Strict Scrutiny - My Name Is Pauli Murray

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

Leah, Melissa, and Kate are joined by Julie Cohen, Betsy West and Talleah Bridges McMahon, the team behind the new documentary, My Name Is Pauli Murray.  The film premieres at the Sundance Film Festival this week. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky

Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court. It's an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they're going to have the last word. She spoke, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our legs. Welcome back. This is a very special episode of Strict Scrutiny. I'm one of your hosts, Melissa Murray. I'm Kate Shaw. I'm Leah Littman. And we are joined today by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, the Oscar-nominated filmmakers who brought you RBG, and Talaya Bridges-McMahon, the Emmy-nominated

producer who are premiering their new documentary, My Name is Polly Murray, this week at the Sundance Film Festival. So welcome, Julie and Betsy and Talia. Thank you. Great to be here. Thank you. Thanks for having us. This film chronicles the life of Polly Murray. Polly Murray was a pioneer, a poet, a lawyer, and the first Black person who presented as a woman to be ordained as an Episcopalian priest. Ten years before the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, Pauley authored a paper in which Pauley argued that segregation, even when it supplied equal facilities, was a moral apostasy and branded Black people as inferior. If that theory sounds

familiar, that of course would be the basis on which the court held segregation illegal in Brown. Pauley also authored a paper and would argue that the same equal protection clause that made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race also made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex, a practice Polly dubbed as Jane Crow. If that theory also sounds familiar, that's because that would be the theory that Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued for as an advocate in briefs crediting Polly and that the court embraced. Murray has become better known over the last few years, but Polly's still not a household name, like your previous subject, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Why did Polly speak to you as a subject? Why is it so important to bring Polly's story to a wider audience? I'll start here. This is Betsy.

Uh, we learned about Polly Murray from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had put Pauli Murray's name on the frontolly had in so many different areas before other people were working on that. deserves a story. Then we discovered that there were audio tapes and a huge archive. And we thought Polly Murray needs to be better known. Why don't more people know about Polly Murray? You know, I never learned about Polly in classes. I think I first came upon Murray's work when I was doing some separate research on LGBTQ issues. But why don't more people know about Polly? You know, it's a hard question to answer. And actually, I think it's a big part of why we wanted to tell this film. Polly Murray doesn't have the name recognition

of a Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but that's really, in a lot of ways, that was the impetus for telling this story. I think there are a combination of factors, but I think a main factor is the point that comes up repeatedly in the film of just how far ahead of the times Polly was, how early to so many different concepts, which, you know, when you think about it, often the people that become famously associated with an idea or a movement are not the first people to that idea. They often the people that become famously associated with an idea or a movement are not

the first people to that idea. They're the people that are pushing forth at a time that the world is ready to hear it. And Pauli Murray was pushing forth ideas about equality at a time when America wasn't ready to hear them yet. That was one of my favorite lines from one of the commentators in the film who said, you know, in studying history, you have to let go of the idea that your heroes are heroes because they deserved it

and they are the only people who deserved it. And instead, it's more of a combination of luck, timing, and of course, you know, being one of the people who was championing these ideas. So can I maybe ask a little bit about her background? You note that her life is not unlike Ruth Bader Ginsburg's in that she suffers an incredible loss early on. Her mother dies of a massive cerebral hemorrhage and her father is institutionalized shortly thereafter. And so she's

taken in by these two maiden aunts who happen to be incredibly well-educated. And they bring her to their home in Durham where their family has been sort of rooted in the Black community for a very long time. And can you maybe talk a little bit about how this early period in her life shapes her and how she understands herself

to be part of a Black community, but also a little apart from it as well. Polly comes from a mixed race family, and they really ran the gamut. There were a lot of people in the family who could pass for white, for example. Pauline actually lost a husband who decided to pass for white, and Pauline decided to maintain to stay in the Black community. So Polly comes from what a lot of people call race women,

people who were really, really committed to the advancement of the Black race. And so Polly, at a very young age, was instilled with a lot of pride. And because both of her aunts were teachers, and there was a long tradition of value and education in her family, Polly was shaped by that. And so they actually invested a lot in Polly because she's the only kid in the household. And so they were all really devoted to her and basically fostering a pride within her that she was able to carry out into the world.

I don't know that Polly would become Polly without coming from such a strong family. So that's all really helpful. And, you know, so it's happening against the backdrop. So she's getting this kind of rich, both educational and sort of political upbringing at home with her aunts, meanwhile, attending segregated and, you know, grossly underfunded and insufficient schools in the pre-Brown South. But so then she decides to go to college. So she goes to college in New York City. She enrolls as one of just a handful of Black women at the All Women Hunter College in New York City. She enrolls as one of just a handful of Black women at the All-Women Hunter College in New York City. But as she says, she feels immediately unprepared. She's concerned about her Southern grammar. And we thought that contemporary students, particularly first-generation students, students of color, might recognize these impulses as something we might call like an imposter syndrome today, although obviously she doesn't use that language.

How does she overcome those feelings of inadequacy? Yeah, I mean, it is extraordinary to read about these dual impulses in Polly. On the one hand, such determination to continue an education that she gets her aunt to take her to New York City and she goes around and has to actually go to high school for a year before attending college in order to pass the regents exam. And so there is a level of just total determination. And yet, as you say, she's looking around and thinking, you know, am I qualified? Do I have it? And I think a lot of people can identify with that feeling. I guess she just kept pushing through.

There was something in Polly that gave her the ability to push back and to push past discouragement, challenges, setbacks, you know, personal and professional and just keep going. It's one of the things that we so admired about Polly. And just to add to that, I think it's hard to know that Polly ever got over it. I think that there's the tension there, right? Where you have a person who is never quite getting the external validation of you are actually a brilliant person. Pauly is fighting all the way to the end to make that case.

And so I think that's something that Pauly constantly grappled with. I find it a little painful as a listener to Pauly's story, which after all, we as the filmmakers and our audience are going to be hearing in Polly's voice as an extremely educated, clearly brilliant person to be hearing these expressions of insecurity, which had been sort of imposed externally from a world of racism and a school where I think she's rightly assessing that she's not getting the same benefits and luxuries and privileges of education that some of the peers that she runs into at Hunter and at various places. Like, it's just, it's actually painful to listen to someone who's brilliant

talk about how insecure they feel. I think it is painful, certainly. She's been one of my heroes for a very long time. But I have to say, like, I so identified with this moment where she's talking about her feelings of inadequacy. I mean, I think so many people, especially women and women of color, moving into professional circles, feel this way. And it was both mystifying to know that she experienced this, but also deeply heartening to know that she experienced it.

It's interesting to note that she's thinking about this alongside what is going to be a lifelong struggle with her understanding of her gender identity. And this is something that the film takes on and addresses very frankly. You start at the beginning where as a child, she is not terribly interested in performing female gender identity. She wants to dress as a boy. Her aunts are incredibly receptive to this. They're unconditionally supportive and loving and help her to sort of live that identity in the way that feels comfortable at the time. But throughout her life, this is something she struggles with. She has relationships with women. Some of these are more closeted. She seeks out medical help to deal with what she thinks is a physiological issue that she can address. But it is a constant nag in her mind. And I wonder,

is it something that really shapes the work that she does, the struggle that she has with her gender identity? And how should we understand her gender identity? I mean, throughout the film, her family members refer to her as she, but others refer to her as they. How do you understand her gender identity? You know, I think all documentaries are learning experiences for the filmmakers. You go into the film thinking one thing, and as you get deeper and deeper, you learn. And that is certainly the case with Polly for all of us, I think, in learning about Polly's struggles with gender identity at a time when nobody really knew what this was. And Polly was not talking about it publicly, but we know from diaries and letters and records was going to doctors and asking for help, saying, I believe I am a man. And this is it's painful to read. And, you know, one of Polly's biographers, Rosalind Rosenberg, really was the very wise thought about all of this, which is that apart from being just her personal life, Polly's personal life and really not in fact, and that differentiations on gender should not be the basis of discrimination, because in fact, they are very fluid. So this, this personal story is very much a part of Polly's whole life. And I think it's the underpinning to some of the brilliance that she showed in thinking about discrimination on the basis of race and discrimination on the basis of sex. Some of those letters are, I think, as a viewer, just genuinely painful to read.

Like this sort of there is this agony that comes through. And yet somehow it did translate or play some really important role in, you know, allowing her to think outside of categories and outside of boxes that others were sort of confined within. So, you know, it's it's complicated, right? The film's relationship to all this is complicated, I think, correctly. Okay, so maybe going back to kind of the narrative a little bit, Polly decides that she's going to apply to graduate school. So she applies to the University of North Carolina. She is promptly rejected, you know, explicitly on the basis of race in the rejection letter, right? I think the president says something like he has not even just the power, but the obligation under the Constitution to reject her application. So will you tell us a little bit about how she reacts and sort of what she does next? Yeah, I mean,

obviously, it's a pretty stunning letter, because this is not like a subtle thing. I think I think the phrase, you know, won't accept one of your race is, is right there in the letter. Polly, faced with so many setbacks in life, isn't going to take this sitting down and decides to do something that becomes known in Polly's world as confrontation by typewriter, a form of direct action, after all, can be writing letters and starts to notify the, at that point in the country, extremely vibrant black press explaining what's happened. Around the same time, FDR, then the president, stops by UNC on the way back from his Georgia estate to the White House to give a speech about how fantastic UNC is and how liberal and how they just represent all of the great ideals of America.

And Pauly writes a letter to FDR basically saying, you know, you're full of crap. How do you think that a Negro student would feel hearing what you had to say? Like, what am I supposed to take of this? And by the way, how come you haven't supported anti-lynching legislation? That's an outrage. Why aren't you speaking out louder against the burning of our people? And it's incredibly politically astute because FDR is just absolutely celebrated in the black community at this point. So I mean, there is a political dimension to this that she is tapping into.

Like, we support you. And yet here you are celebrating an institution that won't even accept us. And there are all of these other legislative initiatives that would help us that you're not supporting as well. So I mean, she has a savvy political acumen as well, even at such a young age. It's very indicative of Polly's activism, that Polly at every step of the way is saying, I know that you are doing these things that people praise you for, but it's not good enough. You know, that you have a progressivism that is celebrated, but you really need to do more. And I would say going back to even to your earlier question of like, why isn't Polly more well known? I do think it's like those sorts of behaviors are what puts

Polly outside of the mainstream, that when you are constantly speaking truth to power, which is what Polly was determined to do at every phase of the way, Polly was never playing politics and was never trying to get along with people. It really does take you out of the mainstream. And Polly, again, was acting alone, not as part of a movement. And so you end up in this situation where Polly is bold enough and brave enough and courageous enough to speak Polly's mind. And, you know, the result of that in this case is that Polly ends up developing a friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt. You know, Eleanor Roosevelt, Polly thinks, I don't know the FDR is actually going to read this letter, but let me also send a copy to his wife just in case. And Eleanor writes back. Well, that's brilliant.

Like, I'm totally going to tell on you. Right. Exactly. Exactly. She's like, CC Eleanor Roosevelt. And so when Eleanor reads the letter, Eleanor is intrigued and says, well, who is this person saying all of this to my husband like this? And it begins this really lifelong for Eleanor Roosevelt for this lifelong friendship where they are corresponding back and forth. You know, then to pick up on that, of course, as the years go by and Polly is developing this genuine friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, not just a professional

relationship, but they go to lunch together and they clearly are friends. When FDR fails to speak out after this horrible police riot in Detroit in 1943, in which over a dozen African-Americans are murdered by, you know, by police. And he fails to speak up about that. Pauly writes a scathing poem entitled Mr. Roosevelt Regrets. So unafraid of taking on FDR, even though Polly's become such a friend with his wife. It's just an example of how Polly really did stand on principle. This was one of my favorite parts of the film and one of the favorite stories that came out of this, in part, you know, because of what Eleanor wrote about Polly. You know, Polly is a firebrand, but I am really quite personally fond of her.

And the confrontation by typewriter, you know, I think in the future I will be now referring to my Twitter feed as confrontation by tweet. Just like a lot resonating with me. You know, but it feels, you know, kind of cheeky to think of Polly just brashly firing off these letters to state officials, the president, the first lady. But this strategy of confrontation by typewriter was also dangerous, you know, and not just because it put her out of

the mainstream and might have, you know, detracted from her professional advancement. So could you say a little bit more about the risks that this posed to Polly? Well, fortunately, there are risks even beyond what were realized in life. I mean, the reality that this did lead to Polly probably being shut out of certain circles of respectable activism that would have been a possibility. That's one thing. But of course, as Polly mentions in regards to the family's feelings about fighting, getting into a battle with UNC, there was real physical danger

in some of the assertiveness and some of the, you know, I'm not going to be cowed position that Polly took. This was a person of principle. And like that's what it means to have principles. It's funny to even This was a person of principle. And like that, that's what it means to have principles. It's funny to even use the phrase person of principle right now when we are so barraged with examples of the opposite in our public life. It's heartening to and inspiring to see someone who just consistently lived by principle. Just to add, Polly put her body on the line in addition to writing these

confrontation by typewriter letters. Polly in 1940, traveling with a friend, refused to go to the back of the bus, wound up in jail. Polly was part of a group at Howard University who did a sit-in at a restaurant in Washington in 1943, which is sort of 15 years before what we think of as the sit-in movement. So it was a combination of really putting herself on the line. Yeah, the film obviously uncovers a lot of Pauly's history that people aren't going to be familiar with. But I almost felt like I was learning about episodes of civil rights history that like she was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus 15 years before Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott and desegregating lunch counters, you know, nearly 20 years before the sit-ins. I mean, and I just I on U Street in Washington, D.C. So it does feel like you're not you're excavating a lot of lost history that is not just Pauly's, but is it sort of a broader, undertold set of civil rights era stories?

I mean, I think that's one of the most amazing things about working on this film. Right. And one of the most amazing things about being a student of history that it's not just that Pau's story isn't well-known. There's so many other stories that aren't well-known. There's so many events from history that are not as well-known. And I think one of the things that was exciting for us in working on this film is just sort of that discovery, that process of uncovering that, you know, the Detroit riots that we were just talking about.

We hadn't heard of that. The Detroit riots that we know are from the 60s. We don't know about Detroit riots from 1943. And so it just is another thing that indicates that so much of the history that we are taught is just surface level. It's basically repeating so many of the same events and having lots of conversations about the same people. And it indicates to us that we just need to all broaden the education that we offer in this country. And it was so funny to hear some of the civil rights organizers of the 1960s saying the

same thing. So Eleanor Holmes Norton, who was at, you know, Yale Law at the time said, you know, we thought we were the ones who invented sit-ins. But Polly was doing that, you know, 20 some years before we did. Yeah, that was it was so it was so great to interview Congresswoman Norton because she had such a perspective on herself as a young firebrand at Yale as part of the civil and also to Polly for being ahead of her time, for being a very strong African-American feminist. And it's so interesting because Eleanor Holmes Norton and Polly Murray come into contact with each other because Polly Murray later in her career goes back to Yale Law School to get a JSD while Eleanor Holmes Norton is getting a JD.

And, you know, the black law students sort of think of her as this kind of doddering old woman slinking around the law school. And in fact, she's like, everything you've done, I already did that. Been there, done that. Have a t-shirt. Let me go back to before she gets this JSD at Yale. She's not admitted to UNC's sociology program because she is Black. And instead, she matriculates at Howard University's law school. So this is the law school that trained Thurgood Marshall and many other leaders of the civil rights movement. She's the only woman in her class. And she finds, though, that even as she has found a place where her race is irrelevant, her gender continues to be incredibly relevant. And in fact, her professors do not call on her

throughout her entire first year. But nonetheless, she persists and she is first in her class, which I'm sure shocks all of them, but doesn't shock her. She continues at Howard Law. She is an incredibly active student. She writes a 3L paper where she offers a strategy for dismantling segregation. And rather than simply relying on the sort of economic equivalency that the civil rights movement has been championing, making the South pay to make separate but equal truly equal, she says, let's forget that entirely and just dismantle Plessy versus Ferguson on the ground that it is a moral apostasy. And so she writes this third year paper. Her ideas are immediately dismissed by her professors,

including one Spotswood W. Robinson, who later becomes a judge on the D.C. Circuit. But then, flash forward 10 years, Spotswood Robinson tells her, do you remember that paper that you wrote as a 3L? Yes, I do. Well, guess what? We used that paper to completely dismantle segregation in public schools in Brown versus Board of Education. And more than that, we didn't even credit you with it.

Like, wasn't that weird and funny? And that to me was the most shocking part of the entire film. I was incandescent with rage for her to be gaslighted like that and then to have them turn around and use her ideas and never give her credit for being the intellectual midwife of this entire strategy. You know, I think part of it's a fascinating episode. I mean, you know, in our mind, what's so amazing is looking at the work that Polly did just still as a student and how, you know, just how incredibly intellectually ahead of the curve, this idea that, no, no, no, the whole goal shouldn't be

to try to bolster the separate, you know, the equality in separate but equal, but like the whole confine is no good. By definition, separate is not equal. So at the end of a senior paper, she basically writes this 13 point outline saying like, how could we overturn Plessy versus Ferguson? What are the arguments? Obviously without attaching it to any particular case. This wasn't a question of, you know, school boards being challenged or that kind of thing. But in fact, at least two of the major ideas that Polly writes into that paper are directly picked up on in the briefs for Brown v. Board. And one is the use of a 1917 Supreme Court case having to do with housing discrimination. And another is, oh, you should use social sciences work, particularly citing a book called The American Dilemma. Like this, if you think about it, you know that.

And sure enough, both American dilemma is cited in the actual Brown v. Board Supreme Court brief, as is the 1917 case. So, you know, again, I don't know to what extent the intellectuals behind legal arguments, you know, ever get credit. I'm not sure how. And of course, by the time Brown v. Board gets to the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall has really structured of his own great intellect, a whole chain of cases. So like, you know, the point is just how amazingly early to the intellectual party Pauli Murray was on this and a whole slew of things. But it's also a stark contrast to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in that brief in Reed versus Reed has no problem giving Pauli Murray some credit. I mean, so it is true that Thurgood Marshall is a

genius and a giant, and he is clearly the architect of all of this. But some of these ideas aren't just sort of structured out of thin air. Like some of this is coming from her and they not only dismiss her, they never really include her in the intellectual provenance of these ideas. And it's striking when you compare it with what Ginsburg did. One of the things just to piggyback on that, that the law was such a male-dominated field at that time that, you know, I think about, I had the same reaction you had to hearing that story, which is, oh my God, this is infuriating. And then you add to that, that when Polly actually starts a legal

career, Polly can't get hired anywhere. And it's like, this is actually one of the most brilliant legal minds in our country. And the fact that this person can't even get a foot in the door is completely outrageous. And so, yeah, I just think, you know, at each turn, there is just this bias that, you know, Polly is up against. And you could imagine, I mean, going back to Polly's gender identity, what we know at that time is for Polly, it's especially infuriating because Polly is in this very complicated position where Polly is facing discrimination because Polly is perceived as a woman. But actually understanding that Polly is not a woman, Polly has that concept, you know,

Polly is saying, I am a man, but then grappling with a world that is not recognizing that and then grappling with all the injustices that come with being perceived as a woman. Another part of the story that's particularly interesting, and again, this is the sort of question about gender and the dynamic between gender and race. It is traditional at this point in time for the person who graduates first in the class at Howard University's law school to be admitted to Harvard Law School's LLM program. And when Polly graduates, she is the first in her class, but she is denied this traditional acceptance to Harvard University's law school because she presents as a woman. So instead, she goes on to get an LLM at Berkeley

Law. I will note, having taught at Berkeley Law for 12 years, it is only in the last couple of years that her name has been really sort of touted as one of the prominent alumni of the school. So, I mean, she is lost even in the progressive history of Berkeley and everything that happened there in the 1940s. This is her story. I mean, she is showing in so many ways just the question of intersectionality. Like, you can be accepted in a place where race doesn't matter and still sort of get shafted because of gender, even as you struggle to understand your own gender. Yeah. I mean, actually, one of the audio tape interviews that we found

was an interview with Polly, I believe in the 1970s at Harvard. And it's a kind of wonderful coming around where she tells the story of how, hey, I couldn't get in here 30 years ago. And now here Polly is being interviewed about her various accomplishments. At that point, I believe she had already become an Episcopal priest. And that was one of the reasons why many people actually interviewed Polly, because she was the first African American female presenting Episcopal priest. And so that brought attention to Polly in the 1970s, and people began to look back at some of the other things that Polly had accomplished. So the film also discusses Polly's work founding now the National Organization of Women with women like Betty Friedan. I think that connects to a point that Talia, you were

gesturing toward that actually, former strict scrutiny guest Chase Strangio mentioned in a clip, which is that Polly uniquely understood, you know, discrimination and axes of discrimination, because she was, she bore the brunt of so much discrimination and so many different kinds of discrimination, like she could see how race, gender, gender identity, sex, sexuality, like intersected with one another, and how all of these things were contributing to her oppression that also allowed her to kind of like allied what was then, you know, an understanding about discrimination on the basis of race and extend it, you know, to other kinds of discrimination as well. And, you know, as you explained in the film, Marie coined the term Jane Crow to describe the discrimination she faced as a Black woman. And

she argued that the 14th Amendment prohibited not just discrimination on the basis of race, but discrimination on the basis of sex as well. I also just want to note, I keep saying she, I keep meaning to say Polly, but, you know, again, because, you know, her family members were also saying she and, you know, anyway, so I apologize if that is a mistake. But one of my favorite vignettes in the film, along these lines is, again, Eleanor Holmes Norton, who's just, I'm so glad you interviewed her and she's part of the film, asking herself, you know, why wasn't I a feminist then? And she says, no one was a feminist except Polly Murray. And Polly co-wrote a paper in which she said women's rights are part of human rights, you know, a line

that would become famous when Hillary Clinton kind of echoed it decades later. And this would be the logic that Ruth Bader Ginsburg relied upon happily citing Polly Murray in, you know, Ruth Bader Ginsburg's work at the ACLU. And so I guess I've kind of speculated about this and mentioned some of what the film says, but why is Polly so far out ahead of everybody else in thinking about discrimination and why and how discrimination is illegal. Polly had an extraordinarily creative brain. Let's face it, Polly was always ahead and always looking for the next thing, not a traditional thinker. And as you said, I think that Polly was radicalized by the treatment at Howard. Probably hadn't thought about it too much about this until getting to Howard and just being dismissed. You know, why do women bother going to law school? At one point, there was a chapter of a legal society that was only open to men. And when Polly questioned this, the dean said, well, just start your own chapter all by yourself.

And that was, I think, totally radicalizing for Polly. So while Polly was going on to fight civil rights and to fight for equality for African Americans, never forgot what it was like to be an African American woman. And as you say, was talking about what we now refer to as intersectionality, the concept of Jane Crow. You know, it really is a brilliant, creative idea that Polly had in the middle of the 1960s, way ahead of Polly's time. What can we say? She was brilliant. Polly was brilliant. And I do think there is something that comes from, you know, Polly's childhood coming from this family that has instilled so much pride in

Polly. Polly goes out into the world to build a great life. And at every turn, someone is giving the stupidest reason, as far as Polly can see, why she can't do X, Y, or Z. And that reason is because of your race, because of your gender. And Polly is just like, that is completely unacceptable. And so to Leah's point, you know, Polly is talking about civil rights at one point and talking about women's rights at another point, and ultimately does start to articulate a vision for human rights that we're not we don't need to just talk about women's issues. We don't need to just talk about rights for black people. We need to talk about rights for everyone. We need to have a universally inclusive society. And that is ultimately what Polly is working towards. I wanted to ask if any of you could say something about the relationship between Murray and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So as Melissa mentioned, you know, Ginsburg, to I think her real credit, does explicitly credit and center Polly's intellectual work, you know, as hugely responsible for her litigation campaign and, you know, puts her on

the read versus read brief. But and you have a couple of clips from RBG in the film, and she's obviously a huge admirer of Murray's. But but I found Ginsburg somewhat circumspect in the way she talked about Murray. So so any any other light you can shed on what the relationship or dynamic between the two was? Sure. I mean, I think on the one hand, the the you know, you guys have thoughtfully drawn the distinction between how Murray does get the credit in Ginsburg's brief versus on the Brown v. Board of Education brief.

I think RBG happened to have read and really absorbed Pauli Murray's paper that she co-wrote called Jane Crow and the Law. And RBG was in the room with a lot of male lawyers over her career where people had taken her ideas as their own and spouted them out. And the whole thing kind of pissed her off. And so I think that's what led her to say, like, well, of course, I would put Pauli Murray's name here as a nod. They actually had first met each other when Pauli Murray was an associate at Paul Weiss, and RBG showed up during law school as a summer associate. RBG didn't get an associate's job.

In her own mind, she says that the issue was that the Paul Weiss partners were thinking like, well, we've already got one woman. What do you want? We're not going to hire two women. That would be nuts. That was that early meeting where also Polly gave RBG a copy of a book that Polly had just written called Proud Shoes. That is an unbelievably interesting family historical memoir focusing a lot on 19th century history that we, I think, all hugely recommend. And, you know, RBG is very interested in writing and literature and was quite blown away by this book. Then they reconnected on the ACLU board, where, as you mentioned, RBG being circumspect, I mean, I think she's hinting at certain times, like, you know, Polly could be pretty prickly in those board meetings and

sometimes not really giving in to RBGs, like, oh, let's all like always catch your plans in terms that everyone is going to come to the table. Like, Polly was a more confrontational activist. You know, these two people had very different personal styles. RBG certainly was a huge admirer of Polly Murray's activism and intellect. But I don't know, you know, personally, I think they had very different ways of looking at the world. So you're saying that Polly Murray was not going to go to the opera with Antonin Scalia? I think you are so right about that, Melissa. Under no circumstances. I would want to go to the opera with Pauli Murray, just to be clear. I'd be with that. So another point of connection, and this did actually remind

me of your documentary about Justice Ginsburg. At one point in this film, you note that as someone without children and the demands of a family life, Polly Murray actually has the time and space to do this kind of work. Ginsburg obviously had children and a family, but she also had a very supportive partner who allowed her to carve out this kind of time. So can you say a little bit more about Polly Murray's personal life, how that may have opened up room for her to do this kind of work. So can you say a little bit more about Polly Murray's personal life, how that may have opened up room for her to do this kind of work, but also, you know, may have been a place where she got incredible support, but it wasn't the kind of public support that Marty Ginsburg was able to give to his wife. Well, Polly had this incredible relationship with a woman named Rini Barlow.

And that was really Polly's support system, ultimately. And they never lived together. They supported each other, but they never really had what we would see as like a traditional romantic relationship that would look like a pseudo marriage of sorts. But this is what ultimately gave Polly strength. And Polly also, we should say, had very close relationships with Polly's nieces and nephews and siblings. And so Polly did have a strong support system

and a strong emotional base and connection to younger people and to family. But it wasn't in the same way. And it's hard to know from Polly's writing if Polly felt like Polly missed out on that, if that was a disappointment in Polly's life. It's hard to see because I would say that Polly was very dedicated to advancing a career. And that really did seem to be the most important thing. Polly set out to have professional accomplishments and really devoted time to that and in some ways felt maybe liberated and felt privileged to be able to focus on that.

One of the professional accomplishments that was almost denied to Polly was tenure at Brandeis University, where Polly went to be a professor and the initial letter about Polly said that Polly's work lacked, quote, flair, brilliance, and conceptual power. This is literally the architect of Brown and modern sex discrimination law, which just makes me all the more annoyed that Spotswood Robinson would not publicly credit Polly's paper on Brown. But then toward the end of Polly's life, Polly chose to leave the law, you know, after attaining tenure and becoming one of the first, you know, people perceived as women to work at Paul Weiss, Polly chose to go to the ministry

because law could not give us the answers to the moral questions that so much of Polly's work confronted. And I was, you know, both curious about your thoughts about what this said about Polly's kind of end of career conclusions about the law, you know, given that this also has some parallels to Michelle Alexander's decision to leave the law for a post at the Union Theological Seminary?

Like, what does it say that these brilliant thinkers kind of come away with at the end, thinking maybe law is not the solution or the place. Yeah. You know, it's a totally surprising chapter in Polly's life. It completely took her friends and family by surprise, even though Polly had been a practicing Episcopalian for all Polly's life. But to give up everything, actually going to seminary at a time when it wasn't clear that women would be allowed to become priests. tenure, and a kind of financial security that Polly had never had or had rarely had in her life. I guess that Paul Weiss also had financial security. Throwing that over, it's a huge big deal. And maybe the restlessness of Polly, having challenged one thing and moving on to the next. We talked at length to Polly's great niece, Karen Rouse Ross, who knew Polly when Karen was growing up. And then as a young woman who makes the observation that Polly changed after seminary school, that Polly had found a kind of peace, as Karen puts it, that Polly,

when I was growing up, Polly wasn't a listener. Polly was a talker. Polly was an activist, was going out. And at the end of her life, Polly became more of a listener, also working very hard on the autobiography, looking inward. I don't know, maybe it was just the newest phase in Polly's life. I don't think that Polly was disavowing the importance of the work that had been done, both in civil rights and women's rights, but saying that there's something else that I personally need to do here to fulfill myself. I think it's important to recognize that Polly made this decision in the late 70s. And Brown versus Board of Education happened in the 50s. There were starting to be changes in rights for women. But Polly can see that there are

limitations to the law, that you can change what's legally required. That doesn't mean that things will change on the ground. You know, it's still today. It's like we are still trying to implement the integration of schools. And we are decades into this. And so there's a way in which I think that poly is starting to see in the 70s where there is this backlash to integrating schools. There is this backlash to women's rights. That maybe you need to change hearts and minds, that just changing it legally is not enough. And so Polly switches gears to say,

I actually need to get at the soul of people. That's what we really need to address. That goes to her point about segregation being immoral and ethical as much as a legal problem. You can address the legal problem, but if you haven't addressed the morality of those who are engaged in this, you've sort of lost half the battle. Right. I mean, we live in such a, there's so much of circles that I think a lot of us travel in that's so secular that it's hard to actually think of this spiritual decision as also being perhaps another way where Polly is just way ahead of the curve. Like if you take a bird's eye view of the problems of racism and sexism combined with Polly's own less discussed issues having to do with sexual identity and gender identity,

like maybe the best place to look for answers, maybe where you get the real answers is in spirituality. Like, why is that such a crazy thing? Like, maybe that's maybe that's the answer. And just another place where Pauli Murray is intellectually way ahead of the rest of us, even, you know, 35 years after after death. So Leah mentioned Pauli's time at Brandeis, you know, where she was initially denied tenure, did ultimately get tenure. And this is after a stint teaching law in Accra in Ghana and doing her JSD at Yale. And some of the discussion of the Brandeis chapter kind of notes the generational clash between her and some of her students, right, many of whom have come of

age in the civil rights movement and Black Power movement. And there's just like a disconnect, right? She does things like she continues to use the term Negroes. Her students are very uncomfortable about that. You know, you have two former students of hers who are just like wonderful characters, and I love the interviews with them. They were amazing to lay a track them down. And oh, my goodness, to talk to these men, you know, now in their mid 60s, looking back at their younger selves and their relationship with Polly, which didn't start out so well because they were clashing about some of these generational issues. Quite wonderful. Oh, just like some among my favorite moments in the film. Like, so great. This part of the film definitely did make me wonder whether there are parallels between that moment and that narrative and some of what we are seeing now in the academy. Either students, many of whom understand themselves to be quite radical, who are sort of unable to or unwilling to fully understand or credit their elders, their professors, and or elders, professors, who are not

able to translate their views to younger audiences. Like, all that dynamic just felt very familiar. We're old, is what she's saying. Our students are young, and we are not. Well, you know, Brittany Cooper has the great line that, you know, if Polly, who was a rabble rouser herself 30 years ago fighting for change, and if that change hadn't happened, couldn't quite understand why Polly's students were even angrier, as you pointed out. I mean, Brown v. Board had been 1955. And, you know, what's happening here? So, you know, it was a humanizing, I think, to see that Pauly, in some ways, was a little out of step with a younger generation at that point, and yet managed to forge this beautiful friendship with these two guys that they talk about that is one of our favorite

parts of the film. So this is probably a nice place for us to end what has been a really terrific conversation. But another theme that is surfaced throughout the film is Murray's own sense of her historical importance, right? I mean, Polly is painstakingly cataloging her papers in her will. She bequeaths her papers to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard. And there's something at once illuminating about that, but also a little bit tragic. Polly clearly understands the role that she is playing and the foundation she is laying that will eventually come to fruition. But as you say, she is not going to live to see her own ideas fully enveloped and embraced. And there's something sort of tragic and sad about that. What might

Polly make of this moment? There is now a college at Yale University that has been named for Polly Murray. Her name rings out in lots of different dimensions. She is credited with laying the foundation for trans rights and LGBTQ equality, not to mention sex-based equality. What might Polly have made of this moment where she's finally getting her due? You know, I think if somebody has a vision that's always pointing out into the distance and combined with a spirituality, that that situation of not being recognized till many years post-mortem might feel less tragic and more like another cause for hope. I mean, it feels like the, you know, just because we're on, happen to be talking on MLK Day,

the same idea of like, you know, I've looked ahead and I've seen the promised land and I might not get there with you, but that doesn't like the fact that the, you know, the arc of history is going in the right direction is cause for hope sort of no matter where I personally fall. And I think that, you know, I think by leaving works from a lifetime in Schlesinger Library, Polly Murray was hoping that the ideas would carry forth, it was less about the individual and more like a dream that ideas were going to come to fruition. What Polly said was, I've lived to see my lost causes found. This is yet another one. Polly was a very optimistic person, I think,

and had hope for the future and left behind this extraordinary story for all of us to discover. Which I have to say, I find to be one of the most admirable traits and really remarkable that you could imagine a different person becoming really embittered by the end. And Polly was the opposite of that. Polly was really optimistic about, you know, not just Polly's own legacy, but the future of our country and was really dedicated to that and to the very end. And I think it's really easy to be jaded after so many letdowns. And Polly was really, really the opposite. Okay, you're gonna make me cry like

now on this MLK day, as we're sort of mired in the pessimism of the moment. Like, let's reach in and tap into our inner Polly Murray's and be a little more hopeful, a little more optimistic. That's beautiful. Thank you so much for this extraordinary film and for joining us, Talia, Julie, and Betsy. Just absolutely terrific and moving. And listeners, you can watch this film. You can experience the joy, the rage, the heartbreak, and the inspiration.

The film, My Name is Polly Murray is accessible via the Sundance Film Festival, which is online this year fortuitously. And you can check it out and obtain a ticket at festival.sundance.org. There are actually two screenings. One is Sunday, January 31st at 6pm Eastern. And the second screening is Tuesday, February 2nd. And that second screening on February 2nd is a 24-hour window. So you can watch the film at any point during those 24 hours. So everyone stay safe, stay tuned, and find your inner Polly Murray. Many thanks to our producer, Melody Rowell, and Eddie Cooper, who does our music.

And many thanks and Happy New Year to our GLOW subscribers. If you'd like to support the podcast, please feel free to subscribe at glow.fm forward slash strict scrutiny.