EP 6 Pauli Murray - Resisting Jane Crow I Women And Resistance 🌍

In this conversation, Aya Fubara Eneli Esq. and Adesoji Iginla delve into the life and legacy of Pauli Murray, a pioneering civil rights activist, feminist, and legal scholar. 

The discussion covers her early life, education, activism, legal career, and the challenges she faced as a Black woman in a male-dominated field. 

It also highlights her contributions to civil rights and feminism, her spiritual journey, and the ongoing struggle for recognition of her work. 

The conversation emphasises the importance of hope and persistence in the face of adversity, as well as the need for continued advocacy for marginalised communities.

Takeaways

*Pauli Murray was a trailblazer in civil rights and feminism.
*Her early life experiences shaped her activism.
*Education was a key focus for Murray, who faced significant barriers.
*Murray's legal work laid the groundwork for future civil rights cases.
*She coined the term 'Jane Crow' to describe gender discrimination.
*Murray's spirituality played a crucial role in her activism.
*Despite her contributions, Murray's legacy has often been overlooked.
*Recognition of her work has been slow but is gaining momentum.
*Murray's life exemplifies the importance of hope and resilience.
*Her story serves as an inspiration for future generations of activists.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Pauli Murray's Legacy
01:24 Exploring Pauli Murray's Early Life and Identity
03:07 Education and Activism: The Fight Against Segregation
05:27 The Struggles of a Pioneer: Gender and Race
07:55 Legal Battles and the Path to Law School
10:27 The Impact of Pauli Murray's Work on Civil Rights
12:43 The Journey to the Clergy and Spirituality
14:52 Reflections on Love and Relationships
17:01 The Fight for Justice: A Life of Activism
19:56 Legacy and Recognition: The Erasure of Contributions
36:37 A Trailblazer's Journey to Ordination
39:20 Pioneering Civil Rights and Women's Rights
42:28 The Power of Persistence and Commitment
48:35 Spirituality in Political Resistance
54:48 The Legacy of Pauli Murray
01:02:28 Reflections on Integration and Identity

Welcome  to Women and Resistance, a powerful podcast where we honour the courage, resilience, and revolutionary spirit of women across the globe. Hosted by Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla...

You're listening to Women and Resistance with Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla—where we honour the voices of women who have shaped history through courage and defiance...Now, back to the conversation.

That’s it for this episode of Women and Resistance. Thank you for joining us in amplifying the voices of women who challenge injustice and change the course of history. Be sure to subscribe, share, and continue the conversation. Together We Honour the past, act in the present, and shape the future. Until next time, stay inspired and stay in resistance!

Transcript

Adesoji Iginla (00:02.348)
Yes, greetings, greetings and welcome to another episode of Women and Resistance. I am your co-host Desoji Ginla and with me as usual is my sister from another mother, Aya Fubera in Elia's choir. How are you sister?

Aya Fubara Eneli (00:21.229)
Pleased to be here.

Adesoji Iginla (00:23.424)
Okay, yes, tonight we're going to be looking at another exceptional woman.

They're all exceptional. Again, like I said, tonight we're going to be speaking about polymory.

Adesoji Iginla (00:43.478)
What is there to be said? Just initial thoughts. Polymory was born in 1910 in Baltimore into what would now be gone.

Aya Fubara Eneli (00:54.091)
Are you live?

Adesoji Iginla (00:55.948)
Yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (00:57.122)
Okay.

Adesoji Iginla (00:59.256)
We are.

will now be born into a multiracial family. And yes, she had a profound childhood. Could you give us an idea of who Pauli Mori was and what made us want to talk to about her tonight?

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:29.375)
In my younger years, I may have answered this question in a much different way.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:40.309)
It's a simple enough question, as a woman of faith, it doesn't come so easily to me to answer that question in the fullness that it deserves. Suffice it to say that others...

myself included on occasion have described me as a poet.

Aya Fubara Eneli (02:13.973)
as a lawyer.

Aya Fubara Eneli (02:20.086)
course, I started as a daughter, a granddaughter.

Aya Fubara Eneli (02:27.429)
as

Aya Fubara Eneli (02:33.822)
A member of a family, a mixed family of both freed blacks and

Aya Fubara Eneli (02:45.258)
blacks who still had been in that tradition of slavery.

a civil rights activist, a women's rights activist.

Aya Fubara Eneli (03:01.6)
Some may call me a champion for what in your day and age is now known as LGBTQIA. We did not have all of those, although I understand the sentiment behind it.

Aya Fubara Eneli (03:19.028)
and of course, a priest.

Aya Fubara Eneli (03:31.464)
when you said that I had a profound childhood.

Aya Fubara Eneli (03:41.084)
It evoked so many memories for me, some of which I captured in my memoir, Song in a Wary Throat.

Aya Fubara Eneli (03:56.045)
subtitled an American pilgrimage and I recognize that there may be some today who might question.

my decision to become a priest after the life that I will shortly share with you, or even my steadfastness to this idea of being an American.

even as I was deeply aware of the flaws and the injustices of

this country called the United States of America.

Aya Fubara Eneli (04:39.276)
And perhaps that could be a conversation of another day. There are people who are more recently writing about me. I for many decades wasn't forgotten.

hero and yet as we will go through there is probably

not an aspect.

of the rights that.

any non-white.

Aya Fubara Eneli (05:16.659)
Any woman?

Aya Fubara Eneli (05:20.49)
and even workers enjoy today that I did not play a role in and certainly paved the way for any rights that members of the LGBTQIA community currently enjoy, which we know is under assault. As you said, I was born November 20th, 1910.

My birth name was Annapoleen Murray.

Aya Fubara Eneli (05:58.605)
And my aunt Pauline, whom I came to live with when I was just three years old, I used to visit with her. She lived in Durham, North Carolina, and my family lived in Baltimore, Maryland. I was one of six children.

But when I was three, my mother died of a brain hemorrhage.

And me and my siblings, my siblings and I, were farmed out to different family members and Aunt Pauline came up to visit and she asked if I would rather go with my siblings or go with her. And as a three year old, I chose to go with Aunt Pauline.

Aya Fubara Eneli (06:53.35)
I have not written about my siblings. really don't know much of what became of them. My father shortly afterwards was committed to an asylum.

and when I was 12 years old.

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:17.31)
And as I say this, I had thought that I was past this part in my life, but I have not told this story in a long time.

But my father, when I was 12, was brutally beaten to death by a guard at the mental health institution where he was housed.

Adesoji Iginla (07:44.728)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:46.294)
and

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:51.178)
I wish that that would be such a common story for black people.

whom I did not call black during my time. I used the term Negro. That was to create issues for me many decades later when I was a professor at Brandeis University. And when the young people were agitating for black power and black rights and civil rights, all of which,

They were not even aware that I was a pioneer of to some degree in terms of the legal fights and.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:36.65)
because I continue to use the term Negro as opposed to Black.

I suppose many of them taught me outdated and maybe not even for the cause, which is a cautionary tale for all of us. Because when we don't effectively study what came before, we may not really understand what is right in front of us. Yes, so my mother passed away when I was three and my father, my mother was Agnes Fitzgerald Murray.

Adesoji Iginla (09:03.995)
in of us.

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:13.556)
and my father was William H. Murray. They were both educated. And in Baltimore, we had access to schools, even though they were segregated schools. But my father supposedly developed severe mental illness. Some folks say it was severe depression or some psychosis. He was committed to Crownsville State Hospital, the Maryland State Hospital for the Negro Insane.

And like I said, in 1923, he was brutally beaten to death by a hospital guard who I suppose was there to protect him and take care of him.

Aya Fubara Eneli (10:02.397)
I was raised by my aunt, Pauline Fitzgerald Dame in Doornam, North Carolina. It is my understanding that several of my siblings were institutionalized at some point. And I too frequently was hospitalized and also in mental institutions, sometimes just because of my very poor health.

Poverty was something that I became very well acquainted with but also maybe my constitution given my family and also some may speculate given the fact that I was born in a woman's body but felt like a man I Was drawn to and attracted to women whom I was forbidden to love

And I guess some may make the observation that I was particularly attracted to white women, whom I never in my letters necessarily claimed to be in a sexual relationship with. But I certainly had very close relationships with some. I'm a mixed race. If you want to call it identity, there's Irish, there's Native American.

that's obviously African. And interestingly enough, as this story unfolds, I can trace my lineage as can many African-Americans, that terminology used now, but back then as could many Negroes to our enslavers, to a white slave owner whose two sons raped.

Aya Fubara Eneli (12:01.642)
My grandmother.

Aya Fubara Eneli (12:10.22)
I was a precocious young girl. My aunt, Pauline, called me her boy girl. I preferred boy clothes. I felt that they were more comfortable, but we did have a compromise that every Sunday when we went to church, I would dress up in a dress. I was on the debate team in the little school that we had for African-Americans, Negroes at the time.

I played sports. I was very athletic. I was very smart, always had been brilliant, a really great student. And when I graduated high school from Hillsdale High School in Durham, North Carolina at age 16, I was actually offered a scholarship to attend Wilberforce College, a Negro college.

and that was that scholarship was made possible by my community. But I turned down that scholarship. I turned it down because I was tired of the segregation. As a matter of fact, as a young girl, boy, girl, as my aunt Pauline would call me, I refused to go to the movie theaters because they were segregated and I was not going to pay money.

Adesoji Iginla (13:15.981)
Why?

Aya Fubara Eneli (13:36.993)
to sit in a segregated place. I would take my bicycle and I would walk everywhere because I did not want to ride the buses with their segregation. And I did not want to go to a college for Negroes. And so instead, I applied to Columbia University.

and Columbia University turned me down for being female.

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:14.14)
I then applied to Hunter College in New York, because Hunter College accepted Negroes. But I actually had an issue because the schools in North Carolina, the School for Negroes, we actually stopped at the 11th grade. And so I did not have all the coursework that I needed to get into Hunter College, to begin studies there. And so...

Adesoji Iginla (14:19.202)
York.

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:44.556)
I attended a school in New York. lived with another family member just so that I could get the additional credits and then of course prove residency to be able to attend Hunter's College. I attended Hunter's College and I graduated one of four Negroes in my class of 19- in 1933.

Adesoji Iginla (15:02.634)
the colors

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:14.27)
and I got my Bachelor of Arts degree in English. Now my grandfather, Fitzgerald, Pa Fitzgerald had always, who himself was an educator and who had left the North after the Civil War to come back to the South and started teaching. And he started in this makeshift shack.

where they would pull logs in from the woods for the children to sit on. It was quite pitiful. But he had always impressed upon me the importance of education. And of course, my parents themselves were educated. And there was this idea that if you got an education, then the doors of life opened up to you.

Adesoji Iginla (15:47.512)
It's on.

Aya Fubara Eneli (16:09.996)
but I graduated in 1933 and that was during the era of the Great Depression. And there was no work for my kind. There was no work for most kinds, but definitely no work for my kind.

I was hungry.

I was desperate and I remember sitting

in the office where you go to sign up for welfare, begging the government for some some meager anything for me to be able to eat and sitting there and watching all the other people in misery. And I would write, I would type. Here is some a little excerpt from a book written about me by

Adesoji Iginla (16:47.21)
assistance.

Aya Fubara Eneli (17:05.63)
my great niece Rosita Stevens Halsey, Pauli Murray, the life of a pioneering feminist and civil rights activist. And she wrote,

Aya Fubara Eneli (17:21.324)
Pauly found herself unemployed. Without the prospects of graduate school, she was forced to apply for public assistance welfare. Sitting on hard benches at government offices waiting like cattle reduced to a number made Pauly's fingers burn again. Around her are the faces of America, dark and light, immigrant and indigenous pleaded for work, not for a handout, but for work so they could eat and have a roof over their heads and perhaps.

little dignity. And she quotes from a poem I wrote. Why did it have to be that way? Freedom is a dream haunting as amber wine or worlds remembered out of time. Not Eden's Gate but freedom lures us down a trail of skulls where men forever crush the dreamers. Never the dream.

Aya Fubara Eneli (18:20.844)
Would you like me to go on?

Adesoji Iginla (18:22.988)
Gone, gone, gone.

Could you elaborate on how you, I mean, I'm sure you're going to come to it, but you mentioned the clergy. What led you to the clergy?

Aya Fubara Eneli (18:27.305)
I, yes, go ahead.

Aya Fubara Eneli (18:43.786)
Yes, of course the clergy was, if you would, the last quarter of my life. But perhaps I can read something from

A combination, I'm sorry, this is a compilation of my sermons and speeches on justice and transformation called to speak a defiant word. And let me read from here to answer the question you asked in just a little way.

Adesoji Iginla (19:16.686)
Because I'm minded to ask the question because it's not often a path that one tread, but there has to be a lead up to it.

Aya Fubara Eneli (19:29.588)
Let me start off by saying.

I lived in the in-between.

Aya Fubara Eneli (19:44.574)
A man trapped in a woman's body, understanding both.

Aya Fubara Eneli (19:55.757)
too dark for some members of my family and too light for yet another set of my family members.

And so with one part of my family, I would be admonished not to go outside and play in the sun. I would be admonished to put cream to protect my skin so I didn't get any darker. And another side of my family that felt I was too light. And when I would go out to the schools being bullied by many of the Black, the Negroes,

who were much darker than I was, who had an issue with the color of my skin and the texture of my hair. I lived racially in between. I lived in terms of gender in between.

In terms of civil rights, here we were fighting against Jim Crow.

against the racism against Black people, against Negroes. Only for me to finally get into Howard University.

Aya Fubara Eneli (21:17.576)
and now face Jane Crow, not just from white people, but actually from the black men who were my peers and from the black male professors, of course there were only male professors, who would openly taunt me for coming to law school and taking up a seat that a man should have had, a black man should have had.

Aya Fubara Eneli (21:48.393)
So at what point do I, am I embraced as black but then put back as a woman? At what point am I embraced as a woman but then held back as black?

Adesoji Iginla (22:03.566)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (22:03.902)
And my whole life, I lived in the in-between, never fully accepted as who I am, who I felt myself to be. Doors after doors after doors shut in my face and I will share with you some of them. And so you may understand why I then wrote this or stated this in one of my sermons.

Here then is the challenge and the promise of the Christian message. But am I willing to accept it?

Aya Fubara Eneli (22:48.342)
Give me a second, please.

Aya Fubara Eneli (22:55.158)
I willing to relinquish my self-interest, my self-centeredness, my dependence upon my own resources or upon others and retire my entire will, my entire life to God? Am I willing to trust in God absolutely and without any reservations? Am I prepared to acknowledge that all I am and all that I

all that I have belong to my Creator and that I am not here for my own purposes, my own glory, but for the purposes and glory of God. I don't know. Some may read this and they may say that just as it has been stated that religion is the opium of the masses.

Adesoji Iginla (23:44.622)
The masses, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (23:46.187)
that perhaps I got to a place of such deep pain, a place where I could never find where I fit in just as I was. And that I got to a place where I returned to the roots of my Aunt Pauline and my grandmothers and all the women who found solace in Christianity. And that I returned to those roots to make peace of a world.

that would not make peace with me.

Adesoji Iginla (24:18.431)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli (24:20.596)
Maybe I was tired of fighting, although I never really stopped. But at some point, some might say, I decided perhaps it was time to surrender to my creator because I had done all that I knew to do. And I fought, I fought all the time. My whole life I feel was a fight.

So here I am, I get into Hunter College, I graduate from Hunter College, still no respect, still fighting, still looking for a job. I worked for the WPA, attended various workshops, adult education courses and community programs during the Great Depression. Just anything, anything at all that I could find to make a way to make a life. I met a friend, she was a white girl, she was the daughter of a banker.

I don't know that it was cosplay, but me being where I was in the camp that I had been sent to because I was so malnourished that the doctor said after I had finally as a graduate gotten a job as someone just answering phone calls at Hunter College, but I was the first black person hired in that position and hired in that capacity because all the rest of the black people, if they did get hired, were hired as janitors. I was grateful for that, but not enough to feed on.

And finally, so malnourished and sick, and the doctor said, you have got to get to a place where you can eat properly. And to be able to get the assistance that I needed, I could not have that job. So I quit that job, and that allowed me to then be recommended to a place called Camp Terrier. was a place where they provided some food, some sustenance for people during this depression era. And that's where I met

my friend Peggy, and then we ended up, after I got kicked out of Camp Terror because they found a copy of a Karl Marx book in my room and decided I was a communist, we actually went on a five week hiking, camping, just out there on our own. And when I was in California, I got news that,

Aya Fubara Eneli (26:41.268)
My aunt Pauline was sick and I needed to return to Durham, North Carolina. How do you do that with no resources? Well, I'll tell you what I did. I wrote a poem about it, 10,000 miles on a dime. And I was dressed like a boy. And what we would do is we would jump on freight trains and sleep wherever we could on the trains.

Adesoji Iginla (26:56.419)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (27:07.05)
with cattle, with food, with whatever was being transported. And you jump off and you get on another train and you work somewhere and you try to get a little food to eat. And that is how I got all the way back to Doran, North Carolina from California. And fortunately, my aunt Pauline wasn't doing so bad and she did eventually recover from that illness. But while I was there, there was a case that came about.

where it was decided that, they could not discriminate against Black people anymore getting into colleges, at least so I thought. And so I decided to apply to the University of North Carolina, a place that by birth I should have been ushered into because the white side of my family, the ones who had raped my grandmother, were benefactors and trustees of that university.

Adesoji Iginla (28:02.958)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (28:05.96)
So I should have been a legacy admit, like the white people get admitted, but there was not one black student at that school. But I applied nonetheless. And then I got the rejection letter. I could not be admitted because of my race.

Adesoji Iginla (28:10.776)
True.

Aya Fubara Eneli (28:25.534)
I tried to fight it. And I wrote a letter to President Roosevelt and to his wife, especially after he had the gall to come down to the university and accept an honorary degree. And in his remarks, talked about how all Americans should have this liberal education. Well, then why are you closing the doors to me? He never responded to me, but his wife

Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt did. And we continued this correspondence and she became a close friend of mine, even though we sometimes did not agree.

Adesoji Iginla (28:58.967)
on this.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:06.912)
Did I tell you about the time 14 years before Rosa Parks? I got arrested for refusing to move on a bus.

I was traveling with a friend of mine. I gave my name when I was arrested as Oliver. They thought I was male. Some say that throughout my life and my letters do bear this out to some degree that I had different aliases.

But they were very smart in how they went about it because once the pressure started to be put on them, we were locked up. And I wrote to them and said, I need toilet paper. I need toiletries because there are things here, the bed bugs. And I always spoke up. They didn't know what quite to do with me. But the WPA did pay to get us to bail us out. And once they knew that there was this much

interest in that particular case, they dropped the part that had to do with not sitting in the colored section and instead just maintain the charge of disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace. And on that they had us and we had to pay a fine.

Adesoji Iginla (30:08.024)
case here.

Aya Fubara Eneli (30:26.496)
But when I reached out to the NAACP, when I was denied admission to University of North Carolina, I wanted them to take up my case. That was when I first made acquaintance with Thorgood Marshall, the famed Thorgood Marshall, who informed me that they could not take up my case. He, at the time, tried to put more emphasis on the fact that

Adesoji Iginla (30:43.128)
I'm not sure. Yeah, keep justice.

Aya Fubara Eneli (30:55.936)
technically since I had not lived in North Carolina for a while that I was not a resident of the state and therefore I could be denied on those grounds. But really I think that what he alluded to was that the NAACP, well he stated and then alluded to more, but that the NAACP is very careful about what kind of cases they take on and what kinds of people.

they represent because they have to look into your person carefully. It's for the same reason that Claudette Colvin was not an ideal candidate for her case to be taken up in terms of refusing to sit in the segregated portion of the bus.

Adesoji Iginla (31:40.148)
Claudette Corvin.

Aya Fubara Eneli (31:55.933)
young and she got pregnant out of wedlock. And he did not give any further information, but I think that I was not quite the ideal candidate. I was disappointed. It felt very crushing to me. Here I was a graduate trying to find a way to make a way in life and doors just kept getting shut.

But I started this letter writing campaign and the newspapers did pick up the story. And my aunt Pauline and my family were very concerned that I was taking up this fight because there were still people being lynched. And their concern was that if people found out that the Negro causing this ruckus

was their child or was part of their family. My Aunt Pauline was concerned her house would be burnt down. She was also concerned that she would be dismissed from her job and she was an elderly woman and she did not have a pension. And what would happen to her if such a thing happened? And so when you look at people and you look at the fights that they wage and the ones that they don't, don't be so harsh.

Adesoji Iginla (32:49.752)
gonna come up.

Aya Fubara Eneli (33:12.852)
And don't be so quick to arrive at conclusions because you don't know all that goes into a decision to stand down or to keep fighting. And sometimes that decision has a lot more to do with your loved ones.

Adesoji Iginla (33:30.221)
Mm. Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (33:31.986)
Because the repercussions for your actions don't just impact you. They may have an impact on others, collateral damage, if you will.

Aya Fubara Eneli (33:46.475)
But I always had a relationship with my typewriter. I wrote essays and articles on race and poverty and inequality. My activism was definitely on the way.

And so I was, I did get a job and I was fighting.

Aya Fubara Eneli (34:14.73)
with

Aya Fubara Eneli (34:18.869)
I pause.

Aya Fubara Eneli (34:26.71)
I as I recall the violence, the violent death of my father. I pause as I recall the violent death of yet another young man who had been accused of raping.

Aya Fubara Eneli (34:45.032)
No, he had been accused, my apologies, he had been accused of killing a white man. He was a sharecropper and he had demanded his wages and the white landowner had refused to pay him his wages and at some point he thought the landowner was going for his gun.

And so he pulled his out and shot the white landowner.

He claimed self-defense.

Aya Fubara Eneli (35:25.01)
and

Aya Fubara Eneli (35:30.888)
At his trial, which should have been a trial of his peers, a trial by a jury of his peers, he was convicted and sentenced to death by the peers of the person he was accused of killing. They were all land owners who had sharecroppers on their land, and there was one banker on the jury.

and of course, all white males.

And I began a campaign on behalf of this man's life, fighting for his life. We were trying to raise money for his defense. And I would have programs with his mother in the community, bringing awareness, trying to raise money. And we did raise a significant amount of money for his appeal.

Adesoji Iginla (36:17.335)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (36:32.704)
Thousands of dollars back then but of course it was for naught. He was still sentenced to death He was still killed

And it was during that process that I realized if I really wanted to fight, if I really wanted to make a difference for my people, I needed a law degree.

and I was recommended by Mr. Ransom to the Howard University School of Law.

And at the time that I was admitted for my class, I was the only female. There was later another woman who was admitted, but she shortly thereafter quit for reasons that I would leave up to the imagination of your listeners. But I would say this.

professors and students alike, all black men would exclude me. There was a memo sent out by the dean inviting the brightest students to his home because that was where they would look over the students that they would ultimately admit to the legal fraternity. And I was excluded. And when I...

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:03.148)
question them why because I was a great student, I was told that I could not be included due to my gender. I had never really felt the sting of sexism until I came to Howard University College of Law.

Adesoji Iginla (38:13.101)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:24.292)
And I made up my mind to show them who I was. And I was the top student in my class. Now, it was tradition that if you are the top student, you get the highest grades, that you are appointed Chief Justice for your class, for the school. And these men...

Adesoji Iginla (38:49.398)
less.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:54.208)
Black men.

fighting against Jim Crow initially skirted the issue and chose not to have the usual process to appoint and the Chief Justice.

Still I fought on being excellent in all my grades. For our senior thesis, we all had to choose topics and I chose to focus on the 14th Amendment and how, rather than emphasizing the equal part of the argument, separate and equal, Plessy versus Ferguson, said segregation was okay as long as it was separate and equal.

Adesoji Iginla (39:38.956)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli (39:46.103)
So as long as it was equal. so black legal scholars had been focusing only on the, let's make it equal. And I said, actually, the fact that it's separate in the first place is a violation of the 14th amendment. And they thought I was crazy. And my professor said, that is just not going to fly. You really are going to write about that? Yes, I am.

And I bet him that in 25 years.

the law would change and they would recognize that the separate portion of that Plessy versus Ferguson was against the Constitution. It was unconstitutional. Well, that actually happened in 1954 with the Brown Bee Board of Education. And now here's the funny thing about erasure.

Adesoji Iginla (40:35.662)
Can you take a pass? Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (40:46.348)
Thorgood Marshall himself told me that my paper, that senior thesis that was so ridiculed while I was in law school became the bedrock that there were salient arguments in it that became a major part of the arguments they laid out.

in Brown v. Board of Education that overturned.

segregation laws.

Adesoji Iginla (41:19.854)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (41:22.016)
But nowhere in that brief was my name included. And when they took their victory lap, when they stood on the court steps and took their pictures, I was not invited. I was not even mentioned.

Adesoji Iginla (41:23.074)
the architect itself.

Aya Fubara Eneli (41:42.412)
By the way, that professor, there was a bet. It was $10, I think. I don't know that he ever paid me my money.

And it would go on. So finally, being the top student in terms of all my scores at Howard University, at the College of Law, they finally did my Black brothers acquiesce and recognize me as Chief Justice. Now, back in those days, the top student from Howard College of Law.

would get a scholarship to attend Harvard University to advance their studies. So I applied.

Aya Fubara Eneli (42:31.646)
This time I get a letter of rejection, not for my race, but for my gender. Harvard University did not admit women at that time and certainly not into that program.

Adesoji Iginla (42:48.216)
Wow.

Aya Fubara Eneli (42:51.252)
And I was the one who coined Jane Crow.

Aya Fubara Eneli (43:00.662)
Here I am with a law degree and still doors being shut to me.

Aya Fubara Eneli (43:10.66)
I ultimately, after being denied admission to Harvard University, I ultimately applied to and was accepted at the University of California, Berkeley, which is where I got my LLM, my Masters of Law, in 1945.

Aya Fubara Eneli (43:34.642)
still struggling to find a place to fit in, to find work, to be accepted.

I did eventually work with Paul Weiss. I had an opportunity to meet one of the loves of my life. I would say maybe the greatest love of my life in terms of an intimate partner, Renee Barlow, who was my close companion.

Aya Fubara Eneli (44:12.072)
I once proposed marriage to a man named Roy Nguyen during a period of emotional struggle, just trying to again fit in, make my way in the world. But that engagement ended. In the 1930s, I did write and repeatedly seek assistance from physicians. I wanted them to check me out to conduct tests to find out if perhaps I was

what is popularly known as a hermaphrodite, whether I actually had male genitalia that just had not descended. And to my dismay, I was told repeatedly that I didn't. I did ask for hormone therapy back then in the 1930s and was rejected.

Adesoji Iginla (44:50.807)
Delia.

Adesoji Iginla (45:08.024)
Wow.

Aya Fubara Eneli (45:10.796)
I had an opportunity to travel to Ghana and I worked in Ghana teaching constitutional law observing the transition at the time from colonialism to quote-unquote independence.

Aya Fubara Eneli (45:39.104)
but again, feeling the sting of rejection and seeing what happens even when people who look like you.

I'm not about justice because I came to see how neo-colonialism was taking root and how many of the leaders were actually not looking out for the interests of their people and rather for theirs.

Adesoji Iginla (46:05.176)
people.

Aya Fubara Eneli (46:12.948)
I did get a job with Paul Weiss law firm. It's a firm that is still in existence today. And that was probably the most money I had ever made in my life. That also happens to be where I met Rene Barlow. And I would credit Weiss as pivotal in solidifying my legal and philosophical thinking. And even in that role,

understanding how to use the law to fight for

for freedom to fight for justice.

Ultimately, I'm just gonna touch on this really quickly. We'll come back to it if you have any further questions. After the death of Renee, after being in and out of mental institutions and hospitals throughout my life, was quite a small frame. I...

Adesoji Iginla (47:03.086)
Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (47:19.15)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (47:25.334)
pursued a doctorate at Yale Law School, becoming the first black person to receive Yale's highest law degree. I got my doctor of jurisprudence there.

and that was in 1965. So at this time I'm a 55 year old woman. And then I went on years later to divinity school to the general theological seminary where I also received a masters of divinity in 1976. And in 1976 the Episcopalian church finally decided that

women could become ordained priests. And in 1977, I was ordained as a priest and I was the first Negro woman to achieve that. Some of the things that you might want to know about me, there's so much that I could share with you. I truly encourage all of your listeners.

Adesoji Iginla (48:13.198)
Come be ordained.

Aya Fubara Eneli (48:40.576)
to engage me from whatever perspective they choose. As a civil rights leader, as a woman's rights leader, as a poet, I was a prolific poet and I had my poetry published back in the 30s to begin with in anthologies that even included people like Langston Hughes, who was a personal friend of mine.

When I graduated from Howard Law School, Eleanor Roosevelt actually sent me a bouquet of flowers and I kept the ribbon. And that ribbon was part of my rituals when I was ordained as a priest. I will tell you more about that. But you can come at me from a social work perspective, because I did work with sharecroppers and again, trying to help people.

just be able to live with dignity. You can come at me from an academic perspective. I was a professor. I taught at Brandeis University. I fought to become a tenure professor. When I applied for tenure because I was an old woman and again in a very precarious financial situation and I needed something more solid.

Adesoji Iginla (49:37.592)
So.

Aya Fubara Eneli (50:05.182)
and I applied for tenure and I was initially denied. They said, some of you may have heard the publish or perish and they said my work was not quite up.

Adesoji Iginla (50:17.134)
for peer review.

Aya Fubara Eneli (50:18.558)
Yes, even though as at that time, even Ruth Bader Ginsburg had credited me with the legal philosophy and the brief that she based her arguments on to fight for women's rights.

And so today everybody knows about Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the United States of America, but she credited me.

Aya Fubara Eneli (50:56.352)
for the work she was then able to do with catapulted her into the stratosphere that she got into and then became the Supreme Court Justice that she was. So you can come at me from there. You can come at me as the first African-American to earn a JSD from Yale. You can come at me from being the ordained and ordained to Episcopal priests. And of course, again,

the first Negro, you guys say black African-American priest in the Episcopalian Church. You can come at me for being a co-founder, or come to me, I shouldn't say at me, come to me for being a co-founder of the National Organization of Women in 1966.

Adesoji Iginla (51:43.117)
No.

Aya Fubara Eneli (51:45.257)
or for being an early advocate for including sex discrimination in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Act's right, or being one of the people who chewed Bayard Rustin's head off for daring to have that march on Washington and have all of those speakers and not have a woman on that podium as a speaker. Yes, we can sing, but we can do other things, and he knew better for sure.

Aya Fubara Eneli (52:16.298)
You can look at my involvement with the NAACP, with CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality. I was a co-founder of CORE. Do you know that? You can look at me for being on the legal committee for the ACLU and the work that I did with the ACLU that still stands today.

Aya Fubara Eneli (52:39.742)
Of course, as so often happens, during my lifetime I was largely overlooked. And even after I passed away from cancer.

Aya Fubara Eneli (52:56.576)
But one of the things I was determined to do in the latter parts of my life was to tell my story. And that is in that biography, my memoir that I shared with you earlier.

Aya Fubara Eneli (53:12.94)
Since then, there are lots of others who have started to write about me. There is a documentary that came out in 2021. My name is Pauli Murray. They did a decent job. I may have chosen some different people to speak about me, but I lived long enough to understand how these things go.

Aya Fubara Eneli (53:37.312)
The Yale Law School now has a Pauli Murray Fellowship that supports scholars working at the intersection of law, race, gender, and LGBTQI plus issues. Let's see if that stands.

Aya Fubara Eneli (53:58.186)
You know.

When I think of all the things that I was involved in and all the things that I accomplished, there were times that I would be interviewed and people would say, my God, you you were so extraordinary and how did you get all of this done and so on and so forth. And what I would tell them for the most part is that,

Aya Fubara Eneli (54:27.166)
I was just persistent in my commitment.

Aya Fubara Eneli (54:35.922)
Nothing, there wasn't some extraordinary chip embedded in me in that way. But I was consistent in my commitment. And so...

Adesoji Iginla (54:36.046)
This is.

Aya Fubara Eneli (54:52.268)
As you study my life, it is not to put me on a pedestal, although yes, I appreciate being acknowledged for what I did and the work that I did, but I know that I was put here for a purpose. And in my later years, as I read earlier, it was understanding that that purpose was beyond me and it wasn't about being individualistic, but it's also about people understanding that if you are persistent in your commitment,

You too will blaze your own trails. You too will open up doors for other people.

Aya Fubara Eneli (55:32.843)
You too can make a difference with this life that you've been given and that is something that all of us should aim for. So I know that you have some other questions which I will answer but I do want to bring up some of these to your listeners. This is another book that I wrote called Proud Shoes, the story of an American family. See the theme? My memoir, An American Pilgrimage. This one, the story of an American family.

Adesoji Iginla (55:40.078)
Hmm

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:01.429)
I guess one could.

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:05.718)
could state that it was important to me to be accepted, to fit in somewhere. And since America was where I was born, where I could trace my roots directly, although of course I understood I was of African descent as well, that was important. This is another book. I love this book because even...

Adesoji Iginla (56:22.926)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:32.734)
A 10 year old can read this book and understand and follow along with my life. Pauli Moray, trailblazing activist for civil rights, women's rights and human rights by Jane A. Hewitt.

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:49.332)
Yes, this is definitely a book that I would recommend. I have another book here and this is the one that I let you know my great niece was a co-author on. Pauli Moray, The Life of a Pioneering Feminist.

and civil rights activists. Now there's some people who may ask in this day and age, would I consider myself transgender? What would my pronouns be?

Aya Fubara Eneli (57:28.694)
think that we have to be careful about...

Aya Fubara Eneli (57:37.344)
backtracking people into the present.

Adesoji Iginla (57:42.158)
That's a lot.

Aya Fubara Eneli (57:42.304)
I lived in a different time. And so since my transition, heard people refer to me as they, them, some people still refer to me as she.

Let me make it simple for all of you. Would you like me to do that?

Adesoji Iginla (58:02.008)
Gone, it's...

Aya Fubara Eneli (58:04.534)
Just call me Polly.

Aya Fubara Eneli (58:09.558)
Just call me Paulie. I actually came at Paulie, you know Ana Pauline, but I tried different variations and different names that I tried. And I like Paulie, just call me Paulie. Paulie said so-and-so, you don't have to say they said so-and-so, just call me by my name. And that way you do not have to infer something on me that you have no real reason to know I would have, maybe I would have gone by they them. Maybe I would have stayed she, I.

Adesoji Iginla (58:35.758)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (58:38.864)
never claimed some of the things that are being attributed to me now, although of course the language did not exist then, but it's okay to just call me as I am. Today, I have honorary doctorates from multiple institutions. I have to tell this story.

Adesoji Iginla (59:00.098)
Gone.

Aya Fubara Eneli (59:02.742)
The University of North Carolina.

have the unmitigated gall.

to offer me an honorary degree while I was still living.

Aya Fubara Eneli (59:22.218)
Yes, thank you. Someone said I always would say don't get mad, get smart. Yes, certainly still applies today. That's what I did everywhere I went. Everywhere I went to study, in every place that I worked. When discrimination came to slap me in the face, knocked me down, punched me, kicked me in the gut, I would always say to myself, get smart. And that is why ultimately those men had to.

had to acknowledge my work and my genius. But I digress. The University of North Carolina now offered me a doctorate, now that I had become someone worthy of being affiliated with their institution. Would you like to hazard a guess as to whether I was so blown away by this gesture and went to collect my doctorate degree and forgive them for all of their past injustices? Would you?

Do you think that that's what I did?

Adesoji Iginla (01:00:23.574)
Of course, mean, black people are normally very forgiving. So one would expect you went in there or, you know, hop-stepping.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:00:35.88)
No sir, no sir, no sir they don't get to use my name and to do these performative meaningless things to whitewash their racism and their

Injustice. No, you don't get to just give me a degree and that makes up for what you did. No, I rejected their degree as I should. And I hope even that is a lesson to those who may be watching and listening. I am a National Woman's Hall of Fame inductee. Yale University did name a poly polymore college after me in 2017.

have been featured on a US stamp in 2024. There is a Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice located in Durham, North Carolina. And it's actually in the home, it's housed in the building, the home where I lived with my grandpa Fitzgerald and my aunt Pauline. I died on July 1st, 1985 of cancer.

and I died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Adesoji Iginla (01:01:55.565)
Mm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:01:59.8)
So quick question before we wrap up.

You were ordained as a priest. So this question speaks to the spirituality question. What was the role that spirituality played in the political resistance of that time? I mean, we've heard about Martin Luther King, but how?

deep rooted was the notion of spirituality.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:02:35.478)
would not claim to answer that question on behalf of all Negroes who lived at that time. But I will tell you that those were incredibly hard times to live in, where we had no rights and no protection, it seemed. I would tell you that I edited a book called, States' Laws on Race and Color in 1951.

and it was dubbed the Bible of Civil Rights Law by Thor Good Marshall. Again, it formed the basis of many legal arguments that Black Negro attorneys made all across the country.

And what was compiled in that book were the laws, the state laws and how they impacted Negroes. So when you are battered on every side and there is no shelter to be found hardly anywhere, but...

in the church, even as segregated as it was. And of course we had our own black churches, but we had clergymen who really cared for their flock. My grandfather was one. My uncle was as well.

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:05.698)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:04:06.654)
I think that spirituality as you coined it, as you called it, became the thing that held us together. We could sing those songs and they would be songs in a weary throat, but they will be songs that we will overcome this by and by. If you listen to the spirituals of the Negroes,

There within those spirituals, you will hear our longing and the understanding that God will make it better, that we will be compensated at a later time for our present sufferings. And it was that hope.

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:50.05)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:04:57.514)
that allowed us to contend with our present sufferings.

One could argue that that spirituality also made us maybe a little easier to control to the extent that we were often taught to embrace the suffering like Jesus did, to turn the other cheek. And as a reverend,

Adesoji Iginla (01:05:25.198)
Shook.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:05:30.452)
And as a minister, as you read through my sermons, I still do believe that there is a higher power, that there is a God, there is a creator. And although we may not totally understand what we're experiencing now, if we do not weary in good doing, not that it felt good, not that I didn't want to scream out in my heart.

But there will be a reward. Can I share this with you? At my ordination, I was invited to lead a service at the chapel. After my ordination, I was invited to lead a service at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and to celebrate the Eucharist, a special ritual of faith and dedication. Now, mind you, this is the same church.

that a slave girl called Cornelia had to climb up to the balcony every Sunday to participate in the goings on at the church because it was the only place that black people were allowed to sit in the church. Now Cornelia's granddaughter, multiracial gender questioning Pauli Murray, was the priest standing at the front leading the service.

Adesoji Iginla (01:06:43.086)
Church.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:07:00.3)
in this space. That day on February 13, 1977, I dressed in the flowing white robes of the priesthood. I had a cross necklace.

Adesoji Iginla (01:07:02.763)
circle.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:07:17.248)
that belonged to my long time partner, Renee, who had passed away. I had a ribbon in my Bible, and that ribbon was from the bouquet of flowers Eleanor Roosevelt had given me upon my graduation from Howard University.

And I had a Bible. And the Bible that I had was the same one that my grandmother used to hold.

Adesoji Iginla (01:07:49.986)
Hmm.

bundle of memories.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:07:58.089)
As a priest, you could sum up my work this way. I saw my work as part of the spirit of love and reconciliation, drawing us all towards the goal of human wholeness.

I suppose that may have been the same kind of sentiment that inspired Desmond Tutu to focus on reconciliation.

Adesoji Iginla (01:08:30.478)
internal reconciliation.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:08:32.626)
in South Africa. But it is up to you, your generation, to study and to inquire as to whether those were the best tactics for us and how they have worked out.

Adesoji Iginla (01:08:51.265)
Yes, button.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:08:53.686)
But certainly every aspiring lawyer should read about me.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:09:03.282)
Every aspiring lawyer should understand how I argued for using the 14th Amendment, the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause for both racial and gender justice. And now that has been expanded to justice for members of the LGBTQIA community as well. What else would you like to ask me as we wrap up?

Adesoji Iginla (01:09:30.882)
Yes, one final question. Why is it that Pauline Mori does not get the accolades she was supposed to get? I know we've talked about gender and race erasure. Or post that, bearing in mind somebody who built their entire career on her work ended up becoming a justice of the Supreme Court in Roots.

Bera Ginsburg. How come following that, she didn't really get the mention she deserved?

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:10:12.428)
Well, I think you answered the question, even though you said barring race and gender. Some would say I was ahead of the times that I had that quote unquote, maybe not even a double, maybe a triple, no, maybe a quadruple whammy. I was certainly problematic. I did not fit neatly into any box, not as a black person.

Adesoji Iginla (01:10:40.386)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:10:42.654)
not as a woman, not as gender conforming, not wealthy. You know, I struggled with poverty most of my life. And those are four major things to overcome. Never got married, never had children. And so once the erasure started, it was relatively easy for me to stay.

in the land of obscurity. And only more recently are there scholars who are digging into my life. In fact, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and as people, the reason I have a documentary about me is because they were doing one on Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Adesoji Iginla (01:11:12.994)
and shadows.

Adesoji Iginla (01:11:38.974)
is.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:11:40.351)
And she mentioned me and gave me the full credit for the art legal argument that allowed her to move us farther along in terms of women's rights and gender equality. And it was at that point that

Adesoji Iginla (01:11:56.194)
women's rights.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:12:05.298)
the directors for the movie, for her documentary decided, well, we need to figure out who is this person that she's, that we've never heard of. And then they started to explore. And then as they found out a little bit about me, they now pushed for resources to be able to now do a documentary on my life. And they will tell you that that documentary could not even touch all of the things.

all of the lives that I lived and all the ways that I quite frankly have impacted every aspect of the lives of Americans as I stated earlier today. So, you know, once I was already shrouded for all the reasons that we've already mentioned, then you just...

Adesoji Iginla (01:12:48.364)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:12:59.456)
continue to, the more, the longer time passes, the less likely it is that people go and unearth any information about you. But I think that the tide has turned to some degree and that there is a little bit more awareness about my work. And this again is not about me, but it is about living though it was a...

Adesoji Iginla (01:13:03.086)
Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (01:13:07.352)
Sure.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:13:28.114)
many a times a painful life. It was a very impactful life. And I did find some semblance of peace towards my latter years.

Adesoji Iginla (01:13:44.27)
There's a poem you wrote in your collection of poems titled Dark Testament and Other Poems. It's named Hope. So if you don't mind, I would read it. It says, hope is a crushed stalk between clenched fingers. Hope is a bird's wing broken by a stone. Hope is a word.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:13:45.132)
Thank

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:13:55.244)
you

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:14:01.901)
Please.

you

and

Adesoji Iginla (01:14:13.824)
in a tuneless ditty, a word whispered with wind, a dream of forty acres and a meal, a cabin of one's own and a moment to rest, a name and place for one's children and children's children at last. Hope is a song in a weary throat.

Adesoji Iginla (01:14:40.768)
Again, that's looking at that based on the stories you told of her living through poverty, being denied access to education, even when she is fully deserving of it, as in the case of Howard going forward and the nose, even

colleagues or peers as they were being jealous of opposition. I suppose the only thing that kept her going was hope.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:15:21.782)
Yes. And.

Though I battled with despair, though I longed to fit in.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:15:34.57)
Those experiences also led me to who I was and the kind of struggles that I was able to fight and...

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:15:46.345)
led to the harvest that some enjoy now. You know, I was appointed by John F. Kennedy in 1961 to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. Eleanor Roosevelt was also on that. I was appointed to the American Civil Liberties Union Board of Directors in 1965. And as I stated earlier, I contributed key legal strategies.

at the intersection of race and gender, why are we asking people to split themselves? Can we not embrace human beings in their wholeness?

Adesoji Iginla (01:16:30.926)
Because society constantly asks who you are, not what you are.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:16:37.58)
So like even when Brandeis initially denied me tenure, I wrote back, protested by typewriter, I wrote back. And I said, how do you deny me tenure when my legal brief, my writings were the basis for the overturning.

of, well, to the extent you can say it was overturned, but let me just put it this way. My legal writings were the basis for Brownlee Board of Education decision. When my legal writings were the basis for...

fighting gender discrimination and fighting for equality.

Adesoji Iginla (01:17:18.39)
equality.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:17:23.422)
None of that counts for anything because you guys wrote some words that nobody else has ever read and has had no impact on the society in which we live. I pushed back and they did eventually grant me tenure. In terms of now, the National Organization for Women, even though I was a co-founder, even within that often fighting this battle of then racism of women against.

Adesoji Iginla (01:17:52.397)
Women.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:17:53.355)
Women.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:17:56.897)
Hope, hope, hope, hope was what kept me going. And so there were, so we clashed and that could have led to being overlooked by the early white leadership of now. And once you are buried in the archives, unless someone goes to look and even knows what to look for, you may not even factor or show up in any way.

Adesoji Iginla (01:18:18.104)
Hmm, yes.

Just keep gathering dust.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:18:25.374)
I actually also ran for office. I did not win, but that was an interesting process. I traveled extensively, like I said, in Ghana and Kenya in the early sixties. I consulted on constitutional and legal developments in newly independent African nations. I lectured on constitutional law and human rights at Ghana Law School. And then the Ghanaian government actually

had concerns about me and felt like I was radicalizing the students. And I did not feel safe and I left. But I definitely drew connections between the American civil rights and the African decolonization movements. And the same tactics that have been used to thwart American civil rights are the same tactics that have been used to thwart.

the true independence of Africans on the continent. These are things that people should know. Any other questions that you have for me?

Adesoji Iginla (01:19:25.102)
of African countries.

Adesoji Iginla (01:19:34.126)
And no, other than to say it's been one informative and truly educative episode, not least the fact that we got to meet the brains behind Brown versus Board of Education, the legal mind behind the success that is Ruth Bethe Ginsburg.

Unfortunately, like you said, once you've been buried in the archives, except somebody does uncover you, you just end up gathering dust there. But hopefully this also contributes to people wanting to know more about the person that is Pauli Mori.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:20:32.972)
wanna end with two additional points. One is that.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:20:43.882)
When I was denied acceptance to the University of North Carolina.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:20:56.192)
There was much debate on the campus and in the community, which I, you know, led to my Aunt Pauline being very concerned.

The governor of North Carolina made this statement. North Carolina does not believe in social equality between the races and will not tolerate mixed school for the races.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:21:23.072)
He went on to say, there should be separate schools and graduate programs for Negroes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:21:32.061)
and the Negro President of the North Carolina College for Negroes.

Dr. James E. Sheppard. In response to the governor's remarks, stated this.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:21:57.317)
Negroes could do their best work only in their own schools.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:22:19.264)
I will not make any.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:22:26.966)
will not pass any judgment at this time on the comments of Dr. Shepard.

I will say that I will assume that he meant well.

I believe that those words that he wrote or he stated, depending on your lens,

Adesoji Iginla (01:22:52.322)
be seeing us.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:22:53.462)
can be seen different in different ways.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:23:03.358)
Being true to my life, I would say that I would always fight.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:23:12.076)
for what we came to know as integration. In fact, when I was a student at Howard University, I helped to desegregate some restaurants. However,

Because Howard University then and now.

received quite a bit of its funding directly from Congress. A racist congressman met with Mark Johnson, the president of Howard, and said, you call off your students, like we were a pack of hound dogs, and stop this desegregation movement.

Or you tell them they will not have a school to graduate from because we will pull all their funding.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:24:07.536)
And the president presented that to us and we had to make a decision.

fight to be served at white only counters, or have a school where we can get educated and get an education and get our degrees.

Adesoji Iginla (01:24:26.72)
What choice did you make?

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:24:29.802)
We chose to get our degrees.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:24:35.584)
I would always fight for our full humanity, for us to be seen in our wholeness. And yet...

I wonder...

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:24:52.264)
as we fought to desegregate those white launch counters.

and initially succeeded. And the white people then decided that they would no longer come to those establishments. We encouraged one another to buy lunch from those establishments so they could stay open. But in doing so, were we now not taking money

Adesoji Iginla (01:25:16.183)
Open.

Adesoji Iginla (01:25:22.766)
away from your economy. Black economy.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:25:24.608)
from the restaurants and the black economy, yes, that had sustained us, the Negro establishments that had sustained us. So.

Adesoji Iginla (01:25:36.173)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:25:40.906)
He says a Negro can only do their best work in their own schools.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:25:51.285)
something to ponder. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with him as much as I am encouraging your generation to do your work because the same threats of funding that we faced are the threats you're facing right now, aren't you? Schools being told to bow down and to give up their moral and ethical standings

Adesoji Iginla (01:26:12.898)
Very much so. Very much so.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:26:21.002)
just to keep their doors open. How will you respond? How will the church respond? I have an art and a chapter where I write about the minorities within this Christianity and to consider that so-called evangelicals make up

The most strident part of the MAGA base should give one cause to ponder.

Adesoji Iginla (01:26:58.189)
Yes.

Adesoji Iginla (01:27:03.064)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:27:03.348)
and then on this issue of gender.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:27:10.336)
Was I also erased by my people because I was just a little different?

Adesoji Iginla (01:27:16.502)
the edge. Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:27:22.052)
And we don't want to highlight those kind of people. They might convince other people, inspire other people to be wayward. And to what extent are we in, even the Negro, okay, your Black African-American community, to what extent are we still marginalizing, looking at people as suspects, discounting people?

because they may just be something other than what we think they should be.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:28:03.958)
Don't let anyone put any limitations on you. I never did. And that's why I lived such a full life, regardless of my struggles.

Adesoji Iginla (01:28:15.852)
Yes. Speaking of yes and thank you, thank you, thank you. And speaking of full lives, next week we're going to be looking at the lives and times of Lucille Parsons. Another interesting person. The name again is Lucille Parsons. That will be.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:28:17.376)
Thank you for this time.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:28:39.084)
whom I bet many of your listeners have never heard of.

Adesoji Iginla (01:28:42.698)
Yes, yes, I'm sure. But again, that's what this series aims to do. It's not just bring household names, but also names that will probably go.

have gone unmentioned or unheard of, but then to bring them to the consciousness of people. again, thank you all for listening, watching. And for those who will come back and watch this, do like, share, and more importantly, leave comments in the comment section. That comment helps drive what we get to talk about.

who we get to talk about here. You can even bring suggestions of names, them in the comments. Just give us a general overview of what you think of the series so far. And so until next week, sister, how are

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:29:44.3)
Okay, first of all, I want to take this wig off and all of this stuff because it's really hot. I don't know how freaks do it, but I'm glad I don't have to. Now, I had to break character real quick. Hey, y'all, listen, we didn't even get to... There's so much about Pauline Murray. I didn't even get into all the cases that she argued and the breach that she wrote. And we didn't share. We only shared one of her poems.

Adesoji Iginla (01:30:03.148)
Yeah, exactly.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:30:15.094)
Phenomenal lady, and I cannot imagine the pain that she experienced trying to make her way in the world and In addition to everything that I take from her life. It's just that We need to become passionate to one another We truly don't know what people are going through and now with all this keyboard warrior stuff it's so easy to tear people down to make disparaging comments to

Cast aspersions on people we really need to be careful because we might really just be pushing people over the edge and people who are will mean well-meaning people who really are trying to fight for All of us even as they try to find their place in the world so I can only imagine that if she lived during this time with all the Social media stuff and then people being able to just say anything they wanted to about you at any time I don't know

I hope that you would have had the fortitude to soldier on, these are tough times out here and let's be kind to one another. Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (01:31:21.26)
Yeah, so on that very hopeful note, yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:31:23.66)
Thank you, Brother Adesoggi.

Adesoji Iginla (01:31:27.066)
Yeah, let's be kind to one another and also extend the hand of camaraderie, especially with what is going on in LA at the moment. until next week.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:31:42.134)
Thank you.

Adesoji Iginla (01:31:42.27)
It's good night and God bless.