Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice

The Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice is a historical site in Durham, North Carolina that both celebrates the life of trailblazer Pauli Murray and acts as an inclusive place for community education. Pauli Murray was a civil-rights activist, women's rights speaker, lawyer, preacher, poet, and much more. The center, which includes Pauli's childhood home, is a safe, welcoming place for all who want to learn more about historical and contemporary human rights issues. Exhibits, community dialogues, visual and performing arts, activism, and workshops are held commonly at the center.

The center's calendar of events can be found here: https://www.paulimurraycenter.com/events-and-celebrations.

Please note: Pauli Murray lived a rich and diverse life during a time where much of the language around sex and gender we have today did not exist. There is much debate within the historical community about whether we should ascribe today's terms to historical figures so to be both respectful of Pauli's experience and for ease of reading the pronouns "S/he" or "they/them" will be used. These are the same pronouns used on the Pauli Murray site. Here is the websites guide to pronouns and Pauli's complex experience: https://www.paulimurraycenter.com/pronouns-pauli-murray.

The Center

The Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice is named after Pauli Murray who was a civil rights activist, women's rights activist, writer, lawyer, preacher, poet, and much more. The center includes their childhood home built by their grandparents in 1898 and the the educational installations on the front yard. The center in addition to teaching about the life of Pauli Murray, also acts as a place for community events and education. Currently the house itself is undergoing renovations and the house next door has been purchased and is being converted into a welcome center. They plan to use this welcome center as a place to hold additional events and put up more educational installations on Pauli Murray and other local activists.

Pauli Murray

Pauli Murray was born in 1910 in Baltimore, Maryland but at three years old was sent to live with their aunts who were teachers in Durham, North Carolina where s/he then grew up. As a teenager s/he secretly married a man and this experience would begin their writings on their complex feelings on sex and gender. The marriage did not last more than a few months and Pauli wrote "why is it when men try to make love to me, something in me fights" about the experience. S/he would later attend Hunter College post divorce where s/he would begin writing the basis for the memoir "Proud Shoes." S/he applied to get a PhD from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill but was rejected because of their race. S/he fought back against this decision in local and national papers, this was their first foray into legal battles against institutions in the name of civil rights. The NAACP was initially interested in their case but decided against supporting due to their "presentation and sexual deviance" which referred to their proclivity for wearing pants and their public relationships with women. Not long after this Pauli and her then girlfriend Adelene McBean were arrested for not sitting in the "Black section" of a southern, segregated bus. The NAACP once again did not assist Pauli in their legal battles. Inspired by these events Pauli began attending Howard Law School and later Boalt Hall School of Law. After passing the bar exam, s/he became the first Black deputy attorney general in California. Pauli worked tirelessly as an advocate for racial and gender equality. S/he was a prominate speaker for the civil rights movement, worked briefly with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and coined the term "Jane Crow" to describe the interesctionality of the race and sex based discrimination Black women faced. Pauli also published States' Laws on Race and Color, an examination and critique of state segregation laws throughout the nation. S/he drew on psychological and sociological evidence as well as legal, a s/he had previously been criticized by law school professors. S/he argued for civil rights lawyers to challenge state segregation laws as unconstitutional directly, rather than trying to prove the inequality of "separate but equal" facilities. Pauli's approach was influential to the NAACP arguments in Brown v. Board of Education which drew from psychological studies assessing the effects of segregation on students in school.

Pauli Murray and Gender

Pauli described themself as having an "inverted sex instinct" that caused them to behave as a man would when attracted to women. S/he disliked when people referred to her as a lesbian and instead considered themself a "man attracted to bisexual women." S/he often wrote about wanting a monogamous married life but one in which s/he got to be the man. Pauli wore their hair short, preferred men's clothes, and when younger would pass as a teenage boy. S/he intentionally changed their name to "Pauli" in their twenties to avoid the gender associated with their dead name. Additionally, at the time of the bus segregation protest s/he gave the name "Oliver" to arresting officers. Throughout their life, Pauli requested hormone treatments and even once requested abdominal surgery to see if s/he has "submerged" male sex organs but was denied. It is due to these life experiences that some current historians argue that Pauli Murray should be considered one of America's early transgender activists and would have gone by male or non-binary pronouns if such things were better know while Pauli was alive.

“Pauli Murray as a LGBTQ+ Historical Figure.” National Museum of African American History and Culture, 27 Jan. 2021, https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/pauli-murray-lgbtq-historical-figure.

Pauli Murray Center, https://www.paulimurraycenter.com/.

Schulz, K., Menand, L., & Ross, A. (2017, April 10). The civil-rights luminary you've never heard of. The New Yorker. Retrieved April 25, 2022, from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/the-many-lives-of-pauli-murray

Zahniser, J.D. “Born Straddling Lines of Gender and Color, Pauli Murray Stitched Together a Life of Extraordinary Accomplishment.” HistoryNet, HistoryNet, 20 Jan. 2022, https://www.historynet.com/how-pauli-murray-became-a-civil-rights-and-feminist-icon/.