Pauli Murray
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Anna Pauline "Pauli" Murray (November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985) was an American
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life ...
activist Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...
who became a
lawyer A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solicit ...
,
gender equality Gender equality, also known as sexual equality or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making; and the state of valuing d ...
advocate, Episcopal
priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in partic ...
, and
author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...
. Drawn to the ministry, in 1977 she became one of the first women—and the first
African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...
woman—to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. Born in
Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...
, Maryland, Murray was essentially orphaned, raised mostly by her maternal aunt in
Durham, North Carolina Durham ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the county seat of Durham County. Small portions of the city limits extend into Orange County and Wake County. With a population of 283,506 in the 2020 Census, Durham is the 4th- ...
. At the age of 16, she moved to
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
to attend
Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admin ...
, and graduated with a
Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
degree in English in 1933. In 1940, Murray sat in the whites-only section of a
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...
bus with a friend, and they were arrested for violating state segregation laws. This incident, and her subsequent involvement with the
socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
Workers' Defense League, led her to pursue her career goal of working as a civil rights lawyer. She enrolled in the law school at
Howard University Howard University (Howard) is a Private university, private, University charter#Federal, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classifie ...
, where she was the only woman in her class. Murray graduated first in her class, but she was denied the chance to do post-graduate work at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
because of her
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most culture ...
. She called such prejudice against women "Jane Crow", alluding to the
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the S ...
that enforced
racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crime against humanity under the Statute of the Intern ...
in the
Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
. She earned a master's degree in law at
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
, and in 1965 she became the first African American to receive a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from
Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & World ...
. As a lawyer, Murray argued for civil rights and women's rights.
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.& ...
(NAACP) Chief Counsel
Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-A ...
called Murray's 1950 book, ''States' Laws on Race and Color'', the "bible" of the
civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
. Murray was appointed by President John F. Kennedy to serve on the 1961–1963 Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. In 1966, she was a co-founder of the National Organization for Women.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( ; ; March 15, 1933September 18, 2020) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by Presiden ...
named Murray as a coauthor of the
ACLU The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". ...
brief in the
landmark A landmark is a recognizable natural or artificial feature used for navigation, a feature that stands out from its near environment and is often visible from long distances. In modern use, the term can also be applied to smaller structures or f ...
1971
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
case ''
Reed v. Reed ''Reed v. Reed'', 404 U.S. 71 (1971), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates between sexes. In ''Reed v. Reed'' the Supreme Court rul ...
'', in recognition of her pioneering work on gender discrimination. This case articulated the "failure of the courts to recognize sex discrimination for what it is and its common features with other types of arbitrary discrimination." Murray held faculty or administrative positions at the Ghana School of Law, Benedict College, and
Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , p ...
. In 1973, Murray left academia for activities associated with the Episcopal Church. She became an ordained priest in 1977, among the first generation of women priests. In addition to her legal and advocacy work, Murray published two well-reviewed autobiographies and a volume of poetry. Her volume of poetry, ''Dark Testament'' (1970), was republished in 2018. Murray struggled in her adult life with issues related to her sexual and
gender identity Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the ...
, describing herself as having an "inverted sex instinct". She had a brief, annulled marriage to a man and several deep relationships with women. In her younger years, she occasionally had passed as a teenage boy. A number of scholars, including a 2017 biographer, have retroactively classified Murray as
transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...
.


Early life

Murray was born in
Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...
, Maryland, on November 20, 1910. Both sides of her family were of mixed racial origins, with ancestors including Black slaves, white slave owners, Native Americans, Irish, and free Black people. The varied features and complexions of her family were described as a "United Nations in miniature". Murray's parents, schoolteacher William H. Murray and nurse Agnes (Fitzgerald) Murray, both identified as Black. In 1914, Agnes died of a
cerebral hemorrhage Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as cerebral bleed, intraparenchymal bleed, and hemorrhagic stroke, or haemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain, into its ventricles, or into both. It is one kind of bleed ...
when her daughter was three. After Murray's father began to have emotional problems, some think as a result of
typhoid fever Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over severa ...
, relatives took custody of his children. Three-year-old Pauli Murray was sent to
Durham, North Carolina Durham ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the county seat of Durham County. Small portions of the city limits extend into Orange County and Wake County. With a population of 283,506 in the 2020 Census, Durham is the 4th- ...
, to live with her mother's family. There, she was raised by her maternal aunts, Sarah (Sallie) Fitzgerald and Pauline Fitzgerald Dame (both teachers), as well as her maternal grandparents, Robert and Cornelia (Smith) Fitzgerald. She attended St. Titus Episcopal Church with her mother's family, as had her mother before Murray was born. When she was twelve, her father was committed to the Crownsville State Hospital for the Negro Insane, where he received no meaningful treatment. Pauli had wanted to rescue him, but in 1923 (when she was thirteen), he was bludgeoned to death by a white guard with a baseball bat. Murray lived in Durham until the age of 16, at which point she moved to New York to finish high school and prepare for college. There she lived with the family of her cousin Maude. The family was
passing for white Racial passing occurs when a person classified as a member of a racial group is accepted or perceived ("passes") as a member of another. Historically, the term has been used primarily in the United States to describe a black or brown person o ...
in their white neighborhood. Murray's presence discomfited Maude's neighbors, however, as Murray was more visibly of partial African descent. She graduated with her second high school diploma and honors from Richmond Hill High School in 1927, and enrolled at
Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admin ...
for two years. Murray married William Roy Wynn, known as Billy Wynn, in secret on November 30, 1930, but soon came to regret the decision. The historian
Rosalind Rosenberg Rosalind Rosenberg (born 1946) is an American historian. Life She graduated from Stanford University, with a BA and Ph.D., in 1974. She began her teaching career at Columbia University in 1974 and taught at Wesleyan University in Connecticut fr ...
wrote: Murray and Wynn only spent a few months together before both leaving town. They did not see one another again before Murray contacted him to have their marriage annulled on March 26, 1949. Inspired to attend
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
by a favorite teacher, Murray was turned away from applying because the university did not admit women, and she did not have the funds to attend its women's coordinate college,
Barnard College Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...
. Instead she attended
Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admin ...
, a free women's college of
City University of New York The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the public university system of New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven senior colleges, seven community colleges and seven pro ...
, where she was one of the few students of color. Murray was encouraged in her writing by one of her English instructors, from whom she earned an "A" for an essay about her maternal grandfather. This became the basis of her later memoir ''Proud Shoes'' (1956), about her mother's family. Murray published an article and several poems in the college paper. She graduated in 1933 with a
Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
degree in English. Murray further continued her education in New York City at Jay Lovestone's New Workers School on West 33rd Street, taking, in Rosenberg's words, "night classes with Lovestone and others ... including Marxist Philosophy,
Historical Materialism Historical materialism is the term used to describe Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. For Marx and his lifetime collaborat ...
, Marxian Economics, and Problems of Communist Organization." Jobs were difficult to find during the
Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
. Murray took a job selling subscriptions to '' Opportunity'', an
academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and ...
of the National Urban League, a civil rights organization based in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. Poor health forced her to resign, and her doctor recommended that Murray seek a healthier environment. Murray took a position at Camp Tera, a " She-She-She" conservation camp. Established at the urging of First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt Anna Eleanor Roosevelt () (October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four ...
, these federally-funded camps paralleled the all-male
Civilian Conservation Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government unemployment, work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a ...
(CCC) camps formed under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's
New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Con ...
to provide employment to young adults while improving national infrastructure. During her three months at the camp, Murray's health recovered. She also met Eleanor Roosevelt. Later they had correspondence that affected both of them. Murray clashed with the camp's director, however. The director had found a Marxist book from a Hunter College course among Murray's belongings, and questioned Murray's attitude during the First Lady's visit. The camp director also disapproved of Murray's cross-racial relationship with Peg Holmes, a white counselor. Murray and Holmes left the camp in February 1935, and began traveling the country by walking, hitchhiking, and hopping freight trains. Murray later worked for the Young Women's Christian Association.


1938-1945: Early activism and law school

Murray applied to PhD program in sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1938, but was rejected because of her race. All schools and other public facilities in the state were segregated by state law, as was the case across the South. The case was broadly publicized in both white and black newspapers. Murray wrote to officials ranging from the university president to President Roosevelt, releasing their responses to the media in an attempt to embarrass them into action. The NAACP initially was interested in the case, but later declined to represent her in court, perhaps fearing that her long residence in New York state weakened her case. NAACP leader Roy Wilkins opposed representing her because Murray had already released her correspondence, which he considered "not diplomatic". Concerns about her sexuality also may have played a role in the decision; Murray often wore pants rather than the customary skirts of women and was open about her relationships with women. In early 1940, Murray was walking the streets in Rhode Island, distraught after "the disappearance of a woman friend". She was taken into custody by police. She was transferred to Bellevue Hospital in New York City for psychiatric treatment. In March, Murray left the hospital with Adelene McBean, her roommate and girlfriend, and took a bus to Durham to visit her aunts. In Petersburg, Virginia, the two women moved out of broken seats in the black (and back) section of the bus, where state segregation laws mandated they sit, and into the white section. Inspired by a conversation they had been having about Gandhian
civil disobedience Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be called "civil". H ...
, the two women refused to return to the rear even after the police were called. They were arrested and jailed. Murray and McBean initially were defended by the NAACP, but when the pair were convicted only of disorderly conduct rather than violating segregation laws, the organization ceased to represent them. The Workers' Defense League (WDL), a
socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
labor rights organization that also was beginning to take civil rights cases, paid her fine. A few months later the WDL hired Murray for its administrative committee. With the WDL, Murray became active in the case of Odell Waller, a black Virginia sharecropper sentenced to death for killing his white landlord, Oscar Davis, during an argument. The WDL argued that Davis had cheated Waller in a settlement and as their argument grew more heated, Waller had shot Davis in legitimate fear of his life. Murray toured the country raising funds for Waller's appeal. She wrote to First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt Anna Eleanor Roosevelt () (October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four ...
on Waller's behalf. Roosevelt in turn wrote to Virginia Governor Colgate Darden, asking him to guarantee that the trial was fair; she later persuaded the president to privately request Darden to commute the death sentence. Through this correspondence, Murray and Eleanor Roosevelt began a friendship that would last until the latter's death two decades later. Despite the efforts of the WDL and the Roosevelts, however, the governor did not commute Waller's sentence. Waller was executed on July 2, 1942.


Howard and Berkeley

Murray's trial on charges stemming from the bus incident and her experience with the Waller case inspired a career in civil rights law. In 1941, she began attending
Howard University Howard University (Howard) is a Private university, private, University charter#Federal, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classifie ...
law school. Murray was the only woman in her law school class, and she became aware of
sexism Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers pri ...
at the school, which she labeled "Jane Crow"—alluding to
Jim Crow The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sou ...
, the system of racial discriminatory state laws oppressing African Americans. On Murray's first day of class, one professor,
William Robert Ming William Robert Ming Jr. (May 7, 1911 – June 30, 1973) was an American lawyer, attorney with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and law professor at University of Chicago Law School and Howard University School ...
, remarked that he did not know why women went to law school. She was infuriated. In 1942, while still in law school, Murray joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). That year she published an article, "Negro Youth's Dilemma", that challenged segregation in the US military, which continued during the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
. She also participated in
sit-in A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to mo ...
s challenging several Washington, DC, restaurants with discriminatory seating policies. These activities preceded the more widespread sit-ins during the
civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
of the 1950s and 1960s. Murray was elected chief justice of the Howard Court of Peers, the highest student position at Howard, and in 1944 she graduated first in her class. Traditionally, Howard's top graduate received a
Julius Rosenwald Julius Rosenwald (August 12, 1862 – January 6, 1932) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for establishing the Rosenwald Fund, which donated millions in ...
Fellowship for graduate work at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
, but
Harvard Law Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...
did not accept women at that time. Murray was thus rejected, despite a letter of support from sitting President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Murray wrote in response, "I would gladly change my sex to meet your requirements, but since the way to such change has not been revealed to me, I have no recourse but to appeal to you to change your minds. Are you to tell me that one is as difficult as the other?" Excluded from Harvard, Murray undertook post-graduate work at the
School of Law A law school (also known as a law centre or college of law) is an institution specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for becoming a lawyer within a given jurisdiction. Law degrees Argentina In Argentina, l ...
at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
. Her master's degree thesis was entitled "The Right to Equal Opportunity in Employment", which argued that "the right to work is an inalienable right". It was published in Berkeley Law's flagship ''
California Law Review ''California Law Review'' (also referred to as ''CLR'') is the journal of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. It was established in 1912. The application process consists of an anonymous write-on competition, with grades playing ...
''.


Professional career

After passing the
California bar exam The State Bar of California is California's official attorney licensing agency. It is responsible for managing the admission of lawyers to the practice of law, investigating complaints of professional misconduct, prescribing appropriate disciplin ...
in 1945, Murray was hired as the state's first black deputy attorney general in January of the following year. That year, the
National Council of Negro Women The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1935 with the mission to advance the opportunities and the quality of life for African-American women, their families, and communities. Mary McLeod Bethune, the f ...
named her its "Woman of the Year" and '' Mademoiselle'' magazine did the same in 1947. Murray was the first Black woman hired as an associate attorney at the Paul, Weiss law firm in New York City, working there from 1956 to 1960. Murray was the firm's second Black associate after Bill Coleman. She first met
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( ; ; March 15, 1933September 18, 2020) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by Presiden ...
at Paul, Weiss, when Ginsburg was briefly a summer associate there.


Activism against racial and sex discrimination

Murray was an outspoken activist at the forefront of the
civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
, alongside such leaders as
Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
and
Rosa Parks Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "th ...
. She coined the term ''Jane Crow'', which demonstrated Murray's belief that
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the S ...
also negatively affected African-American women. She was determined to work with other activists to put a halt to both
racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonis ...
and sexism. Murray's speech, "Jim Crow and Jane Crow", delivered in Washington, DC, in 1964, sheds light on the long struggle of African-American women for racial equality and their later fight for equality among the sexes. As she put it, "Not only have they stood ... with Negro men in every phase of the battle, but they have also continued to stand when their men were destroyed by it." The black women decided to "...continue ... tanding..." for their freedom and liberty even when "...their men ..." began to experience exhaustion from a long struggle for civil rights. These women were unafraid to stand up for what they believed in and refused to back down from the long and tedious "battle". Murray continued her praise for black women when she stated that "...one cannot help asking: would the Negro struggle have come this far without the indomitable determination of its women?" The "Negro struggle" was able to progress partly because of "...the indomitable determination of its women." In 1950, Murray published ''States' Laws on Race and Color'', an examination and critique of state segregation laws throughout the nation. She drew on psychological and sociological evidence as well as legal, an innovative discussion technique for which she had previously been criticized by Howard professors. Murray argued for civil rights lawyers to challenge state segregation laws as unconstitutional directly, rather than trying to prove the inequality of so-called "
separate but equal Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protec ...
" facilities, as was argued in some challenges.
Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-A ...
, then NAACP chief counsel and a future supreme court justice, called Murray's book the "bible" of the civil rights movement. Her approach was influential to the NAACP arguments in ''
Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' (1954), by which they drew from psychological studies assessing the effects of segregation on students in school. The
US Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...
ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. In 1961, US President John F. Kennedy appointed Murray to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. She prepared a memo entitled "A Proposal to Reexamine the Applicability of the Fourteenth Amendment to State Laws and Practices Which Discriminate on the Basis of Sex Per Se", which argued that the Fourteenth Amendment forbade sex discrimination as well as racial discrimination. In 1963, she became one of the first to criticize the sexism of the civil rights movement, in her speech "The Negro Woman in the Quest for Equality". In a letter to civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, she criticized the fact that in the 1963
March on Washington The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, also known as simply the March on Washington or The Great March on Washington, was held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic righ ...
no women were invited to make one of the major speeches or to be part of its delegation of leaders who went to the
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...
, among other grievances. She wrote:
I have been increasingly perturbed over the blatant disparity between the major role which Negro women have played and are playing in the crucial grassroots levels of our struggle and the minor role of leadership they have been assigned in the national policy-making decisions. 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 1964, Murray wrote an influential legal memorandum in support of the
National Women's Party The National Woman's Party (NWP) was an American women's political organization formed in 1916 to fight for women's suffrage. After achieving this goal with the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the NW ...
's successful effort (led by Alice Paul) to add "sex" as a protected category in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1965, Murray published her landmark article (coauthored by Mary Eastwood), "Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII", in the ''
George Washington Law Review ''The George Washington Law Review'' is a bimonthly law review edited and published by students at the George Washington University Law School. It was established in 1932 and publishes scholarly articles, essays, and student notes. A double issue ...
''. The article discussed
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requi ...
as it applied to women, and drew comparisons between discriminatory laws against women and
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the S ...
. The memo was shared with every member of Congress and
Lady Bird Johnson Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson (''née'' Taylor; December 22, 1912 – July 11, 2007) was First Lady of the United States from 1963 to 1969 as the wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson. She previously served as Second Lady from 1961 to 1963 whe ...
, then First Lady, who brought it to President
Lyndon B. Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
's attention. In 1966, she was a cofounder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which she hoped could act as an NAACP for women's rights. In March of that year, Murray wrote to Commissioner Richard Alton Graham that the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a federal agency that was established via the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to administer and enforce civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. The EEOC investigates discrimination ...
was not fulfilling its duty in upholding the gendered portion of its mission, leaving only half the black population protected. Later in 1966, she and Dorothy Kenyon of the ACLU successfully argued ''
White v. Crook White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...
'', a case in which a three-judge court of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama ruled that women have an equal right to serve on juries. When future Associate Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( ; ; March 15, 1933September 18, 2020) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by Presiden ...
, then with the ACLU, wrote her brief for ''
Reed v. Reed ''Reed v. Reed'', 404 U.S. 71 (1971), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates between sexes. In ''Reed v. Reed'' the Supreme Court rul ...
'', the 1971 Supreme Court case that extended the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause to women for the first time, she added Murray and Kenyon as coauthors in recognition of her debt to their work.


Academia

Murray lived in Ghana from 1960 to 1961, serving on the faculty of the Ghana School of Law. She returned to the US and studied at
Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & World ...
, in 1965 becoming the first African American to receive a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from the school. Her dissertation was titled, "Roots of the Racial Crisis: Prologue to Policy". Murray served as vice president of Benedict College from 1967 to 1968. She left Benedict to become a professor at
Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , p ...
. She taught at Brandeis from 1968 to 1973, receiving tenure in 1971 as a full professor in American studies and appointed as Louis Stulberg Chair in Law and Politics. In addition to teaching law, Murray introduced classes on African-American studies and women's studies, both firsts for the university. Murray later wrote that her time at Brandeis was "the most exciting, tormenting, satisfying, embattled, frustrated, and at times triumphant period of my secular career".


Priesthood

Increasingly inspired by her connections with other women in the Episcopal Church, Murray, then more than sixty years old, left Brandeis to attend General Theological Seminary, where she received a Master of Divinity in 1976 with her thesis, "Black Theology and Feminist Theology: A Comparative Review", spending the final year and a half of her course at Virginia Theological Seminary. She was ordained to the diaconate in 1976 and, after three years of study, in 1977 she became the first African-American woman ordained as an Episcopal
priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in partic ...
and was among the first generation of Episcopal women priests. That year she celebrated her first Eucharist by invitation and preached her first sermon at Chapel of the Cross (Chapel Hill, North Carolina), Chapel of the Cross. That was the first time a woman celebrated the Eucharist at an Episcopal church in North Carolina. In 1978, she preached in her home town of Durham, North Carolina, on Mother's Day at St. Philip's Episcopal Church, where her mother and grandparents had attended in the 19th century. She announced her mission of reconciliation. For the next seven years, Murray worked in a parish in Washington, DC, focusing particularly on ministry to the sick.


Death and legacy

On July 1, 1985, Pauli Murray died of pancreatic cancer in the house she owned with lifelong friend Maida Springer Kemp in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2012, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, General Convention of the Episcopal Church voted to honor Murray as one of its ''Holy Women, Holy Men'', to be Calendar of saints (Episcopal Church), commemorated on July 1, the anniversary of her death, along with fellow writer Harriet Beecher Stowe. Bishop Michael Bruce Curry, Michael Curry of the Diocese of North Carolina said this recognition honors "people whose lives have exemplified what it means to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and make a difference in the world." In 2015, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated the childhood home of Murray (on Carroll Street in Durham, North Carolina's West End neighborhood) as a National Treasure. In April 2016, Yale University announced that it had selected Murray as the namesake of one of two new residential colleges (Pauli Murray College) to be completed in 2017; the other was to be named after Benjamin Franklin. In December 2016, the Pauli Murray Family Home was designated as a National Historic Landmark by the US Department of Interior. In 2018, Murray was chosen by the National Women's History Project as one of its honorees for Women's History Month in the United States. Also in 2018, Murray was made a permanent part of the Episcopal Church's calendar of saints (she is commemorated on July 1).
Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-A ...
and Florence Li Tim-Oi were also added permanently to the calendar. In January 2021, a biographical documentary entitled ''My Name Is Pauli Murray'' premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.


Sexuality and gender identity

Murray struggled with her sexual and
gender identity Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the ...
through much of her life. Her marriage as a teenager ended almost immediately with the realization that "when men try to make love to me, something in me fights". Although acknowledging the term "homosexual" in describing others, Murray preferred to describe herself as having an "inverted sex instinct" that caused her to behave as a man would when attracted to women. She wanted a "monogamous married life", but one in which she was the man. The majority of her relationships were with women whom she described as "extremely feminine and heterosexual". In her younger years, Murray often was devastated by the end of these relationships, to the extent that she was hospitalized for psychiatric treatment twice, in 1937 and in 1940. Murray wore her hair short and preferred pants to skirts; due to her slight build, there was a time in her life when she was often able to pass as a teenage boy. In her twenties, she shortened her name from Pauline to the more androgynous Pauli. At the time of her arrest for the bus segregation protest in 1940, she gave her name as "Oliver" to the arresting officers. Murray pursued hormone treatments in the 1940s to correct what she saw as a personal imbalance and even requested abdominal surgery to test if she had "submerged" male sex organs. Writing about Murray's understanding of her sex, Rosalind Rosenberg, author of ''Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray'', categorized Murray as a transgender man. When asked about her understanding of Murray's gender in a 2017 interview with the African American Intellectual History Society, Rosenberg states: "[During Pauli's life,] the term transgender did not exist and there was no social movement to support or help make sense of the trans experience. Murray's papers helped me to understand how her struggle with gender identity shaped her life as a civil rights pioneer, legal scholar, and feminist." In an interview with ''HuffPost Queer Voices'', Brittney Cooper agreed on the matter: "Murray preferred androgynous dress, had a short hairstyle and may have identified as a transgender male today, but she lacked the language to do so at the time." While she lived openly in lesbian relationships for a time, her career, her Communist politics, and respectability politics shut down her options.


Relationships

It has been said that Murray had just two significant romantic relationships in her life, both with white women. The first, in 1934, was brief. The second was with Irene "Renee" Barlow, an office manager at Paul, Weiss, where Murray worked as an associate attorney from 1956 to 1960. Murray's relationship with Barlow lasted nearly two decades. Barlow has been described by Murray's biographer as Pauli's "life partner", although the pair never lived in the same house and only occasionally lived in the same city. Due to Murray destroying Barlow's letters, a lot of the story is unknowable. However, while Barlow does not make an appearance in Murray's memoir, when Barlow was dying of a brain tumor, in 1973, she describes Pauli as "my closest friend".


Pronouns

In an essay titled "Pauli Murray and the Pronominal Problem", transgender scholar-activist Naomi Simmons-Thorne lends support behind the emerging view of Murray as an early transgender figure in U.S. history. In her essay, she calls upon historians and scholars to complement this growing interpretation through the use of masculine pronouns to reflect Murray's masculine perception of self. Simmons-Thorne is not the first academic to draw attention to the issue of Murray's pronouns, however. Historian Simon D. Elin Fisher has also challenged the historical and textual practices of assigning Murray female pronouns through their pronominal use of "s/he" in some of their writings. Simmons-Thorne, however, makes exclusive use of "he-him-his" pronouns in reference to Murray. She conceives of the practice as one of many "gender essentialism, de-essentialist" trans historiographical methods capable of "interrupt[ing] the logic of biological determinism" and "the constraints of cissexism operating historically." Her view is a radical departure from biographers and scholars like Rosenberg, and conventional practices more broadly, which generally refer to Murray through the use of "she-her-hers" pronouns.


Memoirs and poetry

In addition to her legal work, Murray wrote two volumes of autobiography and a collection of poetry. Her first autobiographical book, ''Proud Shoes'' (1956), traces her family's complicated racial origins, particularly focusing on her maternal grandparents, Robert and Cornelia Fitzgerald. Cornelia was the daughter of a slave who had been raped by her white owner and his brother. Born into slavery, the mixed-race girl was raised by her owner's sister and educated. Robert was a free person of color, free black man from Pennsylvania, also of mixed racial ancestry; he moved to the South to teach during the Reconstruction Era. Newspapers, including ''The New York Times'', gave the book very positive reviews. ''The New York Herald Tribune'' stated that ''Proud Shoes'' is "a personal memoir, it is history, it is biography, and it is also a story that, at its best, is dramatic enough to satisfy the demands of fiction. It is written in anger, but without hatred; in affection, but without pathos and tears; and in humor that never becomes extravagant." Murray published a collection of her poetry, ''Dark Testament and Other Poems'', in 1970. The title poem
"Dark Testament", originally appeared
in the winter 1944–45 issue of Lillian Smith (author), Lillian Smith and Paula Snelling's ''South Today''. The volume contains what critic Christina G. Bucher calls a number of "conflicted love poems", as well as those exploring economic and racial injustice. The poem "Ruth" is included in the 1992 anthology ''Daughters of Africa''. ''Dark Testament'' has received little critical attention, and as of 2007, was out of print. It was republished in 2018, following publication of a new biography about Murray in 2017. A follow-up volume to ''Proud Shoes'', her memoir ''Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage'', was published posthumously in 1987. ''Song'' focused on Murray's own life, particularly her struggles with both gender and racial discrimination. It received the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights#Book Award, Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the Christopher Award, and the Lillian Smith Book Award.


Works by Murray


Law

* Murray, Pauli (Editor) (1952) ''States' Laws on Race and Color (Studies in the Legal History of the South),'' Athens: University of Georgia Press, Reprint edition, 2016. ISBN 9-780-8203-5063-9 *Murray, Pauli and Rubin, Leslie. ''The Constitution and Government of Ghana'', London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1964. ISBN 978-0421041806, OCLC 491764185


Poetry

* ''Dark Testament and Other Poems'', Connecticut: Silvermine Publishers, 1970.


Autobiographies

* ''Proud Shoes: The Story Of An American Family'', New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956. . * ''Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage'', New York: Harper & Row, 1987. . Reissued as ''Pauli Murray: The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest and Poet'', University of Tennessee Press, 1989.


Notes


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Further reading


Books

* * * * * *


Articles

* * * (Five-page PDF with bibliography of books and articles by and about Murray) *


External links


National Organization for Women: Finding Pauli Murray
Excellent links to Murray resources. Printable PDF.

fro
Oral Histories of the American South
at UNC-Chapel Hill, NC
Pauli Murray Award
by Orange County, NC
Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice
in Durham, NC
Pauli Murray College
at Yale University, New Haven, CT
Pauli Murray Papers
at Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Pauli Murray poetry (after bio)
at the Poetry Foundation, Chicago, IL
The Pioneering Pauli Murray: Lawyer, Activist, Scholar and Priest
National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC
The Reverend Pauli Murray, 1910–1985
Archives of the Episcopal Church {{DEFAULTSORT:Murray, Pauli 1910 births 1985 deaths 20th-century American lawyers 20th-century American poets 20th-century American women lawyers 20th-century American women writers Activists for African-American civil rights African-American Episcopalians African-American feminists African-American lawyers African-American women lawyers African-American women writers African-American poets American Christian socialists American civil rights lawyers American Episcopal priests American feminist writers American women poets American women's rights activists Anglican saints Anglican scholars Anglican socialists Brandeis University faculty California lawyers Deaths from cancer in Pennsylvania Deaths from pancreatic cancer Women Anglican clergy Female Christian socialists Ghana School of Law faculty Howard University School of Law alumni Hunter College alumni MacDowell Colony fellows Lawyers from Baltimore Lawyers from Pittsburgh LGBT academics LGBT African Americans LGBT Anglican clergy LGBT lawyers LGBT people from Maryland LGBT people from North Carolina American LGBT poets National Organization for Women people Proponents of Christian feminism Transgender academics UC Berkeley School of Law alumni Writers from Durham, North Carolina Writers from Baltimore Yale Law School alumni 20th-century African-American writers Equal Rights Amendment activists