Murray, Pauli,
1910–1985, American lawyer, priest, and activist, b. Baltimore,
S.J.D. Yale University, 1965, MDiv, General Theological Seminary, 1976.
Murray laid some of the formative legal groundwork for the civil rights movement in the United
States. Born Anna Pauline Murray, Murray chose the name "Pauli." Some
scholars observe that Murray personally identified—at different times
in her life—as a man, a woman, and ambiguously in-between, and thus
could be considered "gender fluid." Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Murray
faced discrimination in employment and education. She referred to prejudice
against women as "Jane Crow," a reference to Jim Crow laws. A member of the
Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a pacifist organization, Murray's early
career focused on working to end segregation in public transportation. In
1940, over a decade before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Murray refused to
move to the back of a segregated bus in Richmond, Virginia, and was sent to
jail. This experience would inform Murray's vocation as a civil rights and
women's rights advocate.
A founding member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a preeminent civil
rights organization, Murray's work contributed to the public and scholarly
discussion on racial and gender-based discrimination. After graduating from
Howard Law, Murray earned a master of law degree from the University of
California Berkeley School of Law. In 1946, Murray briefly served as the
first African American deputy attorney general in the state of California.
Following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Murray published two
watershed law articles: "Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title
VII" and "Roots of the Racial Crisis: Prologue to Policy." These articles
would prove instrumental in combating the legal foundations of racial
discrimination.
In 1965, Pauli became the first African American to receive an S.J.D. degree from
Yale University. In 1966, Murray became a co-founder of the National
Organization for Women (NOW), a major feminist organization. In the academy,
Murray served as the vice president of Benedict College and as a tenured
professor at Brandeis University. Murray also became the first African
American woman in the U.S. to become an Episcopal priest in 1977. Along with articles and
essays, Murray also wrote sermons and poetry. Her published works include
States' Laws on Race and Color (1951), Proud
Shoes: The Story of an American Family (1956), Dark
Testament and Other Poems (1970), and Song in a Weary
Throat: An American Pilgrimage (1987). Thurgood Marshall called
States' Laws on Race and Color "the bible" of the civil
rights movement. The book is commonly cited as the foundation for the
arguments presented in Brown v. Board of
Education. Murray died on July 1, 1985.
See G. Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White
Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (1996); D. O'Dell,
Sites of Southern Memory: The Autobiographies of Katharine Du
Pre Lumpkin, Lillian Smith, and Pauli Murray (2001); A. B.
Pinn, ed. Pauli Murray: Selected Sermons and Writings
(2006); A. F. Scott, ed. Pauli Murray and Caroline Ware: Forty Years
of Letters in Black and White (2006); S. Mayeri,
Reasoning From Race: Feminism, Law, and the Civil Rights
Revolution (2011); S. Azaransky, The Dream is Freedom:
Pauli Murray and American Democratic Faith (2011); P.
Bell-Scott, The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a
Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social
Justice (2016); R. Rosenberg, Jane Crow: The Life of
Pauli Murray (2017); T. Saxby, Pauli Murray: A Personal
and Political Life (2020); M. Jones, Vanguard: How
Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for
All (2020).
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