Activism

New Documentary Unveils Pauli Murray, Little-Known Civil Rights Activist, Feminist

I’ll admit it; I was not familiar with Pauli Murray. Honestly, Murray’s extraordinary accomplishments in the years before and after the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement are history lessons many of us didn’t know, until now.

Published

3 years ago

October 3, 2021

Christy Price

Pauli Murray/ Photo Credit Wikimedia Commons

An accessible compilation of mixed media running 91 minutes, “My Name Is Pauli Murray” unearths a revealing journey of extraordinary feats that pre-date the heralded stories of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Pauli Murray knew intimately what it meant to live a life that was out of sync—when even language wasn’t sufficient to define or describe a journey.

Lawyer, professor, poet, and Episcopal priest, Murray was an iconoclast who pushed against the limits—both the conventional and strict legislation and the narrow thinking around issues of race and gender equity. The struggle wasn’t abstract: Murray’s own life —as an African American intellectual whose gender identity felt fluid —personified it.

Born in 1910, in Baltimore, Md., Pauli was taken in at 3 years old by the maternal wing of the family following the sudden death of Pauli’s mother. Embraced by loving grandparents and two aunts—Pauline and Sarah—Pauli exhibited a proficiency in reading and critical thinking, assessing, early on, the vast discrepancies in conditions African-American families lived in as compared to their white counterparts. Murray’s formative years were spent in a segregated North Carolina where she was among the first to integrate classrooms, courtrooms and conferences to sit alongside the world’s most influential powerbrokers.

That gulf of injustice settled deep inside. A visionary, Pauli Murray understood that the same arguments employed to assail Jim Crow laws and other forms of racial discrimination could be made to attack gender inequity — and, consequently, these pivotal insights became a professional signature.

Confidante to President Franklin D. Rooselevelt’s wife Eleanor and an inspiration to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who cites Murray in her first Supreme Court brief regarding the Equal Protection Clause), Pauli frequently stood in close proximity to power.

Rejected by the University of North Carolina for being Black, and arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus, Pauli didn’t dodge conflict, even if there was no precedent or model. Yet, there’s often an excruciating price paid for being “ahead of one’s time.”

Richly recounted in Pauli’s own voice—with archival audio drawn from intimate oral histories and interviews dating back to the 1970s — Pauli’s timely story is augmented by testimonies from a host of contemporary thinkers, educators, and present-day civil rights activists and there are many parallels to today’s ongoing struggle for racial and gender equality.

Murray’s story, artfully told, with the help of editor (pronounced syn-quay) Northern, a former Bay Area resident, and filmmakers Betty West, Julie Cohen, and Talleah Bridges. The film is showing at theaters now from Amazon Studios and releases on Prime video on October 1.

Northern is an artist, filmmaker, and editor who’s been working in documentary for over 18 years. He has edited numerous projects for PBS including “America by the Numbers” featuring Maria Hinojosa and “Your Voice Your Story.” He also spent 10 years working as a lead editor for Stanley Nelson’s Firelight Media (“Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool,” “Black Panthers”). To date, he has over a dozen short films on permanent display at The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, along with the 2021 documentary, “The One and Only Dick Gregory.”

I spoke with Cinque Northern about this absorbing retelling of Pauli Murray (b.1910-d.1985). Please see the link to a portion of our conversation below.

Download link
https://wetransfer.com/downloads/f45303a149989a34ad4a92a9d76cbf1820210927193714/a77cded8dbbca5c4c28756bea57a756620210927193714/14a142

Christy Price

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Activism

In 1974, Then-Gov. Jimmy Carter Visited the Home of Oakland Black Black Political Activist Virtual Murrell While Running for President

civil rights icon Georgia State Representative Julian Bond said that Carter, along with governors Reuben Askew of Florida, Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, and Terry Sanford of North Carolina, were all a part of what was being dubbed the “New South” and so supported civil rights and voting rights for African Americans.

Published

1 day ago

January 3, 2025

Oakland Post

Virtual Murrell chats with Jimmy Carter two years before Carter was elected president in 1976. Courtesy photo.

By Virtual T. Murrell
Special to The Post

On his way to seeking the presidency, then-Gov. Jimmy Carter visited the Bay Area in his capacity as campaign chairman of the Democratic National Committee in March of 1974.

A friend of mine, Bill Lynch, a Democrat from San Francisco, had been asked to host Carter, who was then relatively unknown. Seeking my advice on the matter, I immediately called my friend, civil rights icon Georgia State Representative Julian Bond, for his opinion.

Bond said that Carter, along with governors Reuben Askew of Florida, Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, and Terry Sanford of North Carolina, were all a part of what was being dubbed the “New South” and so supported civil rights and voting rights for African Americans.

Based on Julian’s comments, I agreed to host the governor. We picked him up at the San Francisco Airport. With his toothy smile, I could tell almost right away that he was like no other politician I had ever met. On his arrival, there was a message telling him to go to the VIP room, where he met then-Secretary of State Jerry Brown.

After leaving the airport, we went to a reception in his honor at the home of Paul “Red” Fay, who had served as the acting secretary of the Navy under President John Kennedy. (Carter, it turned out, had been himself a 1946 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a submariner in the 1950s.)

The following afternoon, the Niagara Movement Democratic Club hosted a reception for Carter, which was a major success. Carter indicated that he would be considering running for president and hoped for our support if he did so.

As the event was winding down, I witnessed the most amazing moment: Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, was in the kitchen with my former wife, Irene, wearing an apron and busting suds! You would have to have been there to see it: The first and last time a white woman cleaned up my kitchen.

A few months later, President Richard Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal. He was succeeded by his vice president, Gerald Ford.

On the heels of that scandal, Jimmy Carter’s election in 1976 represented integrity and honesty at a point in America’s history when he was just what the nation needed to lead as president of the United States.

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Oakland Post: Week of January 1 – 7, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of January 1 – 7, 2025

Published

3 days ago

January 2, 2025

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

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Racially Motivated Violence Against Black Teen Prompts $10 Million Claim Against LAUSD 

In December, a second altercation, on a video shared with news media, showed 4 to 6 boys attacking a Black student and using racial slurs. The video also shows a person in a safety vest trying to stop the fight and telling them to “handle it after school.” Then, the video ends. 

Published

6 days ago

December 30, 2024

Oakland Post

(Left to right) Civil Rights Attorney Caree Harper comforts the victim’s mother as she becomes emotional when describing the attacks on her son while her attorney Bradley C. Gage listens. Verdugo Hills High School on Thursday, Dec. 20, 2024, in Tujunga, CA. (Solomon O. Smith /for California Black Media)

By Solomon O. Smith, California Black Media

A distraught mother and her legal team announced a $10 million lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) on Dec. 16, alleging that her son was the target of bullying because of his race.

“CS DOE is a 14-year-old African American student at Verdugo High School. He is a Ninth Grader,” reads a statement the plaintiff’s attorneys shared with California Black Media (CBM).

“Almost from the first day of class (in August 2024), CS DOE was targeted by Latino students who called him racial slurs, physically attacked him and threatened to stab him.”

The family’s identity has not yet been released to the public due to safety concerns, according to their attorneys Bradley C. Gage and Caree Harper. The student’s mother is identified only as A.O. in the complaint.

The first video, filmed in August, showed several non-Black students punching and kicking a Black student in a bathroom on campus while yelling racial slurs. The mother claims that the students who attacked her son were not punished, and the administration asked her to move her son to another school for his safety.

“They wanted him to leave the school without giving any disciplinary action towards those students,” said the student’s mother. “He’s not going anywhere. He’s going to finish. I wanted him to at least stay until the December winter break, and then I was going to transfer schools for him.”

Before she could enroll her son in a different school the attacks escalated.

CS DOE, a 14-year-old freshman, left the school but was followed by a car, according to Gage. Several individuals exited the vehicle, one with a “large butcher knife.” A fight ensued and two people were stabbed. The Black student was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon but was later released into his mother’s custody.

The high school freshmen is scheduled to appear in juvenile court on Feb. 1, but Harper says she will reach out to the District Attorney and make the case against charging the young man.

“His mama had to go find him because he was hiding and fleeing for his very life,” said Harper.

According to the boy’s mother, the young student is still traumatized and has not been able to return to the area because it remains unsafe. Racial slurs have also been spray painted on their home.

“I’m sad. I’m devastated, you know,” said the mother. “I still feel like they’re after him. I still feel like they can kill him, possibly.”

The LAUSD and principal of Verdugo High School did not respond to CBM’s requests for comment.

If you are – or someone you know is – has experienced a hate crime or hate incident, please visit CAvsHate.org for more information and to find out what you can do about it.