The Civil Rights Movement was a pivotal moment in the history of the United States. The movement united people from all backgrounds and marked the end of legal segregation. Americans of all ages are familiar with the stories of giants like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks, who helped propel the movement to success. However, as is often the case with history, there are countless voices and stories of the Civil Rights Movement that have been forgotten or simply ignored by historians. The voice of Pauli Murray, an unsung hero of the Civil Rights Movement, a lawyer, poet, and, later, priest, was one drowned out by synoptic historical narratives. Thankfully, the last few years have witnessed her story claim its rightful place in history.
After her memoir was republished in 2018, a sudden interest and surge in research on Pauli Murray took root in various communities of historians. As an African American, a woman, and a member of the queer community, Murray found herself at the intersection of several marginalized groups in the United States. Most of the research being done about Murray focuses on her racial, sexual, and gender identities, as well as her work as a lawyer and her unrecognized contribution to several Supreme Court cases. These aspects of Murray’s identity are all essential to understanding and appreciating her story. However, the part of Murray’s identity that binds all these aspects together has been largely ignored by historians: her faith and experience within the Episcopal Church. Pauli Murray’s activism was rooted in her faith, and her relationship with God remained a constant force in her life which she repeatedly turned to for strength. She firmly believed that the issues of sexism and racism were inherently spiritual issues that could not be fixed without a form of divine intervention.1 Her story also opens the door to deeper questions concerning the role religion played in the Civil Rights Movement and the lives of Black women in twentieth-century America. To understand Pauli Murray and her activism, it is essential to first understand how her faith shaped her identity and her perception of the world. Even though Pauli Murray often felt trapped in states of uncertainty and unbelonging, she was sure that a higher power had given her a purpose and the power to make real change. Pauli Murray had a destiny, and she would spend her entire life ensuring it was fulfilled.
Growing Up and Forming an Identity in the Jim Crow South
Anna Pauline Murray was born in a small house in Baltimore on November 10, 1910. She was the fourth child of Agnes and William Murray. Murray’s parents were a mix of European, African, and Native American descent and her grandparents included formerly enslaved people and Union soldiers.2 Agnes and William were well educated and had stable middle-class jobs, an exceptional case for people of color in the United States in the early twentieth century. William was raised in the Methodist church and the community there encouraged him from a young age to refute the subordinate position southern society placed him in. He later passed these lessons on to his children. Once they were married, Agnes convinced William to join her in the Episcopal Church.3Their marriage, however, was not an entirely happy one. William suffered from severe depression that, at times, rendered him immobile and made him prone to violent outbursts. Despite the struggles at home, Pauli’s relatives described her as ‘unusually happy’ and ‘always in perpetual motion’ as a child, rather indicative of her future as a writer and activist.4 In 1914, just a few years after Pauli was born, her mother died suddenly. William Murray succumbed to his mental illness soon after and was admitted to a segregated hospital for the mentally ill. Three-year-old Pauli was sent to Durham, North Carolina to live with her aunt and namesake, Pauline Fitzgerald. Pauli’s move to Durham marked the beginning of a defining chapter in her life and religious journey.
While Pauli Murray’s move to Durham occurred under unimaginable circumstances, her childhood experience within the Southern Episcopal Church and the freedom of life with her Aunt Pauline sowed the seeds of Murray’s rebellious nature. In many ways, Aunt Pauline treated young Pauli like an adult. Pauline allowed Pauli to dress as she liked and encouraged her to ask any questions she had. Pauline was a schoolteacher, and before Pauli was old enough to be a student herself, she had learned how to read.5 This early exposure to knowledge developed self-motivation and critical thinking skills within Pauli. Aunt Pauline had great respect for Pauli, which was deeply reciprocated. Life with Aunt Pauline allowed Pauli to explore herself and the world around her. This included understanding, even at a young age, the blatant racism in policies of segregation and the consequences of the revitalization of the Ku Klux Klan in the South.6 Pauli’s time in Durham with Aunt Pauline prepared her to combat discrimination and racial violence.
Murray’s church in Durham posed the first of many challenges to her identity. In her autobiography, Murray recalled growing up in a segregated Episcopal congregation. “Saint Thomas, for [W]hite Episcopalians, stood in a grove of trees… a stately red structure dominating the countryside. Down the hill, across the road from the churchyard was Saint Simon’s, the church for colored Episcopalians, a small frame chapel on a grassy plot barren of trees. These symbols of separation made the deepest impression on me during my visits.”7 Murray had read in the Bible that all God’s people were equal and that she was beloved and cherished. God’s church, on the other hand, was failing to uphold these lessons by perpetuating segregation.
Even within the segregated congregation, Murray was further isolated given her gender. She wrote, “I knew I could never be privileged to carry the cross… only boys were permitted to do so.”8 The Episcopal Church, at the time, barred women from becoming priests or serving the church in ways other than on the altar guild or in the choir.9 This marginalization was incomprehensible and painful for Murray, who had a deep personal relationship with God but felt discarded by the church. She wrote, “I could neither stay away entirely nor enter wholeheartedly into Christian community.”10 Murray studied the Bible intensely and concluded that the segregated world she lived in was not the one God had created or the one preached about on Sundays. Bishop Delany of North Carolina was one of the first Black Bishops to serve the Episcopal Church in the United States and a close family friend who helped raise young Pauli. On his deathbed in 1928, he told Pauli, “You are a child of destiny.”11 This prophetic decree rang true as Pauli resolved to dedicate her life to fighting for her race and her gender, both within the church and outside of it.
In Pursuit of Destiny: Civil Disobedience and ‘Confrontation by Typewriter’
Murray understood that if she wanted to be taken seriously, she needed an education. To do that, she had to get out of the rural south and go where she would be given a chance to succeed. In 1928, as one of four Black women in a class of 247, Murray began her freshman year at Hunter College.12 Life in New York City differed from life in Durham in almost every aspect. Public transportation was racially integrated, living amenities were more modern, and though Murray spent most of her time engrossed in her studies, the city gave her the freedom to be unequivocally herself. She paid her own way through college and had to pause her studies due to the onset of the Great Depression. She finally graduated in 1933 and spent the next several years hitchhiking from city to city in search of work. Murray eventually secured a position with the Works Progress Administration and its Workers’ Education Program.13
Murray’s position in the Workers’ Education Program exposed her to peaceful resistance and showed her the depths of oppression in the United States. Pauli’s definition of injustice took on a new meaning after hearing “echoes of the Black experience” in the personal stories of unemployed and impoverished White people. She witnessed, for the first time, Black and White people standing together in a picket line. She recalled that “one encountered in the labor movement… an almost religious fervor.”14 Murray saw that unity between the two races was possible and came to see how it could change the country. “Seeing the relationship between my personal cause and the universal cause of freedom released me from a sense of isolation… and gave me an unequivocal understanding that equality of treatment was my birthright.”15 This realization was a milestone for Murray and a radicalizing experience. The Great Depression was a political and religious awakening for Pauli and made her evermore determined to integrate the country.
The early years of Murray’s career as an activist were met with harsh defeats. To further her education, Murray applied to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She felt encouraged by the institution’s adoption of courses on race relations but was nevertheless rejected purely on account of her race. Shortly after being denied admission to UNC, Pauli read President Roosevelt’s speech after he accepted an honorary degree from the university. The President praised UNC for “typifying American liberal thought through American action.”16 This enraged Pauli, and she wrote the President a letter calling out his hypocrisy and refusal to speak on the oppression of African Americans. “You called on Americans to support a liberal philosophy based on democracy. What does that mean for Negro Americans?”17 This letter marked the beginning of Murray’s iconic method of resistance, which she dubbed ‘confrontation by typewriter.’
Murray wrote tirelessly in pursuit of justice for Odell Waller, a sharecropper who claimed to have acted in self-defense when he fatally shot his White landlord. Waller was found guilty despite Murray’s efforts and was eventually executed.18 Additionally, thirteen years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, Pauli Murray was arrested in a similar altercation in Petersburg, Virginia.19 Murray took the case to court only to have it thrown out and for the judge to declare Murray was ‘disturbing the peace.’20 These defeats convinced Murray that even after all she overcame to graduate from college and survive the Great Depression, society still refused to take her seriously. Murray strongly believed that fighting for equality was her Christian responsibility and her destiny, but she recognized she had to first fight to be heard. It was then Murray decided to attend law school.
A Lawyer in the Making: Combating Jim and Jane Crow in the Nation’s Capital
Murray enrolled as a first-year law student at Howard University in 1941 “with the single-minded intention of destroying Jim Crow.”21 If one wanted to become a civil rights lawyer, Howard was the place to go. Murray’s classmates included Thurgood Marshall, who would become the first Black man appointed to the Supreme Court, and she studied under Spottswood Robinson III, one of the most famous civil rights attorneys in U.S. history. Pauli was the only woman in her class and was made to feel unwelcome from the moment she set foot on campus. On her first day of class, a professor remarked that he did not understand why women came to law school and that men were being made to simply put up with them. Murray was humiliated, as the only woman in the room.22 While the men around her argued about how to destroy Jim Crow, Murray realized her entire life she had been experiencing what she coined ‘Jane Crow,’ a painful intersection of racial and gender discrimination.
Her first year at Howard was a painful reminder of the gender discrimination she had experienced in the church. Murray politely raised her hand but was never called on to speak and was unable to loudly insert herself into debates like her male counterparts. Her peers and her professors did not believe she had much to say simply because she was a woman. This was intolerable for Murray who “had not grown up in a family in which limitations were placed upon women.” She wrote in her autobiography that the professor’s outburst on the first day only solidified her resolve to succeed. “Though the professor did not know it, he had just guaranteed that I would become the top student in his class.”23 True to her word and against all odds, Murray achieved the top score in each of her classes proving Bishop Delany’s prophecy that a higher power had determined this was Murray’s destiny.24
Murray continued to thrive at Howard for the next few years. She became an advisor to the university’s student chapter of the NAACP which successfully desegregated restaurants in Washington D.C. through organized sit-ins. Her writings on the idea of Jane Crow brought gender discourse into the discussion of civil rights and forced her male peers to be more open-minded about the prospect of female lawyers. The highlight of Murray’s time at Howard occurred in her final year. She chose to write her senior paper on Plessy v. Fergusson, the 1896 Supreme Court case that legalized ‘separate but equal’ facilities. Murray’s classmates believed the issue with this law was that, in most cases, the separate facilities were not actually equal. Murray, however, wrote that this argument would never be strong enough to cause substantial change. Murray’s paper argued for Plessy v. Fergusson to be completely overturned because ‘separate but equal’ was a contradiction of terms that violated the Fourteenth Amendment and its promise of equal protection and privilege under the law. At the time, Murray’s argument was mocked. “One would have thought I had proposed that we attempt to tear down the Washington Monument or the Statue of Liberty. First astonishment, then hoots of derisive laughter, greeted what seemed to me an obvious solution.”25 Murray held firm to her argument and wagered her professor, Spottswood Robinson, ten dollars that Plessy v. Fergusson would be overturned in the next twenty-five years.
Years later, when she returned to Howard to visit Robinson, she collected her ten dollars and learned Robinson and Thurgood Marshall had used her paper in the briefings for Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.26 Murray’s argument made it to the Supreme Court and secured one of the most important legal decisions of the twentieth century, but she was not credited. Though Jim Crow was on the way out, Jane Crow persisted.
A New Wave of the Civil Rights Movement and Reconciliation with the Episcopal Church
Following her graduation from Howard in 1944, Murray pursued a post-graduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley. She proceeded to pass the state’s bar exam and was hired in 1945 as California’s Deputy Attorney General, the first Black person to hold that position.27 In 1950, Murray published a book titled “State’s Law on Race and Color” which Thurgood Marshall described as ‘the bible of the Civil Rights Movement.’ The book was an expansion of the paper on segregation she wrote at Howard, and it proved to be incredibly beneficial for NAACP lawyers. Murray briefly traveled to Africa in 1960 where she helped write courses for the Ghana School of Law. The trip offered her a reprieve from the growing racial violence in the United States and allowed her to form a stronger connection to her African roots.28 A few years after she returned to the United States, Murray secured a teaching position at Brandeis University where she was tasked with creating a set of courses on African American history and women’s studies. The new Black Power Movement was sweeping through the country, and many of Murray’s students were heavily involved. After spending her life fighting for integration and unity among all races, Murray felt appalled and isolated by the movement’s call for an independent Black community in the United States. The violence of it also struck her as inherently unchristian and while she encouraged her students to stand up for their rights, she implored them to use methods of peaceful resistance as she had done.29
For many years, Pauli had been in a quiet relationship with a woman named Irene Barlow whom she affectionately called Renee. The two had formed a deep bond centered around their shared Episcopal faith and spent their time together serving in the church. Murray’s relationship with Renee brought her closer to the Episcopal community and gave her a stronger sense of belonging. Renee was Pauli’s volunteer secretary and bookkeeper, her best friend, and her rock. She encouraged Pauli to pursue a career in the church as a deacon and lay reader, positions previously only available to men.
Renee and Pauli worked together to fight racial and gender discrimination in the Episcopal Church. Just as Murray resisted the Black Power Movement’s desire for a separatist community opposed to integration, she rejected a manifesto calling for a Black caucus within her congregation in New York. In a letter to the minister facilitating the separatist campaign, Murray wrote, “Negro Christians… should be the last to foster separatism. If I have a mission on earth, it is a mission of love, of conversion not coercion, of setting an example of… non-violence in thought as well as words and action. It is seeking self-revolution which in turn can produce miracles.”30 This letter eloquently describes how Pauli Murray understood her identities and her destiny later in life. Knowing her activism would set a precedent for how future generations would resolve social conflict, Murray believed her destiny was bigger than simply establishing equality. Her role was to lay the foundations for a fully integrated, united community.
After Renee passed away in 1973, Murray turned fully to the Episcopal community for solace. “I felt an urgency to complete my mission on earth in the days left to me. From its beginnings, our friendship had centered around the church, and it was in the church that I had found the comforting belief that the living and the dead are bound together in the communion of saints.”31 Murray resolved that the best way to honor Renee’s memory would be to finish the fight for female ordination and become a priest herself.32
One Last Battle: The Ordination of Women in the Episcopal Church
Pauli Murray’s constant state of in-betweenness and her inability to feel completely part
of any aspect of her identity made her acutely critical of boundaries. This allowed her to make profound arguments, such as the one concerning Plessy v. Fergusson, and it also compelled her to fight for the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church. After Renee’s death, Murray found purpose once again in her activism. She enrolled in General Theological Seminary in New York City. There she renewed her trademark ‘confrontation by typewriter’ to resist gender discrimination and call out the hypocrisy of the church.33 She was known for regularly posting her criticisms of the Episcopal Church and its discriminatory practices to the institution’s bulletin board.34 Her copy of the Canons and Constitution of the Episcopal Church was heavily annotated, and Murray used it as a weapon against the church’s argument on the ordination of women.35 Murray also employed the Bible itself to support her argument.36 She repeatedly preached about the women of the Bible, notably Eve, Mary, and Hagar, and emphasized that if these women were considered holy, there was no theological basis for preventing women from answering the call to the priesthood. “It is my understanding as a student of theology that God is not limited by any man’s notion of sex, or gender, or race, or ethnic origin, or status- God is all inclusive.”37
For most of her life, Murray thought her inability to fit in was a curse, but her return to the Episcopal Church changed that. Now, she saw her various intersecting identities as an essential tool in achieving equality for all and fulfilling her destiny. Murray originally fought for justice to be colorblind, but she came to find value in diversity through her ministerial work.38 In 1977, Murray became one of the first women and the very first Black woman ordained in the Episcopal Church. Her reconciliation with the church community kept Murray going after the loss of Renee Barlow, bringing her story full circle. In her memoir, Murray writes an account of her ordination that once again harkens back to Bishop Delaney’s prophecy about Murray’s destiny. “Just as Bishop Creighton placed his hands upon my forehead the sun broke through the clouds outside and sent shafts of rainbow-colored light down through the stained-glass windows. The shimmering beams of light were so striking that members of the congregation gasped… I took it as a sign of God’s will.”39 Murray’s destiny had finally been fulfilled.
In Her Own Words
Murray spent her life determined to interpret the words and callings of the Bible in her own way and on her own terms. The last project of her long and accomplished life was to complete her memoir. Murray’s determination to finish it even as she got weaker made it clear she wanted her story to be told in her own words. The publication of her memoir, extensive volumes of her poetry, and Murray’s habit of filing away every letter and every pamphlet she ever received preserved her legacy for future generations. Pauli Murray passed away in July 1985 after battling pancreatic cancer.40 However, she spent her life ensuring that her legacy would not die with her. Pauli Murray’s argument on the Fourteenth Amendment was used in the 2015 Supreme Court case, Obergefell v. Hodges, which declared marriage for same-sex couples to be not only legal but a fundamental human right.41 The world is finally ready to embrace Pauli Murray and all aspects of her identity. Confrontation by typewriter has once again taken the world by storm.
The Greater Implication of Pauli Murray’s Story: Proposed Areas of Study
The strength of Pauli Murray’s faith despite constant oppression calls for a deeper study of the intersectionality of religion and social movements. Religion was naturally an integral part of the Civil Rights Movement, given that many of its leaders were religious figures who spread the message of the movement through their congregations. Black religion is tied to centuries of activism and the fight for equality in the United States. Some scholars argue that a focus on this intersection limits the scholarship on African American religious tradition and thought, but the fact remains that the Black church and political activism in the United States evolved together and are therefore inseparable.42 Additionally, more research needs to be done on the interrelatedness of Black women in the twentieth century and their religious upbringings. Like Murray, many Black women felt their religion “reinforced this concept of obligation, this sense of helping the needy, giving something back to the community.”43 This intersection of women and the church was integral to the success of the Civil Rights Movement, and the story of Pauli Murray is just one of many that are aching to be told.44 It is the responsibility of historians to dive into these stories and ask critical questions about the current historical narrative surrounding the Civil Rights Movement. The world owes it to the countless people who dedicated and sacrificed their lives to secure equality for future generations. The world owes it to Pauli Murray.
Works Cited
Primary Sources
"First Woman Attorney General." Plaindealer (Kansas City, Kansas) 48, no. 5, February 1, 1946: 1. Readex: African American Newspapers.
Murray, Pauli and Anthony B. Pinn. Pauli Murray: Selected Sermons and Writings. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006.
Murray, Pauli. Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.
Murray’s Copy of the Constitutions and Canons of the Episcopal Church, 1973, Pauli Murray Papers, Schlesinger Library, Box 62, Folder 1039.
Pauli Murray to David Garcia, August 26, 1969 and September 11, 1969, Pauli Murray Papers, Schlesinger Library, Box 62, Folder 1045.
"Story of Sharecropper Told." Bags and Baggage (Chicago, Illinois) V, no. 4, April 1, 1942: 2. Readex: African American Newspapers.
Secondary Sources
Booker, Vaughn. “Civil Rights Religion?: Rethinking 1950s and 1960s Political Activism for African American Religious History.” Journal of Africana Religions 2, no. 2 (2014): 211–43.
Cohen, Julie, and Betsy West, director. My Name Is Pauli Murray. United States: Amazon Studios, 2021.
Giggie, John M. “Review: The Third Great Awakening: Religion and the Civil Rights Movement, by David Chappell.” Reviews in American History 33, no. 2 (2005): 254–62.
Keaveney, Hiroki. “Christian, Queer, and Interracial: The Story of Pauli Murray and Irene Barlow.” 2016: 33.
Lander, Joyce. Quoted in Rosetta E. Ross, Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil Rights. 1517 Media, 2003: 4.
Lewis, Harold T. “Racial Concerns in the Episcopal Church Since 1973.” Anglican and Episcopal History 67, no. 4 (1998): 467–79.
Pinn, Anthony B. “Religion and ‘America’s Problem Child’: Notes on Pauli Murray’s Theological Development.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 15, no. 1 (1999): 27.
Rosenberg, Rosalind. Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020.