PEP, March 2008: Pauli Murray:warrior for human rights

By JANE LaTOUR

Pauli Murray was a rare human being — a change agent who could look at the status quo and pinpoint exactly what was wrong with it. A scholar and an activist, she provided penetrating critiques to the civil rights movement and the women’s movement. A pioneer in many areas of her life, Murray was the architect of significant accomplishments that still impact our lives.

The next time you are sitting in a courtroom, bored and frustrated at waiting to serve as a juror, consider Murray’s role in the White v. Crook case, which banned the exclusion of African Americans and women from formerly all-white-male juries. Murray’s contribution was to challenge the exclusion by gender, in addition to the case’s original challenge to the blanket exclusion of black males.

Civil rights historian Taylor Branch described Murray as a legal visionary in this landmark constitutional case. Her argument convinced a panel of federal judges that, “jury service is a responsibility and a right that should be shared by all citizens, regardless of sex.”

Years later, Murray wrote, “The principle seems so obvious today that it’s difficult to remember the dramatic break it was making with scores of previous judicial decisions.”

Murray, then 54, had just become the first Black woman to receive a doctorate of law from Yale University. Born in the South, raised in the North, she was denied entrance to the University of North Carolina because of her race and to Harvard University because of her sex. Yet she came to serve as a bridge between two of the most important movements of the 20th century — the civil rights movement and the women’s movement.

Historians of both movements document her many contributions as a theoretician and an activist. Yet most people don’t even know her name.

“Her achievements foreshadowed dramatic changes during her lifetime. But history — and her own prescient determination — placed her just ahead of her time, removing her from the spotlight of those changes when they occurred,” wrote Congress member Eleanor Holmes Norton in her preface to Murray’s autobiography.

Born in 1910, Murray’s determination allowed her to overcome barriers placed in her way. Her outsider’s vision gave her penetrating insights into what she described as “the interlocking systems of oppression” in our society — race and gender.

Knocking down barriers
Her professional tools and skills gave her the weapons to challenge discrimination wherever she encountered it.

Murray was “one of the most influential voices for including women of all groups in Title VII’s ban on employment discrimination,” said historian Nancy MacLean.

Reading about a speech given by Murray, Betty Friedan reached out to Murray, who was calling for “an NAACP organization for the rights of women.” Thus Murray became a co-founder and was present in 1966 at the birth of the National Organization for Women, the organization she had envisioned to fight for the civil rights of women.

But by that time, Murray already had decades of activism under her belt. She had participated in sit-ins to integrate Washington lunch counters in the 1940s. At the same time, she coined the expression “Jane Crow” to capture the unequal treatment women were subjected to. She forged a friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and served on the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, which was set up to examine the myriad forms of discrimination against women. Murray fought to enact the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

She drafted the critical memorandum thatargued for the need to include sex discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In her memorandum, which was widely distributed to members of Congress as they prepared to vote on that bill, she wrote: “Women’s rights are part of human rights.” Murray played a key role in educating the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on the importance of addressing complaints related to sex discrimination in the workplace.

In the 1970s, as a law professor at Brandeis University, Murray was active in the Women’s Equity Action League, the group that led the legal and organizing campaign challenging gender discrimination on college and university faculties, including the City University of New York. As a member of the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union, Murray contributed her vision to its pioneering role as one of the most effective advocates for women’s rights.

In 1977, when she was ordained in Washington’s National Cathedral at the age of 66, Murray became the Episcopal Church’s first African American woman priest.

“Pauli Murray: The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest, and Poet,” which is available in the library on the second floor at DC 37, conveys the amazing and important scope of the life she led until her death in 1985.