My Name is Pauli Murray, directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, is a fascinating documentary about Black, queer, non-binary human rights activist and legal scholar Pauli Murray, a poet, lawyer, activist and priest whose writings and teachings laid the groundwork for many legal arguments for race and gender equality. Through Murray’s extensive archive of letters and interviews with her family, students and colleagues, the film makes a compelling case that Murray should be credited for spearheading many of the gains made during the history of the Civil Rights Movement.
Murray led protests to desegregate restaurants in Washington, D.C., almost 20 years before the lunch-counter sit-ins, wrote papers as a student at Howard Law School that became the basis of Thurgood Marshall’s winning argument in Brown v. Board of Education, and used the 14th amendment to end gender discrimination five years before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued her gender equality case before the Supreme Court.
The documentary also explores Murray’s gender identity, and connects how their experience with gender dysphoria and gender expansiveness made them that much more keenly attuned to the immorality of racial and gender discrimination. There is no word yet on distribution but considering that West and Cohen’s 2018 documentary RBG was nominated for an Academy Award, it shouldn’t be too long before this is picked up.