If you look at the most pivotal moments of the 20th century, you’ll usually see the same few faces in the history books. Thurgood Marshall. Eleanor Roosevelt. Betty Friedan. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But if you dig just an inch below the surface of the civil rights movement and the feminist revolution, you find one person standing at the center of it all, often decades before anyone else caught up. Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray was a legal powerhouse, a poet, a priest, and a bridge between worlds that most people thought were mutually exclusive.
It's honestly wild that Murray isn't a household name yet. We’re talking about someone who was arrested for refusing to sit in the back of a bus fifteen years before Rosa Parks. Someone whose legal theories literally handed Thurgood Marshall the keys to winning Brown v. Board of Education. Someone who co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) but also became the first Black person perceived as a woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest.
Murray lived a life of "firsts," but those firsts came at a massive personal cost.
The Legal Genius Behind the Scenes
Most people think the legal strategy to end segregation was a group effort by the NAACP's top brass. It was. But the specific "aha!" moment that changed everything came from Murray’s senior thesis at Howard University. At the time, the strategy was to try and make "separate" actually equal, forcing states to spend so much money on Black facilities that they’d give up on segregation. Murray thought that was a losing game.
"I argued that segregation itself was unconstitutional," Murray later noted.
Essentially, the argument was that the act of separating people was a violation of the 14th Amendment, regardless of how "nice" the facilities were. Murray’s professors at Howard actually laughed at this idea. They called it too radical. But years later, when Marshall was preparing for the Supreme Court, he reached for Murray’s paper. It became the blueprint.
Intersectionality Before the Word Existed
Long before Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term "intersectionality" in 1989, Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray was living it and naming it. Murray called it "Jane Crow."
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It was the realization that Black women didn't just face racism and didn't just face sexism—they faced a specific, crushing weight where the two overlapped. This wasn't just academic theory for Murray; it was a daily reality. Murray was frequently denied opportunities not just for being Black, but for being a woman. Or, as we understand more clearly today, for being someone who struggled deeply with gender identity in an era that had no language for it.
The Struggle with Identity and the "In-Between"
If you read Murray’s private letters and medical records today, it’s clear we’re looking at a pioneer of gender non-conformity. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, Murray sought out hormone therapy, believing there was a biological reason for feeling like a man trapped in a woman’s body. Doctors at the time were... well, they weren't helpful. They suggested psychiatric care.
Murray’s life was a constant navigation of these boundaries. In a 1943 letter, Murray wrote about having an "inverted sex instinct," a term used at the time to describe what we might now call transgender or non-binary identities.
Think about the sheer bravery that took.
To be a Black person in the Jim Crow South is dangerous enough. To be a woman in the 1940s legal world is isolating enough. But to also be questioning the very nature of your gender identity while trying to rewrite the laws of the United States? It’s a level of internal and external pressure that would have broken almost anyone else.
- Murray applied to the University of North Carolina in 1938 and was rejected because of race.
- Murray applied to Harvard Law and was rejected because of gender.
- Murray didn't stop. They went to UC Berkeley and then became the first Black person to earn a J.S.D. from Yale Law School.
A Late-Life Turn to the Altar
After decades of fighting in the courtrooms and the streets, Murray did something that shocked the secular world. At age 62, Murray entered the General Theological Seminary.
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Why the sudden shift?
It wasn't actually sudden. For Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, the law was about justice, but the church was about reconciliation. In 1977, Murray was ordained as an Episcopal priest. It was a massive moment for the church and a full-circle moment for a person who had spent a lifetime being told "no" by every institution in America.
Serving at the same altar where Murray’s grandmother—who was born into slavery—had been baptized was a poetic act of defiance. It was a way of saying that the institutions that once excluded Black bodies now had to yield to them.
The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Connection
We often credit RBG with the legal breakthroughs of the 1970s that protected women’s rights. But Ginsburg herself was the first to admit she didn't do it alone. When she wrote the brief for Reed v. Reed in 1971—a landmark case about gender discrimination—she put Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray’s name on the cover as a co-author.
Murray hadn't actually worked on the brief.
Ginsburg put the name there as an act of "lawyerly debt." She knew that Murray’s earlier work on the 14th Amendment and the concept of "Jane Crow" had paved the way for everything she was doing. Without Murray’s intellectual heavy lifting in the 40s and 50s, the feminist legal wins of the 70s might never have happened.
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Why Does This History Matter Right Now?
History isn't just a list of dates. It's a map. When we look at the life of Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, we see a map of how to exist in a world that wasn't built for you.
We see someone who was "too early" for almost everything. Too early for the bus boycott. Too early for the trans rights movement. Too early for the women’s priesthood. But being early didn't make Murray wrong; it made them a scout.
Honestly, the most impressive thing isn't just the list of degrees or the famous friends like Eleanor Roosevelt. It’s the persistence. Murray suffered from bouts of deep depression and spent time in hospitals for exhaustion. The "trailblazer" narrative often makes it look like these people were superheroes who never felt the sting of rejection. Murray felt it. Deeply. But Murray kept writing, kept litigating, and kept praying.
Practical Ways to Engage with Murray’s Legacy
If you're looking to actually apply the lessons of Murray's life to your own advocacy or understanding of history, you have to look at the primary sources.
- Read "Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family." This is Murray’s memoir of their family history. It’s not just a biography; it’s a deep dive into the racial complexities of the South and how history lives inside our bodies.
- Visit the Pauli Murray Center. Based in Durham, North Carolina, the center is located in Murray’s childhood home. They do incredible work connecting Murray’s history to modern social justice issues.
- Study "Jane Crow." Don't just use the word intersectionality. Look at how Murray applied the law to protect the most vulnerable. It’s a masterclass in how to use existing systems to break the systems themselves.
- Support Clergy of Color. Murray’s ordination was a door-opening moment. Supporting Black and queer leadership in spiritual spaces continues the work Murray started in the 1970s.
Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray died in 1985, just before the world started to really develop the language needed to describe Murray’s full self. Today, we have the words. We have the context. We no longer have an excuse to leave this name out of the narrative of American greatness. The work was done in the shadows for a long time, but the light is finally catching up.
The next time you see a major Supreme Court decision or a breakthrough in civil rights, remember that there’s usually a "Pauli Murray" behind it—someone doing the quiet, radical work of imagining a future that everyone else thinks is impossible.
Actionable Insights for Modern Advocates
- Look for the "Jane Crow" in your own field: Identify where multiple forms of bias overlap to create unique disadvantages that a single-issue lens might miss.
- Build "Lawyerly Debt": If you are in a position of power or influence, credit the pioneers who came before you, especially those from marginalized backgrounds whose work has been erased.
- Don't wait for permission: Murray didn't wait for the Episcopal Church to be "ready" for a Black woman priest, or for the NAACP to be "ready" for a 14th Amendment challenge. They pushed until the institution broke.
- Document your own story: Murray’s archives at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library are massive because Murray knew that if they didn't keep the records, history would forget them. Keep your own receipts.