My Name Is Pauli Murray

This is a beautifully filmed documentary about a woman of whom I'd never heard. What a life! This was a story that needed to be told for all of us who care about human rights and social justice.

Pauli Murray was a unique individual who transcended race and gender.

She struggled with the limits that a racist and sexist society imposed on her.

She went through so many transitions during her life from hopping on freight trains during the Great Depression to teaching at Yale and finally becoming an Episcopal priest.

This is a fine and sensitive documentary giving a close and intimate portrait of this fine human being. As some mentioned during the documentary we should all know who Pauli Murray was. She was ahead of her time and a beacon for a better humanity.

(why this is rated so low on IMDb (6.1 as of this writing) is beyond comprehension.)

This documentary is excellent in showing how white women supported black women and how black men did not support black women with respect to black women's civil rights as women--a balanced intersectional analysis that is generally ignored in other recent documentaries on black history and/or women's history.

I subtracted one star because (like other historical documentaries on black history and women's history) it went into graphic detail about INTERcommunity racial violence against black men, but did not go into graphic detail about INTRAcommunity gender violence against women of all races perpetuated within their own communities (i.e. Coverture, marital rape, femicide, human trafficking, etc.)

I also subtracted one star because they glossed over Murray's brilliant "Jane Crow" analysis, in which she demonstrated how the arguments to keep blacks and women in an inferior status are the same. The filmmakers kept the two issues of race and sex discrimination apart, but Murray rightly connected them, which is one of her most brilliant intellectual contributions to legal theory.

This documentary portrays a woman of extraordinary drive, compassion, reason and intelligence. Yet she been an unknown to me until this superbly-constructed documentary becaame available. Kudos to the creators for finding her and making her come alive. How many unrecognizable heroes are out there? I need to open my eyes and find the beautiful and the brave around me.

Before they died, Pauli Murray wrote and recorded their autobiography. This film shares that voice to tell the moving story of a person who was way out in front of profound changes in Black civil rights, women's equality, and gay liberation. This is a love story for democracy and equality.