Tag Archives: black history

Her Name Was Pauli Murray

Debbie says:

I wrote a blog post about Pauli Murray in 2019. This weekend, I had the opportunity to see the new documentary about her, My Name is Pauli Murray, directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, the team who directed RBG. The film was screened as part of the virtual 2021 Sundance Festival. I can’t find a current trailer or website for this film, though there are some reviews and articles.

I agree with Jude Dry, writing in IndieWire, when they say “While the film doesn’t transcend cinematic heights beyond that of a workaday biopic, it handles the more complex aspects of Murray’s story with nuance and conveys the Black queer trailblazer’s story with requisite reverence.”

Selecting a pronoun to use for Murray is difficult, as some of the people interviewed the film point out. Murray (1910-1985) didn’t live in a time when “they/them” was in any kind of common usage, but it seems like the best choice for someone assigned female at birth who never was able to settle into a female body, and spent decades and thousands of dollars trying to find evidence that they might have undescended testicles or other assigned-male characteristics.

Murray’s life story is extraordinarily complex and layered. Perhaps best known (though nowhere near well enough) is Murray the civil-rights trailblazer. The film begins this story by covering their first experience refusing to move to the back of the bus (a decade before Rosa Parks’ famous moment) and subsequent jail stay.

After providing a stunning split-screen image of Black children leaving a run-down unmaintained school, and morphing into an image of White children leaving a cheerful, affluent school, the film-makers bring in Murray’s law-school paper opposing Plessy v. Ferguson (the notorious Supreme Court case upholding “separate but equal”). They draw an unambiguous line between that paper and the eventual arguments Thurgood Marshall and his team used, to overturn Plessy and replace it with Brown vs. Board of Education, which mandates integration. Spottswood Robinson, Murray’s professor at Howard and a member of the Marshall team, told Murray that they had used her legal theories in crafting their brief.

Of course, the movie covers Murray’s mentorship of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, including a brief moment of RBG herself singing the praises of Pauli Murray. It also spends time on Murray’s quite deep and lasting friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, which grew from Murray’s letters to President Franklin Roosevelt asking probing questions about Black rights, or the lack thereof.

Rather than center itself on racial issues and legal triumphs, the film spends perhaps an equal amount of time on Murray’s gender identity and presentation, and features a number of contemporary nonbinary voices, along with Murray’s own words in letters and other writings. The film-makers go to appropriately great lengths to clarify just how important gender was to Murray, and how valuable that part of their story is to people who have later carved their own path into a gender role and presentation they can be comfortable with.

Scenes in Professor Britney Cooper’s classroom at Rutgers are one device the directors use to context Murray’s importance in Black history. As Cooper teaches Murray’s accomplishments, we are reminded that while they certainly did not comfortably identify as female, they faced all of the obstacles and oppressions of being a Black female in their time, and what that meant to entering the professional legal world. Murray was turned down by law schools because of their race. They went to Howard University, and graduated at the top of their class. Then they were turned down from what was usually an automatic chance for top-rank Howard students to study further at Harvard Law … because of “her” sex.

Their attempts to get a law firm job after graduation prefigure those of Ginsburg and her classmates a few years later; Murray, without the connections and/or husbands of the Harvard women, opened their own law firm in California.

We are given a window into the stories of Murray’s major relationships with women, and a searing vision into the pain Murray experienced when their lover died. And we also get a later chapter of Murray’s life, when they became an Episcopal priest and explored yet another aspect of themself, astonishing many of their friends.

When I wrote about Murray two years ago, I closed with “I find it impossible to think about Murray without wishing I had known her.” That’s even more true since I saw the movie

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Juneteenth!

Juneteenth banner Laurie and Debbie say:

Juneteenth is a much undervalued and underpublicized celebration. Since so many people (except, of course, African Americans) seem to not know about it, or not know much about it, here’s some history:

Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation – which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.

The Emancipation Proclamation, of course, did not free all enslaved people in the United States, just the ones in the “rebellious states”: in other words, the ones Lincoln couldn’t control. States which permitted  slavery, such as Maryland, which were fighting with the Union, were not affected. Those people were freed at the end of the war, just around the time Granger came to Texas. For enslaved people, the Granger arrival as cataclysmic:

One of General Granger’s first orders of business was to read to the people of Texas, General Order Number 3 which began most significantly with:

“The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.”

The reactions to this profound news ranged from pure shock to immediate jubilation. While many lingered to learn of this new employer to employee relationship, many left before these offers were completely off the lips of their former ‘masters’ – attesting to the varying conditions on the plantations and the realization of freedom. Even with nowhere to go, many felt that leaving the plantation would be their first grasp of freedom. …  Recounting the memories of that great day in June of 1865 and its festivities would serve as motivation as well as a release from the growing pressures encountered in their new territories. The celebration of June 19th was coined “Juneteenth” and grew with more participation from descendants. The Juneteenth celebration was a time for reassuring each other, for praying and for gathering remaining family members. Juneteenth continued to be highly revered in Texas decades later, with many former slaves and descendants making an annual pilgrimage back to Galveston on this date.

Where did Juneteenth go, and who was paying attention to it?

In the early years, little interest existed outside the African American community in participation in the celebrations. In some cases, there was outwardly exhibited resistance by barring the use of public property for the festivities. Most of the festivities found themselves out in rural areas around rivers and creeks that could provide for additional activities such as fishing, horseback riding and barbecues. Often church grounds were the site for such activities. Eventually, as African Americans became land owners, land was donated and dedicated for these festivities.  … There are accounts of Juneteenth activities being interrupted and halted by white landowners demanding that their laborers return to work. However, it seems most allowed their workers the day off and some even made donations of food and money. For decades these annual celebrations flourished, growing continuously with each passing year. In Booker T. Washington Park, as many as 20,000 African Americans once attended during the course of a week, making the celebration one of the state’s largest.

Outside of Texas, the celebration seems to have waxed and waned based on various factors, including what was (and what was not!) taught in the schools.

The Civil Rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s yielded both positive and negative results for the Juneteenth celebrations. While it pulled many of the African American youth away and into the struggle for racial equality, many linked these struggles to the historical struggles of their ancestors. This was evidenced by student demonstrators involved in the Atlanta civil rights campaign in the early 1960’s, who wore Juneteenth freedom buttons. Again in 1968, Juneteenth received another strong resurgence through the Poor Peoples March to Washington D.C. Rev. Ralph Abernathy’s call for people of all races, creeds, economic levels and professions to come to Washington to show support for the poor. Many of these attendees returned home and initiated Juneteenth celebrations in areas previously absent of such activities. In fact, two of the largest Juneteenth celebrations founded after this March are now held in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.

Quotes from Juneteenth.com

Abernathy’s direct successor, Reverend Dr. William Barber, has been leading a new Poor People’s Campaign for over a year now. Tune in tomorrow or Sunday to join and/or learn more (details at the link).

Today, in the height of the Black Lives Matter uprising, Juneteenth is all over the news, and there are celebrations in a great many cities. In unprecedented attention to the day, both South and North Dakota are officially recognizing Juneteenth Day today. Some corporations, including Debbie’s employer, have made it a company holiday for the first time. Holidays, celebration, and very belated recognition are a tiny part of the process, and at the same time, they matter. We see today as a day for celebration, and also for reflection: white people need to contend on Juneteenth and the other 364 days of the year with what white supremacy has wrought, and how to dismantle it.