I plan on doing a series on my favorite historical trans people 😄
I'm using all pronouns for them btw
Pauli Murray was the first African American to earn a J.S.D. from Yale Law School,
the first Black "woman," ordained as an Episcopal priest, and a co-founder of the National Organization for Women
They taught at Brandeis University, becoming the first person to teach African-American Studies and Women's Studies there.
he advocated for the inclusion of the word "sex" in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She was cited as an honorary co-author of the amicus brief in Reed v. Reed (1971), which addressed the failure of courts to recognize sex discrimination.
“Should the Civil Rights Cases and Plessy v. Ferguson Be Overruled?” (1944) used incase of Brown v. Board of Education
Murray joined the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) board of directors in 1965.
and Civil Rights Activism
Murray's legal work and scholarship, including the concept of "Jane Crow" to describe the intersecting discrimination against Black women, discrimination.
Murray challenged racial segregation in education and public transit, including organizing a sit-in that desegregated a restaurant in Washington, D.C.
he was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus in Durham, North Carolina.
Murray's book, States' Laws on Race and Color, was considered the "Bible" for civil rights litigators.
Murray self-described as a “he/she personality” in correspondence with family members. For years, Murray requested - and was denied - testosterone injections and hormone therapy, as well as exploratory surgery to investigate their reproductive organs, believing that they may have been intersex and had undescended testis.
Graduating in 1933 amid the Great Depression, Murray soon joined thousands to ride the rails searching for work. With a short bob and slender body that they described as “flat in the obvious places,” Murray presented as a small teenage boy, going by names like “Pete” and “The Dude.”
"I don't know whether I'm right or whether society (or some medical authority) is right. I only know how I feel and what makes me happy. This conflict rises up to knock me down at every apex I reach in my career. And because the laws of society do not protect me, I'm exposed to any enemy or person who may or may not want to hurt me."
Pauli Murray wrote about his gender identity and sexuality throughout her life. In their journals, Murray wondered if she was "one of nature's experiments; a girl who should have been a boy." Partially because of this struggle, Murray suffered breakdowns and was hospitalized throughout her twenties and thirties. Murray sought medical treatment and consulted doctors concerning what they called “an inverted sex instinct,”
Some further reading //some sources
https://www.paulimurraycenter.com/pronouns-pauli-murray
https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/pauli-murray-lgbtq-historical-figure
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_Murray
discoholicmusic
dailybridgerton
kaledo-art
titsay
