Home - "My Name is Pauli Murray" - Screening and Panel Discussion - Guides at University of San Diego Legal Research Center

About the event

Event: "My Name is Pauli Murray" film screening and panel discussion
Date: Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Time: 4:30pm (screening) 6:30pm (panel discussion)
Location: Warren Hall Courtroom

The LRC DEIA Committee, Women's Law Caucus, Pride Law, and Black Law Students Association present a screening of My Name is Pauli Murray and a panel discussion of the film with Professors Jean Ramirez (Law), Channon Miller (History), and Marcelle Maese (English; Women's and Gender Studies). Pizza and popcorn will be served. The screening will begin at 4:30pm and the panel discussion will begin at 6:30pm. Please register by October 24th.

Fifteen years before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat, a full decade before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned separate-but-equal legislation, Pauli Murray was already knee-deep fighting for social justice. A pioneering attorney, activist, priest and dedicated memoirist, Murray shaped landmark litigation--and consciousness--around race and gender equity. As an African American youth raised in the segregated South--who was also wrestling with broader notions of gender identity--Pauli understood, intrinsically, what it was to exist beyond previously accepted categories and cultural norms. Both Pauli's personal path and tireless advocacy foreshadowed some of the most politically consequential issues of our time. Told largely in Pauli's own words, My Name is Pauli Murray is a candid recounting of that unique and extraordinary journey.

Online Resources

Pauli Murray as a LGBTQ+ Historical Figure (National Museum of African American History & Culture)
Pauli Murray's personal writings about her gender identity and sexuality have been a recent topic of study. Gender studies scholars are now acknowledging that were Murray living today, she may have identified as a transgender man.
Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice
The Pauli Murray Center is a nationally significant history site, anchored by Pauli Murray’s childhood home built by her grandparents in 1898 at 906 Carroll Street in Durham, North Carolina. By connecting history to contemporary human rights issues, the Pauli Murray Center will activate visitors of all ages to stand up for peace, equity and justice.
Southern Oral History Program Collection: Interview with Pauli Murray (transcript and audio)
Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Books at USD

Pauli Murray by Troy R. Saxby
ISBN: 1469654938
Publication Date: 2020-03-09
The Rev. Dr. Anna Pauline "Pauli" Murray (1910-1985) was a trailblazing social activist, writer, lawyer, civil rights organizer, and campaigner for gender rights. In the 1930s and 1940s, she was active in radical left-wing political groups and helped innovate nonviolent protest strategies against segregation that would become iconic in later decades, and in the 1960s, she cofounded the National Organization for Women (NOW). In addition, Murray became the first African American to receive a Yale law doctorate and the first black woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest. Yet, behind her great public successes, Murray battled many personal demons, including bouts of poor physical and mental health, conflicts over her gender and sexual identities, family traumas, and financial difficulties.
Pauli Murray and Caroline Ware by Anne Firor Scott (Editor)
ISBN: 0807876739
Publication Date: 2009-09-15
In 1942 Pauli Murray, a young black woman from North Carolina studying law at Howard University, visited a constitutional law class taught by Caroline Ware, one of the nation's leading historians. A friendship and a correspondence began, lasting until Murray's death in 1985. Ware, a Boston Brahmin born in 1899, was a scholar, a leading consumer advocate, and a political activist. Murray, born in 1910 and raised in North Carolina, with few resources except her intelligence and determination, graduated from college at 16 and made her way to law school, where she organized student sit-ins to protest segregation. She pulled her friend Ware into this early civil rights activism. Their forty-year correspondence ranged widely over issues of race, politics, international affairs, and--for a difficult period in the 1950s--McCarthyism. In time, Murray became a labor lawyer, a university professor, and the first black woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest. Ware continued her work as a social historian and consumer advocate while pursuing an international career as a community development specialist. Their letters, products of high intelligence and a gift for writing, offer revealing portraits of their authors as well as the workings of an unusual female friendship. They also provide a wonderful channel into the social and political thought of the times, particularly regarding civil rights and women's rights.
Jane Crow : the life of Pauli Murray by Rosalind Russell
ISBN: 9780190656478
Publication Date: 2017
Throughout her prodigious life, activist and lawyer Pauli Murray systematically fought against all arbitrary distinctions in society, channeling her outrage at the discrimination she faced to make America a more democratic country. In this definitive biography, Rosalind Rosenberg offers a poignant portrait of a figure who played pivotal roles in both the modern civil rights and women's movements.
The Firebrand and the First Lady by Patricia Bell-Scott
ISBN: 0679446524
Publication Date: 2016-02-02
A groundbreaking book--two decades in the works--that tells the story of how a brilliant writer-turned-activist, granddaughter of a mulatto slave, and the first lady of the United States, whose ancestry gave her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, forged an enduring friendship that changed each of their lives and helped to alter the course of race and racism in America.
The Dream Is Freedom by Sarah Azaransky
ISBN: 9780199744817
Publication Date: 2011-04-01
Pauli Murray (1910-1985) was a poet, lawyer, activist, and priest, as well as a significant figure in the civil rights and women's movements. Throughout her careers and activism, Murray espoused faith in an American democracy that is partially present and yet to come. In the 1940s Murray was in the vanguard of black activists to use nonviolent direct action. A decade before the Montgomery bus boycott, Murray organized sit-ins of segregated restaurants in Washington DC and was arrested for sitting in the front section of a bus in Virginia. Murray pioneered the category Jane Crow to describe discrimination she experienced as a result of racism and sexism. She used Jane Crow in the 1960s to expand equal protection provisions for African American women. A co-founder of the National Organization of Women, Murray insisted on the interrelation of all human rights. Her professional and personal relationships included major figures in the ongoing struggle for civil rights for all Americans, including Thurgood Marshall and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society Panel Discussion

This event was inspired by a panel discussion of My Name is Pauli Murray hosted by the Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society. Find a recording of their discussion below or on YouTube.