Speaker 1: It's the spring of nineteen during World War Two, students
Speaker 1: at Howard University, the historically black college and Washington d C.
Speaker 1: Were frustrated. Many of the students who came to Howard
Speaker 1: came from other parts of the country where segregation didn't exist,
Speaker 1: so when they got to Howard, they found themselves in
Speaker 1: a neighborhood in Washington where the restaurants were segregated and
Speaker 1: the nearest one was a white restaurant that they couldn't
Speaker 1: have a meal at. The students sought help from the
Speaker 1: most capable person they knew, a thirty two year old
Speaker 1: black law student named Paully Murray. She was called upon
Speaker 1: by a group of undergraduates, mostly women, who were interested
Speaker 1: in trying to desegregate some of the restaurants and lunch counters,
Speaker 1: and so she advised them, and they actually did something
Speaker 1: they called stool sitting. The women, led by Murray, chose
Speaker 1: the Little Palace Cafeteria for their unusual brand of protests,
Speaker 1: and so Poli organized a sit in, one of the
Speaker 1: first in the entire country. On Saturday, April. The students,
Speaker 1: dressed in their Sunday best, left the Howard campus in
Speaker 1: groups of four and walked the ten minutes to the
Speaker 1: Little Palace Cafeteria. The first group of four arrived at
Speaker 1: the restaurant. Three students went inside, well one remained outside
Speaker 1: to observe. When the students were refused service, they took
Speaker 1: their empty trays to a table and sat down. They
Speaker 1: pulled out books and pretended to study. No one said
Speaker 1: a word. Then the next group of four students arrived
Speaker 1: and did the same thing, and then another. The students
Speaker 1: outside formed a picket line. They held signs that said
Speaker 1: things like our boys are fighting for you. Why can't
Speaker 1: we eat here? And we die together? Why can't we
Speaker 1: eat together? Police were dispatched, but they didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do about a large group of black women protesting
Speaker 1: peacefully at a restaurant, so they stood aside. The frustrated
Speaker 1: owners of the Little Palace Cafeteria closed the rest staurant
Speaker 1: eight hours early that day. Within forty eight hours, the
Speaker 1: restaurant agreed to serve black customers. It was an astounding
Speaker 1: civil rights victory, one well ahead of its time. It
Speaker 1: would be another fifteen years before there were successful restaurants
Speaker 1: sit ins in this country. That's right. In the early
Speaker 1: nineteen forties, a group of black women, led by a
Speaker 1: second year law student named Polly Murray, led the first
Speaker 1: successful restaurant sit in in the nation's capital. But you
Speaker 1: probably didn't read about it in school, nor are you
Speaker 1: likely to read much else about the Reverend Dr Polly Murray.
Speaker 1: Murray was a lawyer, scholar, and civil rights activist who
Speaker 1: was consistently ahead of her time, sometimes too far ahead.
Speaker 1: Her efforts laid the foundation for everything from the desegregation
Speaker 1: of American schools to the early legal victories of the
Speaker 1: women's movement, including a momentous law called Title nine. Finally,
Speaker 1: we gaine and ground. Dr Murray would expound, she lived
Speaker 1: to see her loss. We've made so much headway. Let
Speaker 1: us play, Let us plays. Welcome back to the thread.
Speaker 1: I'm Sean Braswell. This season we began in the summer
Speaker 1: of Welcome everyone to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California,
Speaker 1: as we prepare for the much anticipated final between China
Speaker 1: and the United States. Women's World Cup Final was more
Speaker 1: than a game. It was a defining moment in the
Speaker 1: history of sports and of civil rights. Brandy Chastain's game
Speaker 1: winning penalty kick for the U S national team had
Speaker 1: the weight of history behind it, And as we've seen
Speaker 1: on this season of The Thread, there were forces at
Speaker 1: play on that soccer ball beyond just those from chastain
Speaker 1: Is left foot. For one thing, that goal was assisted
Speaker 1: by the members of the first women's national teams in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen eighties, whose determination helped pave the way
Speaker 1: for the ninety nine team. It was choosing between doing
Speaker 1: something you loved, playing soccer, or building a career and
Speaker 1: actually making a living and having money. That was the
Speaker 1: choice that the players had to make. Chastain's goal was
Speaker 1: also the result of the members of the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six Yale women's crew team, whose daring naked protest helped
Speaker 1: expand opportunities for a new generation of female athletes. And
Speaker 1: if we were to say it's okay for us to
Speaker 1: be treated this way, what kind of message would that
Speaker 1: be for us to send out into the universe. And
Speaker 1: chast stains goal arose out of the thousands of girls
Speaker 1: and young women who joined sports teams in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies in the wake of a landmark anti discrimination law
Speaker 1: called Title nine. It arose thanks to the women who
Speaker 1: guided Title nine pass the goal line. Women like Bunny
Speaker 1: Sandler who when the doors of opportunity were slammed in
Speaker 1: their faces, decided to push until they opened. For millions
Speaker 1: of others. The doors gradually began to open as people
Speaker 1: begin to talk about equal opportunity for girls and women,
Speaker 1: and including women in sports. And once these doors opened,
Speaker 1: women just charged through. Bunny Sandler and others supplied the
Speaker 1: muscle and the tactics to get Title nine past in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, but to build the legal case against
Speaker 1: sex discrimination required a true pioneer, someone uniquely positioned to
Speaker 1: leverage the games made by the civil rights movement on
Speaker 1: the question of race during the nineteen sixties and apply
Speaker 1: them to the area of women's rights in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: That person was Polly Murray. She was constantly concerned about
Speaker 1: the fact that she didn't fit into the society around her.
Speaker 1: In an era that did not appreciate difference. Polly Murray
Speaker 1: was about as different as you could get. She was
Speaker 1: mixed race and transgender, discriminated against on the basis of
Speaker 1: her race and her x But by the sheer force
Speaker 1: of her own will, Polly Murray turned her difference into
Speaker 1: a source of strength. Anna Pauline Polly Murray was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen ten into very challenging circumstances. She was orphaned
Speaker 1: at three. Her mother died of a stroke. Rosalind Rosenberg
Speaker 1: is a professor Emerita at Barnard College in New York
Speaker 1: and the author of Jane Crowe, The Life of Polly Murray.
Speaker 1: Her father was committed to a mental hospital, and she
Speaker 1: was raised by her maternal grandparents and aunts in Durham,
Speaker 1: North Carolina. Young Polly experienced a profoundly segregated society in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. Barbara Law is executive director of the Polly
Speaker 1: Murray Center for History and Social Justice in Durham, North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Paully grew up in an important time period when there
Speaker 1: was a shift between the hope and excitement of reconstruction
Speaker 1: and the reinscription of Jim Crow and many segregation laws
Speaker 1: in the South. Both sides of Murray's family were of
Speaker 1: mixed race. She had ancestors who were slaves and slave owners.
Speaker 1: Skin color varied quite a bit within her own immediate family.
Speaker 1: This is Murray herself in an interview from the Southern
Speaker 1: Oral History Program Collection at the University of North Carolina
Speaker 1: at Chapel Hill. She's talking about a time when she
Speaker 1: was nine years old and went to the movies with
Speaker 1: her five siblings. It was very clear that at least
Speaker 1: four of us could go downtown to the movie soun
Speaker 1: Saturdays to the right movie houses, and two of us couldn't.
Speaker 1: And I happened to be one of the two. So
Speaker 1: that says something to you about why I would become
Speaker 1: a crusader for civil rights. But there were other reasons
Speaker 1: besides her race that made life hard for Murray. She
Speaker 1: believed from an early age that she was really a
Speaker 1: boy boy, and her family uh indulged her in this belief,
Speaker 1: calling her their boy girl. Throughout her youth, Murray preferred
Speaker 1: boys clothes, boys chores, boys games. But when she graduated
Speaker 1: from college and began writing, she chose the name Pauli
Speaker 1: p a U l I for herself because it corresponded
Speaker 1: to the sense of in between. This that she felt
Speaker 1: the sense of being in between was something that she
Speaker 1: felt from a very early age. Today, Murray might have
Speaker 1: been able to embrace her transgender identity and live as
Speaker 1: a transman if she wanted, but in the early twentieth
Speaker 1: century it was a bumpy road. She suffered nervous breakdowns,
Speaker 1: She had no language for her condition, no social movement
Speaker 1: or support network. She grew up looking her whole life
Speaker 1: for a way of becoming more male. But Murray didn't
Speaker 1: let her identity struggles hold her back. She was determined
Speaker 1: to succeed, and she was smart, really smart. She graduated
Speaker 1: first in her high school class in North Carolina. She
Speaker 1: was fifteen. She moved to New York, where her education
Speaker 1: was relegated to a series of second choices. She was
Speaker 1: rejected by Columbia University because she was a woman, so
Speaker 1: she attended Hunter College. Then, after the University of North
Speaker 1: Carolina rejected her for graduate school because of her race,
Speaker 1: she took up the cause of civil rights Barbara law again.
Speaker 1: She realized that she was strong enough to be the
Speaker 1: activist she wanted to be. She wrote in her journal
Speaker 1: that one woman plus a typewriter equals a movement, and
Speaker 1: Murray's activism inspired her to pack up her typewriter and
Speaker 1: go one step further and become a lawyer. Murray got
Speaker 1: a scholarship to attend Howard University Law School in Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. She wanted to learn how to fight back
Speaker 1: against racial discrimination. Author Rosalind Rosenberg again following Murray entered
Speaker 1: Howard Law School at the beginning of World War Two,
Speaker 1: and she thought that she had really found an institution
Speaker 1: where she could fit in. It had become the leading
Speaker 1: training ground of civil rights activists and lawyers. So she thought,
Speaker 1: this is perfect. I'm at a place I'll be accepted
Speaker 1: as African American. But Murray wasn't accepted. Howard Law School
Speaker 1: was an all male environment. Murray was the only woman
Speaker 1: in the entire school besides the school's registrar. She became
Speaker 1: aware of a whole new form of discrimination for the
Speaker 1: first time. This is how Murray described it. I became
Speaker 1: aware of sex prejudice. I became aware of it in
Speaker 1: my freshman year at law school. It came upon me
Speaker 1: as a terrible shop. I had not grown up in
Speaker 1: a family where limitations were placed upon women, and I
Speaker 1: never thought of myself in terms of women. I thought
Speaker 1: of myself in preparing to be a civil rights lawyer,
Speaker 1: you know, for this cause. Murray's realization happened quickly Rosalind Rosenberg.
Speaker 1: But on the first day of class, one of the professors,
Speaker 1: Uh and the other students began um lamenting the fact
Speaker 1: that here was a woman who had taken the place
Speaker 1: of a man, and she couldn't understand how people who
Speaker 1: were training to be civil rights lawyers could fail to
Speaker 1: see the parallel between discrimination on the basis of race
Speaker 1: Jim Crow and what she came to call discrimination on
Speaker 1: the basis of sex Jane Crowe. Murray was humiliated that
Speaker 1: first day of class, but she did not respond to
Speaker 1: her professor. She put it later, he guaranteed that I
Speaker 1: would become the top student in his class. Murray quickly
Speaker 1: learned that no matter how often she raised her hand
Speaker 1: in class, she would rarely be called on. Murray only
Speaker 1: worked harder. By the end of her first year, she
Speaker 1: ranked first in her class. She focused her energies elsewhere
Speaker 1: to including on the sit in she organized in the
Speaker 1: local community. Murray graduated from Howard Law School in still
Speaker 1: first in her class and the only woman. But Murray
Speaker 1: had accomplished even more than that in law school, more
Speaker 1: than she or anyone else could have known. By the
Speaker 1: time she graduated from law school, Murray had sketched out
Speaker 1: a legal argument that would change the face of America.
Speaker 1: That's next on the thread. Polly Murray attended law school
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties when racial inequality was still rampant
Speaker 1: in America, segregation was legal thanks to a Supreme Court
Speaker 1: decision in the famous case of Plessy versus Ferguson, in
Speaker 1: which the court blessed separate but equal facilities for blacks
Speaker 1: and whites. Murray decided to address the Plessy case in
Speaker 1: segregation in her final year of law school Barbara Law
Speaker 1: the director of the Polly Murray Center. As a third
Speaker 1: year student, Poully wrote a final paper, and she decided
Speaker 1: to take on what had been a very thorny issue
Speaker 1: uh school desegregation. And instead of the strategies that had
Speaker 1: been employed by many of these attorneys to push for
Speaker 1: the separate but equal, improving the equal side of the equation,
Speaker 1: Paully felt like it was important to take on schools
Speaker 1: segregation head on. Murray senior paper laid out a legal
Speaker 1: strategy to strike down Plessy and racial segregation in the US.
Speaker 1: She argued that it violated the thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution,
Speaker 1: which outlawed slavery, and the fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees blacks
Speaker 1: and other Americans equal protection of the laws. Again. Author
Speaker 1: Rosalind Rosenberg Paully's contribution was to argue that it was
Speaker 1: time for lawyers to attack discrimination and segregation head on,
Speaker 1: and to argue that both were illegal under the Thirteenth
Speaker 1: and the fourteenth Amendments because they were based on categories
Speaker 1: that were illegitimate. Murray made her case with a deep
Speaker 1: dive into the history surrounding the Plessy case and other
Speaker 1: decisions and laws supporting segregation. My intense desire was to
Speaker 1: find a legal basis for overruling the segregation positions, and
Speaker 1: I worked on that intensively for almost a whole year,
Speaker 1: going back through the congressional records of the period to
Speaker 1: try to see if I could not show that the
Speaker 1: thirteenth Amendment was intended to strike down not only the
Speaker 1: legal relationship of slavery but also the badges of servitude.
Speaker 1: Marie's classmates and professors laughed when they heard her argument.
Speaker 1: Most civil rights lawyers considered Plessy to be settled law
Speaker 1: and therefore pointless to attack. Barbara Lau people didn't think
Speaker 1: much of this argument at the time she wrote the paper.
Speaker 1: She actually made a bet with one of her law
Speaker 1: professors that Plessy versus. Ferguson would be overturned in twenty
Speaker 1: five years and people thought that was actually comical. But
Speaker 1: as we know, she won that bet Rosalind Rosenberg, Murray
Speaker 1: was able to persuade an old friend Third Good Marshal,
Speaker 1: who was head of litigation at the Double A CP,
Speaker 1: that her argument could work, and in fact, in only
Speaker 1: ten years ninety four the argument one in Brown versus
Speaker 1: Board of Education and segregation was deemed illegal. The Supreme
Speaker 1: Court's unanimous decision in Brown versus Board of Education is
Speaker 1: perhaps the most significant in its history. Third Good Marshall
Speaker 1: called Murray's scholarship the quote bible of the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1: The few law students learned about Murray's role in crafting
Speaker 1: the argument that carried the day in Brown Barbara Law. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Pauli was never acknowledged for that contribution, but her ideas
Speaker 1: and legal strategies would win out over and over throughout
Speaker 1: her life. The victory and Brown was just the start
Speaker 1: of Murray's legal legacy and her impact as a legal scholar,
Speaker 1: but the journey was riddled with setbacks. Murray won a
Speaker 1: prestigious fellowship when she graduated from Howard. The fellowship allowed
Speaker 1: its recipients to attend Harvard Law School for a graduate
Speaker 1: legal study, at least its male recipients. Paul Murray, I
Speaker 1: did not know that Harvard did not admit women, and
Speaker 1: and did not believe my professors and fellow students when
Speaker 1: they kidded me and said how Harvard would not let
Speaker 1: me in because I was a woman. Murray experienced another
Speaker 1: formative rejection at the March on Washington. In Those of
Speaker 1: you who listened to season three of The Thread about
Speaker 1: the History of non violence will remember the important role
Speaker 1: that a Quaker name Bayard Rustin played in organizing the
Speaker 1: famous march. Rustin, like Murray, was an outsider, an unsung
Speaker 1: civil rights leader who suffered from what he called the
Speaker 1: double cross of being black and gay. His non violent
Speaker 1: protest tactics were one of the inspirations for the sit
Speaker 1: in Murray organized at Howard. Author Rosalind Rosenberg Well Rustin
Speaker 1: was an old friend. They had met in the early forties,
Speaker 1: and she admired him greatly, but she was furious when
Speaker 1: she learned that Ruston was going to confine the speakers
Speaker 1: at the March on Washington two men. The March on
Speaker 1: Washington was a historic event. Just before dawn, the marchers
Speaker 1: began to assemble here first in a trickle of hundreds,
Speaker 1: then by the thousands, still by eleven this morning, they
Speaker 1: stood almost a shoulder to shoulder, nearly two hundred thousand strong,
Speaker 1: ready to make the long walk down Constitution Avenue to
Speaker 1: the Lincoln Memorial. But that day, not a single woman
Speaker 1: walked alongside leaders like Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaker 1: At the front of the march. Not a single woman
Speaker 1: stood at the podium to address the massive crowd at
Speaker 1: the Lincoln Memorial, a fact that did not go unnoticed
Speaker 1: by Polly Murray Barbara laugh She just couldn't understand why
Speaker 1: they couldn't see the hypocrisy of this, that they were
Speaker 1: fighting for the rights of people independent of their race,
Speaker 1: but they couldn't see how their actions were turning around
Speaker 1: and discriminating against women when women were the backbone of
Speaker 1: the organizations and the actions of the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1: Murray could see the hypocrisy, and that understanding might have
Speaker 1: frustrated her, but it also set her apart from most
Speaker 1: of the other civil rights leaders of her generation. Murray
Speaker 1: called race and sex her quote, two problems I must
Speaker 1: always be concerned not theoretically, but I must be involved
Speaker 1: with and necessarily concerned with racial liberation, but I must
Speaker 1: also personally be concerned with sexual liberation because the two
Speaker 1: is I often say the two meet in meet Rosalind Rosenberg.
Speaker 1: Pably Murray coined the term Jane Crowe while at law
Speaker 1: school as a alternative to Jim Crowe. And what she
Speaker 1: meant by Jane Crowe was that discrimination on the basis
Speaker 1: of sex or we would now say gender, was just
Speaker 1: as rumful as discrimination on the basis of race, and
Speaker 1: that in fact, Black women had the double discrimination of
Speaker 1: race and gender. And in nineteen sixty four, Polly Murray
Speaker 1: got to put her ideas about double discrimination to good
Speaker 1: use in support of a historic piece of legislation. The
Speaker 1: civil rights movement had been pressing for federal legislation to
Speaker 1: support civil rights for decades, but it had always been
Speaker 1: buried in committee in Congress by Southern conservatives. The Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Act of nineteen sixty four was fiercely debated in Congress.
Speaker 1: A key amendment added a single word to Title seven,
Speaker 1: the part of the bill that dealt with discrimination and employment,
Speaker 1: and that amendment was the word sex. That employers should
Speaker 1: be barred from discriminating not only on the basis of
Speaker 1: race and national origin and religion, but also on the
Speaker 1: basis of sex. Many members of Congress did not think
Speaker 1: that sex discrimination should be in the bill. Others hoped
Speaker 1: its inclusion would sink the bill altogether. So supporters were
Speaker 1: desperate to make their case that sex belonged alongside race
Speaker 1: and the legislation. Not surprisingly, they came to Murray for help.
Speaker 1: Pauly Murray decided to write a memo, and she wrote
Speaker 1: a memo um advancing the idea that in order for
Speaker 1: race discrimination to be effective, it had to be effective
Speaker 1: for black women as well as black men. Murray's argument
Speaker 1: that sex and race discrimination operated to reinforce one another
Speaker 1: provided the ammunition needed to solidify support around the bill,
Speaker 1: and that that memo, among massive support from many other
Speaker 1: women leaders UH, finally led to sex being put back
Speaker 1: in the bill. Murray had quietly shaped the course of
Speaker 1: legal history. Yet again, Longress passes the most sweeping civil
Speaker 1: rights bill ever to be written into the law, and
Speaker 1: thus reaffirms the conception of equality that began with Lincoln
Speaker 1: and the Civil Law. One years ago, Paully Murray was
Speaker 1: just getting warmed up Title seven of the Civil Rights
Speaker 1: Act of nineteen sixty four created a new legal framework
Speaker 1: for enforcing equality in America, but it did not outlaw
Speaker 1: sex discrimination wholesale, and most Americans, including everyone from members
Speaker 1: of Congress to civil rights lawyers, still did not take
Speaker 1: sex discrimination seriously. To get from Title seven to Title
Speaker 1: nine eight years later, not to mention, the landmark cases
Speaker 1: won by lawyers like Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies required much more work up next. How Polly Murray
Speaker 1: crafted another winning legal strategy, one that would help extend
Speaker 1: the gains made by the civil rights movement during the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties to the women's movement of the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: The late nineteen sixties was a period of frustration in
Speaker 1: the women's movement in America. Women's groups were disorganized. They
Speaker 1: couldn't agree on the best legal or political strategies to
Speaker 1: advance their interests. Should they be pushing for a constitutional amendment,
Speaker 1: the so called Equal Rights Amendment, in order to achieve
Speaker 1: ginger equality, could they afford to wait for such a measure?
Speaker 1: Pauli Murray stepped into this chaos with an answer, one
Speaker 1: built upon her own experiences with discrimination and her successful
Speaker 1: legal argument in Brown versus Board of Education, Murray wrote
Speaker 1: a key legal article entitled Jane Crow and the Law.
Speaker 1: She argued the solution to the problem of sex discrimination
Speaker 1: lay in an expanded understanding of the Equal Protection Clause
Speaker 1: of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court had endorsed Murray's
Speaker 1: argument in Brown that race was an unreasonable basis for
Speaker 1: classification under the Equal Protection Clause. Why not try to
Speaker 1: persuade the court that sex was also an unacceptable basis?
Speaker 1: Author Rosalind Rosenberg and the argument was the argument she'd
Speaker 1: been making all of her life, that gender, like race,
Speaker 1: is an arbitrary category without clear boundaries, and therefore an
Speaker 1: illegitimate basis for discrimination in the law. Murray's legal arguments
Speaker 1: also had an impact on one particular young lawyer, Ruth
Speaker 1: Bader Ginsburg, took a position at Rector's Law School in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen sixties. A group of students asked her
Speaker 1: to teach a course on women in the law. Ginsburg
Speaker 1: had never taught that before, so she spent the summer
Speaker 1: researching the area. One of the articles that she read
Speaker 1: over that summer was Jane Crow and the and the Law.
Speaker 1: The article itself became the basis of the first brief
Speaker 1: that she wrote that one a victory in the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: The case was read the read decided in ninetee, in
Speaker 1: which the Supreme Court for the first time ruled that
Speaker 1: the equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment could be
Speaker 1: used to protect women from gender discrimination. Ginsburg acknowledged her
Speaker 1: debt to Paully Murray. She put Murray's name along with
Speaker 1: the name of another trailblazing lawyer, Dorothy Kenyon, on the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court brief in read. Two names appear on the
Speaker 1: cover of Paully Murray and Dorothy Kenyon. This is Ginsburg,
Speaker 1: now a justice on the U. S. Supreme Court. In
Speaker 1: we knew that we were standing on their shoulders. They
Speaker 1: were saying the same thing in the fifties and the
Speaker 1: sixties that we were saying in the seventies. Thanks to
Speaker 1: lawyers like Ginsburg, Murray's Fourteenth Amendment strategy was vindicated, and
Speaker 1: over the course of the nineteen seventies, a series of
Speaker 1: victories were one based on Murray's argument that sex discrimination
Speaker 1: paralleled race discrimination. One of those victories was the passage
Speaker 1: of Title nine Rosalind Rosenberg. Pauly Murray's argument that gender
Speaker 1: was like race an arbitrary category with no clear boundaries
Speaker 1: was essential to the passage of Title nine. By arguing
Speaker 1: that discrimination against someone just because she was a girl
Speaker 1: was constitutionally impermissible. That meant a there was tremendous pressure
Speaker 1: brought against schools to begin to provide girls with the
Speaker 1: same kinds of opportunities that boys had always been able
Speaker 1: to take for granted. Poly Murray died in at the
Speaker 1: age of seventy four. Before her death, she accomplished many
Speaker 1: more historic firsts. She was a co founder of now,
Speaker 1: the National Organization for Women. She was the first African
Speaker 1: American to receive a doctorate from Yale Law School. She
Speaker 1: was ordained as the first black female priest in the
Speaker 1: Episcopal Church. The list goes on. Rosalind Rosenberg says poly
Speaker 1: Murray used her own in between identity as a bridge,
Speaker 1: a bridge between white and black, male and female, rich
Speaker 1: and poor, a bridge to fight for the acceptance of
Speaker 1: all people's society detegrated as different. Poly Murray never publicly
Speaker 1: identified herself as a lesbian or as transgender. She never
Speaker 1: argued that uh there should should be equality for gays
Speaker 1: and lesbians or for transgender people, but she spoken code
Speaker 1: she spoke about the importance of protecting social minorities. Barbara
Speaker 1: laugh She was just so ahead of her time in
Speaker 1: so many ways that people didn't understand the gravity of
Speaker 1: what she was suggesting. So what I always say is,
Speaker 1: while she might not have been a woman of her time,
Speaker 1: she is certainly a woman of our time. And Murray's
Speaker 1: words continue to resonate today. As one begins to assume
Speaker 1: that one is equal to other people, not superita, not
Speaker 1: in fury, but equal as a human being, one does
Speaker 1: begin to feel free. I cannot persuade or force other
Speaker 1: Americans to live up to this tree, but I do
Speaker 1: have a personal responsibility for doing my part to make
Speaker 1: this dream come true as as much as possible. Next,
Speaker 1: in our final episode of this season, we arrive at
Speaker 1: the origin of our thread, title seven of the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Act of nineteen sixty four. Paul Murray helped keep
Speaker 1: the words sex in that law, but she was not
Speaker 1: the woman responsible for the word being in there in
Speaker 1: the first place. When the laughter stops, Martha Griffith stands
Speaker 1: up and says, you know, I guess if there's any
Speaker 1: question that women are a second class, you know your
Speaker 1: response would prove that we'll learn more about Martha Griffith's
Speaker 1: the formidable congresswoman behind Title seven sex discrimination ban, and
Speaker 1: we'll bring things full circle back to women's soccer. In
Speaker 1: March nineteen, the current U S women's national team filed
Speaker 1: a gender discrimination lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation that
Speaker 1: alleges unequal pay in working conditions. And do you know
Speaker 1: what the main law is that the team claims was violated?
Speaker 1: You got it? Title seven of the Civil Rights Act
Speaker 1: of nineteen has the author William Faulkner famously put it,
Speaker 1: the past is never dead. It's not even past. Let
Speaker 1: us play, let us play la let us Play. The
Speaker 1: Threat is produced by Robert Coolos, Shannon Williamson, and me
Speaker 1: Sean Braswell. Evan Roberts edited our show and it was
Speaker 1: mixed and mastered by Matt Temarillo. This episode features the
Speaker 1: song let Us Play, written and performed by Tea cup Jack.
Speaker 1: To learn more about the thread, visit azzy dot com,
Speaker 1: Slash the Threat all one word, and make sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe to the thread on Apple Podcasts, follow us on
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, or listen wherever you get your podcasts