Rev. Pauli Murray, JD: A Trail Blazer on Many Fronts, and One of the New Faces of the US Quarter in 2024

If you had a chance to talk to one of your heroes in life, a mentor extraordinaire, someone whose mind you would like to “pick and probe,” or share a glass of wine, who would it be? Is there a figure in history that is larger than life that you would like to get to know better? I ask this question during Black History Month (Feb), and Transfiguration Sunday, thinking of those people who achieved and accomplished the impossible, given the earlier circumstances and trajectory of their lives. Would it be Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? The public orator Frederic Douglass? The trail-blazing politician Rep. Shirley Chisholm? Or the civil rights leader who shook even LBJ, Fannie Lou Hamer? These are all ordinary people who went through a series of transformative or transfiguration-moments throughout their lives, doing the hard work in crossing boundaries and climbing over hurdles, abundantly self-conscious of who they are and who God is when faced with incredible challenges in life. I was thinking of transforming, transfigured lives on Transfiguration Sunday (Sunday, Feb. 19, 2023), and, for me, I chose the story of the incredibly humble late Black Episcopal priest, lawyer, civil rights activist, and wife, Pauli Murray of Durham, NC. Her story is one of such courage, daring, determination, and transformation, that she is being honored, along with other courageous women, with her image on the US quarter in 2024.

Pauli Murray was born on Nov. 20, 1910 in Baltimore, assigned “female” at birth, though she questioned her gender later in life, choosing non-binary gender “they.” They grew up in Durham, NC, raised by their grandparents. She became a lawyer and activist, working against sexism and racism, graduating from the top of her class at Howard University School of Law. Murray’s books includes States’ Laws on Race and Color (1951), and was described by civil rights lawyer and later Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall as the “Bible for civil rights litigators.” In the 50’s, she met her partner, Irene Barlow, an office manager at the firm where she worked, Paul, Weiss, Rifkin Wharton and Garrison. 

In the 60s, Murray served on the Committee on Civil and Political Rights as part of the former-President Kennedy’s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, and continued to be active in the Black civil rights movement, but objected that it was led by men, while women did all the work. In 1966, Murray helped found the National Organization of Women (NOW), but later moved away from NOW because she did not believe that NOW was addressing the needs of Black and brown women, let alone working women. Her work in this area later influence the writing and judgments of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as she argued against sex discrimination before the US Supreme Court. 

Murray taught in an American studies program at Brandeis University from 1968 to 1973.  In 1973, following Barlow’s death, Murray entered Episcopal Church’s General Theological Seminary, and in 1977, Murray was the first Black person perceived as a woman to become an Episcopal priest in the US. Murray wrote several other books, including a poetry collection, an autobiography, and a volume on the government of Ghana. Murray’s best-known book, Proud Shoes:The Story of an American Family, chronicles the difficulties faced by her grandparents in Durham due to racism. It has remained in print since its initial publication in 1956. Murray died of cancer in 1985. Murray’s life and significance were chronicled in the documentary film, My Name is Pauli Murray, released in 2021.  

I thank God for this woman of faith, of courage, and of perseverance, doing the good and right thing, and, as the late-Rep. John Lewis would say, making “good trouble.” May more of us be more like her in the days and months and years of our life.