Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Hey, Hey, hey, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: It's another day, day day. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: felt like I had to rhyme because we were singing
Speaker 1: a song. Songs have to rhyme, yeah, otherwise they're bullshit.
Speaker 1: Take that probably a lot of man. Oh, welcome back.
Speaker 1: We're super excited to have you today. Always so happy
Speaker 1: to have you. Thanks for listening. Trying to inject some
Speaker 1: some joy this. Yes, times, it's the weird time to live,
Speaker 1: like most times to be alive. I guess that's true.
Speaker 1: It's been a weird time to be alive as long
Speaker 1: as I can remember. These unprecedented times are starting to
Speaker 1: feel pretty precedented. Hello, precedent, And I don't really feel
Speaker 1: unprecedent anymore. It just feels pretty normal. Oh, another big
Speaker 1: old thing. Yeah, but y'all have heard about that plenty.
Speaker 1: You don't need to hear about that from us. Came
Speaker 1: to hear fun stories, Yeah, totally. We're here to distract
Speaker 1: you from that and think about other things for a
Speaker 1: few minutes at a time. I like also that this
Speaker 1: conversation we're having is totally evergreen, because we could be
Speaker 1: talking about anything. We're just gonna distract you from the
Speaker 1: horrible thing that's going on insert here. You know what
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, God. So I hope everybody's uh doing well,
Speaker 1: staying in high spirits and taking care of yourselves. That's importantly, definitely,
Speaker 1: and those around you and strangers in far off lands.
Speaker 1: I don't care to take care of somebody, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But we do have a really awesome episode for you
Speaker 1: guys today. I'm so excited about this one. As soon
Speaker 1: as I learned about this person, I was saying, I'm
Speaker 1: diving in immediately doing an episode definitely UM about you.
Speaker 1: But first we wanted to reach in the old mail
Speaker 1: bag and read one of these letters from our listeners.
Speaker 1: So how about a good old mail call awesome? All right?
Speaker 1: So this email came from Laura Shape and she said
Speaker 1: that you guys are awesome, which was so nice to hear.
Speaker 1: I've never shied away from being called awesome. That's a
Speaker 1: always one of my favorite things to be called. Um.
Speaker 1: She said that she had just finished listening to the
Speaker 1: Christo and Jean Claude episode. If you haven't heard that,
Speaker 1: please go check it out. It's beautiful. I love that story,
Speaker 1: and Laura liked it too. She said, I was a
Speaker 1: graphic design major in the early nineties and watched a
Speaker 1: movie on this pair for art history class. I don't
Speaker 1: remember which of their artworks it was about, but I
Speaker 1: do remember thinking it was pretentious and stupid, and she
Speaker 1: was definitely his assistant. But now I realized that was
Speaker 1: probably just my shitty teacher, and I wish I could
Speaker 1: go back and tell him what a jerky was I
Speaker 1: feel you, Laura, I have several teachers I wish to
Speaker 1: go back tell him what i'd jerke I thought they were.
Speaker 1: She goes on, you two have made me see it
Speaker 1: in a completely fresh, fun and beautiful way, and I'm
Speaker 1: truly grateful for it. I wish you had been my teachers. No,
Speaker 1: you don't. This is this is about the extent of
Speaker 1: what I would be capable of doing as a teacher.
Speaker 1: Right many you'll ask a question, I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: was I not just talking? I don't know what I
Speaker 1: would do. I feel like, well, that's a very interesting point.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about it for another forty five minutes. Laura says,
Speaker 1: I have always struggled with my own desire to create art,
Speaker 1: but I have a lack of personal message or gravitas.
Speaker 1: I'm generally pretty light and cheerful, and while I know
Speaker 1: heavy people don't create better art, there's always a part
Speaker 1: of me that felt insecure about not having deep, meaningful why.
Speaker 1: I've always just made stuff because it made me happy
Speaker 1: to make and I thought it would look cool. But
Speaker 1: that has made me feel somehow less than as an artist. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm in my early fifties and have started pursuing art
Speaker 1: full time as a second career, and this podcast just
Speaker 1: helped fill a hole I didn't realize I had. I
Speaker 1: will now more confidently pursue my bliss and love of
Speaker 1: beauty joyfully and playfully without feeling the need to justify it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you for saying that. I mean, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: Taking that lesson from John Claude and Christo I took
Speaker 1: that lesson from them. I think we all can that
Speaker 1: you don't have to go out and have some sort
Speaker 1: of like like you said, heavy, you know, introspective, meaningful
Speaker 1: thing like you don't need a reason to make art. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if you're just making something pretty, I mean and nice.
Speaker 1: So you know, I think a lot of art with
Speaker 1: a point can be ugly on purpose, and that can
Speaker 1: have a good point to it. But yeah, if you
Speaker 1: I'm like, I just want to make things look nice.
Speaker 1: It's something I want to make. I feel good when
Speaker 1: I make it. Is that not enough? You don't need more?
Speaker 1: I'd even say it doesn't even have to look nice,
Speaker 1: Like if you just want to create something, if you
Speaker 1: just want to take your hands and something didn't exist
Speaker 1: and now it does, I don't care. What would be
Speaker 1: better be a mishmash of slop and like, great, you
Speaker 1: brought something into existence, and that that's cool enough for me.
Speaker 1: It's very cool. Yeah, that's awesome. I'm so glad that
Speaker 1: that podcast meant so much to somebody. Very awesome. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Laura, and just for us. She goes
Speaker 1: on to say, also, I've been meaning to write to
Speaker 1: you the rest of the time to say I just
Speaker 1: adore you as a couple. Your enjoyment of each other
Speaker 1: shines through, and that makes you a delight to listen to. Also,
Speaker 1: I love your choice of topics and your quickie take
Speaker 1: on history. It's a wonderful show, and I have told
Speaker 1: many people about it. Yea, Laura, tell many people, tell
Speaker 1: many people, tell many people. The best thing anybody can do,
Speaker 1: I know, huge compliments. Thank you. I mean, you didn't
Speaker 1: have to write in anything to us, but you did,
Speaker 1: and you didn't have to tell anybody about our show,
Speaker 1: and you did that too, So double thank you to Laura.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot about that part. Nice. Yeah, that's nice. Well,
Speaker 1: come come spend some time on a on a on
Speaker 1: a spring cleaning day. How ugly it gets around here,
Speaker 1: That's true, it does get ugly. Um well, thank you
Speaker 1: so much Laura for writing in, and wonderful to everyone
Speaker 1: who writes in. Um. We we do read every message
Speaker 1: we get. Sometimes our episodes just feel a little too
Speaker 1: long to throw an email on the air, but when
Speaker 1: we feel like we get a chance, we definitely will
Speaker 1: read them out and so keep them coming. It keeps
Speaker 1: us going, that's for sure. It does. Very true. So
Speaker 1: Polly Murray is a true unsung hero. She was so
Speaker 1: far ahead of her time that she was always behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. Fifteen years before Rosa Parks, she was arrested
Speaker 1: for refusing to change seats on a segregated bus. She
Speaker 1: placed a bet that pless c V Ferguson would be overturned,
Speaker 1: and not only did she win that bet, it was
Speaker 1: overturned using the argument she made in law school. She
Speaker 1: inspired a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg, had a decade long
Speaker 1: friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, and helped start the National Organization
Speaker 1: for Women. I've only done half of those things, um.
Speaker 1: And she also struggled with her sexuality and her gender identity.
Speaker 1: And she's just truly a trailblazer and a certified badass.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Anna Pauline 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 at a
Speaker 1: concrete wall. But if there's a story where the second
Speaker 1: plants ridiculous roles. A production of iHeart Radio. So. Anna
Speaker 1: Pauline Murray was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on November nineteen,
Speaker 1: but her mother died suddenly when she was only three
Speaker 1: of a massive cerebral hemorrhage, so her father sent her
Speaker 1: to live with her maternal aunt, Pauline Fitzgerald, for she
Speaker 1: was named, and also her maternal grandparents, Cornelia and Robert,
Speaker 1: in Durham, North Carolina, shout out, I have some family
Speaker 1: and Durham. If you're listening, hope you're well. Love you.
Speaker 1: But three years after she was sent to live with
Speaker 1: her family in Durham, her father was committed to an
Speaker 1: insane asylum, where in a racist white guard screamed slurs
Speaker 1: at him, dragged him into the basement, and beat him
Speaker 1: to death with a baseball bat. God. In her memoir
Speaker 1: song in a Weary Throat, Polly remembers attending his funeral
Speaker 1: at the age of twelve, seeing him laid in an
Speaker 1: open casket, his skull quote split open like a melon
Speaker 1: and sewed together loosely with jagged stitches. Terrible. And again
Speaker 1: she hasn't seen her dad since she was three, so
Speaker 1: that's her second memory of her father. Basically horrible. Uh.
Speaker 1: She called her family a united nation in Minister because
Speaker 1: her maternal grandmother, Cornelia, had been born enslaved. She was
Speaker 1: the daughter of an enslaved woman who was frequently raped
Speaker 1: by her enslaver. Her grandfather, Robert, had been raised free
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania, attending anti slavery meetings with Frederick Douglas and
Speaker 1: Harriet Tubman. She also had Native American ancestry Her relatives
Speaker 1: ranged from rich to poor, fair skinned with blue eyes,
Speaker 1: too dark skinned with four sea curls. From Episcopalians two Quakers.
Speaker 1: She grew up, as she said quote, a thin, wiry,
Speaker 1: ravenous child. She was willful but eager to police. She
Speaker 1: devoured snacks and books with equal enthusiasm, and by the
Speaker 1: time she graduated high school at only fifteen years old,
Speaker 1: she was editor in chief of the school newspaper, president
Speaker 1: of the literary society, class secretary, member of the debate club,
Speaker 1: a top student, and a forward on the basketball team.
Speaker 1: What do any of those things? I mean? I was
Speaker 1: president of the drama club. You're still president of the
Speaker 1: drama never left. Yeah, she would have been one of
Speaker 1: these kids who got like six hundred scholarships to like
Speaker 1: every school in the world, just like her choice anywhere
Speaker 1: she wanted to go right wrong. Because, of course, after
Speaker 1: the Civil War ended and slavery was outlawed, white people
Speaker 1: immediately did everything we could to keep black people from progressing.
Speaker 1: In America, Laws deciding where formerly enslaved people could work
Speaker 1: and exactly how much they could earn were passed in
Speaker 1: many states. KKK violence surged like astronomically and by eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety six, the Supreme Court upheld the right of white
Speaker 1: people to segregate public and private spaces. I mean, as
Speaker 1: long as there were equal facilities available for black citizens, right,
Speaker 1: So of you, you could have a bathroom for white
Speaker 1: people only as long as you also had a bathroom
Speaker 1: for black people. Who right. And that was in the
Speaker 1: plus c v. Ferguson decision, more commonly known as Separate
Speaker 1: but Equal. And Polly hated segregation. And this is probably because,
Speaker 1: you know, she's grown up surrounded by a family that
Speaker 1: is so full of variety. So she's like, this is bullshit.
Speaker 1: You know, if we can all live together, what the
Speaker 1: fun is going on? So even as a kid, she
Speaker 1: walked everywhere rather than ride in segregated street cars. She
Speaker 1: boycotted movie theaters instead of sitting in balconies reserved for
Speaker 1: black audience members. And so she was kind of like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go to the segregated North Carolina
Speaker 1: college for black students. I don't want to go there.
Speaker 1: She has set her sights up north and decided to
Speaker 1: enroll at Columbia in New York because she deserves the best. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: while Columbia University was fine, with her being black, they
Speaker 1: did object to her being a woman, so she was
Speaker 1: welcome to attend their women's college, Barnard, but she couldn't
Speaker 1: afford the tuition. The all women's school, Hunter College, was
Speaker 1: free for New York residents, but she didn't live there.
Speaker 1: Another problem was that black high schools in North Carolina
Speaker 1: ended in eleventh grade, so she would have to re
Speaker 1: enroll in high school in New York to get her
Speaker 1: high school diploma first. So she had to move in
Speaker 1: with a cousin and Queens to become a New York resident,
Speaker 1: and she completed her senior year as the only black
Speaker 1: student in a high school of four thousand students, and
Speaker 1: she finally entered Hunter College, one of four black students.
Speaker 1: Instead of staying with her sister in Queens, she lived
Speaker 1: at the Harlem y m c A. And there she
Speaker 1: became friends with Lankston Hughes, and she met W. E. B. Dubois.
Speaker 1: She heard lectures from activist Mary mclaude Bethune, and she
Speaker 1: went to the Apollo to see Duke Ellington and Cab Callaway,
Speaker 1: and she worked towards becoming a writer. He is living
Speaker 1: it up like the height of the Harlem Renaissance. Definitely
Speaker 1: a place I would go as a time traveling tourists,
Speaker 1: a place to pick that would be really dope. You
Speaker 1: would get some eyes I would not blend in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know rightfully, so I think they would be
Speaker 1: worried to see you, and yeah, they would hopefully, you know,
Speaker 1: hopefully for the future. It is not great, but better
Speaker 1: not talking. I'm not telling anyone anything. But then the
Speaker 1: giant crash of October. Polly had been making a living waitressing,
Speaker 1: but soon lost all her customers and then her job
Speaker 1: due to the depression, and became so impoverished that she
Speaker 1: ended her second year of college sick with malnutrition. Like
Speaker 1: that's how hungry she was, and maybe that's part of
Speaker 1: the reason that she married a man named William roy
Speaker 1: Wynn known as Billy Wynn in secret on November However,
Speaker 1: You're an awkward two day honeymoon at a cheap hotel.
Speaker 1: Polly realized this whole thing was a big mistake. She
Speaker 1: wrote years later that she was repelled by the act
Speaker 1: of sexual intercourse. She wrote, quote, why is it when
Speaker 1: men try to make love to me? Something in me fights?
Speaker 1: And after a couple of months they separated and Billy
Speaker 1: left town and she did not contact him again until
Speaker 1: they annulled their marriage in now Okay. These days, some
Speaker 1: scholars have said that Polly would identify as a transgender male,
Speaker 1: but of course she didn't have that language available to
Speaker 1: her at the time. Reminds me of Lily Elbe. We
Speaker 1: talked about her experience. A lot of things remind me
Speaker 1: of Lilian, right, and it's a similar era, I mean,
Speaker 1: early twentieth century. Actually, Lily would pass away from her
Speaker 1: second surgery only a year later after this marriage. That
Speaker 1: was that. But whatever the case, it's clear that she
Speaker 1: strug gold with her gender identity and her sexuality. She
Speaker 1: thought of herself as a mixture of genders, or more often,
Speaker 1: quote one of nature's experiments, a girl who should have
Speaker 1: been a boy. She wore her hair short, and she
Speaker 1: preferred wearing pants skirts. She had a pretty slight frame,
Speaker 1: so she sometimes was mistaken for a teenage boy. After
Speaker 1: her brief marriage, she shortened her name from Pauline to Polly,
Speaker 1: though she also experimented with the names paul and Dude,
Speaker 1: which is a great name. Love. It just went by dude,
Speaker 1: like hey, hey, dude, dude. Good to meet you, dude. Also,
Speaker 1: it's like if your name is guy, you know, like
Speaker 1: I'll never forget because if I do, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: say hey guy, like wow, you remembered. Yeah. I totally
Speaker 1: says that at some point in the nineteen thirties, she
Speaker 1: asked doctors for exploratory surgery to check for quote secreted
Speaker 1: male genitals, and she tried to convince them to give
Speaker 1: her hormone treatments. This is something that reminds me a
Speaker 1: lot about Lily that Lily. If you remember episode on
Speaker 1: lilyan gerda Um, Lily had talked a lot about how
Speaker 1: justified she felt in her gender struggles when the doctors
Speaker 1: found out that she had like an underformed ovaries, and
Speaker 1: I feel like Polly was looking for the same, a
Speaker 1: similar justification for for how she was feeling internally. She
Speaker 1: couldn't find a reason for it, and she really wanted
Speaker 1: a reason. But actually the doctors were like, you actually
Speaker 1: have less testosterone than most women. You have no nothing
Speaker 1: going on interest, just who she was. She also acknowledged
Speaker 1: the term homosexual describing others, but with herself she preferred
Speaker 1: saying that she had a quote inverted sex instinct that
Speaker 1: caused her to behave more like a man. But New
Speaker 1: Yorker points out that quote. By way of explaining why
Speaker 1: she believed she was a head real sexual man, Marie
Speaker 1: noted that she didn't like to go to bars, wanted
Speaker 1: a monogamous relationship, and was attracted exclusively to extremely feminine women.
Speaker 1: All of that is less a convincing case for her
Speaker 1: convoluted heterosexuality than for her cultures harsh assessment of the
Speaker 1: possibilities of lesbianism. So, yeah, she was just like lesbians
Speaker 1: like to sleep around and go out drinking, and they're
Speaker 1: all real butch looking. I guess there's a thing. But
Speaker 1: that's definitely more of a stereotype that existed at that
Speaker 1: time she could have maybe today might more freely accept
Speaker 1: the term lesbian than at that time. Maybe. I mean,
Speaker 1: we see this, I feel like pretty regularly too. If
Speaker 1: people who lack the modern language that we have to
Speaker 1: explore gender and sexuality, still some of that stems from
Speaker 1: their own predisposed ideas about what these identities mean. And
Speaker 1: so it's sort of like rooted in stereotype just because
Speaker 1: they they're uneducated on yeah, because it didn't exist yet. Well,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they were pointing out that she was being brave,
Speaker 1: really brave by looking into it and like researching it
Speaker 1: and trying to find anything written about you know, quote
Speaker 1: unquote sexual deviance. Um, but there it is, you know,
Speaker 1: right there. You have to look in a book that
Speaker 1: says your sexual deviance. That makes it really hard, I
Speaker 1: think to like try to absorb that into yourself and
Speaker 1: as you're part of your identity, let me learn more
Speaker 1: about myself from this paper that talks about what trash
Speaker 1: I am? Hey, you are you a piece of ship?
Speaker 1: Read this book? Like no one wants to read them.
Speaker 1: No one wants to identify with that, you know. Um
Speaker 1: So anyway, yeah, that's I did laugh though that she
Speaker 1: was saying that, Oh, I'm I'm like a heterosexual man
Speaker 1: because I don't like to go to bars or like
Speaker 1: sleep around. Come on, now, have you met a heterosexual man?
Speaker 1: Maybe going to bars? More like heterosexual man because I
Speaker 1: exclusively believe in monogamy. What I'm sorry, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think of a man, right, But anyway, you can see
Speaker 1: where she was just really coming up against walls trying to,
Speaker 1: you know, understand this about yourself throughout her life. So
Speaker 1: she graduated from Hunter College with a degree in English
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty three, probably the worst year in American
Speaker 1: history to be entering the workforce unless you invested in
Speaker 1: like a chain of kissing booths in January, that's the
Speaker 1: second worst time to get into a workforce. Specific things
Speaker 1: went downhill for you. Yeah, I'll tell you, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be all the rage inw just free love. Everybody's just
Speaker 1: gonna be mashing their naked faces together. Sounds bad, even
Speaker 1: pre pandemic, honestly, if I could be honest. So Pouli
Speaker 1: found a job selling subscriptions to the Opportunity, which was
Speaker 1: an academic journal of the civil rights organization National Urban League.
Speaker 1: But eventually she became too unwell to continue like walking
Speaker 1: around selling subscriptions, and she was diagnosed with pleurisy, and
Speaker 1: her or advised her to find a healthier climate, you know,
Speaker 1: recover your strength. I wish doctors would prescribe that. I
Speaker 1: wish a doctor would tell me, you know what, for
Speaker 1: your own health, you should probably move to Tuscany. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you say so. Doctors going to cover that?
Speaker 1: Can you write me a note? Now? It is no.
Speaker 1: But fortunately that same year President Roosevelt authorized the funding
Speaker 1: for She She She camps thanks to the urging of
Speaker 1: his wife Eleanor Roosevelt. So again, unemployment was so terrible
Speaker 1: during the Depression that Roosevelt established nationalized voluntary work programs
Speaker 1: called the Civilian Conservation Corps or c c C. And
Speaker 1: these were this was for like young, married, unemployed men
Speaker 1: to come and have some work doing some government infrastructure
Speaker 1: jobs like creating man made lakes, building damns, fighting wildfires,
Speaker 1: and other conservation work like that, and they got paid
Speaker 1: a wage of thirty dollars per month, twenty two to
Speaker 1: five dollars of which had to be sent back to
Speaker 1: their families. So just to put that in a context,
Speaker 1: I think I'll pull out our calculators. Let's see, that
Speaker 1: would be six hundred and fifty eight dollars today, So
Speaker 1: five hundred and forty of that had to be sent home,
Speaker 1: So you were left with a hundred and eighteen dollars
Speaker 1: for the entire month in today's money. In today's money,
Speaker 1: eighteen dollars barely gets me through a day, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, what's a copp of coffee now, like it's
Speaker 1: just a banana. Michael. Yeah, it was so cool. I
Speaker 1: remember learning about the c c C. When we did
Speaker 1: our camping trip in Utah, of we got to drive
Speaker 1: through State Route twelve, which is this amazing scenic road
Speaker 1: that kind of winds through the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument,
Speaker 1: which is one of the coolest places I've ever been.
Speaker 1: It's like going to Mars, so awesome, and there's all
Speaker 1: these stops along where you can kind of get these
Speaker 1: incredible scenic views. And there was a lot of signs
Speaker 1: up about how Zavelt had the c c C come
Speaker 1: out there, and uh, a lot of men were given
Speaker 1: jobs sort of like uh, cultivating this landscape and helping
Speaker 1: build the national parks. It's super awesome stuff. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a cool like two birds with one stone
Speaker 1: program because it was like, let's employ some people, which
Speaker 1: is desperately needed, and also improved the infrastructure of the
Speaker 1: country at the same time. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that seems smart. Yeah, it seems smarts, Like that would
Speaker 1: be a real good idea. I think another bridge just
Speaker 1: crumbled something anyway, But Eleanor thought it wasn't very fair
Speaker 1: to leave unemployed women out of this program. Again, this
Speaker 1: is just for young married men. And she's like, actually,
Speaker 1: women have been hit hardest by this depression, UM, and
Speaker 1: they're being left out of all these programs meant to
Speaker 1: address what's going on. UM and she knew that there
Speaker 1: were women in America who were willing to work in
Speaker 1: forestry and conservation if they were getting money to send
Speaker 1: back to their families. So the first she she she
Speaker 1: camp was born Camp Tara, or Temporary Emergency Relief Assistance.
Speaker 1: I know, she she is that would never fly to
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you if it's I know. I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, I don't know if that would work out.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. We got, she sheds. We
Speaker 1: did get, she showed, but that was also laughed at. True,
Speaker 1: So I don't know. And so Camp Tara is where
Speaker 1: Polly ended up at the end of nineteen thirty three
Speaker 1: to recover her health. Let's find out about her time
Speaker 1: there after a short break. Sounds good, welcome back campers, okay,
Speaker 1: So Polly regained her health there at Camp Tera. She
Speaker 1: she she camp, and she actually got to meet Eleanor
Speaker 1: Roosevelt at one point, but she clashed with the director
Speaker 1: of the camp, who was a bit of an authoritarian.
Speaker 1: It seems she ran it in kind of a semi
Speaker 1: military fashion, which this is a little ironic because Fdr
Speaker 1: always made sure that the c C C camps were
Speaker 1: never military at all, because he desperately did not want
Speaker 1: them to resemble the Hitler youth program in any way.
Speaker 1: It's like, this is this cannot look like the American
Speaker 1: version of Hitler Youth. This is a totally different thing.
Speaker 1: Do not run this like a drill sergeant. But that's
Speaker 1: exactly what this director seemed to do. She didn't really
Speaker 1: like Polly's attitude when she met the first lady because
Speaker 1: Polly didn't stand up when they were introduced. All that mean,
Speaker 1: but she was there like for literally a medical diagnosis
Speaker 1: of being exhausted, sod a medically tired. Okay, I'm sitting down.
Speaker 1: Oh lord, my doctor said I should go live in Tuscany.
Speaker 1: You're lucky I'm even here, if only. And then this
Speaker 1: director found a copy of Dust Capital by Karl Marx
Speaker 1: and Polly's stuff, which Polly just had from a college
Speaker 1: course at Hunter. But this director is like communists. But
Speaker 1: most of all, this director disapproved of Polly's relationship with
Speaker 1: her fellow ounceler, a white woman named peg Holes First Love.
Speaker 1: So the director kicked them both out of the camp,
Speaker 1: and Paulin and Peg just sort of like hoboat around
Speaker 1: for a while, just hopping on freight trains, hitchhiking, you know, bindles,
Speaker 1: the cooking a can of beans under a bridge, over
Speaker 1: a bucket fire. I imagine. Yeah, I wonder if she
Speaker 1: knew about hobo signs, the little put up like a
Speaker 1: secret code, like this bridge is safe. Careful, there's a
Speaker 1: patrol around here. If you see a little squiggle, it
Speaker 1: means certain things. Yeah, you can sleep here and the
Speaker 1: owner won't won't run you out or whatever. Right, they
Speaker 1: had little little codes, so I imagine she picked up
Speaker 1: on those pretty cool. And during this time Pauline actually
Speaker 1: traveled disguised as a man. New Yorker writes that quote,
Speaker 1: she learned all about the labor movement, stood in her
Speaker 1: first picket line, joined a faction of the Communist Party USA,
Speaker 1: and then resigned from that party a year later because
Speaker 1: she found the party's discipline irksome. I get it. She's
Speaker 1: not one to take to get pushed around by nobody. No,
Speaker 1: she does not like constraints, right, but yeah, that while
Speaker 1: while she's riding the rails is when she was sort
Speaker 1: of saying, I'm Paul, I'm dude, I'm Steve, Like she's
Speaker 1: trying different names out, and yeah, wearing pants, wearing her
Speaker 1: hair short, you know, wearing a men's hats and stuff.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if that was also for safety of travel,
Speaker 1: like two women traveling together. I was going to ask
Speaker 1: that couple, I feel like a couple. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: do think it's interesting because, for example, um, I'm looking
Speaker 1: back our Elagablus story, because she said her whole life,
Speaker 1: I am the Empress, you called me your empress, you
Speaker 1: will address me as such. So it became very clear
Speaker 1: that even though Alcabilis didn't have the sort of modern
Speaker 1: conversations and dialogue and and education, we could still glean
Speaker 1: from that very clearly that she wanted to use she
Speaker 1: pronounced she wanted to go by the name Algablus. Like
Speaker 1: with Polly, we definitely kind of have been trying to
Speaker 1: sort of figure that out. Is different, takes some different articles,
Speaker 1: but we can only kind of assume what Dr Murray
Speaker 1: might have wanted today, right, So honestly, really it just
Speaker 1: kind of points to the sort of complexity and the
Speaker 1: fluidity of gender and conversations around gender, which are both
Speaker 1: quite fluid and change all the time. Yeah, yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: much like gender itself, very fluid. Yeah, um, yeah, we
Speaker 1: we saw some. There are some scholars who who have
Speaker 1: have retroactively applied he him, and some use all pronouns throughout,
Speaker 1: just depending what part of her life therein. And for example,
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
Speaker 1: says that for their exhibit about Dr Murray quote, throughout
Speaker 1: both the physical and online exhibition, the museum has decided
Speaker 1: to use she her pronouns, keeping with historical precedent, and
Speaker 1: have identified Murray as she identified herself in accordance with
Speaker 1: our language guide. So yeah, they all kind of each
Speaker 1: source kind of takes their own stance on it, I guess,
Speaker 1: and chooses their own their own way of going forward.
Speaker 1: But they kind of all acknowledge that it is a
Speaker 1: conversation that's ongoing and that's very fluid, and that they'll
Speaker 1: probably update as they go. I mean, we don't have
Speaker 1: that luxury, I guess, but as as it evolves, they can,
Speaker 1: you know, evolve the way they talk about Polly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, especially when we get into Police's future.
Speaker 1: As the episode goes on, we'll learn that her experiences
Speaker 1: as a woman in the world really kind of define
Speaker 1: her legacy. And of course, again this is at a
Speaker 1: point in time where you know, if she were to
Speaker 1: identify as trans today, that would be a big part
Speaker 1: of her experiences back then. They weren't talking to her
Speaker 1: like that. She wasn't speaking like that. She was speaking largely,
Speaker 1: especially as she moved forward in her professional career, about
Speaker 1: her experience in the world as a woman surrounded by
Speaker 1: all these CIS men like that are constantly challenging her
Speaker 1: in both black and white spaces. Um, she's she's having
Speaker 1: she's up against the wall of these guys a lot.
Speaker 1: So we, like you said, like, we don't particularly feel
Speaker 1: confident on this show sort of making that decision for
Speaker 1: her posthumously. Uh, we're kind of taking the Smithsonian's angle
Speaker 1: here and saying, you know, she wrote in her books
Speaker 1: about herself using she her pronouns. Yes, things might have
Speaker 1: been different where she around today. Um, but it really,
Speaker 1: ultimately it just us bring up that same thing that
Speaker 1: the conversation around gender gender itself both very complex issues. Uh.
Speaker 1: And what's kind of cool about it is that we're
Speaker 1: living in the middle of this conversation right now, right,
Speaker 1: it's happening all around us in all kinds of different places.
Speaker 1: Is I'm fascinated by it and I love to just
Speaker 1: listen to it, and kind of I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: just at a movie sometimes, just like watching the story unfold, Like, well,
Speaker 1: I'll just sit here and listen to the story. Cool,
Speaker 1: let me know what's happening next. Yeah, that's awesome to me.
Speaker 1: I don't get why people are like so resistant to
Speaker 1: these these cultural conversations happening. I'm like, let it play out.
Speaker 1: Get I'm not getting involved. It's got nothing to do
Speaker 1: with me. They just think it's kind of cool to
Speaker 1: see happen. Well, maybe they don't want to change the
Speaker 1: behaviors that need to be changed. Well yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that people, But it is so weird to be like, well,
Speaker 1: I think about chromosomes all the time. Come on, you
Speaker 1: don't give any of that exactly. You know you don't.
Speaker 1: You only just started care for some fucking reason, right,
Speaker 1: because you want to be contrary and I guess, or
Speaker 1: make your decision whatever, get real stuck in it for
Speaker 1: some reason. I don't know why people do that, but
Speaker 1: people do do that. People do do that. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but and that again, it just comes back to that
Speaker 1: it's a complicated issue and there's a complex thing and uh,
Speaker 1: and all we can do is kind of keep listening,
Speaker 1: um to what's going on, take part if it involves you,
Speaker 1: and and sit back and listen if it doesn't, because
Speaker 1: it is complicated. And yeah, the expiration of gender is
Speaker 1: a complicated issue. Um, but using someone's correct pronouns when
Speaker 1: they ask you to is not complicated. All it is,
Speaker 1: super uncomplicated, is extremely fucking easy to do. Actually, Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, don't don't I mean, don't be like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's very complicated, just so you don't change your behavior
Speaker 1: because that's the thing that's making it difficult now exactly,
Speaker 1: you know. Yes, So in she applied to go to
Speaker 1: graduate school for sociology at the University of North Carolina. Now,
Speaker 1: they didn't accept black students, but Polly had family ties.
Speaker 1: Two of her Enslaver relatives had attended, another had been
Speaker 1: on the board of trustees, and another created a permanent scholarship.
Speaker 1: So she was kind of like, I think I have
Speaker 1: a right to be here, and I love that. I
Speaker 1: really love that. Let me tell you about my great,
Speaker 1: great grandfather. Oh you want a legacy candidate, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you about some of my family. But six days after
Speaker 1: she applied, the letter came, quote, dear miss Murray, I
Speaker 1: write to state that members of your race are not
Speaker 1: admitted to the university. And I'm just going to pull
Speaker 1: into speculation station and say that. The letter went on
Speaker 1: to say, because we all have a big, fat, poopy
Speaker 1: diapers that are really taken up all of our time
Speaker 1: right now. Yes, I think that's probably accurate. I think
Speaker 1: that's accurate. So what's ironic is that in this instance,
Speaker 1: separate but equal should actually have worked in Polly's favor,
Speaker 1: because only two days before she got her rejection letter,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court had said that segregated rules had to
Speaker 1: admit black students if they did not have an equivalent available,
Speaker 1: and they did not in in North Carolina. But the
Speaker 1: legislature of North Carolina got around this whole thing by
Speaker 1: promising to set up a college for black students just
Speaker 1: as soon as we can, we swear promise. Wow, And
Speaker 1: they went for that. They said, Okay, I know. Supreme
Speaker 1: Court was like, we trust you. Your records pretty good,
Speaker 1: North Carolina. Okay, come on racial equality and instead. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously they slashed its budget by two thirds and completely
Speaker 1: ignored it and did nothing. So they just got away
Speaker 1: with it. But we're getting to it eventually. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At some point, so Pauli asked then Double A CP
Speaker 1: to help her sue U n C, but the Double
Speaker 1: A CPS said no because they thought that her being
Speaker 1: a New York resident was going to hurt the case.
Speaker 1: Isn't that ironic? She couldn't go to school in New
Speaker 1: York because she was a resident of North Carolina, So
Speaker 1: she became a resident of New York and then could
Speaker 1: not sue North Carolina because she wasn't a resident of
Speaker 1: her home state. I'm just like, she must have been like, God,
Speaker 1: damn it, We're not a United States so frustrating. Dr
Speaker 1: Patricia Bell Scott has argued that it was also because
Speaker 1: of Pauli's openly queer life. So yes, So bell Scott
Speaker 1: is some one of these scholars who is talking talks
Speaker 1: a lot about her sexuality, her gender identity, and it's
Speaker 1: her opinion that the n Double A CP was maybe
Speaker 1: engaging in a little bit of respectability politics this time,
Speaker 1: because of course, obviously, first of all, they want cases,
Speaker 1: they can win. So if they feel like they can't win,
Speaker 1: they're not going to take the case no matter how
Speaker 1: good it is. And secondly, they want the person the
Speaker 1: defendant to be the quote unquote right type of black
Speaker 1: person to kind of further the cause. I think it's
Speaker 1: like now when we talk about immigration, you have to
Speaker 1: talk about the doctors and lawyers that come from other
Speaker 1: countries and like, but also there's people who just they
Speaker 1: just work a normal, like an everyday job, but they
Speaker 1: go home and they do normal ship and they're not
Speaker 1: like I also think they should be allowed to live. Um.
Speaker 1: So I think it's something like similar to that. You know,
Speaker 1: in that time period, they were like, we just need
Speaker 1: you to be a nice, straight, well dressed, educated, well
Speaker 1: spoken person so that you don't look like a scary
Speaker 1: black person or something to all the crazy white people
Speaker 1: were dealing with, right, because they were dealing with such
Speaker 1: crazy white people, you know, like you've got to kind
Speaker 1: of you understand where they're coming from, because it's like,
Speaker 1: look who we have, look at the assholes we have
Speaker 1: to impress you. They'll use they are yeah, they'll use
Speaker 1: literally and they go, you you tied your left shoe
Speaker 1: before your right shoe. No, I don't think so pretty
Speaker 1: much close, yeah, and when we still see that, so
Speaker 1: you know, I can see why it feels itchy. But
Speaker 1: it's also like I can see why where the logic
Speaker 1: is for it, even though it's not like emotionally nice,
Speaker 1: you can see why they might have just been like,
Speaker 1: you're not the right kind of candidate for us. Um.
Speaker 1: How for all everything written down, all the evidence that's
Speaker 1: written that you can look at, is because she was
Speaker 1: not a resident of the stage. That's the official reason. Gotcha.
Speaker 1: So Polly also wrote both of the Roosevelt's, asking them
Speaker 1: to denounce You and See and criticizing FDR for accepting
Speaker 1: an honorary degree from them, but nothing ended up working.
Speaker 1: She did not attend You and See at any point. However,
Speaker 1: this was the beginning of her lifelong correspondence with the
Speaker 1: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. She responded to Polly's letter with
Speaker 1: an invitation to tea. According to Kenneth mac and The
Speaker 1: Boston Review, in an article titled Polly Murray Eleanor Roosevelt's
Speaker 1: Beloved Radical, their relationship was remarkable for the way Polly
Speaker 1: could get under Eleanor's skin, Eleanor once called a letter
Speaker 1: from Paully quote one of the most thoughtless I have
Speaker 1: ever read, to which Polly replied, quote, you have been
Speaker 1: utterly frank with me, and I should like to be
Speaker 1: equally frank with you. So don't start, man, won't be Eleanor.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say it like it is. I love
Speaker 1: Eleanor's like, you didn't have a lot of deference in
Speaker 1: that letter, and She's like, I'm sorry, what's deference? I
Speaker 1: don't have that for anyone? I don't think like. No,
Speaker 1: she definitely they both were like pretty close for years,
Speaker 1: and they both cited one another as big inspirations for
Speaker 1: quite a lot of things. So yeah, a productively contentious relationship,
Speaker 1: I saw it. But Polly experienced an emotional breakdown when
Speaker 1: her relationship with Peg ended again her first love, this
Speaker 1: woman she had rode the rails with and done all
Speaker 1: this stuff with, defied that shitty director of the crap
Speaker 1: camp and everything. Unfortunately, I can't find anything about Peg herself,
Speaker 1: so we can't say much about who she was as
Speaker 1: a person or anything. But probably was pretty cool. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to decide that regulation she was awesome, kicked,
Speaker 1: pretty cool, lady homes. But yeah, Polly had like just
Speaker 1: a total breakdown when they broke up, and she ended
Speaker 1: up going to the Bellevue Hospital in New York for
Speaker 1: psychiatric treatment. When she left, she was with her hospital
Speaker 1: roommate and new girlfriend, Adeleine McBean, which is just an
Speaker 1: amazing name. Children about Kane. I love it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm getting big Amelia Badelia vibes Satelene McBain. Hopefully she
Speaker 1: wasn't as dumb as Amelia Badelia, literature's dumbest character. I know.
Speaker 1: The only thing I remember from an Amelia Badelia book
Speaker 1: was somebody asked her to draw a bath, and you
Speaker 1: know that she pulled out a sketch pad. Do you
Speaker 1: know what she did drawing a bath? I know, it's
Speaker 1: it's a It's a shock that she was still employed
Speaker 1: by the end of that amazing, I mean it really should.
Speaker 1: You just actually had a lot of respect for her employers,
Speaker 1: very patiently and alright, look, she's incredibly literal. So everybody
Speaker 1: think about drags from Guardians, Yes, Amelia, but deal, it
Speaker 1: was the original drags and I love that. Oh lord.
Speaker 1: So anyway, she's with her Amelia Badelia Adeline McBean, and
Speaker 1: they boarded a public bus to get back to Polly's
Speaker 1: family in Durham for the Easter holidays. Even though Polly
Speaker 1: hated taking segregated transit, it was really her least favorite thing.
Speaker 1: She wrote that the intimacy of the space quote permitted
Speaker 1: the public humiliation of black people to be carried out
Speaker 1: in the presence of privileged white spectators who witnessed our
Speaker 1: shame and silence or indifference. Well, that just lays it
Speaker 1: out so clearly, Yeah, what was wrong with Oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's like I literally have to get into this tiny
Speaker 1: space and squeeze my ass past all you jerks and
Speaker 1: all the empty seats available and go sit in the
Speaker 1: worst section. Well, and more than that, it just points out,
Speaker 1: like why it's so much more than just me having
Speaker 1: to sit in the back of the bus. This is
Speaker 1: every time I get on the bus, it's further reinforcing
Speaker 1: this idea that we are less than that all these
Speaker 1: white people already believe and even even I would think
Speaker 1: less directly racist white people who might not think twice
Speaker 1: about it, and they're not not really care who's on
Speaker 1: the bus, where subconsciously are getting reinforced with this idea constantly,
Speaker 1: Well you're better, so you can seat at the front
Speaker 1: of the bus. Like, yeah, that's that's such a brilliant
Speaker 1: way to put it. Yeah, she's good at that. She's
Speaker 1: very good at that. So when they had to change
Speaker 1: buses in Virginia, of course that was the South, so
Speaker 1: they had to move to the back of the bus
Speaker 1: where black people are mandated to sit, but all the
Speaker 1: seats reserved for the black passengers were broken, so they
Speaker 1: were like, well, we're gonna move to ones in the
Speaker 1: white section. They sat down, and they had been talking
Speaker 1: about Gandhian civil disobedience like you do with your lover.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, whenever we're on a bus together. First, I
Speaker 1: love it. I love They're just like staring into each
Speaker 1: other's eyes, like I love non violande, I love john violence.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm thinking about next summer hunger strike.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about a hunger strike. Perfect, You're so beautiful.
Speaker 1: So this was not a planned thing, but when they
Speaker 1: were they had just been talking about, you know, non
Speaker 1: violent forms of protest. They sat in the white section,
Speaker 1: and so when they were asked to move and move
Speaker 1: into sit in those broken as seats, they politely refused
Speaker 1: and continued to sit where they were sitting, and of
Speaker 1: course the cops were called. They were arrested and thrown
Speaker 1: in jail. Now, the N double A CP was interested
Speaker 1: this time, but Virginia knew the issue of segregation was
Speaker 1: heating up and they didn't want to call down the thunder.
Speaker 1: So instead of charging Paully and Adeline with breaking segregation laws,
Speaker 1: they only charged them with disorderly conduct and they were
Speaker 1: fined about forty five dollars, which, just checking again, transfer
Speaker 1: rate is over eight hundred dollars today. That's a lot.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of money for sitting on the bus,
Speaker 1: you know, And it's that same they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not a racial issue. It's just like
Speaker 1: you should have you should have listened to that police officer. Boy,
Speaker 1: isn't that always the case? Polly had been presenting as
Speaker 1: male while traveling with Adeline, and she'd even given her
Speaker 1: name as Oliver when she was arrested, so Dr Bell
Speaker 1: Scott has argued that possibly the N double A CP
Speaker 1: was again like, you know, let's not put a spotlight
Speaker 1: on this case, particularly this one, not the right. So
Speaker 1: instead the Workers Defense League came in and paid their fine,
Speaker 1: and a few months later they gave Paully a job.
Speaker 1: And it was through this administrative position that she got
Speaker 1: involved in the case of Odell Waller, who was a
Speaker 1: black Virginia's sharecropper who had been sentenced to death because
Speaker 1: he killed his white landlord during an argument, and the
Speaker 1: Workers Defense League was arguing that he had been in
Speaker 1: legitimate fear for his life, that they had been like
Speaker 1: really going at it. He thought his at landlord was
Speaker 1: going to kill him, he killed him in self defense.
Speaker 1: So Polly was traveling around raising money for Odell's defense,
Speaker 1: and she wrote to her friend Eleanor Roosevelt on his behalf,
Speaker 1: and Eleanor actually reached out. She personally asked the governor
Speaker 1: of Virginia to ensure that Odell got a fair trial,
Speaker 1: pretty telling that the first lady has to ask for
Speaker 1: that sort of I think a thing that we already
Speaker 1: expect in this country, but anyways, sort of in the constitution. Um.
Speaker 1: And then she she also privately asked her husband, the president,
Speaker 1: to commute his death sentence as well, but ultimately Odell
Speaker 1: was executed in ninety two. After all that, Polly got
Speaker 1: very interested in a career in civil rights law. She
Speaker 1: became a passionate orator, and after a speech she gave
Speaker 1: at a w D. L rally, a young lawyer named
Speaker 1: Third Good Marshall wrote her a letter of recommendation to
Speaker 1: Howard University School of Law, where he was an alumnus.
Speaker 1: She was awarded a scholarship, and she said she went
Speaker 1: in why the one thing on her mind, overturning Jim
Speaker 1: Crow laws. Now, Howard wasn't all black school, so finally
Speaker 1: she was in a class surrounded by black people, but
Speaker 1: she still stood out. She was the only woman. On
Speaker 1: her first day. One of her law professors said in
Speaker 1: front of her entire class that he quote didn't understand
Speaker 1: why a woman would want to go to law school.
Speaker 1: Uh wow, I mean it's still appointed to be the
Speaker 1: only woman in the room and have him just generally
Speaker 1: tell the whole room like, why would a lady want
Speaker 1: to be here? Also, my answer to that would be, Uh,
Speaker 1: the reason is exactly what you just said. That's exactly
Speaker 1: what I thought. I was like the thing that women
Speaker 1: have gotten fucked over so many times in history for
Speaker 1: not understanding the law and how they're protected by it.
Speaker 1: And of course women should go to law school? Are
Speaker 1: you kidding? I want to go to law school because
Speaker 1: you think I shouldn't. How about that? How about that? Now?
Speaker 1: She was obviously humiliated by this comment open in class
Speaker 1: to everyone, but also, as she said it quote, guaranteed
Speaker 1: that I became the top student's pistols like oh you bitch,
Speaker 1: watch me. She referred to this type of discrimination as
Speaker 1: Jane Crow and as the Smithsonian Rights. She quote subsequently
Speaker 1: became an active member of the Congress of Racial Equality
Speaker 1: or CORE, and contributed to the growing dialogue on the
Speaker 1: intersection of racial and gender based discrimination. She also participated
Speaker 1: in sit ins at restaurants with discriminatory seating policies in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Years before the prevalence of those sit ins
Speaker 1: in the fifties and sixties. It was at Howard that
Speaker 1: she would place her bet about Plessy versus Ferguson. And
Speaker 1: we'll hear more about that right after this commercial. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, and welcome back to the show. Okay, So
Speaker 1: it's Polly's and Howard University, and she and her classmates
Speaker 1: are having a spirited discussion about how to bring about
Speaker 1: the end of Jim Crow laws. Now Ever, since the
Speaker 1: landmark Separate but Equal decision in civil rights. Lawyers had
Speaker 1: been questioning the equal part, so they were kind of
Speaker 1: trying to chip away at it by being like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's a specific white school up against a specific black school,
Speaker 1: and they don't quite measure up to the same quality
Speaker 1: of facilities or whatever, in order to kind of say
Speaker 1: this law is not not great. It's not you're not
Speaker 1: doing what you say is supposed to do. Um. But
Speaker 1: that wasn't really working. Again, it was really small gains,
Speaker 1: if any, from that argument, and so Polly said, why
Speaker 1: not challenge the separate part instead? And the response was
Speaker 1: quote hoots of derisive laughter, as she wrote in her memoir.
Speaker 1: But she bet her professor Spotswood Robinson ten dollars that
Speaker 1: PLUSY would be overturned within twenty five years, and her thesis,
Speaker 1: her senior thesis paper, formalized her argument that separate but
Speaker 1: Equal violated and fourteenth amendments of the U. S. Constitution.
Speaker 1: So she was just straight up like, forget that, it
Speaker 1: doesn't even matter if they're equal. The thing is we
Speaker 1: should not be separate by race. That's ridiculous. Now. PAULI graduated,
Speaker 1: of course, at the top of her class, just like
Speaker 1: she said she would, and she was elected Chief Justice
Speaker 1: of the Howard Court of Peers, which normally would have
Speaker 1: resulted in a scholarship to Harvard, But Harvard didn't accept women,
Speaker 1: even one who had a recommendation letter from the Ding
Speaker 1: Dang President of the United States, like PAULI did. Now
Speaker 1: imagine that you applied to a school and the President
Speaker 1: Franklin Delano Roosevelt has written a recommendation letter for you,
Speaker 1: and they're like, still not good enough. If we lead
Speaker 1: one woman in, what's next? Two women? I would a
Speaker 1: woman even want to go to law school? They gave
Speaker 1: her the Jane Crow version of her old U n
Speaker 1: C Letter, saying, quote, you are not of the sex
Speaker 1: entitled to be admitted to Harvard Law School. So she
Speaker 1: wrote back, quote, gentlemen, I would gladly change my sex
Speaker 1: to meet your requirements, but since the way to such
Speaker 1: change has not yet been revealed to me, I have
Speaker 1: no recourse but to appeal to you to change your
Speaker 1: minds on this subject. Are you telling me that one
Speaker 1: is as difficult as the other? Damn tell him? Tell them? Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Is it harder for you to change your
Speaker 1: minds than it is for me to change my holding.
Speaker 1: Dang gender. Okay, I can't find a penis to attach,
Speaker 1: right or trust me? I would have is stand Sorry,
Speaker 1: I also love You're not of the sex entitled to
Speaker 1: be admitted. That's such a choice of words. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they said what they meant. Oh yeah, their lawyers they
Speaker 1: chose that word very specifically, and I hate it. But
Speaker 1: it didn't work. She never did get in. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think Harvard was really busy at that time where their
Speaker 1: balls were shrinking back into their bodies. So after that,
Speaker 1: we're just like withdrawing away from the ground into their bodies.
Speaker 1: So they were like, oh no, you know, and they
Speaker 1: were really worried about that. Right. So she went to
Speaker 1: Berkeley instead, and she wrote a paper arguing for equal
Speaker 1: opportunity in employment, and after graduation, she was named the
Speaker 1: first black district attorney in California. The next year, she
Speaker 1: was named Woman of the Year by Mademoiselle magazine, and
Speaker 1: she was approached by the Methodist Church. They opposed segregation,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to be able to give out some
Speaker 1: information about how it negatively impacted their mission, and in
Speaker 1: the thirty one states where they had parishes, could Polly
Speaker 1: write up a little pamphlet for them explaining the segregation
Speaker 1: laws in America. Well could Polly, ever, because in response,
Speaker 1: Polly published a seven hundred and seventy six page book
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty called States Laws on Race and Color.
Speaker 1: So she walked into the Methodist church, it was like,
Speaker 1: on their desk, here's that pamphlet you asked for two
Speaker 1: years ago. They're like, oh my god. And it was
Speaker 1: so comprehensive that the a c LU distributed copies to
Speaker 1: law libraries, black colleges, and human rights organizations. Third Good
Speaker 1: Marshall kept stacks of them around in the n double
Speaker 1: a c P offices and famously called it the Bible
Speaker 1: of the civil rights movement because, as Smithsonian rites quote,
Speaker 1: the book skillfully illustrates the social implications and unconstitutionality of
Speaker 1: segregation laws. And the social implications parts really important, because
Speaker 1: she got made of in law school for wanting to
Speaker 1: include in her arguments about how unconstitutional segregation was the
Speaker 1: fact that it had this heavy weight, this heavy social
Speaker 1: emotional psychological weight to it. It wasn't, as you said,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just sitting in the back of the bus.
Speaker 1: It's all the rest of it. It's very invisible and
Speaker 1: you can't look at it, and I can't. You can't
Speaker 1: experience it. I can experience it. I can tell you
Speaker 1: about it. But that's it. That. But there's so much
Speaker 1: more to it than you understand. You're doing so much
Speaker 1: more damage than you even understand. And they laughed at
Speaker 1: her about that. They were like, they ain't gonna care
Speaker 1: about that. But he and his team used her book
Speaker 1: extensively to craft their arguments in Brown v. Board of Education,
Speaker 1: the landmark case that overturned plus C v. Ferguson in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four. New Yorker writes, quote, in this way,
Speaker 1: to Murray's immense gratification, the book ultimately helped render itself obsolete.
Speaker 1: That's also but that is not her only contribution. Old
Speaker 1: Spotswood Robinson was also on the team Brown v. Board
Speaker 1: of Education, And when they got together, you know, convenient
Speaker 1: to figure out their arguments, he remembered Polly's senior thesis
Speaker 1: paper that she had placed her bet on back in Howard,
Speaker 1: and he pulled it out. He showed it to them,
Speaker 1: and they used her paper as a guide to strategize
Speaker 1: their arguments. And it was the social implications thing that
Speaker 1: was the reason it got overturned. Incredible, but apparently they
Speaker 1: didn't bother to tell her how much she contributed to
Speaker 1: the case until Spotswood ran into her randomly at Howard
Speaker 1: ten years later. Oh my god, I would have been like,
Speaker 1: what use this girl's paper? But let's not tell her.
Speaker 1: We're just won't write, or like what the I hope
Speaker 1: she was immediately like, Okay, where's my ten dollars that
Speaker 1: I opened that wallet? Spotswood laughing at me. Who's laughing? Now?
Speaker 1: Look but this only scratches the surface of Polly's life.
Speaker 1: She does so much more. She's about to get so
Speaker 1: pissed at the civil rights movement for neglecting women in
Speaker 1: their leadership, and she's about to go Hella bested at
Speaker 1: the women's rights organization she helped start for sidelining minorities.
Speaker 1: She's about to integrate the church. She's about to meet
Speaker 1: the love of her life, and she's about to inspire
Speaker 1: Ruth Bader Ginsburg to argue the case of her life.
Speaker 1: Paully had so much and she turned out to be
Speaker 1: such an incredible character that, of course we had to
Speaker 1: split this into two parts, so you know, We're going
Speaker 1: to come back with the rest of her story next time,
Speaker 1: which will does involve like her actual romance. I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the things with this story that we
Speaker 1: were looking at is there's too much to tell about
Speaker 1: her and this show. I think we've learned over the
Speaker 1: close to a year that we've been doing it now
Speaker 1: that it it's not always a specific romance that we're
Speaker 1: looking at, but rather UM, someone's unique experience with attraction
Speaker 1: UM who or sometimes what they're attracted to UM and
Speaker 1: and that in and of itself is as much of
Speaker 1: a story as you know, a love story between two people.
Speaker 1: Definitely UM and that's such a big part of her life.
Speaker 1: But we do get to meet her romantic partner in
Speaker 1: part two, person that she really fell for, and that's
Speaker 1: very exciting too. Yeah, she's just PAULI is inspirational person.
Speaker 1: I'm like a little fucking mad that I've never heard
Speaker 1: of her before now, Yeah, because she's just in every
Speaker 1: facet of of everything. She has so much to offer,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like someone who I was
Speaker 1: very interested in feminism from high school and I even
Speaker 1: remember being like feminism is like so awesome because women
Speaker 1: are are everything women are gay, women are black, women
Speaker 1: are indigenous, women are are not Western there from other countries.
Speaker 1: Like if you want to care about if you want
Speaker 1: to work towards equal rice for women, then you have
Speaker 1: to work towards so many other movements, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Women are disabled and women you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. But of course that was before I learned
Speaker 1: how much feminism was sidelining so many other identities, um
Speaker 1: in within the movement in favor of specifically white women
Speaker 1: and even more specifically white women with a certain amount
Speaker 1: of money. Um So, it's very interesting that in all
Speaker 1: of these intersections of class, of race, of gender, identity,
Speaker 1: of sexuality, she just has so much to say. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not just inspirational, but she's so educational. And
Speaker 1: I think that's one thing I'm really excited for in
Speaker 1: part two is we will get what's much more into
Speaker 1: the intersectionality arguments that like, for me, it's always just like, okay, intersectionality.
Speaker 1: Of course, yeah that sounds right, I'll go for it.
Speaker 1: But just because it seemed like the right thing, or
Speaker 1: the people I know who are smart are telling me,
Speaker 1: this is what you should concern yourself with. She puts
Speaker 1: it into words that just makes it all click where
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, that's why, of course, Like she really
Speaker 1: contextualizes things in an incredible way. Um that that's a
Speaker 1: that's a really challenging skill. Even for some of the
Speaker 1: greatest leaders in these movements. It's still difficult to really explain.
Speaker 1: But why does this matter so much? I can see,
Speaker 1: you know, someone like me might say like, oh, I
Speaker 1: could see that it matters to you, and that's enough
Speaker 1: for me. But to really have someone explain it in
Speaker 1: a way that just like, oh my god, I get
Speaker 1: it now. I think it's so powerful. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: it's like nice too, because she was so ahead of
Speaker 1: her time that she must have felt even a little
Speaker 1: bit of like impotence in all her words, because she
Speaker 1: she's sort of yelling into this void, like it must
Speaker 1: have felt a lot of her life that no one
Speaker 1: was really listening or just like oh Polly again with
Speaker 1: her crazy stuff. But then years later it would be
Speaker 1: the thing that did everything that she ever wanted it
Speaker 1: to do. And you know, it sucks that she didn't
Speaker 1: get the credit and the flowers at the time, but
Speaker 1: it didn't seem to be the main thing for her.
Speaker 1: She's just like, as long as the thing happens, I
Speaker 1: don't really care if my name is attached to it.
Speaker 1: And so I just think that's that's really cool to
Speaker 1: to learn, just like little moves. Now they do build,
Speaker 1: they do build. Yeah, it's equally frustrating and awesome to
Speaker 1: see how long things take sometimes because that can that's
Speaker 1: very frustrating and it shouldn't be like that. And I
Speaker 1: never settle for the excuse of well, it takes a
Speaker 1: while to change people's minds and stuff like screw that.
Speaker 1: That's obnoxious. But it does also emphasize the fact that
Speaker 1: it can feel like you're spinning your wheels, but the
Speaker 1: work matters and it and these things often will pay
Speaker 1: off later than you think they do. Sometimes it takes generations.
Speaker 1: Hopefully as our technology advances, our communication technology advances, the
Speaker 1: things can take less and less time. Um, but I
Speaker 1: think that's truer now than it used to be. But
Speaker 1: you do see, I think that, like you said, these
Speaker 1: these little actions are what makes mountains move, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just love this shoes out there being undeniable,
Speaker 1: like he could not sideline her. She's so important to
Speaker 1: all these movements too, that it was just like, well,
Speaker 1: we might not like what she's saying, but there's no need.
Speaker 1: We gotta have her here. She's got to be on
Speaker 1: my side because she's killing it. So yeah, I hope
Speaker 1: you love this story. You know there's so much more.
Speaker 1: Please join us for part two. There's just so much
Speaker 1: more to come, right, It's going to be good and
Speaker 1: we will catch you all at the next episode. Don't
Speaker 1: forget to shoot. Does an email give us your thoughts?
Speaker 1: Romance at iHeart media dot com right or we're on
Speaker 1: social media on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dynamite Boom
Speaker 1: and I'm at Oh Great. It's Eli and the show
Speaker 1: is at ridic Romance. We can't wait to bring you
Speaker 1: the rest of the story too, and in and out
Speaker 1: We'll see you then. I love you so long. Friends,
Speaker 1: It's time to go. Thanks for listening to our show.
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