Nov. 20, 1910 – Anna Pauline Murray (she called herself “Pauli”
from about the age of 20 onward1) was born in Baltimore, the fourth
of six children. Her mother, Agnes Fitzgerald Murray, who had been trained as a
nurse at the Hampton Training School for Nurses, died of a cerebral hemorrhage in March 1914, in the fourth month of her seventh
pregnancy, when Pauli was 3 years old. Her father, William Henry Murray, a graduate
of Howard University, was a schoolteacher. However, in 1905, he became ill with
typhoid fever complicated by encephalitis, and he was never mentally the same
afterward.2 In 1917, he had to be committed to the local mental
hospital, and a year later was transferred to Crownsville State Hospital, where
in 1923 he was murdered by a white guard, who beat him to death with a baseball bat.3 The guard was convicted of manslaughter, and was sent to prison for ten years.4
1914 – Pauli went to live with her aunt, Pauline Fitzgerald
Dame, in Durham, North Carolina.
1926 – When Pauli was 16, she graduated from Hillside High
School in Durham, and then moved to New York City to stay with her cousin
Maude. In order to meet the entrance and residency requirements for Hunter
College, which at that time was a women’s college that offered free tuition to
city residents, she spent a year at Richmond Hills High School, graduating in
1927.
1930 – She married William Roy Wynn, but soon realized the
marriage was a mistake, and they permanently separated. The marriage was finally
annulled in 1949.
1933 – She graduated from Hunter College, one of four black
women in a class of 247 women.
1937 – After the decline of a close relationship between her
and Margaret (Peggie) Holmes, whom she had met in 1934, she suffered an
emotional breakdown. She struggled with her transgender identity—she identified as a man in a woman’s body who was attracted to women.5 She was never
able to publicly disclose or discuss her gender identity.
1938 – After she recovered, she applied to graduate school in sociology at the
University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been
a trustee,6 but she received a rejection letter that said explicitly, “members of your race are not admitted to the University.”7
1940 – Pauli and her friend Adelene McBean were arrested and
jailed in Petersburg, Virginia for refusing to move to the back of a bus, thus
violating state segregation laws.
1941 – Pauli enrolled at Howard University Law School,
graduating in 1944 as the only woman and the top-ranked student in her class.
1943-1944 – She participated with other Howard Law School
students in a series of cafeteria sit-ins, protesting racial segregation in
local cafeterias and restaurants.
1944 – She applied for a post-graduate fellowship at Harvard
University Law School, but received a rejection letter that said explicitly
“you are not of the sex entitled to be admitted to Harvard Law School.”8 (Harvard Law School did not admit women as students until 1950.)
1945 – She earned a master’s degree in law from the
University of California, Berkeley. After passing the state bar exam in
1945, she became California's first black deputy attorney general in January
1946.
1950 – She published States’
Laws on Race and Color, an extensive compilation of the laws of every state
regarding racial segregation and discrimination. The book provided a valuable
resource for the NAACP in its struggle against racial discrimination, and Thurgood
Marshall, who was at that time NAACP Chief Counsel, described the book as the “bible” of the civil
rights movement.9
1956 – Her biography of her family, Proud Shoes: The Story of an
American Family, was published.
1956-1960 – She worked as an associate attorney for the New
York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where she met Irene (Renee) Barlow, office manager, who became her close friend
and companion.
1960-1961 – She taught at the University of Ghana School of
Law, in Accra. She later coauthored with Leslie Rubin a work entitled The Constitution and Government of Ghana
(1964).
1961 – She was appointed by President Kennedy to the
President’s Commission on the Status of Women, serving from 1961-1963.
1963 – On Nov. 14th, she delivered an address
entitled “The Negro Woman in the Quest for Equality” to the National Council of
Negro Women, in Washington, D.C., in which she criticized civil rights leaders
for having failed to invite any women to deliver speeches at the March on
Washington or to be a part of the delegation of leaders that met with President
Kennedy at the White House afterward. She used the term “Jane Crow” for the twofold kind of discrimination that women of color are confronted with—discrimination not only on
the basis of race (Jim Crow), but also on the basis of gender (Jane Crow).
1965 – She coauthored with Mary O. Eastwood an article in the
George Washington Law Review entitled
“Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII.”10
1965 - She became the first African American to earn a
doctoral degree from Yale University Law School. Her doctoral thesis was
entitled “Roots of the Racial Crisis: Prologue to Policy.”
1966 – She was a cofounder of the National Organization for
Women.
1967-1968 – She served as Vice-President of Benedict College
in Columbia, South Carolina.
1970 – She published a collection of her poetry, entitled Dark Testament and Other Poems.
1971 – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the plaintiff’s brief
in the U.S. Supreme Court case Reed v.
Reed, named Pauli Murray and Dorothy Kenyon as coauthors, in recognition of
their influential work on gender discrimination. Reed V. Reed was the first case in which the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits
gender discrimination.
1968-1973 – Pauli taught at Brandeis University, where she eventually
received tenure as full professor in American Studies.
1973 – Irene Barlow, her longtime friend and companion, died of a brain tumor. Pauli decided to resign her professorship at Brandeis in
order to enter General Theological Seminary in New York and study for the
ministry.
1976 – She completed the third year of her seminary training
at Virginia Theological Seminary, in Alexandria, Virginia, and received a
Master of Divinity degree. Her master’s thesis was later published as “Black
Theology and Feminist Theology: A Comparative Review” (in the Anglican Theological Review, January
1978, pp. 3-24). She described the strengths and weaknesses of black theology
and feminist theology, and suggested that neither had yet fully explored the
interlocking relation between racism, sexism, and classism.
1977 – She was among the first group of women to be ordained
as Episcopal priests (on January 8th, at the Washington National
Cathedral), and was the first African American woman to be ordained as an
Episcopal priest. She had been raised in the Episcopal Church in Durham, North
Carolina, and her aunts Pauline and Sallie had been longtime members of St.
Titus’ Episcopal Church in Durham.
1977 – On June 12th, in a sermon at the Church of
the Holy Comforter in Washington, D.C., she said,
“Jesus of Nazareth…treated women as
persons of equal dignity and worth with men…When he visited the home of Mary
and Martha in Bethany, he approved of Mary’s rejection of the kitchen role and
permitted her to sit at his feet and listen to his teaching as if she were a
male rabbinical student. And when he was teaching in the temple, he refused to
condemn the woman charged with being caught in the act of adultery, saying to
the man who had brought her in, “Let him who is without sin among you cast the
first stone.”…
And women responded as disciples of
Jesus, following him as he went about preaching the good news of the kingdom of
God and using their own means to provide for him and his company. They followed
him to the cross and stood by him during those agonizing hours of crucifixion when
the other disciples had run away in fear. Women discovered the resurrection on
Easter morning and went to tell the eleven; and according to John’s Gospel, Mary
of Magdala was the first person to whom the Risen Lord appeared…
The message of Jesus of Nazareth was
that wholeness of being lies, not in superior status or exclusiveness…but in
the ministry of love and service that recognizes human worth. And many women
today, responding to that message, are seeking a theology which in symbol and
language will help people to understand the wholeness of God and the oneness of
humankind.”11
1977 – On Oct. 12th, in a lecture at Vassar
College, she said,
“My own quest for freedom of self-expression and wholeness
of personality in the face of severe societal restrictions imposed upon me by poverty
in my youth, by racism, and sexism have had much to do with my interest in law
and theology. In my earliest youth I sought to work out intolerable
frustrations through poetry. As I became more deeply involved in the civil
rights movement in the 1940s, I turned to law as a means of working within the
system for social change. In time, as the world crisis has deepened, I began to
realize that the law by itself is inadequate to cope with fundamental moral and
ethical issues of our time, and this led me to theology. I cannot pretend that
I have found a synthesis, for my feminist outlook sharpens the tensions
experienced in trying to come to terms with a continuous struggle for authentic
selfhood...The synthesis that I strive for is one that harnesses the creative
urge to a vision of a more humane society and in which I can direct whatever
talents I possess toward making that vision a reality.”12
1978 – She served as priest in several parishes in
Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Pittsburgh, but had to retire at age 72, due to
church rules regarding retirement.
1979 – On March 28th, in a lecture at the Church of the Atonement, in Washington, D.C., she said,
“True community is based upon equality, mutuality, and
reciprocity. It affirms the richness of individual diversity as well as the
common human ties that bind us together. The marks of a community of faith are
communion, participation, mutual trust, sharing, and fellowship. A community of
faith is both social and sacramental. As Professor Letty M. Russell of Yale
Divinity School defines it, “Communion is participation with Christ in his work
as the representative of God’s love to others, and sharing with his community
in common actions of celebration, reflection and service to the world.” This is
what we do in our Lenten season in a special sense, for following our
celebration of the Holy Eucharist and sharing of a common meal, we reflect
together on how we can respond to world hunger for human dignity as well as
physical sustenance.”13
1985 – She was featured in a segment of Charles Kuralt’s “On
the Road” program on CBS.
1985 – On July 1, at the age of 76, she died of pancreatic
cancer in Pittsburgh. She was buried under the same headstone as Irene Barlow, in Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.
1987 – Her autobiography, Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage was
published.
FOOTNOTES
1Rosalind Rosenberg, Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2017), p. 39.
2Pauli Murray, Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage (New York:
Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1987), p. 13.
3Ibid.,
p. 72.
4Ibid.,
p. 73.
5Rosalind Rosenberg, Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray, pp. 55-60.
6Ibid.,
p. 4.
7Song in a
Weary Throat, p. 148.
8Ibid.,
p. 310.
9Ibid., p. 373.
10In this groundbreaking article, Murray and
Eastwood explained that the typical excuses or arguments given by employers for gender
discrimination—namely, (1) the argument that, supposedly, women are only temporary workers, because they will leave work to marry and raise children, (2) the argument that
certain customers or clients may prefer to utilize the services of men rather
than women, (3) the argument that men may be physically stronger or have more
physical endurance than women, and (4) the argument that employers may have to
provide separate facilities, such as dressing rooms or restrooms, for women, thus requiring additional expenses on the part of the employer—do
not, according to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, justify gender
discrimination. (Pauli
Murray and Mary Eastwood, “Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title
VII,” 34 George Washington Law Review,
1965, abridged version in Radical
Feminism, edited by Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, and Anita Rapone, Times Books,
1973, pp. 165-176.)
11Pauli
Murray, “Sermon, June 12, 1977,” in Pauli
Murray: Selected Sermons and Writings, edited by Anthony B. Pinn
(Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2006), pp. 67-69.
12Pauli Murray, “Synthesis: Theology, Feminism,
and the Law—The Impact upon a Creative Writer,” in Pauli Murray: Selected Sermons and Writings, pp. 206-207.
13Pauli Murray, “Challenge of Nurturing the
Christian Community in Its Diversity,” in Pauli
Murray: Selected Sermons and Writings, pp. 210-211.
