Pauli Murray

A Personal and Political Life

Troy R. Saxby

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781469654928
• eBook ISBN: 9781469654935
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

The Rev. Dr. Anna Pauline “Pauli” Murray (1910–1985) was a trailblazing social activist, writer, lawyer, civil rights organizer, and campaigner for gender rights. In the 1930s and 1940s, she was active in radical left-wing political groups and helped innovate nonviolent protest strategies against segregation that would become iconic in later decades, and in the 1960s, she cofounded the National Organization for Women (NOW). In addition, Murray became the first African American to receive a Yale law doctorate and the first black woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest. Yet, behind her great public successes, Murray battled many personal demons, including bouts of poor physical and mental health, conflicts over her gender and sexual identities, family traumas, and financial difficulties.

In this intimate biography, Troy Saxby provides the most comprehensive account of Murray’s inner life to date, revealing her struggles in poignant detail and deepening our understanding and admiration of her numerous achievements in the face of pronounced racism, homophobia, transphobia, and political persecution. Saxby interweaves the personal and the political, showing how the two are always entwined, to tell the life story of one of twentieth-century America’s most fascinating and inspirational figures.

Notes

PREFACE

1. “Killing Insane Principal,” Baltimore Afro-American, June 22, 1923, 1.

2. Murray didn’t describe traveling to her father’s funeral in her autobiography beyond stating that she traveled alone. Her memories of the journey to Croom, visiting Baltimore, seeing her father at Crownsville, and attending his funeral are in Murray, Pauli Murray, 50–57, 39–45.

3. Murray proudly identified as “Negro” throughout her life, even after the term “Negro” fell out of favor. For a contemporary readership, however, Negro seems jarring. I have primarily used the term “Black” as a compromise because Murray’s main objection to “black” was that it lacked the dignity of a proper noun—an approach suggested by Caldbeck, “Religious Life,” 22.

4. Height, “‘We Wanted the Voice,’” 89–90; Murray, “Negro Woman in the Quest for Equality,” November 14, 1963, B84, F1459, Pauli Murray Papers, the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. (hereafter cited as PMP).

5. For a sample of Murray literature, see Azaransky, “Jane Crow”; Cooper, Beyond Respectability; Drury, “Boy-Girl”; Drury, “Love, Ambition”; Gilmore, Defying Dixie; Mack, Representing the Race; Mayeri, Reasoning from Race; Peppard, “Poetry, Ethics, and the Legacy.”

6. Azaransky, Dream Is Freedom; Bell-Scott, Firebrand.

7. Rosenberg, Jane Crow, 9–30, 167–72.

8. Murray, Pauli Murray, 153.

9. Murray to Rodell, August 5, 1970, B99, F1777, PMP.

10. Ware to Murray, August 15, 1971; Murray to Ware, August 19, 1971, B106, F1898, PMP.

CHAPTER 1

1. Birth certificate; baptism certificate; Murray to Superintendent of Schools, December 15, 1966; Murray to the Rector, December 15, 1966, B1, F1, Pauli Murray Papers, the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. (hereafter cited as PMP).

2. Murray, Pauli Murray, 1.

3. Murray, Pauli Murray, 2–8.

4. Rosenberg, Jane Crow, 12–13.

5. Agnes Murray to Robert and Cornelia Fitzgerald, August 24–26, 1905, B10, F226, PMP; “Personal Notes,” Baltimore Afro-American, August 26, 1905, 7.

6. Murray, Pauli Murray, 31.

7. Family Tree, B12, F331, PMP.

8. Murray to June Gwynn, December 10, 1955, B10, F245, PMP.

9. Murray, Pauli Murray, 3.

10. Agnes Murray to Dame, October 21, 1912, B10, F264, PMP.

11. Murray, Pauli Murray, 12.

12. Agnes Murray certificate of death, March 13, 1967, B10, F227, PMP; Murray, Pauli Murray, 1, 11.

13. Except where otherwise indicated, the preceding discussion of Murray’s first three years is summarized from chapter 1 of her autobiography. Murray, Pauli Murray, 1–13.

14. Murray, Pauli Murray, 12.

15. Interview with Pauli Murray, Documenting the American South, http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/G-0044/G-0044.html, accessed October 12, 2011.

16. “Problem Child,” B84, F1457, PMP.

17. Raggatt, “Multiplicity and Conflict,” 16.

18. “Beginning of Proud Shoes,” July 18, 1933, B76, F352, PMP.

19. Murray, Pauli Murray, 3.

20. Leslie Brown, Upbuilding Black Durham, 78, 344.

21. Rosenberg, Jane Crow, 13.

22. “Beginning of Proud Shoes,” July 18, 1933, B76, F352, PMP; Murray, Pauli Murray, 14–15.

23. Murray, Pauli Murray, 13, 16.

24. Murray, Pauli Murray, 15.

25. hooks, Where We Stand, 21.

26. Murray, Pauli Murray, 15.

27. Dear Uncle Harry and Aunt Mildred, April 8, 1946, B102, F1844, PMP; Murray, Pauli Murray, 16; Murray, P...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Preface
• One. A Child of Destiny or a Nobody without Identity, 1910–1926
• Two. For All My Bravado, Deeply Engrained Notions of Respectability Filled Me with Distress, 1926–1940
• Three. An Unknown Negro Girl without Title or Prestige, 1940–1946
• Four. Such a State of Uncertainty, Caution, and Fear, 1946–1961
• Five. The Problems of Race Discrimination and Sex Discrimination Meet in Me, 1961–1973
• Six. I Am a Child of God, 1973–1985
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index