Did you see the picture of Pauli Murray's class at Howard? With the lone woman?
When did i first become aware of Pauli Murray? In the summer of 1958.
I was engaged as a summer associate in a law firm, and I was taken to meet the lone woman associate,
Pauli Murray.
I thought she was remarkable. She had written the book about her family, Proud Shoes,
and I had read that, so i knew a little bit about Pauli.
My closest affiliation with her was when she was on the board of the ACLU.
I saw her working at her office in
Paul Weiss, but that was just fleeting, as I was going down the corridor.
The 14th amendment contains my favorite clause of the constitution,
'nor shall any state deny any person the equal protection of the laws.'
Pauli had the idea that we should
interpret the text literally. It said any person, not any male person.
She wrote this remarkable article called Jane Crow and the Law,
Where she called attention to all the laws that
restricted what women could do, but unlike race discrimination they were all rationalized
as favors for the ladies. For example, women were not permitted to serve on juries.
It was thought that would distract them from their responsibility at home. The idea of Jane Crow was
to show that classifications dividing the world up that way, were not benign. They did not operate
benignly in women's favor. Years later Justice Brennan put it very well. He said, 'the pedestal
on which women were thought to stand, more often than not turns out to be a cage read.'
Reed v. Reed was the turning point gender discrimination case in the supreme court.
Sally Reed's case was ideal to open the court's eyes. The case on the facts was heart-rending,
the law was as arbitrary as it could be. 'Males must be preferred to females.'
The actual wording of the 14th Amendment is very simple,
the case itself presents a large and I think significant problem.
I wrote the brief in Sally Reed's case. I put on the cover Pauli Murray's name.
By the time of Reed, Pauli had already changed her interest, she was going to divinity school,
she was into ministry, not lawyering, but we knew when we were writing that brief that we
were standing on her shoulders, because she was the one that sparked the idea that the 14th Amendment
should protect the right of men and women, boys and girls should let them be free to be you and me,
that is to follow their talent as far as it could take them. Unlike Pauli who was
way ahead of her times, I was there at the right time. We owed so much to her courage,
to her willingness to speak out when society was not prepared to listen.