Today in the Episcopal Church we remember the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray (November 20, 1910 - July 1, 1985), a human rights activist, legal scholar, author, labor organizer, poet, Episcopal priest, cofounder of the National Organization for Women, and first Black person to earn a JSD from Yale Law School.
Murray's work was and is indispensable to the field of civil rights. They became involved with the civil rights movement as a student in the 1930s, and in March 1940, they were arrested and imprisoned along with their girlfriend for refusing to sit at the back of a bus in Virginia. In 1941, while studying law at Howard University, s/he coined the term "Jane Crow" to describe the intersection of sexism and Jim Crow laws. His book States' Laws on Race and Color, published in 1951, was described as "the Bible for civil rights litigators" by Thurgood Marshall, and was influential in the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. In 1961, President Kennedy nominated Murray to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. In 1966, s/he cofounded the National Organization for Women, but later moved away from a leading role because they did not believe the organization was appropriately addressing the issues of Black and working-class women.
In 1973, following the death of their partner Irene Barlow, Murray left their tenured position at Brandeis University to become a candidate for ordination at General Theological Seminary, and in 1977 became the first Black person perceived as a woman to become an Episcopal priest. S/he offered the Eucharist for the first time on February 13 at Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill, NC where their grandmother Cornelia was baptized as an enslaved person. For seven years, she worked in parish ministry in Washington, D.C., focusing particularly on ministry to the sick.
Murray is also known as someone who had a complex relationship to gender and sexuality. In a 1943 letter, they wrote:
"I don't know whether I'm right or whether society (or some medical authority) is right. I only know how I feel and what makes me happy. This conflict rises up to knock me down at every apex I reach in my career. And because the laws of society do not protect me, I'm exposed to any enemy or person who may or may not want to hurt me."
Murray self-described as a “he/she personality” in correspondence with family members. For years, Murray requested - and was denied - testosterone injections and hormone therapy, as well as exploratory surgery to investigate their reproductive organs, believing that they may have been intersex and had undescended testis. Some of Murray’s own private writings describe periods where Murray seemed to self-identify as a heterosexual man. Later in journals, essays, letters and autobiographical works, Murray employed “she/her/hers'' pronouns and self-described as a woman.
While Murray was briefly married to a man in 1930, the marriage ended quickly with the realization that "when men try to make love to me, something in me fights," and the majority of his relationships were with women.
The life and accomplishments of someone so extraordinary and influential are impossible to summarize effectively here. I encourage you to browse the site of the Pauli Murray Center as well as Dr. Murray's Wikipedia article to learn more.
Liberating God, we thank you for the steadfast courage of your servant Pauli Murray, who fought long and well: Unshackle us from the chains of prejudice and fear, that we may show forth the reconciling love and true freedom which you revealed in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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