Dear Church, the Beloved of Christ
Let us Pray:
Liberating God, we thank thee for the steadfast courage of thy servant Pauli Murray, who didst fight long and well: Unshackle us from the bonds of prejudice and fear so that we may show forth thy reconciling love and true freedom, which thou didst reveal through thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Anna Pauline “Pauli” Murray (November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985). Poet, priest, lawyer, inspirer – an inspiration to Martin Luther King, Jr., Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall, and a pen pal to Eleanor Roosevelt, and co -founder of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) and the National Organization of Women (NOW), she is a saint of our time.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Murray was raised mostly by her maternal grandparents in Durham, North Carolina. At the age of sixteen, she moved to New York to attend Hunter College, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1933. In 1940, Murray sat in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus with a friend, and they were arrested for violating state segregation laws. This incident, and her subsequent involvement with the socialist Workers’ Defense League, led to a career goal as a civil rights lawyer. She enrolled in the law school of Howard University, where she graduated first in her class, but was denied the chance to do post-graduate work at Harvard University because of her gender. She earned a master’s in law at University of California, Berkeley, and in 1965 she became the first African American to receive a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School.
As a lawyer, Murray argued for civil rights and women’s rights. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Chief Counsel Thurgood Marshall called Murray’s 1950 book States’ Laws on Race and Color the “bible” of the civil rights movement. Murray served on the 1961 Presidential Commission on the Status of Women and in 1966 was a co-founder of the National Organization for Women. Murray held faculty or administrative positions at the Ghana School of Law, Benedict College, and Brandeis University.
In 1973, Murray left academia for the Episcopal Church, becoming an ordained priest on January 8, 1977, among the first generation of women priests. She served many years as a priest in Baltimore before succumbing to cancer in 1985. (Cara Modisett, hagiographer)
The Rev Dr Pauli Murray lived more lives than any one person could have, and is still relatively unknown. I recall wandering the streets of Greenwich Village, the same streets she walked, sharing her story feeling both inspired and intimidated by her CV – friend of Langston Hughes and Shirley Chisholm! RBG cited her work! Rev Murray’s work changed our lives for the better in our Church and country. I recommend reading:
The Many Lives of Pauli Murray
Pauli Murray: The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest and Poet, University of Tennessee Press, 1989.
Blessings Be,