Exploring Black History at Trinity: Pauli Murray

Pauli Murray

(November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985)

Pauli Murray is often remembered for “firsts” - for being the first Black woman ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church (1977); for being the first Black person to graduate with a Doctor of Juridical Science Degree from Yale Law School (1965). These milestones are significant, and yet even they do not convey the breadth and influence of Pauli Murray and Murray’s lifelong commitment to justice and faith. Murray dedicated years to a legal vocation, graduating first in class from Howard Law School in 1944 and going on to confront systems of sexism that denied Murray admission to Harvard Law School the following year. Murray’s legal writings became a key resource for the work of other legal justice advocates such as Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Gisberg. At a time when the relationship between women’s rights and civil rights was unclear and at times tenuous, Murray affirmed that justice for people of color and justice for women are deeply interconnected.

Also deeply connected to Murray’s legal career was Murray’s Christian faith, which ebbed and flowed throughout Murray’s life, reaching a point of clarity and fulfillment with Murray’s ordination to the priesthood in 1977. Pauli Murray stated, “I began to realize that universally, all of mankind is constantly falling down from these high ideals... that racism and sexism are actually sins, the sickness of sin; that human beings are not really in harmony in relationship to their creator. And since they are not, they are not able to be in harmony, in relationship, and to love-- to respect their neighbor.” Faith gave Murray a lens through which to imagine a better future. This faith in the future is particularly inspiring given all the ways that the world was not welcoming of Pauli Murray: as a woman, a Black person, and a gender non-conforming person who explored using different pronouns in public and private life. Murray’s faith in God and in the future is perhaps best expressed in Murray’s poetry:

Dark Testament Verse 8

By Pauli Murray

Hope is a crushed stalk

Between clenched fingers

Hope is a bird’s wing

Broken by a stone.

Hope is a word in a tuneless ditty —

A word whispered with the wind,

A dream of forty acres and a mule,

A cabin of one’s own and a moment to rest,

A name and place for one’s children

And children’s children at last . . .

Hope is a song in a weary throat.

Give me a song of hope

And a world where I can sing it.

Give me a song of faith

And a people to believe in it.

Give me a song of kindliness

And a country where I can live it.

Give me a song of hope and love

And a brown girl’s heart to hear it.

In 2017, Yale University named a new college after Pauli Murray, who among many accomplishments is an alum of Yale Law School. We also lift up the legacy of Pauli Murray as a faithful Christian, and leader in the Episcopal Church.

Sources:

“Fighting Jane Crow: The Multifaceted Life and Legacy of Pauli Murray,” BackStory, podcast (20 March 2020), https://www.backstoryradio.org/shows/pauli-murray/, accessed 24 Feb. 2021.

Pauli Murray, Dark Testament and Other Poems (Silvermine, 1970).