Today is the Feast Day of Pauli Murray (1910-1985) who was one an American civil rights lawyer and one of the first females ordained as priests in the Episcopal Church. Murray was also the very first African American woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest. Thurgood Marshall called Murray’s book States' Laws on Race and Color the "bible" of the civil rights movement. Her book was an essential resource in the argument which overturned segregation.
Murray was feisty and determined. In an age when there were few female and zero other black female lawyers, she had to fight for her place in society. She fought for herself when no one else would fight for her. One of my favorite quotes comes from her determination as a fighter. “One person plus one typewriter constitutes a movement,” she said.
Murray also was one of the early pioneers in regards to our understanding of gender as a non-binary biological and social concept. As a gay woman who sometimes dressed in men’s clothes — slacks! — Murray helped knock the door down to the men’s only world she was born into and opened the hole for millions of others.
Pauli Murray plus a typewriter began a movement. And now that she is gone the question for us is who is willing to put their fingers on the keyboard next?
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