Pauli Murray: The American Hero You Never Learned About (and the Federal Government Doesn’t Want You To)

A few years ago, I went searching for Pauli Murray. By that point, the poet, civil rights activist and pioneering legal scholar had been dead for 35 years. But in researching her life for the book I was working on, I’d learned about the profound impact that her work had had on the very fabric of America and particularly on the country’s legal system. I was convinced that because of everything Murray had done—the extent to which she had shaped movements and laws and lives—she would have to be remembered prominently and publicly. It was probably just my own fault, I reasoned, that I hadn’t previously heard of her.

Like millions of others around the world, I have spent the last few weeks oscillating between fear, anger and sadness as I’ve watched the new U.S. administration neglect the core values of democracy and wreak havoc with the systems that have propped up this country for centuries. With no way of changing the mind of a morally bankrupt megalomaniac, I’m concentrating on what I can do. Since I’ve learned of her remarkable life, I’ve loved telling people about Murray; about the unlikely against-all-odds battles she faced head-on—public wars she waged while simultaneously grappling with her own often-debilitating private troubles. If the federal government chooses to ignore those upon whose shoulders we all stand, those of us who recognize the indignity of this will simply have to make up for it by telling their stories loudly, telling their stories often and then repeating them over and over and over again. It is, after all, what Pauli Murray would do.

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation: Women’s Rights Face Global Backlash 30 Years After Beijing Declaration; Washington Post Loses Ruth Marcus, a Leading Voice for Women

Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation. 

This week: Ruth Marcus details her decades-long history with The Washington Post and the deteriorating environment on the editorial page as its owner Jeff Bezos curried favor with Donald Trump; City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams launches campaign for New York City mayor; with Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) not seeking reelection, the U.S. will lose two women U.S. senators after the 2026 elections; women serve as heads of state in only 25 countries, make up only 27.2 percent of Parliament, and hold 22.9 percent of Cabinet positions internationally; and more.

Universities Must Do Better for the Trans Community

For the past decade, Americans have been fed a steady diet of transphobic hysteria, with 2024 being the 5th consecutive record-breaking year for anti-trans legislation. The election of Donald J. Trump was predicated on a fight against trans rights.

As professors at San José State University, we have seen the results of this type of targeted campaign. Recent and past events on our campus by transphobic individuals and extremist groups emphasizing bigotry and hate, turn university spaces into anti-intellectual theater and harm trans students. In so doing, they position our campuses too closely to intolerance. 

Women’s Independence, Credit Cards and Economic Power: Celebrating 50 Years of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) of 1974 enabled women to get credit cards or a mortgage without a co-signer, making it a pivotal milestone for women’s financial independence. The 50th anniversary of ECOA being signed into law by President Gerald Ford fell just a week ahead of the recent presidential election, considered by many to be a referendum on women’s rights in a political climate still reeling from the revocation of Roe. That critical landmark for women’s autonomy was overturned by the Dobbs decision in 2022, one year short of reaching its own half-century observance. 

By focusing on women’s independence through the lens of economic power over the last 50 years, a new Smithsonian exhibit—”We Do Declare Women’s Voices on Independence,” commemorating ECOA’s passage—hones in on another essential factor in women’s ability to achieve freedom, security and power: financial independence.

Conservative Supreme Court to Rule on Right to Be Trans, Medical Care, Parents’ Rights, Constitutional Sex Discrimination—and the Right to Be Different

“I’m here to stand up for my kid,” Brian Williams told me outside the Supreme Court on Dec. 4. Williams and his wife Samantha have been fighting for their daughter—known as L.W. in the legal papers the ACLU filed to challenge Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors—for years.

Though difficult to sit through, the two-plus hours of argument in United States v. Skrmetti—a challenge by trans youth, their families, the ACLU, Lambda Legal and the Biden administration to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors—was a nearly perfect distillation of this moment in our gender politics.

The ‘Woman in Charge’: Diane von Furstenberg’s Lifelong Commitment to Empowering Women, Fashion and Philanthropy

Though her fame as a designer came through the success of her iconic wrap dress, Diane von Furstenberg has said, “I don’t think I had a vocation for fashion; I had a vocation to be a woman in charge.”

Towards the end of the exhibit—on display at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles until Aug. 31, 2025—a QR code directs visitors to sign up for her more recent innovation: the “InCharge platform,” which serves as “a place to rally, where we use our connections to help all women be the women they want to be.” Its aim urges women to make “first a commitment to ourselves” by “owning who we are” and then to use the platform to “connect, expand, inspire, and advocate.” It is her latest project in a lifetime of advocacy meant to strengthen women.

Rest in Power: Lilly Ledbetter, Trailblazing Icon for Women’s Equal Pay

Lilly Ledbetter, an equal pay activist whose legal fight against her employer led to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, died this weekend. She was 86. 

“One of the next steps in reaching pay equity is the Paycheck Fairness Act—a bill that would amend the Equal Pay Act of 1963 to give workers stronger enforcement tools and remedies to help close the pay gap between men and women once and for all,” wrote Ledbetter in an op-ed for Ms. in January. “But things have been frustratingly stagnant in Congress.”

The Feminist Fight for Gender Equity: Lisa Ann Walter and Advocates Renew Push for ERA Ahead of 2024 Elections

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the battle to restore abortion rights has been front and center. Less visible are efforts to enshrine women’s equality into the Constitution—the continuation of a campaign that conservatives thought they killed more than 40 years ago. Not true.

Champions of the ERA have been working tirelessly to get Congress to publish the 101-year-old measure that would ban gender-based discrimination. Although women have made considerable strides over the last century, a constitutional right is the only guarantee they will make further gains and keep them in perpetuity.

Dropping the ‘Respectfully’ in Dissent: What ‘Trump v. U.S.’ Means for the Country’s Future

The Supreme Court majority’s extreme belief in Trump v. U.S. that our president is above the law is anathema to the history of our nation.

In almost every case, the dissenting justices write, “I respectfully dissent,” but both Sotomayor and Jackson omit the “respectfully” in their dissents in Trump v. U.S. There is little to cling to in this decision. It is as un-American as can be.