Pauli Murray (1910–85)

Abstract

Pauli Murray, the direct descendent of both slaves and slave-owners, grew up in Durham, North Carolina. She took her undergraduate degree at Hunter College, but was refused admission to the University of North Carolina law school on the grounds of race as she would later be refused admission to Harvard on the grounds of gender. She completed her law studies at Howard during the war, when she and a group of women students organized a sit-in demonstration protesting the refusal of a local cafeteria to serve African-Americans. Murray had a long and distinguished career as a lawyer, a poet, activist, and priest in the Episcopalian church, and was one of the founders of NOW. Her autobiography is entitled Song from a Weary Throat An American Pilgramage.