Why Don’t We Know More About The Legacies of Pauli Murray & Bayard Rustin?
Mar 05, 2024Season 6Episode 9
Angella Fraser & Leslie Osei-Tutu
Although Black History month ended last week, we are keenly aware that Black History is every month and for everybody. After all, Black history is American history.
We bring you this week the lesser told stories of two African American pioneers: Pauli Murray and Bayard Rustin. They are two pivotal yet often unheralded champions of the Civil Rights Movement, whose legacies intertwine with the fabric of America's ongoing quest for equality. In this episode Angella and Leslie discuss two screen depictions of the remarkable lives and contributions of these trailblazers, whose courageous battles against injustice were further complicated by their LGBTQIA+ identities.
We highlight Pauli's visionary legal strategies that reshaped gender equality laws and Bayard's strategic genius in organizing the March on Washington, revealing a deeper understanding of their lasting impact on the world we live in today.
This episode and all previous episodes are available on YouTube. Please join our Besties Quad Squad as a Patreon subscriber at the $5 or $10 monthly level. You'll receive exclusive behind-the-scenes content.
Although Black History month ended last week, we are keenly aware that Black History is every month and for everybody. After all, Black history is American history.
We bring you this week the lesser told stories of two African American pioneers: Pauli Murray and Bayard Rustin. They are two pivotal yet often unheralded champions of the Civil Rights Movement, whose legacies intertwine with the fabric of America's ongoing quest for equality. In this episode Angella and Leslie discuss two screen depictions of the remarkable lives and contributions of these trailblazers, whose courageous battles against injustice were further complicated by their LGBTQIA+ identities.
We highlight Pauli's visionary legal strategies that reshaped gender equality laws and Bayard's strategic genius in organizing the March on Washington, revealing a deeper understanding of their lasting impact on the world we live in today.
This episode and all previous episodes are available on YouTube. Please join our Besties Quad Squad as a Patreon subscriber at the $5 or $10 monthly level. You'll receive exclusive behind-the-scenes content.
Hey, les, how are you I'm doing so good? How are you, pal, I'm doing good, are you gonna say it?
Speaker 1:
You look amazing. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:
Is that what you wanted me to say? No, uh, no. Is that what you were fishing for? Actually, it was not, it was.
Speaker 1:
Happy Palantines Day. Happy Palantines Day and happy Gatsby, gatsby, gatsby.
Speaker 2:
I heart you.
Speaker 1:
I heart you back.
Speaker 2:
Oh, did you see it? Did that. I don't think mine is gonna do that. I tell you this AI stuff it's a little crazy.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn. Brooklyn man. We have a wonderful topic today.
Speaker 2:
It's our last episode that will air during Black History Month, and we were thinking about, you know, what we could do to commemorate Black History and the Black History Month, and we thought about people in the movement, the Civil Rights Movement, that few people know about, and two of those people are Paulie. I just drew a blank on our last name, paulie, paulie, paulie.
Speaker 1:
Paulie.
Speaker 2:
Paulie, paulie, paulie, paulie, marie, marie, paulie Marie. And what's the other person? Bayard Rustin, bayard Rustin, yeah, so both of them have. Well, paulie Marie has a. There's a documentary about her life and much of it is in her voice because she recorded her memoir an audio recording and also written, I think and the other one is a movie. It's not a documentary, but both of them really illuminating, and we wanted to talk about some of what they have given to America, to everyone in America and Black people in America, and they are both LGBTQIA in that community, of that community, and we wanted to give a shout out for that too, because representation matters, it matters for Black folks, it matters for queer folks and it matters to us, and so we did want to kind of talk about that aspect of their lives too and how it affected their work.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so what I'll also say is that I believe you just mentioned that it is still Black History Month and we all are Black History, and in this episode, in this case, we wanted to talk about people who may not have been household names or may not be known. That doesn't mean their accomplishments are not known, but it's also a time for us to appreciate and say their names.
Speaker 2:
Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:
So the documentary that we'll reference about Paulie Murray is my name is Paulie Murray that's airing now on Prime Video I believe it is Amazon Prime and Bayard Rustin's the movie about him starring Coleman Domingo An excellent, amazing portrayal of this civil rights figure that we don't hear much about. His movie Rustin is airing now on Netflix. We encourage you to not only check out both those movies, but if you have seen those movies already, or if you want to, why don't you like us and leave a comment and let us know what you think about it, so maybe we can start some type of dialogue about it? But both of these are fascinating features that we'd certainly recommend, so let's get into it.
Speaker 2:
So I found out about Paulie Murray maybe a year ago and I think it was in the context of. It was in the context of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I was listening to something about her and somehow that got me to learn about Paulie Murray and then I found the documentary and Paulie Murray actually is the legal mind behind the most fundamentally effective changes in America around the civil rights of black folks and the equality of women and the fact that we don't know and we know these cases so well Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself said that it was Paulie Murray's legal Contribution or legal, Not just contribution.
Speaker 1:
but she initiated it. It was just a contribution.
Speaker 2:
She is the one that said that the 14th Amendment, as applied to black people, should also apply to women, and she was just a little before her time. By the way, I'm going to start using Paulie's proper pronoun, because Paulie is non-binary. It wasn't language that was used at the time, but they were clear that they were having these struggles, went to doctors, felt male, presented female, and so it's very well documented and I believe that if they were living in this time, this is a pronoun that they would use. And so to honor their work.
Speaker 2:
I'm going to use that pronoun.
Speaker 1:
I thought about that also. And can you imagine? Pauli was born in 1910.
Speaker 1:
1910, yeah, and died in 85 at the age of 74. Could you imagine the errors that they lived through and the different levels of struggle, and to the point that you just made about the struggle of their gender identity. It was almost heartbreaking to hear them write so poignantly about their internal turmoil, about even their Pauli wrote to many, many doctors thinking that they must have undescended testes, that even though I'm presenting as a female, I feel so male that there must be male organs in me somewhere, and had surgery to try to identify them. Surgeons did not find any.
Speaker 2:
They weren't there.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
But they did have an aunt, because Pauli became an orphan when they were young and then moved to Durham, north Carolina. I'm gonna really try to go to the home where they grew up, because it is a historic home. Now I'm also gonna try to go to the singer. My memory is come on the singer, nina Simone, thank you. Her home is in Trion, north Carolina. But so, pauli, they grew up with their aunt in Durham, north Carolina, and their aunt, pauli, did not want to wear dresses and they made a deal that they could wear pants, but when it was time for church they had to wear a dress and their aunt called them their boy girl, my boy girl. That's how the aunt was.
Speaker 1:
My boy girl. Yeah, but outside of that, the aunt was the only one that respected their personhood in that way.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and.
Speaker 1:
Pauli remarked about it in her writings Right.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so I'm gonna. I took some notes because I really thought it was important to point out the legal cases that Pauli is responsible for, without question.
Speaker 1:
Oh, I'm glad that you made a note of that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, so they are responsible for it was Pauli and their cousin who were the first to get arrested for refusing to sit in the back of the bus. Some years after that, rosa Parks had that situation, but it was Pauline, her cousin, and there was some legal loophole that the local authorities used, so that didn't start the big broil that later happened with Rosa Parks. So you have to watch it to see that the other one is the sit-ins at the lunch counter. It started with Pauline and their friends.
Speaker 1:
I think when they were students at Howard University, at Howard, yeah.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and the separate but equal Brown versus Board of.
Speaker 1:
Education. That we attribute to Thurgood Marshall and their alliance with Thurgood Marshall and the team out of Harvard University. They took that to the Supreme Court and yeah.
Speaker 2:
Because they actually made a bet. They made a bet with Pauline. They said that within 25 years that separate but equal was gonna be struck down. And they laughed. They laughed at them because it was you know-.
Speaker 1:
Yes, professional Pauline was the only Like, of course not.
Speaker 2:
Right, right, and it happened, I think, within five or seven years, right right.
Speaker 1:
So Pauline was the only visionary that said that this is a possibility.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, and the last one that I wrote down was the woman's rights.
Speaker 1:
Yes, based on the 14th.
Speaker 2:
Amendment, and that was six years before the case was argued by RBG, and in the writing of that case she did attribute the legal argument to Pauline Murray Mm-hmm. So for all these reasons-.
Speaker 1:
But don't also forget wait posthumously. Yes, the recent one, I believe it's for LGBT unions. Oh yeah, the Supreme Court decision. That's right, that's right. Was built upon the work that Pauline Murray started Right right, absolutely, absolutely, and well, I don't-. There's just so many layers, I know.
Speaker 2:
I don't want to say too much about it, because we really want to encourage you to learn about this amazing human being and what they did for the cause of black people and women in America and, unfortunately, their gender. It wasn't something that was public, it wasn't something that was spoken about.
Speaker 1:
They were obviously in turmoil, trying to understand what you know who they were, and what was going on?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, but so I'm going to have to stop it there, les, because I want to talk about every-. Oh, they were also the first black women to be ordained as an Episcopalian.
Speaker 1:
See, that's what I was going to say. They had this whole life and what really was the catalyst was that when Pauli Murray didn't see circumstances the way that they thought that they should be, you know, as I'm blocking now the name, it'll come to me but when they did Don't get like me. Yeah, I know, it seems to be-.
Speaker 2:
It has to be one of us. One of us needs to have a good memory. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:
But what Pauli did? When they didn't see things the way they should, they stepped up and made it happen Every time. So Pauli Murray, as a child, was a poet and they wrote this beautiful poetry and was a lover of reading and books and writing. But when they saw that the circumstances and the civil rights were not the way that they wanted them to be, they said how best can I affect change? In this way? They went to law school. They didn't grow up thinking that law was for them or what have you, but they went to law school.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it was how-. What do I have to do to make this?
Speaker 1:
different, exactly, and it wasn't a matter of-.
Speaker 2:
I would say it a little differently, less that it wasn't a they didn't think that it was the way that they wanted it to be. They saw the criminality of it. They grew up at a time where lynchings were common you know what I mean and they felt the pressure of just walking around with the color of their skin being just completely dishonored.
Speaker 1:
And so, and I think the living in North Carolina and growing up in North Carolina, seeing the lynchings and the jailing and the terrible mistreatment, made them say that there must be some way that I can affect change. Yeah, yeah, you know the late, great Joe Madison, the journalist and radio talk show host. What would he always say what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? And I could certainly hear that in the back of Paulie's head saying like, well, what am I going to do about it? Yeah, yeah, I want to. Just so. Paulie was a poet, they were an attorney, a lawyer. Yeah, when they didn't see change again as a middle-aged person, they went to the seminary and said then, as a believer, all their life, then God must have a solution for these problems.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
And then they became an Episcopal priest, in fact, the first black female Episcopal priest in the country. Why don't we know about?
Speaker 2:
this person and their family thought they were crazy because it was maybe in their 60s, I think. That they did this pivot and what? What do you mean? But I think what happened is that they so wanted to not only understand things better, but they wanted to affect change, and they saw that the human spirit is something that needed to be changed, and so they felt that, by becoming a priest, that was a way that they could affect their. So yeah, please Like this is a case for the Lord.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, and I again. How can I be a vessel, as they did for every obstacle that they saw? I mean, they traveled to Ghana, just please.
Speaker 1:
Right. Let me say what really sparked my interest In the 70s, the 60s and early 70s, civil rights was changing in the United States and many esteemed colleges and university they went to Yale. Colleges and universities were trying to appear to be more diverse and open to equality. Paulie Murray was on staff at Brandeis University. I was a student at Brandeis.
Speaker 2:
University.
Speaker 1:
And they were the first African American tenured professor at Brandeis. So Paulie got tenured at Brandeis in 1971. And I got to Brandeis in 1980. So I was trying to think about the timeline. It's like, were they still there for nine years For nine years when I got there? I think they were gone by the time I got there in 1980. But wow, it's like we walked in the same halls Ford Halls. I was looking around at the pictures of the campus. I'm like, do I remember any of that?
Speaker 2:
You know, I'm going to say one other thing about all of their accomplishments. Everything was so hard fought. Nothing that they were able to do was done easily. They were jailed, they were, okay, discriminated against to the highest level, both because of their race and because of their gender the gender they presented and just dug in, just dug in and kept going, but nothing was handed to them, nothing at all.
Speaker 1:
But while so much of that turmoil was internalized, they presented in such a bold and daring way. It was surprising to me the juxtaposition of that emotional struggle with that outward boldness and voice that they give. I mean, paulie wrote to President Roosevelt you don't want me to.
Speaker 2:
Well, I just thought it was we got to. I wanted to talk about that so badly, but yeah, let's go ahead.
Speaker 1:
No, no, no, no, no, no, you're ready, started. We want you all.
Speaker 2:
Well, there's a part, no, no, no, you can talk about that part. There's a part we won't talk about. Who else they? Wrote to, but you can talk about the fact that they wrote to the president.
Speaker 1:
All right, I'll just say they wrote to President Roosevelt.
Speaker 2:
They wrote to President Roosevelt because they tried to get into UNC Chapel Hill and they showed the letter where they were not allowed in because of their race. The Constitution of the United States and the laws of our state say that we cannot admit you because of your race. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
I mean, this was just the same thing happened at Harvard. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yes, it happened at Harvard, but that was.
Speaker 1:
Postgraduate students were at the top of the class were allowed to proceed to and study at Harvard Law I believe it is and Paulie was not allowed to go.
Speaker 2:
Yeah but and that was both. They said both because of their race and their gender, because Harvard didn't allow women. Paulie said oh hell, no, that's when they decided to go to Howard.
Speaker 1:
Oh hell. No, Let me just say, the last thing I want to say about this is it won't be the last thing. It won't be the last. You're right, thank you. You know me so well. I appreciated the opening quote for the documentary and I'll just read it. Okay. Paulie said I want to see America be what she says she is. It's in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution America be what you proclaim yourself to be. Wow, simple, yeah, it's as simple as that.
Speaker 2:
You said it, you said it, but you said it, you promised. You promised America, you promised yeah.
Speaker 1:
And that reminds me of when I hear people say black Americans or any Americans should not be critical of the United States. If you don't like it, go elsewhere.
Speaker 2:
Right, if you don't like it, leave.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, the flag and the country are no more anyone else's than it is mine. Exactly that's the purpose of having a mirror so that you can see how you look. It is written in a piece of paper in a book that says America stands for this, this, this, and sets itself up as a beacon of the world to look at, for democracy and fair treatment and wealth and richness. So how dare those folks say that we have no right to be critical and to hold America up to a higher standard if we see that there are areas of lack? You know, I think that I personally would be doing a disservice as an American citizen if I were to, any more than if I saw my child misbehaving and I chose not to say anything. You know, we, we, if I see potential for better, I'm going to speak up. I mean that's how.
Speaker 2:
That's how a democracy works. It's participatory Right. It's participatory Right Right.
Speaker 1:
It's you and you and you and you get. A say yes, everybody gets a say Exactly, exactly, exactly. We don't have to leave the country. If, if, after we get our say it's like, what do you mean? We got to leave, Right who?
Speaker 2:
better than us it was. It was hard to you know, I've been thinking about the possibility of moving abroad and I, as I watched the documentary, I thought about some of what they said about the you know the, the fact that this is where their work needed to be and I know that that's a hard thing, especially for African-Americans to. It's sometimes the reason why they don't leave America, because it's well. My four parents fought blood, sweat and tears for this country. I'm gonna stay here, but then there's this pressure of living here and as an individual. Is that what you're holding onto? Or are you holding onto finding peace and joy and another way of living where you don't have this day-to-day pressure of racialized pressure of living in America? I don't know the answer. I'm just saying that that is a dilemma, I think, because it's almost like you're giving up on what your ancestors fought for, but then, on the other hand and what?
Speaker 1:
was promised to us, yeah, and what was promised to us in the Constitution? What's promised to us? You know what I mean? It's like yeah. But then on the other hand- who wants to fight all your life? Who wants to fight? I'm getting a little tired. Exactly who? Wants to fight yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
You know, and maybe that is the act of resistance right To say I'm stepping away from this, I'm not fighting with you, that is also an act of resistance. So you know different strokes for different folks, but highly recommend yeah, for sure that move. Could you say the full name again, les? My name is Paulie Murray. My name is Paulie Murray and the other one we saw the other one with- Coleman Domingo quite a while ago. With the buyer arrested.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, at the time that we have left, I would like to mention that movie a little bit more, say a few more words about it and also we can talk about Now I feel like I'm in a classroom Talk about the similarities between the two figures and even postulate why. We might not know about that. And my light went out. I got a little darker.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1:
No, your light is the same.
Speaker 2:
Oh, okay, my ring light went off. Oh, I see, that's why. Yes, I see a dark too, that's okay, thanks.
Speaker 1:
I hope.
Speaker 2:
Can I reach and turn it on? Sure, you can do that, you're allowed.
Speaker 1:
You're allowed. All right, you can keep talking, though.
Speaker 2:
It's a party and we can turn on the light if we want to. So Bayard Rustin was the mastermind behind the March on Washington. The March on Washington, I almost said the million man march, the March on Washington. Had it not been for him, even the NAACP were staunchly against this march. And had it not been not only for his vision but his ability to plan and logistic and lead the way that he assigned different responsibilities and when I say assigned, it's like that's yours, you figure it out, you make it work. I mean, he was brilliant at that.
Speaker 2:
And usually I don't know if I'm saying usually oftentimes you either have one talent or the other. You're either a big visionary or you are an orchestrator of. You're either the what or the how, and he was both. And for someone like me, I just thought that was so amazing, the way that he was talented in both creating this compelling vision for the march and what it could mean and what it would say about the energy and power of black people. And then he was also so great at logistics, right, right. So that left brain, right brain thing, man, it was just firing on all.
Speaker 1:
And so I was like, oh, my God, oh my God, this guy is somebody. But what struck me also as so so special about him is also that inner consciousness of being a gay and outwardly gay man in a community, in a religious community, in a civil rights community, when that was shunned, he was often attacked by his own people plotted against?
Speaker 1:
Yes, absolutely, and one of the reasons that we postulate that he is not more well known and rather his friend and confidant or buddy, dr Martin Luther King Jr is more well known, is because MLK was a more acceptable figure in the community, being a married, heterosexual man, a man of the cloth, et cetera, et cetera. But Martin Luther King Jr got so many of his ideas. In fact, mlk's nonviolent stance was MLK's nonviolent stance. Yeah was born, was introduced by Bayard Rustin.
Speaker 2:
You know, les, I'm gonna ask people to check on that, because some of what I saw in Paulie Murray was that, and for a few of these things that we attribute to a certain individual, paulie Murray was the first, because they talked about nonviolent action too, and I think this was even before Rustin did. It was early in the-.
Speaker 2:
I don't know if that's specifically it was early in the documentary, and it was around when they arrested them for not sitting in the back of the bus because the seat was broken and they were in this infested jail cell these are. This was their first time coming down south to visit, and so, but anyway, I think that's where it started, you mean?
Speaker 2:
the nonviolence, the nonviolent when they decided to fight against that. So you gotta watch. Then you gotta watch to see who's right. Was it Paulie Murray? Was it Bayard Rustin? Who, who, who, who? One of them did it. You gotta get back to this letter now.
Speaker 1:
Again. Yeah, that would be good if you put it in the comments and then we can like respond to it and have a little debate going, because we like to debate, I like a good fight.
Speaker 2:
I like a good fight. I like a good fight.
Speaker 1:
All right, comments about that. Did you guys like this little review? Or did you know anything about Paulie Murray or Bayard Rustin, or you know? I thought it was pretty amazing yeah. Thanks for putting me on to Paulie Murray. I knew about the Rustin movie but Paulie Murray, I did not know about and I think I'm, I tell you, I think I'm a better person because I know about it.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:
I like it a lot I learned it the same way.
Speaker 2:
Anyway, all right.
Speaker 1:
I think that I didn't give up any more spoiler alerts, like you kind of like stopped it right there.
Speaker 2:
I had to. You like ah, I had to, I had to there's so much more. There's so much more. There's a lot more and what we talked about and yeah, All right.
Speaker 1:
All right, we're going to get the people watching. So thank you for tuning in to another Represord of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn Brothers Block.