Pauli Murray (1910-1985)

January 19, 2007 
/ Contributed By: Elwood Watson

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Pauli Murray

Courtesy Carolina Digital Library and Archives (P2-M983-P327)

Pauli Murray was born on November 20, 1910 in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of Agnes and William Murray. Her father, a Howard University graduate, taught in the Baltimore public schools.ย  Both of Murrayโ€™s parents died when she was a child.ย  Her mother suffered from a brain hemorrhage and died in 1914. Her father was the victim of typhoid fever and died in 1923.

Despite such heartbreaking tragedy, Murray pursued her life goals. In 1933 she graduated from Hunter College in New York City, New York. Despite a stellar academic record, Murray in 1938 was denied admission into the University ofย  North Carolina Law School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She later enrolled in the Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C. and graduated in 1944. Not long afterwards, Murray sought admission to Harvard University Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts for an advanced law degree but was denied admission because of her gender.ย  She enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley where she received a master of law degree in 1945. Twenty years later, in 1965, she became the first African American awarded a J.S.D. (a law doctorate) from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.ย  Her degree was based on her dissertation, โ€œRoots of the Racial Crisis: Prologue to Policy.โ€

Murray argued that her experiences encountering and overcoming racial and gender discrimination gave her special insight into the nature of racial and sexual hierarchies in the U.S. and wrote about its various manifestations in Americaโ€™s legal history.ย  Murray coined the term โ€œJane Crow and Jim Crowโ€ to describe the impact of dual discrimination.ย  She also joined both the civil rights movement and the feminist movement.ย  In 1966 Murray was one of the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW) with feminist icon Betty Friedan.

Murrayโ€™s life took an abrupt turn when at the age of 62 she entered a seminary and became in 1977 the first black female priest ordained by the Episcopal Church.ย  On July 1, 1985, cancer claimed the life of Pauli Murray in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her autobiography Song in a Weary Throat: an American Pilgrimage was published posthumously in 1987.

About the Author

Author Profile

Elwood Watson is a professor of History, African American Studies, and Gender Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is the co-editor of two anthologies There She Is, Miss America: The Politics of Sex, Beauty and Race in Americaโ€™s Most Famous Pageant and The Oprah Phenomenon. He is the sole editor of the anthology Searching The Soul of Ally McBeal: Critical Essays. His book Outsiders Within: Black Women in the Legal Academy After Brown v. Board was published in 2008 by Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. The author and co-author of several award winning articles, he is currently working on an anthology that explores performance and anxiety of the male body and a second monograph that explores the contemporary race realist movement. Watson is also the co-author of the forthcoming book, Beginning A Career in Academia: A Graduate Guide for Students of Color Routledge Press (2014).

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Watson, E. (2007, January 19). Pauli Murray (1910-1985). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/murray-pauli-1910-1985/

Source of the Author's Information:

Pauli Murray, Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage (New York: Harper and Row, 1987); Elaine Sue Caldbeck, โ€œA Religious Life of Pauli Murray: Hope and Struggle,โ€ Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 2000; https://spartacus-educational.com/USAmurrayA.htm.

Further Reading