Pauli Murray, Civil Rights Pioneer, Feminist, Civil Libertarian, Dies
Pauli Murray, an African-American feminist, lawyer, civil rights activist, civil libertarian, Episcopal priest, and poet died on this day.
As a student at Howard University, she participated in one of the first sit-ins in the country, challenging segregated restaurants in Washington, D.C., on April 17, 1943 and also on April 22, 1944.
Murray’s most notable achievement was an influential paper she wrote for the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, arguing that discrimination against women violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Commission was established on December 14, 1961, and it issued its report on October 11, 1963.
Murray was a member of the ACLU Board of Directors and, later in life, became an ordained minister in the Episcopal Church.
Read the definitive new biography: Rosalind Rosenberg, Jane Crow The Life of Pauli Murray (2017)
Read Pauli Murray’s Memoirs: Pauli Murray, Proud Shoes (1956)
Learn more: Patricia Bell-Scott, The Firebrand and the First Lady: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Racial Justice (2016)
Watch a documentary on Pauli Murray: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBROdwo_le4
Read: Sarah Arazansky, The Dream is Freedom: Pauli Murray and the American Democratic Faith (2011)
Learn more about Pauli Murray: http://www.blackpast.org/aah/murray-pauli-1910-1985
Learn more at the Timeline of Pauli Murray’s life at Duke University: http://paulimurrayproject.org/pauli-murray/timeline/