by Reagan Jackson

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A note on she/her pronouns: Pauli Murray lived during a time before it was commonplace to use pronouns to denote nonbinary or trans identities. She expressed dysmorphia to an extent where she underwent exploratory surgery hoping for medical confirmation of undescended testicles to prove that though she appeared to be a woman, she felt, thought, and existed within herself as a man. In this article, I will refer to Pauli Murray as she/her because those were the pronouns she used, but with the caveat that in today’s world Murray likely would have chosen to identify as he/him or they/them. 

Pauli Murray is one of the most important figures in modern U.S. history that you might never have heard of — a Black trans lawyer, activist, Episcopal priest, and poet. Often ahead of her time, Murray was a founding member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and went unrecognized for her thought leadership in two court cases that changed the face of this country: Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case that overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and led to integrating schools, and Reed v. Reed, the 1971 case that outlawed discrimination on the basis of sex. 

When we think of Brown v. Board of Education, we see the iconic image of Thurgood Marshall in his beautifully tailored suit and pocket square standing with the team of all male lawyers from the NAACP that took on the case. Who goes unseen is a young law student at Howard 10 years earlier being the subject of ridicule when suggesting to her professor Spottswood Robinson that lawyers should “make a frontal assault on the constitutionality of segregation.” Robinson bet Murray $10 that it wouldn’t happen within the next 25 years, and he handed her the winnings when he revealed to her that Marshall had indeed used the paper she wrote for that class when putting together his strategy.

When Reed v. Reed comes up, though Murray is co-authored on the brief, it’s the face of Ruth Bader Ginsburg that appears. It reminds me of the title of a Black women’s studies anthology edited by Akasha Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith called All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave. It aptly sums up the positionality of many Black women and nonbinary, queer, and trans folks who have been rendered invisible throughout history for not fitting neatly into the narratives of white heteropatriarchy. And yet it is precisely because of who Murray was in the world, her bravery to simply exist combined with how the world treated her, that shaped her to be such a dynamic change agent.

Pauli Murray was born Anna Pauline Murray in 1910. Orphaned by age 12, she was sent to live with her namesake and aunt Pauline Fitzgerald Dame, her other aunt Sally Fitzgerald, and her maternal grandparents, Robert and Cornelia. Both of her aunts were teachers, and the center of Murray’s childhood with them was education. Within three years of arriving in North Carolina, she graduated from high school with honors, then moved to New York to attend college. At the time, Columbia University did not accept women, and Barnard College was too expensive, so she chose Hunter College, but she had to spend an additional year in a white high school first, both to become a New York resident (eligible to attend Hunter for free) and to supplement her transcripts. She took on work as a waitress to support herself, and then lost her job during the Great Depression.

She graduated in 1933, malnourished and impoverished, and spent a stint traveling the country by railroad disguised as a man. She applied for grad school at the University of North Carolina and was turned down on the basis of race, but went on to earn a spot at Howard University School of Law, where she was the only woman. Professors did not call on her for the entire first year. Having lived in the South, she had been familiar with Jim Crow, but what she experienced at Howard she termed “Jane Crow,” the predecessor to what Kimberlé Crenshaw later termed “intersectional oppression.” 

Despite graduating at the top of her class in 1944 and earning the Rosenwald Fellowship, which traditionally meant automatic admission into Harvard, Jane Crow closed the door for her here too, and she was rejected on the basis of sex. She continued her studies on the other coast at UC Berkeley School of Law, and later became the first African American to get a Doctor of Judicial Science from Yale. 

“One thing is crystal clear. The Negro woman can no longer postpone or subordinate the fight against discrimination because of sex to the civil rights struggle but must carry on both fights simultaneously,” said Murray during a speech to the National Council of Negro Women Convention in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14, 1963.

We often laud the bravery and resilience of Black folks without recognizing that the requirement to develop this kind of fortitude is forged in trauma. This trauma has been the fuel for many a revolution, but often at great personal cost. Despite being met by closed door after closed door, Murray did a thing Black folks are famous for. She made a way out of no way, and in doing so, blazed a trail for others to follow.

“The path ahead will not be easy; the challenges to meet new standards of achievement in the search for equality will be many and bewildering,” said Murray in her speech.

Many years have passed since she spoke those words, yet they ring truer than ever today. It is bewildering to have had a whole Civil Rights Movement that overturned Jim Crow (and Jane Crow) laws, and a Supreme Court that affirmed women’s rights to our own bodies and the right to vote for every U.S. citizen, only to watch it all seemingly be reversed. How do we take these setbacks and still get up in the morning? What does it mean to be generationally embroiled in a battle to be treated as full humans under the law? Now is the time we must look to people like Pauli Murray for advice on way-making. 

Something else Murray shared during her speech was the importance of forming allies across difference: “Moreover, Negro women should seek to communicate and cooperate with white women wherever possible. Their common problems and interests as women provide a bridge to span initial self-consciousness. Many white women today are earnestly seeking to make common cause with Negro women and are holding out their hands. All too often they find themselves rebuffed. Integration, however, is a two-way effort and Negro women must be courageous enough to grasp the hand whenever it is held out.”

Lately, in the wake of such turmoil in the world, I have seen activist circles grow smaller and smaller. Working with white people is the least of our struggles when we can barely seem to work with one another in BIPOC communities across the nuances of our priorities and agendas. We spend our days shouting in the streets, angry and combative, and with good reason. But what happens when we bring that anger home? What happens when we greet our friends and colleagues with that same energy and every minor disagreement is turned into a fight against an oppressor? We get nowhere. We waste precious time and energy villainizing or discrediting one another. Also, we deny ourselves the opportunity to practice the ways we actually want to exist. We know how to fight. We do it every day. But do we know how to love? How to show grace? How to forgive? How to repair and move forward together?

Murray wrote: “The civil rights revolt, like many social upheavals, has released powerful pent-up emotions, cross currents, rivalries and hostilities.” She went on to talk about the way Black women, while expected to do the grunt work of the movement, were intentionally excluded from the March on Washington. If it takes all of us to make a revolution work, we are all accountable to creating conditions in which we can show up in solidarity with one another.

Activist and MacArthur Genius Award recipient Loretta Ross coined the term “calling in.” She says: “A call in is actually a callout done with love and respect. Because you’re really seeking to hold people accountable for the potential harm that they cause, but you’re not going to lose sight of the fact that you’re talking to another human being.”

Pauli Murray had every reason in the world to hate everyone, but she stands out to me as someone who never lost sight of the humanity in herself or others. Having to struggle did not deter her from living her life, standing in her purpose, finding community, and being willing to work with others to build a more equitable and inclusive society. She did all of this even though she herself, in many ways, would never reap the benefits, marginalized by the societal limitations that prevented her from being able to live fully in the truth of her identity.

At the age of 62, her faith led her to become an Episcopal priest. She also traded in writing ACLU handbooks and legal briefs for writing poetry. Though she was feisty to the end, her life was not only one of struggle, but included love, partnership, friendships, work that she was passionate about, and an opportunity to learn and grow. And that life has given us a gift of an exemplary trancestor who showed us how and when to fight.

“I have been enslaved, yet my spirit is unbound.
I have been cast aside, but I sparkle in the darkness.
I have been slain but live on in the river of history.” 
—Pauli Murray

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Sources cited for this article include “Pauli Murray,” an unpublished essay by Dr. Stanlie James; the documentary film My Name Is Pauli Murray; Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage by Pauli Murray; and “The Negro Woman in the Quest for Equality,” Pauli Murray’s speech to the National Council of Negro Women Convention, Washington, D.C., Nov. 14, 1963.

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📸 Featured image via Carolina Digital Library and Archives (under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 license).

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