A true trailblazer, Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray was a scholar, activist, writer, and Episcopal priest who was important in the civil and women’s rights movements.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, as Anna Pauline in 1910, Murray was raised by family members in Durham, North Carolina, after their mother’s death in 1914. From a young age, Murray grappled with the complexities of their racial identity.
Murray would begin to struggle with gender identity and go by the androgynous nickname of “Pauli.” Murray spent the rest of their life feeling out of place in their own body and in later years were denied gender-affirming medical care, specifically hormone therapy.
A member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Murray worked to end segregation on public transport. In March 1940, Murray was arrested and imprisoned for refusing to sit at the back of a bus in Virginia.
In 1943, Murray published two important essays on civil rights: “Negroes Are Fed Up” in Common Sense, and an article about the Harlem race riot.
Murray graduated from Howard in 1944 at the top of the class with the intention of becoming a civil rights lawyer. After being denied admission to Harvard Law School because of their assumed gender, Murray enrolled in an LL.M. degree program at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where they graduated in 1945. Their master’s thesis was titled The Right to Equal Opportunity in Employment. Following graduation from Berkeley, Murray landed a position as an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison in New York, where they briefly overlapped with then-summer associate Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
In 1956, Murray published Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family, a biography of how white supremacy and anti-Blackness oppressed their grandparents and their efforts of racial uplift, and a poignant portrayal of their hometown of Durham.
The Award of Merit, the Yale Law School Association’s highest honor, was given to Murray posthumously during Alumni Weekend 2022 and a portrait of Murray is on display at Yale Law School.
In celebration of Black History Month, the Training Division is honoring black legal minds in the United States who have advanced civil rights and continue to inspire advocates to dismantle systems of oppression and work for a better tomorrow.
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