36. The Life of Pauli Murray: Confrontation by Typewriter, Part 1

In this episode of History is Gay, Leigh and guest host Aubree Calvin discuss Pauli Murray, an important African American lawyer, and activist who is finally getting the historical attention they deserve. In their time, Murray was a labor rights, civil rights, and women's rights activist, and broke significant barriers all while facing sexism and racism. In addition to having a brilliant legal mind, they were a writer, poet, and priest, and had time to be friends with Eleanor Roosevelt. Pauli Murray should be in every U.S. History book in every K-12 school. So, if Pauli Murray was so important to so many movements, why has history largely forgotten them? Leigh and Aubree try to answer that in this two-episode series. This first episode looks at their upbringing, many careers, and accomplishments. Later, in part two, we look at what made Pauli queer, and try to get a handle, as best we can, on their gender identity. Our wonderful guest host for this episode, Aubree Calvin, can be found at www.aubreecalvin.com or on her podcast Southern Queeries. You can also hear Aubree in previous episodes, which you can check out by clicking here! Outline0:00 – Introduction10:00 – Main Topic: Pauli Murray13:06 – Socio-Historical Context14:36 – A Note on Pronouns16:11 – Who were they? Bio Time.19:26 – Content Warning: Racial violence30:05 – Fun Segment: Word of the Week57:13 – Poetry and Memoir Writing1:12:19 – Content Warning: Stark descriptions of slave trade1:20:55 – Closing and Where to Find Us Online Support for this episode comes from .gay, a brand new domain extension that will add a whole bunch of fabulousness to your website, while supporting LGBTQ rights and organizations at the same time! .gay is offering our listeners a FREE .gay domain name of your choice for your own website or brand for 1-year. Click here to get your free .gay website with our special coupon code already applied! -------------------- Want to help us continue to make the show? Support us on Patreon and get awesome goodies, behind-the-scenes access, special minisodes, and more! You can get super cool merch in our store! Shirts, hoodies, totes, a coloring book, and other neat things. If you'd like to help us transcribe the show for our d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing fans, please head on over to www.historyisgaypodcast.com/transcribe to join the team of volunteers! Find our full list of sources and bonus content at www.historyisgaypodcast.com. Get at us on twitter @historyisgaypod, tumblr at historyisgaypodcast, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Don't forget to rate and review so more folks can see the show!