmother, who was helping raise her Cornelia,

12:11

was born a slave, and

12:14

Cornelia's mother was

12:17

also a slave who

12:19

was raped by her white

12:22

slave owner. So her grandmother was actually

12:25

raised by both her paternal

12:27

aunt and owner, right,

12:30

And so that side of the family tree is something that

12:33

Polly really struggles with in her autobiography,

12:35

where she talks a lot about

12:38

the genealogical process of

12:40

going back through a family history and how it puts

12:42

so much of herself and her family

12:44

into the context of the time. She

12:47

really had to come face to face with those ugly facts

12:49

that she talks about how a lot of African

12:51

American families at the time weren't

12:54

willing or ready or very eager

12:56

to sort of dive back into that's that's an

12:58

open wound, it's a lot of pain. And so she

13:01

talks about how she had to come face

13:03

to face to that with that because just

13:05

as she had been so proud and ready to accept

13:08

the branch of the family tree that were freedman

13:10

her, one of her grandfather's, for instance, was

13:12

emancipated and then fought for the

13:14

union. Yeah, and she had a

13:17

really strong attachment to her

13:20

grandparents um, but tragically,

13:23

again it was like she was orphaned a

13:25

second time because both of her grandparents

13:28

died by the time she was thirteen, and

13:30

she kind of considered that the end

13:32

of her childhood. I mean, Polly grew

13:35

up very fast. It seems

13:37

like, well, she went to live with her aunt,

13:39

who was her namesake. And this is the

13:41

aunt who she credits so

13:43

much. Yes, she found so much inspiration

13:46

in her all of her grandparents and great grandparents,

13:48

but it was her aunt who she says, really encouraged

13:51

her to be herself

13:54

and be sort of fulfill her

13:56

destinies. The amazing child that

13:58

she was. Yeah, in the first step

14:00

along the way to fulfilling

14:03

her destiny, and she really did have a sense

14:05

of destiny, was attending Hunter

14:07

College. So she heads up to New York

14:10

in nine and she graduates

14:13

in nineteen thirty three, and college

14:16

is incredibly difficult

14:19

for her financially. I mean, she's struggling

14:21

to make ends meet to the point that she suffers

14:23

malnutrition and like the illness

14:26

that she encounters during

14:28

college because she's so poor and

14:30

can't feed herself very well. I mean, it kind of

14:33

haunts her for the rest of her life. It leaves her rather

14:36

frail, although you would not know it by the

14:38

legacy that she leaves behind um.

14:41

But after graduation, she finally

14:43

finds some teaching work with

14:45

the Works Progress Administration

14:48

and as an activist for the

14:50

Workers defense league. But

14:52

it's this whole time that she's also

14:55

questioning both her gender

14:57

identity and her sexual orientation.

14:59

She re really struggled with feeling

15:02

like she was a man trapped in a woman's

15:04

body her words, but also struggling

15:07

with this attraction to feminine

15:11

women. She wrote to her doctors

15:13

saying, I've got to find a solution,

15:16

like I don't know why I feel this attraction, because

15:18

you've also got to keep in mind at the time that

15:21

being gay was considered

15:24

a psychiatric disorder. Yeah,

15:26

And in a note to her doctor

15:28

that she wrote in seven,

15:31

she said, why do I desire

15:34

monogamous married life as a completion?

15:37

Because she's you know, she's struggling with her same

15:39

sex attraction to women, but

15:41

at the same time, because of

15:45

that desire to succeed

15:49

professionally but also have the quote

15:51

unquote normal family

15:54

life was something that was also very

15:56

much ingrained in her and very

15:58

important to her. Clearly a point

16:00

of personal conflict

16:02

for her, and I think it's important as

16:04

um. There was one academic we were reading who

16:07

pointed out that while today

16:10

she might have identified

16:13

as transgender or a lesbian,

16:16

she never labeled herself

16:18

as such. Um back then. I mean, well,

16:20

for one reason, the term transgender

16:22

didn't even exist in the nineteen

16:24

thirties. Um. But she

16:27

she knew that something was

16:29

up, and she really wanted a biological

16:32

explanation for it. UM. In her twenties

16:34

and thirties, she was really enamored

16:36

with new research on hormones

16:39

and glands and part

16:42

of why she was so compelled.

16:44

Um and and even at one point

16:47

requested an exploratory

16:50

surgery to see if she had a

16:52

male genitalia like secreted inside

16:54

of her. As she put it, was because

16:56

of the specter of mental

16:58

illness within her family. I mean you have,

17:00

like you mentioned, Caroline, at the time, homosexuality

17:03

was considered a psychiatric disorder,

17:06

and that was terrifying for her, considering

17:08

how her dad was murdered

17:10

when he was in a psychiatric hospital,

17:13

and there had been other mental health issues in her family.

17:16

Yeah, and so she did seek

17:18

both psychiatric and hormonal treatment,

17:21

but doctors refused to give her male

17:23

hormone, simply telling her to conform

17:25

to female expectations. UM.

17:28

That doesn't mean she didn't experiment.

17:31

She there's lots of pictures of her, and she talks

17:33

about how she explored

17:35

gender identity and presentation, particularly

17:38

in her younger years in her twenties and thirties by

17:41

wearing men's clothing. And this

17:43

is around the time when she also opts

17:45

to start going by the name Polly instead

17:47

of Anne. Yeah. And if we look

17:50

back at her one

17:52

autobiographical photo album,

17:55

The Life and Times of an American called

17:57

Polly Murray Um,

17:59

the image of the dude is

18:02

clearly the uh, the

18:04

identity within her that's questioning

18:08

gender and what it means

18:10

and how it applies to her, and she

18:13

in one of the photos she has sort of she

18:15

has men's clothes on and a

18:18

men's style hay do um.

18:21

But you can see as

18:23

she goes to law

18:26

school and her legal career picks up in

18:28

her public profile increases,

18:30

you see her dress in more traditionally

18:33

feminine ways. Yeah, I think there

18:35

there's one picture that we saw of her, was it

18:37

from law school or after?

18:40

Where it's one of those like very old school,

18:42

you know, from the side kind of pictures where

18:44

she's looking off into the distance and

18:46

the caption on the back of the photo was first

18:49

and last upswept hair do

18:53

So I mean, I you know, she kind

18:55

of like those doctors when she was in her twenties

18:58

and thirties said, you know, they told her to conformed

19:00

female expectations. I think

19:02

she did feel like she had to for

19:04

a lot of her early public presentation

19:07

in persona. You know, you you see her

19:10

exclusively in dresses in those

19:12

early years, especially like in pictures

19:14

where she's with Betty fred Dan in

19:16

a picture with the early

19:18

founding staff of Now and

19:21

in law school, she's wearing all of those dresses

19:24

and those hair dues. But as you get

19:26

old, as she gets older, I should say, uh,

19:28

you start to see her, Oh yeah,

19:31

this is the woman who said she prefers pants

19:33

to dresses. Like you start to see hers almost just

19:35

sort of start to look more like herself.

19:37

Well, And there was one anecdote from when

19:39

she was in the priesthood of

19:42

her being delighted

19:45

that she would sometimes get mistaken for

19:48

a guy, partly because she had

19:50

short, cropped hair and glasses

19:53

and she even had rocked a little lady mustache in

19:55

her old age, and obviously,

19:58

like priestly close, our gender

20:01

ambiguous, and being the first

20:03

female priests, would kind of just expect it

20:05

to be a guy. But she was like, oh,

20:07

I loved it. Yeah. Well,

20:09

because yeah, I mean, like you said, transgender

20:12

wasn't a term in use yet, but

20:14

I'm sure it must have felt great

20:17

for someone to look at you

20:19

and identify you as the way that you. I

20:22

don't know that I want to put words in anyone's mouth, but

20:24

the way that you have felt inside.

20:27

Yeah, I mean, but I I well. And

20:29

I also think it's interesting that part

20:32

of her concern over

20:35

how she felt was not just her attraction

20:38

to women and her

20:40

discomfort in uh

20:43

with feminine gendered clothing,

20:47

but also she felt like her

20:49

ambition and drive was

20:51

also highly masculine, in a sign

20:54

that something wasn't entirely

20:57

right and part of why she wanted to fight for women's

20:59

right because she was like, oh, I can't this

21:02

womanhood is is holding me

21:04

back. Like I know I'm a woman, but I

21:06

don't feel like I should be because

21:08

of all of this stuff that I want to accomplish.

21:11

Yeah, so many layers to gender

21:13

identity. Who's surprised, no one? No

21:16

one well, and she carried

21:18

on though open romantic relationships,

21:20

though with a number of women

21:23

um and in her later life

21:25

she forged a seventeen year relationship

21:28

with a woman named Irene Barlow,

21:30

whom she met at a law firm in

21:33

nineteen fifty six and it lasted

21:35

until Barlow's death, and they're buried

21:37

under the same headstone in New York.

21:40

Yeah, yeah, I think she because I think

21:42

when Barlow died at the

21:44

time, um, Polly

21:47

was teaching at brand Ice and

21:49

she ended up leaving her position because

21:51

she was so heartbroken that she

21:53

felt like I can't I can't go on. But

21:56

then in her posthumously

21:59

published autobiography Song and a Weary

22:01

Throat, there's no mention whatsoever

22:04

of same sex relationships.

22:08

So clearly there are lots of intersections

22:12

happening within this

22:15

one person and in the

22:17

next phase of her life

22:19

and career. Because we're going to get into

22:22

this is when we see all of her

22:24

brain power then being

22:27

applied to all of her

22:29

identities and struggles and how she

22:31

applied that to empowering

22:36

marginalized groups. And we're going to

22:38

get into that when we come right back from

22:40

a quick break. So,

22:52

if there's one big thing that poly

22:54

Murray understood ahead of her time,

22:58

was now discrimination

23:02

cuts across identities,

23:05

um and and we might take that so for

23:07

granted today, but that was a revolutionary

23:10

concept not so long ago um

23:12

and speaking to The Washington Post in nineteen

23:15

seventies seven, Pouli said, this

23:17

society is not hospitable to persons

23:19

of color, women or

23:21

left handed people. Ain't that the truth?

23:24

Congerss well listen as a lefty,

23:26

I agree, and so well.

23:28

I do appreciate her humor. That should

23:31

not indicate that she was anything other

23:33

than deadly serious about the

23:35

discrimination that she and others around her were

23:37

facing. Uh. In, let's

23:40

let's just go through basically the history

23:42

of what she overcame that ended

23:44

up contributing to the person that she

23:47

Well, I want to say the person that she became,

23:49

but I mean, she already was this person, She was

23:51

this fighter. So we've got to

23:54

give this back story though, so you know exactly

23:56

what she went through. She

23:59

was denied to a school admission at

24:01

UNC Chapel Hill because of

24:03

her race, and she

24:05

knew this was wrong. She knew this was ridiculous.

24:07

She knew she was up against a discriminatory

24:10

machine. So she launched a letter

24:12

writing campaign that attracted the

24:14

attention and the friendship

24:17

of one Eleanor Roosevelt,

24:20

and she actually, through correspondence

24:22

with Eleanor became a personal advisor

24:24

to her on civil and human rights issues

24:27

well, and the UNC

24:29

president at the time knew Murray

24:31

was qualified enough to gain

24:34

entrance, and he even consulted

24:37

the U. S. Senate on this. I mean, and

24:39

this is incredible to me. Already at

24:41

this point in her life, she's like, oh,

24:44

like sounding the alarm all the way up to the White

24:47

House. Um. And later in life

24:49

though, when UNC

24:51

Chapel Hill tries to grant

24:53

her an honorary degree, Murray

24:56

says, oh, no things

24:59

and finds it stuck

25:02

to our guns that woman did. But

25:04

the thing is like, that's ninety eight. I feel

25:06

like this sounds like, oh, yeah, of course,

25:08

something like that must have happened in the sixties, people

25:10

pushing back against UH segregation

25:12

and racism and discrimination. This is thirty

25:15

eight. This woman's ahead of her time. She's also

25:17

ahead of her time because in nineteen forty,

25:20

fifteen years before Rosa

25:22

Parks in Montgomery, Alabama, Polly

25:25

and her lady friend Adeline mcbreen were

25:27

arrested in Virginia for refusing

25:30

to move to the back of a greyhound

25:33

bus. And so what

25:35

possibly contributed to this contentious

25:39

UH conflict scenario? Was

25:41

the fact that she was actually dressed in men's clothes

25:43

at the time, and uh,

25:46

that could have contributed to antagonizing

25:48

the police toward her. Yeah,

25:50

there was a headline though from the

25:52

time reporting on the incident it

25:55

was Jim Crow bus dispute leads

25:57

to girls arrest and the news article

25:59

just scribes her as a

26:01

honey tongued legal mind.

26:05

Don't mess with her, I mean, even then, honey

26:08

tongue legal mind. In the same

26:10

year, her honey tongue

26:12

legal mind was hired by the

26:14

Workers Defense League to pardon a

26:16

black sharecropper who was convicted

26:19

of murder, and she returns to Virginia

26:21

to raise money and meets prominent civil

26:23

rights lawyers, which inspires

26:26

her to start Howard

26:29

Law School with the aspiration of

26:31

becoming an n double a CP lawyer.

26:34

So she starts law school in N one,

26:36

but law school going to Howard,

26:39

where race is no longer the discriminatory

26:42

issue sex discrimination

26:45

comes to the forefront. Yeah, it's

26:47

during this time that she coins that

26:49

term Jane Crow to describe

26:52

her experience of the

26:54

double race and sex based

26:56

discrimination, and one source

26:58

we read described it as a eerie born

27:00

from her own struggles with categories

27:03

that seemed to do violence to Murray's own

27:05

sense of self, sometimes black and

27:07

white, but far more often men

27:09

and women. And she's still active

27:12

in civil rights protests.

27:14

It's during these years at Howard that

27:16

she also participates in silent demonstrations

27:19

and sit ins at a Washington, d c. Cafeteria.

27:22

Again, keep in mind, some woman's ahead of her

27:24

time. It's the forties. I feel like school

27:27

children today tend to think of the civil rights

27:29

movement as like a sixties thing. Yeah,

27:31

And and her graduating thesis from

27:34

Howard was titled to the civil

27:36

Rights cases and PLUSY

27:38

be overruled. And she's referring

27:40

to plus C v. Ferguson the case

27:43

which upheld separate but equal,

27:46

And she's arguing, obviously that plus

27:48

C should be overturned. This is

27:50

ten years before

27:53

Brown versus The Board of Education

27:55

case would overturn that separate

27:58

but equal clause. But when Polly

28:00

first suggests this, all

28:02

the guys in her class laughed at her.

28:04

She described it as hoots of

28:07

derisive laughter. But

28:09

Polly would get the last laugh sort

28:11

of when Brown v.

28:14

Board of Education took place

28:16

because n double a CP Chief Council

28:19

third good Marshall used

28:21

Murray's thesis as

28:24

a strategic guide to

28:26

argue the case. But the thing is all of this

28:28

was unbeknownst to Murray for years

28:30

because he never gave her credit for it. M

28:34

Like, come on, man, come on, thur

28:36

Good. We could all stand to learn a little something

28:38

from RBG. I know Ruth

28:40

Bader Ginsburg hashtag shine theory

28:42

knows how to attribute. So

28:45

uh. Polly graduates as

28:48

the valedictorian of her Howard University

28:50

class, naturally, which

28:52

typically would have parlayed

28:54

into a scholarship to get a Masters

28:57

in law at Harvard. However,

28:59

she was not a man. Yeah,

29:02

so Harvard Admissions

29:04

wrote back to Polly saying,

29:07

quote, your picture and the salutation

29:10

on your college transcript indicate

29:12

that you were not of the sex entitled

29:15

to be admitted to Harvard Law School.

29:17

Come on a drag. And

29:20

and here's the whole Jane Crow thing too

29:22

coming into play, because she writes about how

29:25

her male civil rights comrades

29:28

had really sympathized with her race based

29:30

U n C rejection years earlier, but

29:33

when it came to her being rejected by Harvard,

29:35

they were simply amused at the idea that she wanted

29:38

to go there anyway, So there was none of

29:40

that support, that community

29:42

support rallying around her for for this

29:44

particular rejection, it was more of like a oh,

29:46

you silly woman. Well,

29:48

that silly woman decided to take herself

29:51

to get her Masters of Law degree at UC Berkeley

29:54

instead, and she graduated in

29:58

and then became the state first

30:00

black Deputy Attorney General.

30:04

A few years later, in she

30:07

pens the State's Laws on

30:09

Race and Colors, which was a compilation

30:12

of all race related state

30:14

level laws. And this might sound

30:16

like an insignificant detail, Why

30:18

are you telling us about this directory that this

30:20

woman wrote, essentially, Well,

30:22

because yet again she

30:25

is writing what would essentially

30:27

become known as the Bible of

30:30

civil rights law. Yeah,

30:32

exactly. She had compiled

30:34

it at the request of the

30:37

Methodist Churches Women's Division,

30:40

which I love. I'm like, who but

30:42

uh so, working very closely

30:45

with women from a church,

30:47

and it just became this critical

30:50

piece of writing for a lot of people. Yeah,

30:53

I mean, and just again and again and again,

30:55

she's laying all of

30:57

this legal foundation, doing

31:00

all of this leg work for these

31:04

you know, landmark cases and desegregation

31:06

that will happen many years later. Well,

31:08

yeah, I mean she but all of this is

31:11

driven by her her

31:13

personal convictions. I mean,

31:15

she writes about how segregation

31:18

places a badge of inferiority

31:20

on black children, and and

31:23

so it was it was looking

31:25

into her past, seeing

31:27

her own experiences with discrimination

31:30

and and looking at the community around her

31:32

that drove her to try to make this world a

31:34

better place. Well, and also

31:36

to going back to her family tree, that duality

31:39

of blackness

31:41

and also the violent

31:44

whiteness that was in there

31:46

with um, you know, the rape of her great

31:49

grandmother. Um. And she

31:51

spends a lot of time after

31:53

nine, She spends four

31:55

years actually going back to

31:58

North Carolina and researching

32:00

all about her family.

32:03

And she ends up publishing sort

32:05

of like a familial autobiography

32:08

called Proud Shoes, The Story of an

32:10

American Family. And Caroline,

32:12

I gotta say, this reminded me a lot of you,

32:14

because genealogy is

32:16

a hobby of yours. Oh my god, I know I've

32:18

lost so much sleep since the holidays

32:21

because I've been on a total family research

32:23

kick. But did you feel at least a little bonda

32:25

to Well I did.

32:28

I did, because um,

32:31

just her passion for it and

32:33

and seeing her give voice to a lot of the

32:35

same things that I feel in terms of the importance

32:37

of kind of figuring out where you come from,

32:40

because it's no small it's

32:42

no small and significant thing to figure

32:44

out who your people were. She writes,

32:46

the conviction grew in me that one of the best ways

32:49

to incorporate social and political history

32:51

into one's experience is to embark on a

32:53

search into one's family history. These

32:55

ancient documents spoke to me of a common

32:58

humanity and narra the distances

33:00

between races, classes, and political

33:02

positions. And I mean, this is a woman who had to come

33:04

to terms with her multi racial,

33:07

as she put it, past an origin,

33:10

someone who had to embrace both

33:12

the amazing freedmen in her tree,

33:15

but also the slave ancestors

33:17

who she writes about who didn't

33:20

have They did have a complicated

33:22

relationship obviously with the white people

33:24

who owned them, but she writes

33:26

about having to come to terms with the

33:29

complexities of realizing that her great

33:31

grandmother didn't hate these people. She

33:33

was quite friendly and

33:35

intimate with the white women

33:38

of that family. So, as you might

33:40

imagine, it's that dual heritage that had

33:42

a huge effect on her and gave

33:44

her a strong sense of personal identity.

33:46

She writes about it as the tangled

33:49

roots from which I sprang, and

33:51

said she felt it was part

33:53

of her destiny to counteract the

33:56

effects of stereotypes that black people

33:58

had played no signific, vacant role

34:00

in US history. And that's what's

34:02

so addictive about family research

34:05

and genealogy. It's it's

34:07

digging into the past and realizing

34:09

that whether you're at the top

34:11

of the socioeconomic heap or at the bottom,

34:14

all of these people played such an important

34:16

role in the foundation

34:19

of this country. And so that really played

34:21

a role in helping her define

34:23

who she was. Yeah, And

34:26

the more she learned about herself and

34:28

where she came from, and the more deeply

34:30

embedded she became in the

34:33

civil rights movement, motivated

34:35

by those tangled roots

34:38

that she wrote about. It also

34:40

fueled her feminism

34:43

because as we move

34:45

into the sixties and seventies,

34:47

particularly when the Black power

34:50

movement arises, she

34:52

becomes really uncomfortable with

34:55

the power structures that she sees

34:57

emerging in it. And for

35:00

instance, I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but just

35:02

to give you a sense of where we're going. In

35:04

a nineteen seventy essay, she wrote, the

35:07

main thrust of black militancy

35:09

is a bit of black mails to share

35:11

power with white males in a continuing

35:13

patriarchal society in which

35:15

both black and white females are

35:18

relegated to a secondary

35:20

status. Yeah, and this is

35:22

this is where it's important to remember her

35:25

push for um both

35:27

protection for both sex and racial

35:30

discrimination, because her attitude

35:32

was that if you protect

35:35

for both, then you uplift

35:37

everyone. Like we mentioned earlier, Yeah,

35:40

so if we go back to nineteen

35:42

sixty one, she's a big deal.

35:45

JFK appoints her to the

35:47

President's Committee on the Status of Women

35:49

as well as the Commission

35:52

on Civil and Political

35:54

Rights, And the more immersed

35:57

she gets in the civil rights movement,

35:59

the more she starts to see and call

36:01

out sexism

36:04

within the movement because of its

36:06

avoidance of appointing women

36:08

to visible leadership roles

36:10

and tacitly endorsing

36:13

gender segregation by, for instance, appearing

36:15

at the National Press Club, which enraged

36:17

her because at the time, the National

36:19

Press Club excluded women. So she was like, what are

36:22

you doing. You're you can't stay

36:24

in this one space that doesn't allow these people in

36:26

while you're advocating for the

36:29

rights of more people. Yeah.

36:32

And it's interesting because you've also

36:34

got to keep in mind that there were a lot of civil rights

36:36

leaders who saw women's rights

36:38

as a completely separate issue, which echoes

36:40

back to our episodes that we've done on suffrage

36:43

and black women in the abolition and

36:45

suffrage movements, because it was sort

36:48

of the other side of the coin back then. All

36:50

of these women pushing for suffrage and women's

36:52

rights were like black issues

36:54

are totally separate things, stopped distracting

36:56

from the cause. Yeah, I mean, and in

36:59

a way like her biography

37:01

does echo a lot of the women that we talked

37:03

about, um Ida b Wells comes

37:05

to mind of someone straddling

37:07

both suffrage and abolition

37:10

and often being caught at those

37:12

intersections. Um So, N

37:15

four is a pivotal

37:18

year, not only for Polly but

37:20

also for the US

37:22

because this is when the Civil Rights Act

37:25

is enacted, and this

37:27

is the year that she co

37:29

authors her landmark paper,

37:32

Jane Crow and the Law Sex Discrimination,

37:35

entitled seven, published in the

37:37

George Washington Law Review.

37:41

And this was a really radical

37:43

idea, this whole Jane Crow of

37:46

crystallizing that double

37:48

discrimination of being not only

37:52

African American but also female

37:55

because, as Harvard law professor Kenneth

37:57

W. Mac points out, this

38:00

is the early nineteen sixties. You still

38:02

have laws on the books excluding

38:05

women from certain jobs like like

38:07

bartending for instance. Um, you have

38:09

all male juries going on. Um,

38:12

And we even have in nineteen sixty

38:14

one Scotus Justice

38:17

John Marshall Harlan writing, woman

38:20

is still regarded as the center of home

38:22

and family. That's where she

38:24

belongs. I added that last bit of that's where

38:27

she belongs. Well, yeah, it's that

38:29

idea of benevolent sexism,

38:31

that women must be protected

38:33

from certain dangerous or

38:36

unsavory situations,

38:39

whether it's being a bartender or being

38:41

a juror Yeah. And so

38:44

she publishes this paper in

38:46

the same year. I mean, she's so busy. I want

38:48

to know also her secret

38:50

to productivity. That's

38:52

another episode, I guess. Um. But the

38:54

same year she individually

38:57

lobbies congressmen and even ladybroog

38:59

John's them to include sex

39:02

the word sex in the

39:05

Civil Rights Act to

39:07

make sure that it not

39:09

only protects against racial discrimination

39:12

but also gender

39:14

based discrimination. And

39:16

she was able to convince congressmen

39:19

to include it because she was

39:21

the first one to argue not that

39:23

it would benefit solely white

39:26

women or that it would possibly

39:28

um negatively

39:31

impact black men, but

39:34

she raised the issue of its

39:36

impact on black women. I

39:38

mean, that's another thing. An undercurrent

39:41

to all of this stuff that's going on is the

39:43

complete invisibility

39:45

of black women in our society for so

39:48

long. Yeah, well, she writes, I mean, speaking about

39:50

herself, she read about being a minority

39:52

of a minority, of being

39:54

a woman who was also black, and

39:57

the hardships that come along with that. Yeah,

40:00

And so she was able to make the convincing

40:03

argument that you must

40:05

include that sex clause because

40:07

if you don't, you will leave

40:10

out this entire population of

40:13

Black women and only increase

40:16

the social burden that they're bearing.

40:19

And meanwhile, the

40:21

next year, she becomes the first

40:24

African American to earn a JSD

40:27

from Yale, and her

40:29

dissertation is Roots of the Racial

40:31

Crisis Prologue to Policy. And

40:34

I note all these things that she's writing, because again,

40:36

how is she doing all this? How does she? How

40:38

does she do it? Caroline? I have no

40:40

I have no idea. And and she wanted

40:42

to add to it because she also wanted

40:44

to get a law school teaching job after she

40:47

graduated, but no one would hire

40:49

her. And there have been questions about

40:51

whether that distancing

40:54

from her as successful as she was, as prominent

40:56

as she was at the time, that

40:58

her outward queerness

41:01

possibly um alienated

41:04

her from certain employment. Interesting.

41:07

Well, okay, so we mentioned the whole jury thing

41:09

earlier about benevolent

41:11

sexism and women at the

41:13

time being exempt

41:15

from jury service unless they volunteered. Well,

41:18

that whole idea comes up again in nineteen

41:21

sixty six when, along with

41:23

the a c LU legal team, Polly

41:25

co writes the brief in the

41:27

case White v. Cook, which

41:29

struck down the constitutionality

41:32

of all white, all male juries.

41:35

This gets rid of all of those quote unquote protections

41:37

for women. She had wanted

41:40

it though, to reach the Supreme Court

41:42

and serve as women's brown

41:44

versus Board of Education. And

41:47

speaking of women, the same

41:49

year she becomes a founding member

41:52

of the National Organization for

41:54

Women. She had suggested, actually to

41:56

Betty for Dan that there needed to

41:58

be some sort of double a CP

42:01

for women. Um. And I mean, by

42:03

this point it makes total sense that she's

42:05

so engaged with the feminist

42:08

movement because of all the groundwork

42:10

that had been laid going back to

42:13

her sexist treatment at Howard

42:16

being on the President's Commission on the Status

42:18

of Women. Researching this and also,

42:20

of course it's embedded in her

42:23

Jane Crow theory and her

42:26

personal repulsion at the anti

42:28

feminism of some

42:30

civil rights leaders as well as

42:32

UH leaders of the Black Power

42:35

movement. But I mean

42:37

she didn't, she didn't entirely find a

42:39

home, not surprisingly in in second

42:41

way feminism, which was

42:43

largely led by middle and upper class

42:46

white women. Yeah, I mean she said

42:48

that she did feel more comfortable

42:50

within feminism, but

42:53

she quickly took issue with now's

42:55

sidelining of civil rights leaders. So it's

42:57

that back and forth of like over here

43:00

they don't want this aspect of me, and over

43:02

here they don't want this other aspect

43:04

of me. So she ends up leaving, joining

43:07

the a c l U and

43:09

from there is instrumental in a

43:11

c l U adopting women's rights as a key

43:14

priority. And from there she finally gets

43:16

a teaching job that she had so long

43:18

been wanting. She becomes a tenured professor

43:21

at Brandis Um and she ends up

43:23

developing some of the first black

43:25

women's studies courses as

43:27

an American studies professor. Yeah,

43:30

I mean she's not a two dimensional person by

43:32

any means. I mean her one of her original

43:35

interests on her way to

43:37

grad school with sociology, but she

43:39

you know, didn't go to you and c took

43:41

the law route thankfully. Um.

43:44

But I mean, this is a woman with so many different

43:46

interests. Like, you know, I'm reading

43:48

all of this stuff about her and then it's like, oh, yeah,

43:51

And I mean she started all of these black women's

43:53

studies classes and You're like, how how

43:56

does who has the time? This

43:58

woman? Like she's this is the most

44:00

driven woman I think I've ever read about.

44:03

Oh and not to mention Caroline, she was publishing poetry

44:06

too all the while because

44:08

she I think her father wrote poetry

44:11

and she always felt that was a connection to

44:13

him, you know, because she lost him when

44:16

she was twelve. I mean, although she was

44:18

obviously separated from him before

44:20

that. But if we jump

44:22

forward, she's sixty

44:25

two. She's done so much

44:27

you think that Polly would like kick up her

44:29

feet and just chill out for the rest of her life.

44:31

No, no, no, no, she has one more

44:34

first to accomplish.

44:37

At sixty two, she enters

44:40

episcopal seminary, despite

44:42

the church not yet ordaining women.

44:44

Apparently in nineteen seventy four seven

44:47

women had been sort

44:49

of like casually or day and they were like,

44:51

we're like kind of priests, but it's not really

44:54

official. But Polly Murray was

44:56

like, no, no, no no, this is nonsense. The sexism

44:59

is ridiculous, and

45:02

I love this faith. I'm

45:04

going to seminary. In the nineteen seven

45:06

she became the first black female

45:09

episcopal priest, and

45:12

fascinating detail, she leads

45:14

her first Eucharist in the same North

45:16

Carolina church where her grandmother, Cornelia

45:19

had been baptized one d and twenty

45:22

three years earlier as a slave. I

45:24

mean full circle. Probably took

45:26

it full circle. It almost Her

45:28

bio almost reads as if she had

45:31

some kind of blueprint she was following, because

45:33

it's like, how else could you accomplish

45:36

so much in so many different corners

45:39

of our society? Well, yeah, and I mean she

45:41

also writes in terms of entering

45:44

the seminary, she writes about how Irene

45:47

Barlow's death sort of sparked

45:50

something in her that was undeniable.

45:53

It was this she had always sort

45:55

of had a connection with Christianity,

45:57

but something in her was

46:00

driven to dedicate

46:03

her life to it instead of just you

46:05

know, belonging to a church or going to a church. She

46:07

just felt it in her being that she had

46:10

to do this, pursue this path,

46:12

and it was she writes about how it was fulfilling

46:15

a different part of her. Obviously, all of her legal

46:17

work, her women's studies

46:20

work, all of that had fulfilled

46:22

very specific and large parts

46:24

of her and serve the community.

46:27

But it was time to serve at

46:29

this age. It was time to serve a different part of herself

46:32

and a different portion of the community well,

46:34

and I love how yet again her

46:37

priesthood is an example of that

46:39

personal drive being

46:43

the compulsion to have that outwardly manifested

46:45

into something to enrich

46:48

the world outside her. Because

46:51

it was also with Irene Barlow

46:53

that she um became

46:55

more immersed in the church. They would go to church

46:57

together and it was you know, a significant part

47:00

of their relationship. And so I

47:02

like thinking of her going

47:04

to seminary as Um,

47:06

I don't know, is almost an homage

47:09

to Irene and

47:11

that love that they had, which I couldn't find out much

47:13

about, especially because it's not really

47:16

documented in her personal papers

47:18

or her autobiographies. Um, there's

47:20

there's not much out there about Irene.

47:23

So after such a rich

47:25

and accomplished and sometimes highly conflicted

47:28

life, she dies

47:31

and her autobiography, Song and a Weary

47:33

Throat comes out two years later. And

47:36

it's not until two thousand twelve

47:38

that the General Convention of the Episcopal

47:40

Church makes her a saint. But

47:43

we want to fitting end to this

47:45

saint hood. Yeah, you know,

47:48

I'm picturing because there's this great picture of her

47:50

where she's close up and she's wearing

47:53

her collar and she's smiling into the camera

47:55

with her glasses on, and I just imagine

47:57

a little halo going above her

47:59

head. Thing. I

48:01

mean, the things

48:04

that this woman contributed to our

48:06

world and our society are

48:08

incredible. She broke so

48:11

many barriers and and she

48:13

meant to. I mean, this is a woman who

48:16

meant to break these freaking

48:18

barriers. Like she knew what she was up against,

48:20

she knew what she was doing, and the very

48:23

life, her very existence was against

48:25

the norm and breaking barriers. And I

48:28

mean, you know, talk

48:30

about a a heroine

48:32

for for

48:34

for all of us. Yeah, because

48:36

I mean that was her goal to embody

48:39

intersectionality, even though that

48:41

word had not been coined yet

48:43

by yet another female legal

48:46

scholar down the road and bridging

48:49

gaps and uplifting

48:52

marginalized people because of all the different

48:54

layers of identities and experiences

48:57

that she had. And you're so right

48:59

about the intentionality of all of it. Even

49:01

when she applied to grad school

49:04

at you and See, she knew she wasn't going to get in. She

49:06

knew that they had a policy um

49:08

barring people of color from admissions,

49:11

but she didn't care, you know, she wanted

49:14

to make a point. Well,

49:16

I just I am

49:19

so fascinated to look

49:21

at modern uh feminism

49:23

and politics in light

49:26

of Polly Murray's life because

49:29

you know, I don't know how many times we can say

49:31

that she was ahead of her time, because we

49:33

need so many more minds like

49:36

hers that worked to incorporate all

49:38

of these different layers of yes,

49:40

gender and sexuality but also

49:43

race and uh

49:45

socioeconomics. I mean, this

49:47

woman tried to incorporate and

49:49

did incorporate all of this into her life's work.

49:52

Well, and it makes me so curious to know

49:54

what she would say

49:56

about intersectionality

49:58

today if she was sitting here at us, and what

50:00

she would undoubtedly be

50:02

seeing as the next step

50:05

she would because you know, of course she would be if

50:07

she were alive today, she would already be like twelve

50:09

steps ahead of us. So I almost wish

50:12

that she were still around to tell

50:14

us what to do next. Well,

50:16

listeners, I hope that Paully Murray's

50:19

legacy has resonated as much with

50:21

you as it has with us. Caroline,

50:23

I've been telling so many people about her by

50:25

the way, um, and

50:28

I'm curious to know from from folks

50:30

whether they had heard of her before.

50:33

Mom Stupp at house stuffworks dot com is where

50:36

you can send us your letters

50:38

and if there are other unsung trailblazers

50:41

that we should look into, please

50:43

let us know. You can also tweet us at

50:46

mom Stuff podcast or message us

50:48

on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages

50:50

to share with you right now. Why

50:58

have a letter here from elizabe It, She

51:00

says, I just listened to the episode on feminist

51:02

marriages, and like everyone their mom,

51:05

their dog, and their downstairs neighbor, I have a couple

51:07

since I want to throw in about last names. I've

51:10

heard a lot of women talk about how it's a

51:12

feminist wind to keep their own last name

51:14

after getting married. Some women get

51:16

pretty smug about this, which is obnoxious

51:18

to say the least. But what nobody

51:20

seems to mention about this is, ahem, a

51:23

woman's maiden barf last

51:25

name is her dad's name.

51:28

More likely than not, a woman who is us

51:30

born to an English speaking family and plenty of

51:32

other backgrounds have their dad's

51:34

name. Dads are almost always

51:36

men, and fatherhood is a concept and social

51:38

familial structure that is at the very root of patriarchy,

51:41

quite literally, if we look at the root of the word patriarchy.

51:44

So I'm not married and probably will never make that choice

51:47

for myself, but it drives me nuts to hear the fact

51:49

that an unmarried woman's last name is probably

51:51

her dad's last name, who's also a man who

51:53

is or was also a perceived authority figure.

51:55

I say all this to say women are kind of screwed

51:58

on this front, so we should just do whatever we want it

52:00

with our last names and not feel compelled one way

52:02

or another by patriarchy or feminism

52:04

to change or keep it. In the seventies

52:06

and earlier, it was definitely super subversive

52:08

and radical, but these days I think people need to

52:10

chill out a little before they start asking for medals

52:13

for keeping their dad's name instead of taking their male

52:15

spouses. Anyways, have

52:18

been am currently and will remain a huge

52:20

fan of the cast. Keep it up well,

52:22

Thank you, Elizabeth, loved your letter. I've

52:24

got a letter here from Carrie, also about our

52:26

Feminist Marriage podcast, and

52:29

she writes, I've been married to a wonderful

52:31

feminist dude for eight years now, and

52:33

it's been wonderful. Congratulations,

52:35

Scary. We took each other's names

52:38

because we viewed marriage as emerging of

52:40

our two lives. As a consequence,

52:43

we are the only Holly Hurts in the

52:45

world, and that's pretty cool. I

52:47

enjoyed Meg Keane's view of marriage, especially

52:49

what she said about household duties being a negotiation.

52:52

I completely agree with that. Although our

52:54

system is a little less formal. We

52:57

both take on chores we have time for

52:59

or we're better at, so I cook and he cleans

53:01

the kitchen. But when it comes to things neither

53:04

of us wants to do, like changing a dirty diaper,

53:07

we go toe to toe in a rousing

53:09

game of rock paper scissors.

53:12

It's the perfect way to get things done without

53:14

either of us feeling like we're doing more than the

53:16

other. But Carrie, what if one of you is just

53:18

like, really really good at rock paper scissors? Just

53:21

wondering. She goes on to say, though

53:23

marriage takes work, but I imagine it's a

53:25

hell of a lot easier when you have a partner

53:27

that respects you and gets it. We're

53:30

just doing this thing and clinging on to each

53:32

other for dear life. So

53:34

thank you, Carrie, and um,

53:37

I'm wishing you the best of luck with

53:39

some rock paper scissors victories and

53:42

friends. Keep your letters coming, mom. Stab

53:44

at Housettworks dot com is where you can send them

53:46

and for links to all of our social media as well

53:49

as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts

53:52

with our sources. So you can learn

53:54

more about Polly Murray,

53:56

head on over to stuff Mom Never Told

53:58

You dot com.

54:03

For more on this and thousands of other topics,

54:05

visit how stuff Works dot com.