Barbara Lau, Executive Director, recently spoke with Dr. Patricia Bell-Scott, consulting producer of My Name Is Pauli Murray, author of The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice, and professor emerita, Women’s Studies, Human Development & Family Science, of the University of Georgia.
Barbara Lau: What was your role as a consulting producer for the film My Name is Pauli Murray?
Dr. Patricia Bell-Scott at a Duke Human Rights Center event (2016)
Dr. Patricia Bell-Scott: I saw my role in several ways. The first goal was to assist in identifying themes in Pauli Murray’s life. So, in the first conversations with co-directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West, and producer Talleah Bridges McMahon, we talked about the breadth of and themes in Murray’s life, as well as those issues that would resonate with viewers. Over time, our focus sharpened as the project developed.
My second goal was guided by a journal entry Pauli Murray wrote while struggling to conceptualize the family memoir that would one day become Proud Shoes. I keep this this quote close by. It reads: "Great art is not a matter of presenting one side or another, but of presenting a picture so full of the contradictions, tragedies, [and] insights of the period that the impact is at once disturbing and satisfying." I kept this idea in mind as we worked on the film. It encouraged me to do several things: to consider the complexity of this brilliant individual whose life covered most of the previous century, to examine the connections between Murray and the movements for human rights and human equality, and to spotlight the lasting impact of Murray’s work as a writer-thinker-activist.
In practical terms, this meant identifying documentary sources, potential interviewees, and sites for filming. I’d worked for 20 years on my biography, The Firebrand and the First Lady, and that prepared me for the role of consulting producer. I was familiar with the archival holdings, which include an array of documents, photographs, and recordings that proved to be helpful. I’d also interviewed and/or corresponded with many of Murray’s lifelong friends.
Because I knew how much poetry meant to Murray and I knew that it is in the poetry where one gets the deepest sense of Murray’s feelings, I used poetry liberally and strategically in The Firebrand and the First Lady. I am happy that viewers see and hear Murray reading poetry throughout the film. Although known primarily as a groundbreaking lawyer-activist, poet was the title Murray cherished most. My Name Is Pauli Murray chronicles public and private achievements and challenges. My hope is that we’ve honored Murray’s notion about the complexity of art.
Dr. Patricia Bell-Scott (center) filming at the Pauli Murray Center with local high school students for “My Name Is Pauli Murray” documentary (2020). Photo taken by Charles V. Underwood Jr.
In thinking about sites where we could film on location, Pauli Murray’s childhood home in Durham [now the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice] was at the top of my list. As executive director of the Center, Barbara, I know that you know how strong Murray’s presence is at the house and on the grounds.
There are three moments in the film where viewers see the house—when I discuss the tragedy that brought Pauli Murray to Durham to live with relatives, in the clip of Charles Kuralt’s On the Road television series where Murray returns to preach in the church [Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, NC] where her grandmother had been baptized, and near the end of the film where I’m standing in the yard with several high schoolers. This house, which symbolized Murray’s ancestral foundation, had a lasting impact.
The day we filmed someone said to me in the yard, “I wish Pauli could be here.” And I smiled and whispered, “Pauli is here.” At the time, I was thinking about Pauli’s response to Charles Kuralt who’d asked, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if your grandmother were here?" To which Murray said, “My grandmother was here right behind me." That’s what I felt the day we did the shoot at the house. Pauli was right there with us.
BL: Well, thank you so much Dr. Bell-Scott for recommending that the team come to Durham.
As you think about the people that may watch the film, what is it you hope they'll take away from that experience?
Poster for “My Name Is Pauli Murray”
PBS: My hope is that viewers will be inspired by Pauli Murray’s life and that they will come away from the film with a sense of how multidimensional Murray was. Murray could be brazen, courageous, and daring, and also vulnerable, sensitive, and shy. Murray was woman-loving, kept medical records documenting gender-identity conflict, presented as female most of her life, and preached that gender—like race—was a social construct.
Pauli Murray’s great-niece Karen R. Ross shares how her aunt, who’d been a talker and doer in Karen’s youth, became a listener and servant after becoming a priest. The reflections of friends, family, colleagues, former students, scholars, and a new generation of activists reflect the diversity of perspectives on Murray.
Murray’s friend, the Reverend Dovey Johnson Roundtree who was also an attorney, told me that Pauli aimed to live an authentic life, and I hope viewers get a sense of that from the personal declaration at the beginning of the film. That video footage of Murray, recorded by a student, had not been digitized or seen before director Julie Cohen discovered it.
“My hope is that viewers will be inspired by Pauli Murray’s life and that they will come away from the film with a sense of how multidimensional Murray was. Murray could be brazen, courageous, and daring, and also vulnerable, sensitive, and shy. ”
I also hope that the film is a response to young people who have said to me, “I’m upset. How did I get through American history or law school without any professor mentioning Pauli Murray? And where can I learn more?” I think about the Black Lives Matter, feminist, LGBTQ+, and religious activists, who’ve asked, “What would have been Pauli’s reaction to the contemporary social justice movement?” “Did she get tired, and how did she combine activism with the rest of life? “ I think of the writers yet-to-be published, who’ve asked, “What kept Murray going in the face of a literary market and readers who didn’t undertand Proud Shoes for decades?”
There aren’t specific answers to these questions, but I hope that some explanations are evident. Yes, Murray was emotionally and physically exhausted many times, yet flowered with the support and acceptance of family, friends, and loved ones. Karen spoke of the acceptance Murray got from Aunt Pauline, who referred to Pauli as her “boy-girl.” Former students and biographer Rosalind Rosenberg talk about the significance of Murray’s intimate partnership with Irene Barlow. I talk about how the relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt moved from confrontation, to allyship, to a friendship with mother-daughter undercurrents.
My hope is that the film will encourage viewers to be mindful of those social activists in our midst who need support. There are firebrands, as you've said Barbara, who need the support that Pauli Murray didn't get. That support can be a simple as a call or note, to be present in a moment of crisis, to credit someone for their pathbreaking work (as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by citing Pauli Murray work as a legal theorist), to provide respite, material or financial assistance when we can.
I've gotten some heart-warming messages from young people. I'm thinking of a writer who props Pauli Murray’s memoir in her writing chair at the close of the day. To have it there waiting at attention the next morning inspires her, she says, “to write her truth.” My hope is that My Name is Pauli Murray will inspire viewers to seek truth and social justice.
BL: Thank you so much, Dr. Bell-Scott.