RESOURCES

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Author’s note: Scholar Naomi Simmons-Thorne writes: "Given the rigid enforcement of the gender binary, we do not, nor will we ever know, [Pauli] Murray’s true gender identity."[1] To reflect this, this piece uses they/them/theirs, she/her/hers, and he/him/his pronouns interchangeably. 

“No law which imprisons my body or custom which wounds my spirit can stop me.”[2] 

Pauli Murray was unstoppable as an activist, priest, and human rights lawyer. Throughout their life, they were a key player in the fight for African Americans’, workers’, and women's rights. Murray’s story shows us the value of living our truth, documenting our own stories, and creating true community. 

Pauli Murray was born in 1910 to Agnes Fitzgerald and William Murray in Baltimore, Maryland. After Agnes died when Murray was three-years-old and William’s mental health suffered, young Murray was sent to live with her mother’s family in Durham, North Carolina. William was eventually admitted to a mental hospital where a white guard murdered him. 

Murray attended Hunter College and graduated in 1933. Throughout the 1930s, Murray actively questioned his gender and sex. He asked physicians for hormone therapy and exploratory surgery to investigate his reproductive organs, but he was consistently denied gender-affirming medical care. 

Murray enrolled in Howard University School of Law in 1941 to become a civil rights lawyer. She was the only person perceived as a woman in her class and coined the term “Jane Crow'' to describe the intersectional oppression faced by Black women. As a law student, she helped form the Congress of Racial Equality, took part in several restaurant sit-ins, and continued to wield their typewriter. For their final thesis, Murray wrote a paper outlining a new strategy for dismantling segregation and overturning Plessy v. Ferguson. This strategy later ensured the 1954 Brown v. Board win. In 1944, Murray graduated at the top of her class. 

Murray completed their Master of Laws degree at the University of California with a thesis titled, The Right to Equal Opportunity in Employment. Murray then served as California’s first Black deputy attorney general. In 1951, they published States’ Laws on Race and Color, which Thurgood Marshall described as the “Bible” for civil rights litigators. Murray enrolled in the Doctor of the Science of Law (JSD) program at Yale and became the first African American to receive a JSD from Yale. Murray testified in Congress to ensure legal protections for Black women and for the inclusion of “sex” as a protected category in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Recent Supreme Court cases seeking to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination were successful based on Murray’s advocacy. 1  

When Murray’s long-time partner Irene Barlow died in 1973, Murray left her teaching position at Brandeis University to pursue a religious calling. In 1977, Murray became the first Black person perceived as a woman to be ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in the U.S. 

Murray died of cancer in 1985 and was buried with Irene in Brooklyn, New York. Murray’s archives are stored at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University and contain 2,573 folders. 

In 2011, the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice prevented Murray’s childhood home from being demolished. In 2015, the National Trust for Historic Preservation added the home to its list of National Treasures and in December 2016, the Pauli Murray Family Home was designated a National Historic Landmark. While the building is not currently open to the public, visitors are welcome to visit the outdoor exhibit. 

[1] Simmons-Thorne, Naomi. “Pauli Murray and the Pronominal Problem: a De-essentialist Trans Historiography.” Activist History Review, 30 May 2019. 

[2] Murray, Pauli. “An American Credo.” Common Ground, no. 2, pg. 22-24, 1945.