I’ve learned about some important issues and incredible people through Sundance documentaries. At last year’s festival the amazing efforts and accomplishments of the Reverend Dr. Anna ‘Pauli’ Murray were a revelation.
Before seeing this doc, I could not have told you one thing about Murray. In fact, from the photo in the Sundance program, I assumed ‘she’ was a ‘he’. Pauli was born in 1910 and died in 1985 and if Pauli lived today I’m not sure with which pronouns she would identify.
I’ve seen the doc and done some additional research, here’s what I can tell you now. Pauli was an intelligent, black, queer, female lawyer, Episcopalian priest, poet, professor and author who was a thinker and an activist way ahead of her time. Her civil rights activism began in the 1940s, doing things Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King, Jr later built on, continued, and got credit for in the 60’s. Murray also designed the legal architecture later used by the ACLU in 2020 to win cases for the LGTBQ community.
Like so many other women under our historic radar, she made striking differences but her thunder and lightning are often attributed to someone else. Did she mind? As Murray once said, “I lived to see my lost causes found.”
Fortunately, Murray had a sense her actions would have historic value and she left an immense archive of photos, recordings, letters, papers and documentation of all kinds from which this documentary was constructed. We, as a culture, have so very much to learn. Why not begin by viewing this film?
"My Name is Pauli Murray" is rated PG-13 and runs 1 hour, 31 informative minutes. Park City Film screens it at the Santy Auditorium October 29, 30 and 31. See their website for details.