Thread by @Sifill_LDF

So excited. Starting now, the world premiere of #MyNameIsPauliMurray at @sundancefest.

#PauliMurray was another among a litany of women like Ida B Wells, who many don’t know also challenged segregation in public transportation years before Rosa Parks #MyNameIsPauliMurray

Born in #Baltimore, raised in Durham, NC. Her mother died; her father institutionalized. Raised by her aunt (a teacher) in Durham. “The classroom was my second home.”

“The point at which my life became unbearable was when there was contact with the white world.” The “awareness” of lynching Murray speaks of, that was there for millions of 20th century Black ppl is what I tried to capture in On The Courthouse Lawn.
#MyNameIsPauliMurray

“Where could I go to get an answer?” The strain and isolation of being gender non-conforming when there was no language and few places to be fully Pauli. So painful to imagine this turmoil and loneliness.
#MyNameIsPauliMurray

“Most of her life was ‘you will see me; you will hear me.’”
#MyNameIsPauliMurray

Read Lynne Olson’s masterpiece Freedom’s Daughters for more on Murray’s long friendship with, and great admiration for, Eleanor Roosevelt.
#MyNameIsPauliMurray

At Howard Law School she is largely ignored. But at the end of the first year she was at the top of her class. Then, she started to get attention.
#MyNameIsPauliMurray

Add successful lunch counter sit-ins in D.C. in 1943 to Murray’s actions. This began the segregation of U Street.
#MyNameIsPauliMurray

At Howard - in 1944 - she proposes challenging Plessy v Ferguson head-on. She incubates the idea of the frontal challenge to segregation that becomes realized in Brown.
#MyNameIsPauuliMurray

The law firm of Paul, Weiss hires Murray. This firm had also broken barriers in hiring William H. Coleman, when he was unable to get a job of a law firm after his clerkship with Supreme Court clerkship with Justice Felix Frankfurter.

Like many Black intellectuals who could escape, Pauli Murray leaves for Africa for a time - a refuge after the devastating lynching of Mack Parker in 1959 in Mississippi.
#MyNameIsPauliMurray

At Yale where Murray pursued her doctorate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, then a student active in the Civil Rights Mvmt, admits the students thought they started sit-ins and non-violent civil rights demonstration. They are unaware of Murray’s pioneering activism.
#MyNameIsPauliMurray

Founding member of the National Organization for Women. On the board of the ACLU. Murray pushes challenging exclusion of women from juries. #RBG adds Murray’s name to her SCOTUS brief in Reed v Reed.
#MyNameIsPauliMurray

Murray: “I’ve lived to see my lost causes found.”
#MyNameIsPauliMurray

So moving and powerful. Pauli Murray was trailblazer, an original, a brilliant lawyer, activist and intellect to whom we owe a debt of gratitude. Thank you for this film Julie Cohen, Betsy West & Talleah Bridges McMahon.
#MyNameIsPauliMurray. @sundancefest