Pauli Murray

Murray was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on November 20, 1910.[10] 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".[11] Murray's parents, schoolteacher William H. Murray and nurse Agnes (Fitzgerald) Murray, both identified as Black.[12] In 1914, Agnes died of a cerebral hemorrhage when her daughter was three.[13] After Murray's father began to have emotional problems, some think as a result of typhoid fever, relatives took custody of his children.

The house where Murray lived in Durham, North Carolina

Three-year-old Pauli Murray was sent to Durham, North Carolina, to live with her mother's family.[14] 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.[15] She attended St. Titus Episcopal Church with her mother's family, as had her mother before Murray was born.[16] 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.[4]

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.[17] There she lived with the family of her cousin Maude. The family was passing for white in their white neighborhood. Murray's presence discomfited Maude's neighbors, however, as Murray was more visibly of partial African descent.[18] She graduated with her second high school diploma and honors from Richmond Hill High School in 1927, and enrolled at Hunter College for two years.[19]

Murray married William Roy Wynn, known as Billy Wynn, in secret on November 30, 1930, but soon came to regret the decision.[20] The historian Rosalind Rosenberg wrote:

Their honeymoon weekend, spent in a "cheap West Side Hotel", was a disaster, an experience that she later attributed to their youth and poverty. The truth was more complicated. As Pauli explained in notes to herself a few years later, she had felt repelled by the act of sexual intercourse. Part of her had wanted to be a "normal" woman, but another part resisted. "Why is it when men try to make love to me, something in me fights?" she wondered.[21]

Murray and Wynn only spent a few months together before both leaving town.[21] They did not see one another again before Murray contacted him to have their marriage annulled on March 26, 1949.[22]

Inspired to attend Columbia University 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.[23] Instead she attended Hunter College, a free women's college of City University of New York, where she was one of the few students of color.[24] 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 degree in English.[23]

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, Marxian Economics, and Problems of Communist Organization."[25]

Jobs were difficult to find during the Great Depression. Murray took a job selling subscriptions to Opportunity, an academic journal of the National Urban League, a civil rights organization based in New York City. Poor health forced her to resign, and her doctor recommended that Murray seek a healthier environment.[26]

Murray took a position at Camp Tera, a "She-She-She" conservation camp. Established at the urging of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, these federally-funded camps paralleled the all-male Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps formed under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal to provide employment to young adults while improving national infrastructure.[27][28] 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.[29] Murray and Holmes left the camp in February 1935, and began traveling the country by walking, hitchhiking, and hopping freight trains.[30]

Murray later worked for the Young Women's Christian Association.[31]

back, l to r, Albert M. Sacks, Pauli Murray, Mary Bunting; seated, l to r, Alma Lutz, suffragette [sic] and Harvard Law School Forum Guest, and Betty Friedan

Murray applied to PhD program in sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1938, but was rejected because of her race.[32] All schools and other public facilities in the state were segregated by state law, as was the case across the South.[23] 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.[33] NAACP leader Roy Wilkins opposed representing her because Murray had already released her correspondence, which he considered "not diplomatic".[34] Concerns about her sexuality also may have played a role in the decision;[35] Murray often wore pants rather than the customary skirts of women and was open about her relationships with women.[36]

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.[37][lower-alpha 1] She was transferred to Bellevue Hospital in New York City for psychiatric treatment.[37] In March, Murray left the hospital with Adelene McBean, her roommate and girlfriend,[38] 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, the two women refused to return to the rear even after the police were called. They were arrested and jailed.[39] 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.[40] The Workers' Defense League (WDL), a socialist 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.[41]

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.[42] Murray toured the country raising funds for Waller's appeal.[43] She wrote to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on Waller's behalf.[44] 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.[45] Through this correspondence, Murray and Eleanor Roosevelt began a friendship that would last until the latter's death two decades later.[46] 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.[47]

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.[48] In 1941, she began attending Howard University law school. Murray was the only woman in her law school class, and she became aware of sexism at the school, which she labeled "Jane Crow"—alluding to Jim Crow, the system of racial discriminatory state laws oppressing African Americans.[49] On Murray's first day of class, one professor, William Robert Ming, remarked that he did not know why women went to law school. She was infuriated.[50]

Howard University School of Law

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. She also participated in sit-ins challenging several Washington, DC, restaurants with discriminatory seating policies. These activities preceded the more widespread sit-ins during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.[31]

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.[51] Traditionally, Howard's top graduate received a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship for graduate work at Harvard University, but Harvard Law did not accept women at that time. Murray was thus rejected, despite a letter of support from sitting President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[31] 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?"[52]

Excluded from Harvard, Murray undertook post-graduate work at the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.[31] 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.[53]

After passing the California bar exam in 1945, Murray was hired as the state's first black deputy attorney general in January of the following year.[54] That year, the National Council of Negro Women named her its "Woman of the Year" and Mademoiselle magazine did the same in 1947.[7] 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 at Paul, Weiss, when Ginsburg was briefly a summer associate there.[55]

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.[67][68][69][31] She was ordained to the diaconate in 1976[70] and, after three years of study, in 1977 she became the first African-American woman ordained as an Episcopal priest and was among the first generation of Episcopal women priests.[17] That year she celebrated her first Eucharist by invitation and preached her first sermon at 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.[16] For the next seven years, Murray worked in a parish in Washington, DC, focusing particularly on ministry to the sick.[31]

An exhibit on Pauli Murray in front of the Murray family home

On July 1, 1985, Pauli Murray died of pancreatic cancer in the house she owned with lifelong friend Maida Springer Kemp in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[7][71]

In 2012, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church voted to honor Murray as one of its Holy Women, Holy Men,[72] to be commemorated on July 1, the anniversary of her death, along with fellow writer Harriet Beecher Stowe.[73] Bishop 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."[74]

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.[75]

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.[76]

An exhibit on the religious life of Pauli Murray in front of the Murray family home in Durham, North Carolina

In December 2016, the Pauli Murray Family Home was designated as a National Historic Landmark by the US Department of Interior.[77]

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.[78]

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 and Florence Li Tim-Oi were also added permanently to the calendar.[79]

In January 2021, a biographical documentary entitled My Name Is Pauli Murray premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.[80][81]

Murray struggled with her sexual and gender identity 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".[82] 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.[83] 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.[9]

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.[82] In her twenties, she shortened her name from Pauline to the more androgynous Pauli.[84] At the time of her arrest for the bus segregation protest in 1940, she gave her name as "Oliver" to the arresting officers.[85] Murray pursued hormone treatments in the 1940s to correct what she saw as a personal imbalance[37] and even requested abdominal surgery to test if she had "submerged" male sex organs.[86]

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."[87] 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."[85] While she lived openly in lesbian relationships for a time, her career, her Communist politics, and respectability politics shut down her options.[88][89]

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 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."[93]

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 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.[94] Dark Testament has received little critical attention, and as of 2007, was out of print.[86] It was republished in 2018, following publication of a new biography about Murray in 2017.[4]

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 Book Award, the Christopher Award, and the Lillian Smith Book Award.[95]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Pauli Murray.

• National Organization for Women: Finding Pauli Murray, Excellent links to Murray resources. Printable PDF.
• Oral History Interview with Pauli Murray from 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