MY NAME IS PAULI MURRAY

BY: Amanda Jane Stern

You may not already be familiar with the name Pauli Murray, but documentarians Betsy West and Julie Cohen want to change that with their documentary My Name is Pauli Murray. The documentary follows the titular Pauli Murray, a lawyer and activist who was instrumental in arguing the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment which outlawed sex-based discrimination. Doing a little digging into Murray reveals a very rich life. Murray was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1910 and raised predominantly by maternal grandparents after her mother died and her father fell ill. She graduated, the only woman in her class, from Howard University’s law school, and then went on to become the first African American to receive a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School. As a lawyer, she argued passionately against sex-based discrimination and was influential in influencing noted figures like Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

But it wasn’t just the law that Murray was interested in. In the 1970s she became one of the first women to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. She also struggled with her gender identity and sexual orientation. Many scholars who study her today have claimed that if Murray were alive today, she’d likely identify as a transgender man. She wore her hair short and presented as androgynous as possible. She often described her desire to be “the man” in her relationships with other women. Of course, the language that we have today to describe sexual orientations and gender identities did not exist in Murray’s time, and while we can make educated guesses based on what we know of Murray, we cannot say for certain how Murray would identify had she been given the language to identify as anything other than man, woman, straight, or gay.

My Name is Pauli Murray had its world premiere on January 31, 2021 before being given a limited theatrical release on September 17, 2021. It will be released on Amazon Prime on October 1, 2021.