Speaker 1: Hey, everybody doing out there. I'm too full of casella.
Speaker 1: Case it did it? Oh, case it did it. That's good.
Speaker 1: I did I over case I did it. Like I'm
Speaker 1: not normally a case of dilla. I wouldn't order that
Speaker 1: at a restaurant, but I don't know. I was just
Speaker 1: feeling it tonight. Yeah. It feels like when I order
Speaker 1: a case of dia. It always feels like the kid's menu,
Speaker 1: you know, like, Oh, you didn't want like a real meal,
Speaker 1: so you just put cheese on veggies for you, and
Speaker 1: here you go, here's your mac and cheese. Like it's
Speaker 1: the Mexican equivalent of a mac and cheese. No, it's
Speaker 1: a grilled cheese. Yeah, sure, yeah, same same energy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe cheese is making a comeback. Sure, there's gourmet girl
Speaker 1: cheese all over the place. All right, all right, uh
Speaker 1: show me teach me cheese out there. Y'all have heard
Speaker 1: we're about to take a trip and we're going out
Speaker 1: to l A. So it's but we've had Mexican food
Speaker 1: twice in Atlanta's got good Mexican, don't get me wrong, Um,
Speaker 1: but I've been like, we're about to get some of
Speaker 1: the best Mexican food in the country, so I'll be
Speaker 1: fine with the CA city at a night. I'm not
Speaker 1: worried about the local tacicos. I've got a list of
Speaker 1: tacos length of my army that we're going to definitely
Speaker 1: be putting in our face holes. Yeah, I can't wait.
Speaker 1: So good, so excited, But not right now. I'm not
Speaker 1: excited for food at all at all. Just too much,
Speaker 1: too much. It was one of those things that I
Speaker 1: was like halfway through the plate and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm done eating now, but I'm not going to
Speaker 1: stop eating. It wasn't even that good, just like it's
Speaker 1: here and now it's gone. Yeah, yeah, don't put food
Speaker 1: in front of me please. Well, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we can't sit here and have a nice conversation about
Speaker 1: a cool person. Yeah, yeah we can. We can have
Speaker 1: a meal of a Oh yeah, we'll really make a
Speaker 1: meal out of this, make a meal out of this story.
Speaker 1: We're meals and you'll be even more full. Yeah. I'm
Speaker 1: so excited to have you back for part two of
Speaker 1: the Dr Paully Murray story. I hope you loved part one, Yes,
Speaker 1: I did. Fascinating person with a fascinating history and a
Speaker 1: whole complicated bunch of stuff going on that just I
Speaker 1: don't always I don't know if I've mentioned, but it's
Speaker 1: fascinating to learn a new word. Bro, I can't. I'm
Speaker 1: too full. It's too late for me. Dr Paully Murray
Speaker 1: is like, what the hell are they talking about? Their right?
Speaker 1: The disrespect? I apologize, I am an. Yes, you're right,
Speaker 1: you're right. I have some respect for real, for real,
Speaker 1: in fact, Yeah, forget me and my case of the
Speaker 1: l Let's just get into it, yes, so, yes, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Part two of Dr Polly Murray. Last time we
Speaker 1: talked about Polly's time riding the rails and hanging out
Speaker 1: in the Harlem Renaissance, and her present her presentation as
Speaker 1: mail for a few years, and her first heartbreak and
Speaker 1: one of her first triumphs, which was when her arguments
Speaker 1: helped their good Marshall overturned. Plus c V. Ferguson how
Speaker 1: life dream achieved. But she has so much more to
Speaker 1: accomplish and love to find, love to find exactly. So
Speaker 1: let's hear everything else about Polly Murray. Let's go, Hey,
Speaker 1: their French come listen. Well, Elia and Diana got some
Speaker 1: stories to tell. There's no matchmaking, a romantic tips. It's
Speaker 1: just about ridiculous relationships, a love. It might be any
Speaker 1: type of person at all, and abstract cons don't a
Speaker 1: concrete wall. But if there's a story. Were the second
Speaker 1: Glance Ridiculous Roles a production of I Heart Radio. So
Speaker 1: we picked back up in nineteen fifty six when Polly
Speaker 1: was invited to join the law firm Paul Weiss, Rifkin,
Speaker 1: Wharton and Garrison. Many names, my guys, do you think?
Speaker 1: I wonder if lawyers meet up and they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: they want to start a firm together, but one of
Speaker 1: them's name is like, you know, Greg Smith, and they're like,
Speaker 1: I'm not putting Smith on the sign outside. We only
Speaker 1: take really wild and crazy names Wiss, Rifkin, Wharton, and Garrison.
Speaker 1: What if the names don't flow together and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: this partnership is over, gentlemen. Good day. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: like Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton and Banks. Actually there's I mean
Speaker 1: many a lawyer, many a lawyer name Banks, and I'm
Speaker 1: related to many of them. Well, Paully worked for Paul Weiss, Rifkin,
Speaker 1: Wharton and Garrison, and there she was again the only
Speaker 1: black person and one of three women in sixty plus lawyers,
Speaker 1: and two of those women soon left, so she's really
Speaker 1: standing a loan Polly. But a summer associate named Ruth
Speaker 1: Bader Ginsburg joined them briefly, and the future Supreme Court
Speaker 1: justice was so inspired by Polly that she even called
Speaker 1: Polly her legal Heroka. Well, there's more on that later.
Speaker 1: I wonder if when she first came in as the
Speaker 1: summer associate, if she walked in because her name was
Speaker 1: Joan Ruth Bader is her, you know her the name
Speaker 1: she was born with. She went by Ruth and then
Speaker 1: married Ginsburg. I wonder if she walked in it was like, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Joan Bader and they were like, now, no, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work. It's lackluster. I don't know what you need.
Speaker 1: But it's something like, what's what's your middle name? Ruth? Okay,
Speaker 1: it's a start. Let's start with Ruth. Could do something
Speaker 1: with that, Ruth Bader. It's just something missing. You gotta
Speaker 1: marry a Ginsburg. Also in nine six, Polly published her
Speaker 1: second book, which was called Proud Shoes, The Store of
Speaker 1: an American Family, and it explored her family's history. You
Speaker 1: know that miniature United Nations that she kind of had
Speaker 1: grown up with. And it was released twenty years before
Speaker 1: Alex Haley's Roots, so it's credited as the seminal work
Speaker 1: on African American genealogy. Cool. That's a very cool little factoid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had to throw that in there. But that's not all.
Speaker 1: She also met Irene Barlow, the lovely office manager at
Speaker 1: Paul Weiss, and she was probably the most enduring romance
Speaker 1: of Polly's life. They never lived together, but Barbara Law
Speaker 1: who's the director of the Polly Murray Project at the
Speaker 1: Duke Human Rights Center, says, quote, they had dogs together,
Speaker 1: they had cars together, and they went on vacations together.
Speaker 1: So I mean, that's that's it, right, If you got
Speaker 1: a dog with someone, that's to me, that's stronger than marriage.
Speaker 1: I was basically like sharing a kid. I mean a
Speaker 1: little less like sharing a kid, but sort of if
Speaker 1: you have some custody things to work out. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people are like, oh, that was
Speaker 1: her closest companion or companion, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Best friends be very close. Best they're such good friends,
Speaker 1: they hold hands when they're walking on the street together.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's generally accepted that they were romantically entangled,
Speaker 1: and entanglement much like Peg homes her first love. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot about Irene herself out there to find.
Speaker 1: So I think we should pull into speculation station and
Speaker 1: imagine they're being cute. You know, there's an office romance
Speaker 1: we're talking about. I don't know. Maybe maybe Irene's carrying
Speaker 1: like like a big bunch of heavy law books like
Speaker 1: Chelle and uh Paul. He's got all these like binders
Speaker 1: full of case work, but she's got And there they
Speaker 1: both come around the corner crash and then they're like
Speaker 1: stammering like apologies and collecting, and they don't really notice
Speaker 1: each other. And then I've got mine and oh those eyes, Hi, Irene? Hi?
Speaker 1: What was your name again? Oh, Polly? Okay, Irene doesn't really.
Speaker 1: Irene wasn't great about learning people's names. She's the one
Speaker 1: thing that helped her that that held her back. Otherwise
Speaker 1: she's so good her job, and everyone was like Irene
Speaker 1: was so bad with names. I love this story we're
Speaker 1: building for them. Oh, I love it. Little rom com
Speaker 1: and yeah. Their relationship spanned seventeen years, but Polly actually
Speaker 1: destroyed many of their letters between each other, and she
Speaker 1: doesn't say much about Irene in her memoir other than
Speaker 1: to call her my closest friends. So even Polly was
Speaker 1: kind of like we were roommates, you know. I think
Speaker 1: even she was kind of a little bit cagy about
Speaker 1: this romance. And as the New Yorker article, which is
Speaker 1: called The Many Lives of Polly Murray points out, quote,
Speaker 1: by leaving her a gender identity and romantic history out
Speaker 1: of her autobiography, Murray necessarily leaves out something else as well,
Speaker 1: the lifetime of emotional distress they caused. From the time
Speaker 1: she was nineteen, Murray suffered breakdowns almost annually, some of
Speaker 1: them culminating in hospitalizations, all of them triggered either by
Speaker 1: feeling as if she were a man or by having
Speaker 1: feelings for a woman. She wrote once to her aunt Pauline, quote,
Speaker 1: this conflict rises up to knock me down at every
Speaker 1: apex I reach in my career. And she reached a
Speaker 1: lot of apexes, so you can see that that would
Speaker 1: be a very constant thing. And to her doctor, she wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: anything you can do to help me will be gratefully appreciated,
Speaker 1: because my life is somewhat unbearable. In its present phase.
Speaker 1: It's like we talked about in the last episode, you know,
Speaker 1: that sort of comp located swirling issues around uh, gender
Speaker 1: and identity and conversations. Especially for someone like Paul. He
Speaker 1: is living through this with with no no guidance, basically
Speaker 1: no precedent um, you know, and really kind of trying
Speaker 1: to understand yourself. And I hope that people can hear
Speaker 1: stories like that and understand that this is not a
Speaker 1: new phenomenon. This is not something that's made up, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, by gen z for for for whatever purposes.
Speaker 1: People think that gender identity is made up for. This
Speaker 1: is something that people genuinely, earnestly really suffer with dysphoria
Speaker 1: and their their own personal identity versus what you know,
Speaker 1: society wants to project on them. Uh. It's a really
Speaker 1: challenging issue that we're still working on. We're still having
Speaker 1: conversations about. Uh. And again, like I said before, I
Speaker 1: don't know why you wouldn't be totally content to just
Speaker 1: kind of sit back and listen. Um, Well, anybody's got
Speaker 1: to stick there now, isn't It is beyond me? It's
Speaker 1: true has really well. We did that because because it's
Speaker 1: very clear when you see someone like Polly or you know,
Speaker 1: if if you know anyone out there today, talk to them.
Speaker 1: This is a really difficult situation for them to be in,
Speaker 1: and it can cause intense mental and even physical illness
Speaker 1: like anguish. Yeah, yeah, Like you can't comprehend what that
Speaker 1: means for someone to go through. You honestly cannot. I cannot,
Speaker 1: None of us can without going through it. So it
Speaker 1: just accept it, Just accept and and offer what you
Speaker 1: can and just let people be them damselves really well
Speaker 1: and like to go through all that and then on
Speaker 1: to throw on top of them an additional layer of intolerance,
Speaker 1: potential violence and crazy restrictions on your life. Is like,
Speaker 1: it's already hard enough all by itself. It doesn't need
Speaker 1: any help from you to be difficult, and no one
Speaker 1: is doing it to have a good time. And that
Speaker 1: was something that really was driven home to me by
Speaker 1: Lily Elbe when she was really describing in her diaries
Speaker 1: what it was like to go through those changes. I
Speaker 1: was really like, she was made herself sick all the time,
Speaker 1: and no one would choose that, do you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying? It is happening whether she wanted it or not,
Speaker 1: because the sickness comes from the intolerance, right. The sickness
Speaker 1: comes from the stress of saying, well, I feel like this,
Speaker 1: that I this is who I am, and this is
Speaker 1: what I need myself to be, and yet I can't
Speaker 1: be that because some people are going to give me
Speaker 1: more than a hard time about it, but actually put
Speaker 1: my life in danger potentially because of it. And that
Speaker 1: that's what makes it such a dangerous and damaging issue.
Speaker 1: People should be allowed to be themselves freely and openly,
Speaker 1: and then it wouldn't be psychologically damaging. It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: putting people in the damn hospital if they didn't have
Speaker 1: to worry about how how twisted the world is gonna
Speaker 1: make them out to be and feel. And imagine all
Speaker 1: the help that Polly could have gotten from the Magnus
Speaker 1: Hirshfield Institute. If oh my god, absolutely back in the
Speaker 1: Lilyeube episode, if if you haven't heard that you should,
Speaker 1: But if you haven't, there was a whole hospital in
Speaker 1: Germany dedicated to studying LGBT issues in a very open
Speaker 1: and accepting way that was like unheard of at the time.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know there was anything like this at
Speaker 1: the time. I guess what the Nazis came in and
Speaker 1: burned that place to the ground and destroyed all their
Speaker 1: records and killed the doctor in charge. We should probably
Speaker 1: do an episode just about the magnets Field Hospital, honestly so.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty Paully left the US for the first
Speaker 1: time when she accepted a job at the newly opened
Speaker 1: Ghana School of Law, but she only stayed there for
Speaker 1: a year before returning in nineteen sixty one when she
Speaker 1: was appointed to President Kennedy's Presidential Commission on the Status
Speaker 1: of Women. Status It's bad, she in, like, I got,
Speaker 1: I got, I got the memo for you. I know
Speaker 1: the status it's funked up out there in the streets.
Speaker 1: So she wrote a memo arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment
Speaker 1: forbade sex discrimination as much as racial discrimination, and she
Speaker 1: didn't let civil rights leaders off the hook for sex
Speaker 1: discrimination either. In nineteen sixty three, she criticized the March
Speaker 1: on Washington because not a single woman was included in
Speaker 1: either the major keynotes speaking lineup or in the delegation
Speaker 1: sent to speak with the White House. She wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: I have been increasingly perturbed over the blatant disparity between
Speaker 1: the major role which black women have played and are
Speaker 1: playing in the crucial grassroots level of our struggle, and
Speaker 1: the minor role of leadership they have been assigned in
Speaker 1: the national policy making decisions. It is indefensible to call
Speaker 1: a national march on Washington and send a call which
Speaker 1: contains the name of not a single woman leader amen
Speaker 1: for real in the world. So true, right, and certainly
Speaker 1: not for me to criticize the March on Washington, But
Speaker 1: we can definitely look at that and say, yeah, y'all
Speaker 1: forget somebody. Well again, Polly is intersectional as fuck. She's like,
Speaker 1: you should not be leaving out Rosa Parks and Fanny
Speaker 1: lou Hamer and me. I mean, she never said herself,
Speaker 1: but she would have been a great speaker to what
Speaker 1: are y'all doing? You had some wonderful speakers at your fingertips,
Speaker 1: so I totally get that. In ninety three, Congress was
Speaker 1: debating the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited employment discrimination based
Speaker 1: on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, and some
Speaker 1: civil rights leaders wanted to take out the word sex because,
Speaker 1: according to Forbes, they thought the inclusion would shift focus
Speaker 1: away from black people to white women or sink the
Speaker 1: bill entirely, which is very interesting and often true. I
Speaker 1: guess I've heard that about affirmative action as well, that
Speaker 1: if you look at the numbers, it's benefited white women
Speaker 1: the most interest of any group. I would have to
Speaker 1: double check that, so I will put myself in corrections
Speaker 1: quarter later I have to. But I have heard that.
Speaker 1: But Polly decimated that argument. She wrote a memo saying
Speaker 1: that if they took out the word sex, only half
Speaker 1: the black population would be protected, since black women, millions
Speaker 1: of home worked and supported families already could still be
Speaker 1: fired due to their gender. She wrote, quote, it is
Speaker 1: exceedingly difficult for a black woman to determine whether or
Speaker 1: not she is being discriminated against because of race or sex.
Speaker 1: These two types of discrimination are so closely intertwined and
Speaker 1: so similar that black women are uniquely qualified to affirm
Speaker 1: their interrelatedness. She also wrote an article in titled Jane
Speaker 1: Crow and a Law, Sex Discrimination and Title seven, explaining
Speaker 1: how certain legal statutes meant to protect civil rights still
Speaker 1: limited the scope of liberties afforded to women. By the way,
Speaker 1: She's been enrolled at Yale for a couple of years
Speaker 1: at this point, and became the first black woman to
Speaker 1: earn a Doctor of Juridical Science degree there in. So
Speaker 1: she's doing all this meanwhile she's also in Yale Credible
Speaker 1: and hopefully having some lovely dinners at home with Irene
Speaker 1: I hope. So I mean again, I think I said
Speaker 1: this in last episode two, but I am so fascinated
Speaker 1: with her just way with words. I mean, the way
Speaker 1: she puts things makes things, makes these issues make so
Speaker 1: much sense. And again you could be like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: if you say intersectional, then I'm all about it. That
Speaker 1: sounds like a great idea. And then she puts it
Speaker 1: in such a way where you're like, holy ship, that
Speaker 1: is super important. I've gone from being just a supporter
Speaker 1: on the sidelines to like actively, Oh my god, this
Speaker 1: makes so much sense. How can you not be supporting
Speaker 1: feminism while you're supporting racial equality, because then you still
Speaker 1: got half the people not dealing with it. Or you
Speaker 1: can't support feminism without also supporting trans women because then
Speaker 1: you've got a whole bunch of women who still aren't
Speaker 1: getting their chip. It's it has to come from all
Speaker 1: sides at once. It really does. It really does, and
Speaker 1: you've got leave any of it out right and be like,
Speaker 1: we'll do this first, right, what do you mean first?
Speaker 1: So it's the Jane Crow article that in helped Ruth
Speaker 1: Bader Ginsburg, who worked with Pauli also at the a
Speaker 1: c l U, successfully argue the landmark Supreme Court case
Speaker 1: Read versus Read, which established equal protections for women. Ginsburg
Speaker 1: knew that she was so indebted to Pauli's work on
Speaker 1: this subject that she even just named her a co
Speaker 1: author of the legal brief, even though Paully didn't directly
Speaker 1: work on the case. She was like, I know you
Speaker 1: didn't work on it, but you did wor. Ginsberg later said,
Speaker 1: quote Laurie was the one who sparked the idea that
Speaker 1: the fourteenth Amendment should protect the right of men and
Speaker 1: women to follow their talent as far as it could
Speaker 1: take them. We were not inventing something new. We were
Speaker 1: saying the same things Polly had said years earlier, at
Speaker 1: a time when society was not prepared to listen. Yeah, hello,
Speaker 1: believe it or not. Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it all.
Speaker 1: She made her point. Wow, I guess, and then just
Speaker 1: like third Good and Spots would Ginsburg one her case
Speaker 1: that she based on Polly's argument. Incredible yeah, incredible, yea.
Speaker 1: And these seeds she had to plant like that before
Speaker 1: they bore any fruit. Pauli's out here just throwing foundations
Speaker 1: down left and right, like here, you build something on that. Here,
Speaker 1: you build something on that. Go build something on that ship. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But back in nineteen sixty five, Polly was frustrated with
Speaker 1: the lack of progress for women. So one day she said,
Speaker 1: women should organize a march on Washington, like a similar
Speaker 1: civil rights one, but for women's rights. And as usual,
Speaker 1: you know, people around here, what in the world's Polly
Speaker 1: talking about it? She's so crazy? She said something crazy again.
Speaker 1: But then she got a phone call from at the
Speaker 1: time the most famous feminist in America, Betty Freedan, and
Speaker 1: she was like, what's this now? You want to do?
Speaker 1: And they did organize a conference for women in Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. And at that conference, Polly told Betty she
Speaker 1: thought it was past time that there was an n
Speaker 1: double a c P for women, so you know, a
Speaker 1: group that could take on cases of segregation but specifically
Speaker 1: based on sex, and like tackle that ship head on.
Speaker 1: And together with Shirley Chiselm and others, they started the
Speaker 1: National Organization for Women or Now in nineteen sixty six, nice,
Speaker 1: Now that's what I call organizing. Now, that's what I
Speaker 1: call a joke. Yeah. And also that same year, she
Speaker 1: successfully argued that women should be allowed on juries alongside
Speaker 1: her a c ou colleague, Dorothy Kenyon, who also inspired
Speaker 1: RBG and was also named a co author on that
Speaker 1: sventy one legislation. Because they both were so amazing back
Speaker 1: in the day, I had to give them props. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: Ruth had to give them props, and we have to
Speaker 1: give you some commercials. So we will be right back
Speaker 1: right after this. Welcome back to the poly Murray story, everybody. So,
Speaker 1: by nineteen sixty seven, Paully was criticizing now for sidelining
Speaker 1: minority and poor and working class women in their efforts
Speaker 1: for equality tail as old as feminism working hard. But then, hey, hey, feminism,
Speaker 1: you forgot somebody, a lot of somebody. Yeah, it tends
Speaker 1: to happen, So, she wrote, quote, since as a human being,
Speaker 1: I cannot allow myself to be fragmented into black at
Speaker 1: one time, woman at another, or worker at another. I
Speaker 1: must find a unifying principle in all these movements to
Speaker 1: which I can adhere. This it seems to me is
Speaker 1: not only good politics, but also maybe the price of survival.
Speaker 1: Again with the words, don't you just get it when
Speaker 1: she speaks, don't you just fully understand what she's talking about?
Speaker 1: I do? And she's absolutely right, Like how could you
Speaker 1: separate those identities and have an organization be like, well,
Speaker 1: we're just going to deal with one at a time, like, well,
Speaker 1: which one? Yeah, because I'm all of them, I'm all
Speaker 1: of them? Which one takes a backseat? Right? I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't only be a woman today. I am also
Speaker 1: black still, she says, and a work. Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be until nineteen eighty nine that legal scholar
Speaker 1: professor Kimberly Crenshaw would coin the term intersectionality as a
Speaker 1: way of describing how systems of oppression overlap to create
Speaker 1: these distinct experiences for people with multiple identity categories. Polly
Speaker 1: wrote in quote, when my brothers try to draw a
Speaker 1: circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle
Speaker 1: to include them. Where they speak out for the privileges
Speaker 1: of a puny group, I shall shout for the rights
Speaker 1: of all mankind with humility, but with pride, I shall
Speaker 1: offer one small life, whether in Foxhole or in Wheatfield,
Speaker 1: for whatever it is worth to fulfill the prophecy that
Speaker 1: all men are created equal. Polly stirring shit. I don't
Speaker 1: even feel qualified to read that quote. It was so good.
Speaker 1: Oh man, she's amazing. This person is incredib and I
Speaker 1: love that to her attitude of like, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: encompass more. Why are you guys trying to leave people out?
Speaker 1: You're trying so hard to leave people out, and I
Speaker 1: want everyone in here. Why can't we all have what
Speaker 1: says straight white men have right? Why can't we have
Speaker 1: that it says right here in the Constitution that we're
Speaker 1: supposed to have that. I'm not asking for nothing. I
Speaker 1: wasn't promised well. Speaking of her way with words, in
Speaker 1: Polly published her only volume of poems, Unfair that she
Speaker 1: also gets to be a poet. She's I mean, she
Speaker 1: can do anything. Uh. It's called Dark Testaments and many
Speaker 1: were written back in her Harlem days, so they kind
Speaker 1: of span her life. Remember she was hanging out with
Speaker 1: Lankston Hughes and James Baldwin also a friend. So yeah,
Speaker 1: she she was hanging out with some literary cats and
Speaker 1: did some poems of her own, and they're all worth reading,
Speaker 1: but we wanted to highlight two of them, So let's
Speaker 1: go down to poetry corner. Here from Dr Polly Murray,
Speaker 1: her poem to the oppressors. Now you are strong, and
Speaker 1: we are but grapes aching with ripeness. Crush us, squeeze
Speaker 1: from us all the brave life contained in these full skins.
Speaker 1: But ours is a subtle strength, potent, with centuries of yearning,
Speaker 1: of being kegged and shut away in dark, forgotten places.
Speaker 1: We shall endure to steal your senses in that lonely
Speaker 1: twilight of your winter's grief. Snap, Snap Snap. And here's
Speaker 1: another poem from Dr Murray in nineteen seventy called simply Words.
Speaker 1: We are spend drifts with words. We squander them, toss
Speaker 1: them like pennies in the air, arrogant words, angry words,
Speaker 1: cruel words, comrade leye words, shy words tiptoeing from mouth
Speaker 1: to ear. But the slowly wrought words of love and
Speaker 1: the thunderous words of heartbreak, those we hoard. Mm hmm,
Speaker 1: I like that too, because what about you know, if
Speaker 1: you think about everything going on with Irene in the
Speaker 1: kind of the background of her life, is this sort
Speaker 1: of secret not so secret, open secret romance. And I
Speaker 1: wonder if she's like, I don't get to say with
Speaker 1: my whole chest how I feel. Yeah, yeah, so I
Speaker 1: have to hoard those I'll throw. I've thrown words at
Speaker 1: you all day long. It seems like I'm just giving
Speaker 1: you all my words. But I've got some that I
Speaker 1: gotta keep to myself, right, And I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's a pretty universal thing. She all. I think we
Speaker 1: all hoard words of love and words of heartbreak. Nobody
Speaker 1: wants to say be the first to say, and nobody
Speaker 1: wants to be the first to say. Um. But but
Speaker 1: that's what I was reading it, and I was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: I wonder if she's kind of thinking about some yearning
Speaker 1: of her own to be like I want to be
Speaker 1: just hanging out with my wife like everybody else. So
Speaker 1: by the time that this volume was published, Polly had
Speaker 1: accepted a teaching position at Brandy's University, and she not
Speaker 1: only taught law there, but she basically created the American
Speaker 1: Studies program. She was fighting all the time to include
Speaker 1: courses on African American and women's studies, which were both
Speaker 1: firsts for the school. Polly wrote that her time there
Speaker 1: was quote the most exciting, tormenting, satisfying, embattled, frustrated, and
Speaker 1: at times triumphant period of my secular career. So I
Speaker 1: think that's great. I mean, that sounds like her life
Speaker 1: and all those words, you know what I mean. Um,
Speaker 1: So she's crushing at Bran and Dy's. She received full
Speaker 1: tenure there in nineteen seventy one, securing the most financially
Speaker 1: stable and respectable job of her life. So she seemed
Speaker 1: to be like set, She's gonna be hanging out at
Speaker 1: Brandy's and doing her things. And this is seventy one
Speaker 1: and she was born in nineteen so she's sixty at
Speaker 1: this point. Like what what what's left? Well, it came
Speaker 1: as a real surprise to everyone when in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: three she quit Brandy's to become an Episcopalian priest. Yep,
Speaker 1: So let's find out more about that right after this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: welcome back to the show, everybody. All right, So Irene Barlow, Polly's,
Speaker 1: you know, alleged love of her life, was actually dying. Um.
Speaker 1: She had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and she
Speaker 1: made Polly her executor. Now, long after Irene passed away,
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy three, Paully resigned from Brandy's and entered
Speaker 1: New York's General Theological Seminary to become an episcopal priest.
Speaker 1: She and Irene had been active at this church, and
Speaker 1: she had many friendships with women there, so this might
Speaker 1: have been something that she thought about doing for a
Speaker 1: long time. And she even once said that when she
Speaker 1: taught her students, she asked them what do you think
Speaker 1: and got conversations going with them, and later realizing that
Speaker 1: she was acting more like an ecclesiastical counselor than she
Speaker 1: was a lawyer in class. You know, it wasn't about like,
Speaker 1: let me make a case for this for this case,
Speaker 1: but let me let's have a conversation about it, right,
Speaker 1: And she wanted to like explore people's ideas, what they
Speaker 1: thought and why they thought what they thought, you know.
Speaker 1: So she was like, I just felt more like we
Speaker 1: were talking about bigger things than just the letter of
Speaker 1: the law of the spirit of the law. So that
Speaker 1: might have been what let her to take this position,
Speaker 1: or it might have been inspired by the deaths of
Speaker 1: both her life partner and her aunts, who were the
Speaker 1: most important people in her life who died around the
Speaker 1: same time that might have caused her to make this
Speaker 1: kind of big, drastic professional change so late in her life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she said, when she's going through some of Irene's papers,
Speaker 1: because she was her executor, she went through some of
Speaker 1: her stuff and she was like, I thought I knew
Speaker 1: her pretty well, but I didn't realize all these small, lovely,
Speaker 1: kind things that she had been doing, which is just, uh,
Speaker 1: a little clue about Irene's character. Yes, it's a very
Speaker 1: little clue. Unfortunately we don't have more. But I guess
Speaker 1: Irene was always out there being sweet as hale, helping
Speaker 1: people out and doing cool things. She just sounds like
Speaker 1: a wholesome, pretty lady that Paula got to spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time with. So that makes me happy. So yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe she was also like, I want to do good.
Speaker 1: I want to do good in small ways every day,
Speaker 1: like Irene did. Maybe there was some inspiration in that
Speaker 1: or something, although it could partly have been so the
Speaker 1: fact that the Episcopal Church did not ordain women at
Speaker 1: the time, don't you for real well, allow me to
Speaker 1: just change another system real quick. I'd like to kick
Speaker 1: in one last door. So yeah, I think she may
Speaker 1: you know, some people think that she maybe saw an
Speaker 1: opportunity to put pressure on another system that was segregating,
Speaker 1: and so she was like, well, let me get up
Speaker 1: in there and start making making some good trouble. But
Speaker 1: this time in her life, her timing was perfect. The
Speaker 1: church's General Convention voted to change that policy effective January one, seven,
Speaker 1: only three weeks after she would complete her Divinity training.
Speaker 1: So if I can pull into speculation stage room, do
Speaker 1: you think that she enrolled? And they were like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: Polly Murray's up in here. Well you know she's gonna
Speaker 1: make us do it anyway, guys, let's just go ahead
Speaker 1: and get the wheels training. We got about three years
Speaker 1: while she goes to the divinity training, and to make
Speaker 1: this happened, someone call up the pope or whoever. Let's
Speaker 1: just quit get the paperwork done before she comes in
Speaker 1: and starts yelling at us, because I don't want to
Speaker 1: get yelled at by Polly Murray. I'm not interested in
Speaker 1: another stirring quote. What she's done. She's gonna make us
Speaker 1: look like idiots, or or was it more like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: Polly Murray wants to be a priest. Oh, this is
Speaker 1: about to be right, we need to get somebody get
Speaker 1: the paperwork. I want to sign it right now. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, can you imagine the people. She'll be out
Speaker 1: there saying amazing stuff, the sermons. I can't wait. Oh
Speaker 1: so I can't decide which how the church reacted to
Speaker 1: Polly wear his name in the list. So however they
Speaker 1: decided to do it, they did decide to do it.
Speaker 1: They decided that women could be ordained. So on January eighth,
Speaker 1: at the National Cathedral, Polly became the first black American
Speaker 1: woman to be vested as an Episcopal priest. New Yorker
Speaker 1: notes that quote. A month later, she administered her first
Speaker 1: Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross, the little church
Speaker 1: in North Carolina, where more than a century earlier, a
Speaker 1: priest had baptized her grandmother, Cornelia, then still a baby
Speaker 1: and still a slave. Crazy. That ship never fails to
Speaker 1: touch me, like and when somebody is like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago we were dealing with the most
Speaker 1: iniquitous ship in history, and now I am the boss
Speaker 1: bitch doing everything. I mean, that really is amazing. It's
Speaker 1: incredible because it's so, it's so, it's such a warm
Speaker 1: and powerful thing. For them, and it's also just such
Speaker 1: a big fuck you to the past. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you tried to pull some ship, but look where we
Speaker 1: are now. It didn't work. Made it never works. Everybody
Speaker 1: stop oppressing people because it never works. Eventually. Can we
Speaker 1: just skip to the part where you lose? I know,
Speaker 1: But the problem is it works for people for so long.
Speaker 1: My lifetime went by and it worked great, and I
Speaker 1: died and I had everything I wanted to tell them
Speaker 1: that right, I'm sorry, we're trying to convince them that
Speaker 1: they suck. They've certainly turned it off by now off,
Speaker 1: so that would be the last of Police's first She
Speaker 1: never got a permanent preaching position, so she took a
Speaker 1: few part time jobs and did sermons that bucks per appearance.
Speaker 1: I would have booked it for my birthday. I would
Speaker 1: have been like, come give a sermon, booked her for
Speaker 1: my bedtime stories every night, Just come behind, please just
Speaker 1: tell me something brilliant. But yeah, she was close to
Speaker 1: retirement age anyway, So this is why I think she
Speaker 1: never ended up with a full time position or anything
Speaker 1: like that. But on July one, she died at seventy
Speaker 1: six years old of pancreatic cancer. And she was laid
Speaker 1: to rest in a Brooklyn cemetery, next to her two
Speaker 1: aunts and under the same headstone as the love of
Speaker 1: her life, Irene Barlow. I mean, is that not a
Speaker 1: clue that maybe they had a deeper We were such
Speaker 1: good friends together under the same headstone. She made me
Speaker 1: her executor. We had dogs together. Somebody somebody early in
Speaker 1: the show messaged us and said, will you guys please
Speaker 1: do stories about women who were friends people who were ms.
Speaker 1: This is definitely, I think got to be one of
Speaker 1: those stories. Paully's memoir Song in a Weary Throat was
Speaker 1: published posthumously, and though she didn't include much about again Irene,
Speaker 1: or her sexuality or anything like that, or her gender struggles,
Speaker 1: but she did choose to include all those musings in
Speaker 1: the files and her personal papers, which she donated to
Speaker 1: Harvard's Schlicinger Library. The hundred and forty boxes of papers
Speaker 1: include letters between Irene and PAULI that, according to the
Speaker 1: Smithsonian quote, show past the couple's affection and playful sign
Speaker 1: offs such as double O seven or Charlie Brown cute.
Speaker 1: But I wish I could read some of these letters.
Speaker 1: You have to actually go to Harvard and we did
Speaker 1: not oh it to physically go to Harvard. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: tried to look. You can look them up and I'll
Speaker 1: tell you like witch box s it's in, but you couldn't.
Speaker 1: They weren't like digitized online to read. So you have
Speaker 1: to actually, I guess go check them out or like
Speaker 1: go ask you know, to read them at the library. Right,
Speaker 1: So unfortunately I can't read them, any of them to you. Well,
Speaker 1: if any of our friends in Boston have access and
Speaker 1: want to I want to letters, please go to reach out, right.
Speaker 1: I Also, I love that they signed off cute names
Speaker 1: like that, like yours truly double O seven because what
Speaker 1: weren't they probably sneaking around with this relationship like they
Speaker 1: probably felt like spies sometimes maybe they might be having
Speaker 1: fun with that. You know, you may as well if
Speaker 1: you have to do it better? Was self destruct doble?
Speaker 1: You know, No, that's awesome. I love it. I love it. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm glad she didn't destroy all their letters, right, because
Speaker 1: it's always sad when you feel like the need to
Speaker 1: do something like that. Really, it must just be a wrench.
Speaker 1: I know how I would feel to like destroy something
Speaker 1: my grandmother wrote on or something. Yeah, I would hate
Speaker 1: to do that right now. The letters I have in
Speaker 1: a box somewhere, probably, I mean, I doubt they tell
Speaker 1: an interesting story, but I Polly wrote that she quote
Speaker 1: lived to see my lost causes found. But she also
Speaker 1: felt that she didn't accomplish as much as she could
Speaker 1: have in a more egalitarian society. And that's Polly for
Speaker 1: you right there, just like I'm gonna get as far
Speaker 1: as I can, but I will always remind you I
Speaker 1: could have gotten farther if it weren't for you, specifically
Speaker 1: being an obstacle in my way. In seventies, she wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: if anyone should ask a black woman in America, what
Speaker 1: has been her greatest achievement, her honest answer would be
Speaker 1: I survived. But Polly, even in death, wasn't done change
Speaker 1: in the world. First of all, her home in North
Speaker 1: Carolina was designated a National Historic Site in damn right,
Speaker 1: it is okay, I would like to visit it. Also, um,
Speaker 1: she was also sainted by the Episcopalian Church. Obviously makes sense.
Speaker 1: They're like this, this, this one here, another fast track
Speaker 1: for Polly. Please everybody pay attention to this. Yale University
Speaker 1: has a college named for her, but as usual, it's
Speaker 1: her words that are still resonating even decades after her death.
Speaker 1: That's right, because three employees were fired for being gay
Speaker 1: or transgender, and their lawsuit against their employers was argued
Speaker 1: in front of the Supreme Court. As Forbes writes, quote,
Speaker 1: on June, six justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, ruled
Speaker 1: in favor of the employees, effectively banning workplace discrimination due
Speaker 1: to sexual orientation or gender identity. The opinion, delivered by
Speaker 1: Neil Gorsuch hinged on the word sex in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four Civil Rights Act that Pauli Murray had fought
Speaker 1: so hard to include. So even in death, she's protecting
Speaker 1: people from segregation and discrimination. It's incredible. I mean, does
Speaker 1: that not send shivers up your spine that if she
Speaker 1: had given up that that argument in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: it would have completely been totally different, especially for women.
Speaker 1: But then again, resonating so far into the future that
Speaker 1: that one single word protects so many people, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's insane. It's wild. Throughout her life she was not
Speaker 1: just at the forefront of history, she was quite literally
Speaker 1: making it all the time. It's legit, like give me
Speaker 1: a little flower, give me a little baking soda, because
Speaker 1: I'm about to make history historians. Susan Ware once said, quote,
Speaker 1: it may be that when historians look back on twentieth
Speaker 1: century America, all roads will lead to Paully Murray. Ain't
Speaker 1: that the truth? All roads lead to Polly Murray. We're
Speaker 1: gonna have to every episode we do from now. I
Speaker 1: don't gonna be like, well, how would it be if
Speaker 1: Polly Murray hadn't been around? Polly had not said sex
Speaker 1: is important? Right? What an incredible person and a remarkable story.
Speaker 1: And I hope, I hope you'll appreciate that while this
Speaker 1: story wasn't about as much their specific romance and how
Speaker 1: it played out, it's uh an episode that is a
Speaker 1: foundational in the story of romance in general, right of
Speaker 1: of love stories. Anything post certainly nine is definitely has
Speaker 1: something to do with this. And I think this is
Speaker 1: such a fascinating story of a person's you know, we
Speaker 1: don't know much about her actual love story, but her
Speaker 1: entire story is around sex and gender and love and
Speaker 1: all these things that are that are so important in
Speaker 1: this category. I think she was just such a I
Speaker 1: don't just a firestarter. Just people. There's some people in
Speaker 1: this world that just burn, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: And she was like just one of those lights to me.
Speaker 1: She was like, I'm gonna burn this motherfucker now, I
Speaker 1: mean with her fire then she did. I mean, just
Speaker 1: admire her so much, And like you said, it's really
Speaker 1: too bad that we can't tell you more about Irene
Speaker 1: because what an interesting person she must have been to
Speaker 1: to to be. I mean again, they weren't like living together,
Speaker 1: but it was it was pretty well known that Polly
Speaker 1: was a lesbian, or though she preferred she didn't really
Speaker 1: prefer that word herself. That's certainly how people category eyed
Speaker 1: her later on her life and everything. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: a secret. But it just took a lot of bravery,
Speaker 1: I think, to live like that. And so we get
Speaker 1: a lot of Polly's bravery, and deservedly, so we don't
Speaker 1: get any of Irenees, which is just too bad. Um
Speaker 1: and Peg to Peg also got kicked out that camp
Speaker 1: and she was doing she was she was living life
Speaker 1: on the edge when it was very, very tough. So
Speaker 1: props to both those ladies, whatever they were like. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad it's gotten so much better. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure for people in uh, for for for people who
Speaker 1: are LGBT anywhere on that category are a lot more
Speaker 1: free to be public with their relationships. But I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people still aren't too, especially in their
Speaker 1: home communities. You know, it's a lot different than be
Speaker 1: like you know, you can go on TV and and
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. You can be out on TV, and
Speaker 1: it's not like it was even ten years ago. But
Speaker 1: I mean, I I still know people today who are
Speaker 1: in sex relationships or who are trans who even if
Speaker 1: they're out with their families and it's all okay, they
Speaker 1: might still have a grandparent or even a relative even
Speaker 1: whose appear who refuses to acknowledge it, either violently or passively,
Speaker 1: which is still violently. Um. And that's that's stop stop it.
Speaker 1: That's so insane. Or the rest of the world where
Speaker 1: state you live in our community, yeah, absolutely very closed
Speaker 1: minded and still hard to get jobs and things like that.
Speaker 1: It's for as far as we've come, there's still a
Speaker 1: long way to go. Um. But uh, but hopefully there's
Speaker 1: more polies out there working on it. Now we can
Speaker 1: all take a little piece of Polly with us and
Speaker 1: try and be a better person and and on a
Speaker 1: positive note for resonance. I mean, speaking of resonance, this
Speaker 1: is like a story of somebody who's straight up was
Speaker 1: hitting walls all day long and instead of quitting, was like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep working and I'll just write this
Speaker 1: down real and leave it and someone else will do
Speaker 1: something with it. And it ended up like everything as
Speaker 1: she said, her lost causes were found. She she she
Speaker 1: wanted to overturn Plussy Ferguson and it happened. She wanted
Speaker 1: equal protections for women, and it happened. Even after her death,
Speaker 1: protections for people with gender identity struggles like she had
Speaker 1: are even benefiting from her work. So like these little
Speaker 1: steeds that she planted ended up growing more slowly than
Speaker 1: maybe she wanted, but they still grew. And I just
Speaker 1: think that's a really valuable lesson because I'm very much
Speaker 1: a person who wants things to happen just as soon
Speaker 1: as possible. I like things to pay off very quickly,
Speaker 1: and they can't. Often they won't, especially if there's something
Speaker 1: good and lasting. They will take some time, but once
Speaker 1: they've rooted, it's like inevitable. So I want to try
Speaker 1: to remember that energy and polymery energy plant some seeds
Speaker 1: just work, even if you're not seeing the immediate results.
Speaker 1: Plant the tree that will shade someone else the right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I always love about landscape architecture is I
Speaker 1: think I've talked I'm sure I've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: but somebody in building a park has to straight up
Speaker 1: think about what it will look like years from now
Speaker 1: and when it's actually the vision they have, right, and
Speaker 1: they may never see that themselves, but it's not about that,
Speaker 1: And I just think that's amazing. What a long con you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm plant these saplings all around this lake and I
Speaker 1: know that long after I'm gone, it'll look incredible like this. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so cool. Thank you for doing that, because now
Speaker 1: we have beautiful parks that you never got to enjoy,
Speaker 1: but we enjoy every day. So who we're really coming
Speaker 1: out swinging for in this episode is landscape architects. Uh,
Speaker 1: just we all need to treat them a little better.
Speaker 1: Murray was the landscape architect of legislation. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: was thinking about the future social issues? Yeah, yeah, she
Speaker 1: really was. Well that's awesome, Polly. I hope you all
Speaker 1: love Polly too. Yeah, we would love to hear your
Speaker 1: thoughts of course, as all. Well, usually we don't mean it,
Speaker 1: but this time you really want to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 1: Usually we're just bullshit. Yeah you know, I would just
Speaker 1: say whatever to just get those notifications. That's all we
Speaker 1: really want. I'm just thirsty for attention. I don't pay
Speaker 1: attention to what that attention is. Sweet sera tune and yes,
Speaker 1: give me another hit? No no no. We love hearing
Speaker 1: from you, um, and we would love to hear from
Speaker 1: you on this one. So please shoot us an email.
Speaker 1: It's romance and I heeart media dot Com right, or
Speaker 1: we're on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at Dynamite Boom and
Speaker 1: I'm at Oh great, it's Eli. Now we're both at
Speaker 1: raddic Romance. That's right, um, so follow along, shoot us
Speaker 1: some words, uh, tell us your thoughts, break into Harvard
Speaker 1: and in those letters and read them for us the
Speaker 1: internet for all to read. Uh, and we will catch
Speaker 1: you with the next episode. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: By so long, friends, it's time to go. Thanks so
Speaker 1: listening to our show. Tell your friends neighbor's uncles in
Speaker 1: dance to listen to a show ridiculous Well Dance