My Name is Pauli Murray
Filmmaker and director Betsy West (RBG) joins us to discuss her new project, My Name Is Pauli Murray. Fifteen years before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat, a full decade before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned separate-but-equal legislation, Pauli Murray was already knee-deep fighting for social justice. A pioneering attorney, activist and dedicated memoirist, Murray shaped landmark litigation – and consciousness – around race and gender equity. As an African American youth raised in the segregated South – who was also wrestling with broader notions of gender identity – Pauli understood, intrinsically, what it was to exist beyond previously accepted categories and cultural norms. Both Pauli’s personal path and tireless advocacy foreshadowed some of the most politically consequential issues of our time. Told largely in Pauli’s own words, this documentary is a candid recounting of that unique and extraordinary journey.
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Betsy West is an Academy Award®-nominated, Emmy-winning director/producer of RBG (Magnolia, Participant, CNN Films, 2018), along with Julie Cohen. She was the executive producer and lead interviewer of the MAKERS (PBS/AOL, 2012) documentary and digital series about the modern women’s movement, and the feature documentary The Lavender Scare (PBS, 2019.) As an ABC News producer and executive producer of the documentary series Turning Point, she won 21 Emmy awards. A graduate of Brown University, Betsy is the Fred W. Friendly Professor Emerita at Columbia Journalism School. Most recently, she and Cohen directed JULIA (Imagine Entertainment/CNN Film/Sony Picture Classics), which is being released in 2021.
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