36. The Life of Pauli Murray: Confrontation by Typewriter, Part 1
History is Gay
Leigh Pfeffer
4.6 β’ 536 Ratings
ποΈ 25 June 2021
β±οΈ 92 minutes
ποΈ Recording | iTunes | RSS
π§ΎοΈ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of History is Gay, Leigh and guest host Aubree Calvin discuss Pauli Murray, an important African American lawyer, and activist who is finally getting the historical attention they deserve. In their time, Murray was a labor rights, civil rights, and women's rights activist, and broke significant barriers all while facing sexism and racism. In addition to having a brilliant legal mind, they were a writer, poet, and priest, and had time to be friends with Eleanor Roosevelt. Pauli Murray should be in every U.S. History book in every K-12 school.
So, if Pauli Murray was so important to so many movements, why has history largely forgotten them? Leigh and Aubree try to answer that in this two-episode series. This first episode looks at their upbringing, many careers, and accomplishments. Later, in part two, we look at what made Pauli queer, and try to get a handle, as best we can, on their gender identity.
Our wonderful guest host for this episode, Aubree Calvin, can be found at www.aubreecalvin.com or on her podcast Southern Queeries. You can also hear Aubree in previous episodes, which you can check out by clicking here!
Outline
0:00 β Introduction
10:00 β Main Topic: Pauli Murray
13:06 β Socio-Historical Context
14:36 β A Note on Pronouns
16:11 β Who were they? Bio Time.
19:26 β Content Warning: Racial violence
30:05 β Fun Segment: Word of the Week
57:13 β Poetry and Memoir Writing
1:12:19 β Content Warning: Stark descriptions of slave trade
1:20:55 β Closing and Where to Find Us Online
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, and welcome to History is Gay, a podcast that examines the underappreciated and overlooked |
| 0:05.6 | queer ladies, gents, and gentle enbies that have always been there in the unexplored |
| 0:10.1 | corners of history, because history has never been as straight as you think. |
| 0:32.4 | Yeah. Well, hello, everyone, everyone. |
| 0:35.7 | It's been a while since we did an episode. |
| 0:40.5 | And I'm so happy to be back in this space with you. |
| 0:49.5 | Thank you for your patience while I went through a lot of work things and getting a pet and spending all my time dedicated to that. |
| 0:52.3 | And also, happy pride, everyone. |
| 0:57.3 | For all of you wonderful gay babies out there i really hope you have a wonderful and exuberant pride and you are able to go to some sort of events socially distanced |
| 1:05.1 | that are available to you now hopefully folks have gotten vaccinated and are starting to be able to get back out |
| 1:12.2 | into the world. Today, I am joined once again by Aubrey Calvin, who is coming here with me today |
| 1:20.3 | to talk about Polly Murray, which we teased a little bit in our last episode together. And we've |
| 1:25.7 | been working on this episode for quite some time because this person has |
| 1:29.0 | had such an expansive life. |
| 1:31.5 | It's complicated. |
| 1:32.8 | Yeah, welcome back, Aubrey. |
| 1:34.7 | Hi. |
| 1:35.2 | How have you been in the three or four months since we last talked, at least, on a podcast |
| 1:40.7 | together? |
| 1:41.7 | Well, thanks for having me back on. |
| 1:43.3 | I have been okay, okay. I mean, |
| 1:46.3 | that's what, that's what American say, right? When we look like, when we want to be vague, |
... |
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