Female Power Project, perSISTERS designs

Question Categories for Pauli Murray

QUESTION CATEGORIES for Pauli Murray, a perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project

In a new documentary, Pauli Murray says that communication is at the center of everything she does. This thrilled me because I have for years been thinking about communication. Communication is fundamentally about the meeting of two persons, two subjectivities, and the bridging of differences. Differences are set up and perpetuated by social categories, most often binaries, and individuals are sort of tied in a web of these categories. Pauli Murray was a brilliant and perceptive human whose self was suspended in the threads between firm categories. I’m thinking of the categories of subject and object, not-white and white, female and male, heterosexual and homosexual. Binaries are distortions. She was capable of perceiving her situation, and effecting action upon it, long before we had (as a culture in U.S.) the language to talk about these things. She was like a grammarian to a language that had yet to exist. She had the astounding imagination to be able to sketch the landscape that Martin Luther King, Jr. could only partly see from his mountaintop. This is because he did not have people who were not heterosexual, or who were assigned female, standing there with him. Murray liked to say that she lived to see all her lost causes found. Many of them were. Many will be.

Ruth  (a poem by Pauli Murray)

Brown girl chanting Te Deum on Sunday
Rust-colored peasant with strength of granite,
Bronze girl welding ship hulls on Monday,
Let nothing smirch you, let no one crush you. 

Queen of ghetto, sturdy hill-climber,
Walk with the lilt of ballet dancer,
Walk like a strong down-East wind blowing,
Walk with the majesty of the First Woman. 

Gallant challenger, millioned-hope bearer,
The stars are your beacons, earth your inheritance,
Meet blaze and cannon with your own heart’s passion,
Surrender to none the fire of your soul.

Pauli Murray (November 20, 1910–July 1, 1985) was a poet, a writer of letters to powerful people, a lawyer, civil rights activist, women’s rights activist, organizer, professor, Episcopal priest, and a non-binary person. She was a Black person who had many white ancestors, and at least one indigenous ancestor. She was assigned female at birth but always felt that she was really a man, that there was some mistake in her body. She lived most of her life as a lesbian woman, after a short time presenting as a boy when riding the rails during the Great Depression. She never spoke publicly about her sexuality or sexual identity, but her voluminous archive does include many documents expressing them. She knew that she would be an object of study in the future—her archive includes photos and film from the 1930s!— and she did not hide her complex identity from us, here in the future, although she did destroy her letters with her greatest love. I am so grateful to whoever did not destroy this record of her non-binary self. I think we are ready to think about her as she really was in a way that was not possible while she lived. Maybe that’s why most people are only now discovering her.

Pauli Murray is not able to tell us explicitly which pronouns are hers. This choice was not available to her the way it is available to people now. I am using the third person pronouns she did use for herself. It is not wrong to use “they/them”. It is not wrong to use “he/him”. These are categories we can question FOR her. Another category we have now that I don’t think she had then is “non-binary.” This may have been the best home for her, but we just don’t know. That is why her power for us is to QUESTION CATEGORIES. As a lawyer, Murray questioned racial and gender categories and worked to show that laws discriminating against people based on these categories are arbitrary and unconstitutional. These laws are wrong at their core, not just in their implementation.  

In the same way it is not wrong to include her—someone who knew themselves to be a man—in a project about female power. If you have read this long, I am now going to tell you a secret (it was never a secret). Female Power is not just for females. My project is to expand the definition of power to include the power of females. We know that binaries are inadequate. Let’s imagine what replaces them.

I urge everyone to see the recent documentary called “My Name Is Pauli Murray” available at the link below. In it we hear Chase Strangio, an ACLU attorney, say, “We can’t comprehend legal movements for justice without understanding Pauli’s role in them.” 

There is too much to include in this small space, so I will make a condensed list of Murray’s ground breaking human rights work. In the last decade of her life she worked in ministry as an Episcopal priest, the first ordained African American woman in that church. She felt she wanted to work directly in communion with individual people. 

• In 1940, Murray sits in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus with a friend, and they are arrested for violating state segregation laws. They had been reading about Gandhian non-violent resistance. The NAACP drops her case when the charges are changed to disorderly conduct. This event fires her interest in Civil Rights law.

• In 1941 she enters Howard University Law School and stays at the top of her class. She writes a paper on a strategy to counter segregation and her reasoning is later used by Thurgood Marshall to argue Brown v. Board of Education. While at Howard she participates in sit-ins challenging discrimination at restaurants in D.C.

• Long before Kimberlé Crenshaw develops the idea of intersectionality, Murray uses the term “Jane Crow” to describe the special status of Black women as the targets of discrimination. She later criticizes the sexism of the civil rights movement, “It is indefensible to call a national march on Washington and send out a call which contains the name of not a single woman leader.”

• In 1950, Murray publishes a book surveying state racial segregation laws across the country. She continues her argument that lawyers should fight such laws as directly unconstitutional, instead of trying to make the separate accommodations more equal. Thurgood Marshall calls Murray’s book the “bible” of the civil rights movement. The text functions as a catalogue of laws for dismantling, similar to the Solicitor General’s list that RBG used.

• 1961–1964 Murray writes influential works on extending the developing civil rights law protections for Black people to women as well. Ruth Bader Ginsburg adds Murray as coauthor on her brief in her first case for the ACLU, Reed v. Reed (1971).

• In 1966, she originates the idea for, and then co-founds, the National Organization for Women (NOW), which she hoped could act as a NAACP for women’s rights. 

DESIGN NOTE

You might have noticed that the large titling typeface I used in this design is a “unicase font” (called Quinoa) in which upper case and lower case forms are combined into one case. In other words, this type is non-binary.

This print was published in October 2021.

SOURCES

Documentary: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B09DMPMWCP/

Artwork based on this Photo: Pauli Murray of New York, winner of Mademoiselle Merit Award for signal achievement in law, 1946. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

Wikipedia

https://www.indiewire.com/2021/10/pauli-murray-trailblazing-advocacy-shaped-the-world-1234669711/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/the-many-lives-of-pauli-murray

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/sep/17/how-is-pauli-murray-not-a-household-name-the-extraordinary-life-of-the-uss-most-radical-activist

Female Power Project, perSISTERS designs

DISIENTO for Sonia Sotomayor

DISIENTO (“I DISSENT”) for Sonya Sotomayor, a perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project

Sonia Maria Sotomayor (born June 25, 1954) is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2009 and has served since August 8, 2009. She is the third woman to hold the position. Sotomayor is the first woman of color, first Hispanic, and first Latina member of the Court. Sotomayor was born in The Bronx, New York City, to Puerto Rican-born parents. Sotomayor graduated with honors from Princeton University in 1976 and received her law degree from Yale Law School in 1979. –Wikipedia

DESIGN NOTE
I have been pondering a design for Sonia Sotomayor for several years. I was impressed with her compassion, drive, and brilliance after reading her 2013 memoir. However, it was not clear to me what words to use for her “power.” I had thought to use “LISTEN” but was disuaded by someone who used to work for her who told me that Sotomayor is notorious for interrupting people. Sigh. Then recently someone came in to my Female Power hut at Eastern Market and, looking at my RBG “DISSENT” button, told me, “I would love a button with Sotomayor on it that says ‘DISSENT.”’ (She was refering to the dissent quoted below.) “Especially if it were in Spanish!” Well, I know a good idea when I hear one, and this also solved the problem I’ve stated above. I’m starting with a perSISTER print, and a button will be coming. 

I found three ways to say “I dissent” in Spanish, and a lawyer friend helped me find the official judicial phrasing by looking up Supreme Court decisions published in Puerto Rico. 

I found out that the Supreme Court publishes their decisions using the typeface Century Schoolbook, so that is the face I used to typeset the dissent appearing behind the judge in this print. The text reads:

The court’s order is stunning. Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.

Last night, the court silently acquiesced in a state’s enactment of a law that flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents. Today, the court belatedly explains that it declined to grant relief because of procedural complexities of the state’s own invention. Because the court’s failure to act rewards tactics designed to avoid judicial review and inflicts significant harm on the applicants and on women seeking abortions in Texas, I dissent.

In May 2021, the Texas legislature enacted SB8 (the act). The act, which took effect statewide at midnight on 1 September, makes it unlawful for physicians to perform abortions if they either detect cardiac activity in an embryo or fail to perform a test to detect such activity. This equates to a near-categorical ban on abortions beginning six weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period, before many women realize they are pregnant, and months before fetal viability. According to the applicants, who are abortion providers and advocates in Texas, the act immediately prohibits care for at least 85% of Texas abortion patients and will force many abortion clinics to close.

The act is clearly unconstitutional under existing precedents. The respondents do not even try to argue otherwise. Nor could they: no federal appellate court has upheld such a comprehensive prohibition on abortions before viability under current law.

The Texas legislature was well aware of this binding precedent. To circumvent it, the legislature took the extraordinary step of enlisting private citizens to do what the state could not. The act authorizes any private citizen to file a lawsuit against any person who provides an abortion in violation of the act, “aids or abets” such an abortion (including by paying for it) regardless of whether they know the abortion is prohibited under the act, or even intends to engage in such conduct. Courts are required to enjoin the defendant from engaging in these actions in the future and to award the private-citizen plaintiff at least $10,000 in “statutory damages” for each forbidden abortion performed or aided by the defendant. In effect, the Texas legislature has deputized the state’s citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbors’ medical procedures.

The legislature fashioned this scheme because federal constitutional challenges to state laws ordinarily are brought against state officers who are in charge of enforcing. By prohibiting state officers from enforcing the act directly and relying instead on citizen bounty hunters, the legislature sought to make it more complicated for federal courts to enjoin the act on a statewide basis.

Taken together, the act is a breathtaking act of defiance—of the constitution, of this court’s precedents, and of the rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas. But over six weeks after the applicants filed suit to prevent the act from taking effect, a fifth circuit panel abruptly stayed all proceedings before the district court and vacated a preliminary injunction hearing that was scheduled to begin on Monday. The applicants requested emergency relief from this court, but the court said nothing. The act took effect at midnight last night.

From Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in Whole Woman’s Health et al v Austin Reeve Jackson, Judge, et al, on application for injunctive relief. She was joined by Justices Breyer and Kagan. This text has been lightly edited to remove some legal citations. This is quoted directly from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/02/sonia-sotomayor-dissent-texas-abortion-ban-law-supreme-court

This dissent, this case, this new “originalist” Supreme Court, is about much more than denying reproductive rights for women. The historian, Heather Cox Richardson, points out in her letter of September 3, 2021,  “A state has undermined the power of the federal government to protect civil rights. It has given individuals who disagree with one particular right the power to take it away from their neighbors. But make no mistake: there is no reason that this mechanism couldn’t be used to undermine much of the civil rights legislation of the post–World War II years.”

This print was published in September 2021.

FURTHER SOURCES
A good summary of her legal career so far:
“Sonia Sotomayor.” Oyez, www.oyez.org/justices/sonia_sotomayor. Accessed 24 Sep. 2021.

Memoir: My Beloved World, 2013.

The image of Sotomayor in this artwork is based on a photograph © Elena Seibert. The photographer does not have any responsibility for the message of this print.

Female Power Project, perSISTERS designs

Act Like People Matter for Frances Perkins

ACT LIKE PEOPLE MATTER for Frances Perkins, a perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project

Frances Perkins (born Fannie Coralie Perkins; April 10, 1880–May 14, 1965) was an American workers-rights advocate who served as the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, the longest serving in that position. She made history as the first woman to serve in any presidential U.S. Cabinet. As a loyal supporter of her longtime friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt, she helped make labor issues important in the emerging New Deal coalition. She was one of two Roosevelt cabinet members to remain in office for his entire presidency which took place during the depths of the Great Depression and World War II.

Her most important role came in developing a policy for Social Security in 1935. She also helped form governmental policy for working with labor unions, although the union leaders distrusted her. Her Labor Department helped to alleviate strikes by way of the United States Conciliation Service. –Wikipedia

Like many people at the time, Perkins was moved to work even harder for workers’ rights after the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory fire of 1911. She witnessed the fire herself because she had been at lunch with a friend nearby. She watched in horror as people threw themselve out of windows to die on the pavement to avoid perishing in the fire. After the fire she worked as a workplace inspector for the State of New York.  Many of the workplace safety laws of New York became the blueprint for Federal safety laws.

From Wikipedia:  “The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history.The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers—123 women and girls and 23 men—who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Italian or Jewish immigrant women and girls aged 14 to 23…. Because the doors to the stairwells and exits were locked—a common practice at the time to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft—many of the workers could not escape from the burning building and jumped from the high windows. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.”

According to the biography by Kirstin Downey, Frances only accepted the post of Labor Secretary once Roosevelt agreed to back her in her goals to enact the Federal initiatives she had sketched out. She brought a list to her meeting with the recently elected President. These were: general relief from the unemployment crisis through a temporary public works program; prohibiting child labor; reduction in working hours; a minimum wage; worker’s compensation for workplace injury; workplace safety regulations; national unemployment insurance; and an old age pension (Social Security). These goals seemed foolishly ambitious at the time, but Frances had plans for how to get nay-sayers to collaborate. She wanted FDR’s agreement that she could at least study how these policies could work while avoiding the worst pitfalls.  “Are you sure you want this done, because you don’t want me for Secretary of Labor if you don’t want these things done.” He agreed. Through her amazing social skills and canny understanding of the powerful men around her, she did it. She did those things. FDR had faith in her, amazingly. The misogyny she had to deal with was absolutely monumental, and the pressure made it impossible for FDR to keep supporting her later on, and her authority and power was undermined through countless hurtful things. Still, lifted up by a foundation of Christian faith—a radical love for humanity—she rallied the powerful to her cause and she did those things.

DESIGN NOTE I got some inspiration from 1930s graphic design. The background image is from a newspaper article from the NY Evening Telegram of March 27th, 1911. It recounts the heroism of Fannie Lansner, who was credited with saving many lives before she jumped to her death from the Triangle Factory. This page is overlaid with the circle and triangle logo of the notorious factory. The colors in this design are inspired by paint colors of the houses of New England, because Perkins was from Maine.

This print was published in September 2021.

SOURCES
The photo of Frances Perkins, circa 1938, from the National Archives, found here: https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/personal-story/frances-perkins

The Woman Behind the New Deal, by Kirstin Downey, 2009.

https://francesperkinscenter.org/life-new/

Hear Perkins’ voice here: http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/lectures/FrancesPerkinsLecture.html

Newspaper image from here: http://open-archive.rememberthetrianglefire.org/heroic-young-forewoman/

I Make Things Out of Words, Mostly