“I’m on a tangent, not how I planned it / I had some fans that hopped and abandoned ship / When they thought that I wasn’t gone pan out, I got a plan / They say that success is the greatest revenge, tell all your friends.” — J. Cole
For minority law students and attorneys, Black History Month is more than just a tribute to the past. It is a tribute to how far our society has come and a reminder of how much further we must go to address racial inequality.
We recognize Black History Month because, as Eric Liu writes, “The experience of African-Americans is exceptional in its systematic, multigenerational, reverberating effects. And it’s exceptional in its centrality to the founding and building of our nation. No experience reveals more than the African-American experience both the hypocrisy and the possibility of our national creed.”
Today, I’m paying tribute to Pauli Murray (1910-1985), a giant in the civil rights movement. But in telling her story, I hope to remind the ATL audience that many of the same fights and rights that have been fought for and fought over in past decades, continue to come back to haunt us today.
As a Durham, North Carolina, transplant I’ve become quite familiar with Murray, a native of Bull City. A few weeks ago, I watched her on the big screen at the Carolina Theatre. As Chris Highland highlights in the Citizen Times:
Pioneering civil rights activist Pauli Murray is portrayed in the new movie On the Basis of Sex, about the early legal work of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Portrayed by actress Sharon Washington, Murray is one of three Ginsburg mentors who serve as ‘judges’ in a mock trial scene when Ruth and her husband Marty are preparing for a groundbreaking court appearance on equal protection for both sexes.
On my evening walks with my yellow lab, I often visit the various Pauli Murray murals that adorn the city. If you ever make it to Durham, be sure to make a pilgrimage to the Pauli Murray House. And if you are planning a trip here next year, the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice is scheduled to open sometime in 2020. Needless to say, Murray was as an impressive individual as they come. Per Wikipedia:
As a lawyer, Murray argued for civil rights and women’s rights. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Chief Counsel Thurgood Marshall called Murray’s 1950 book, States’ Laws on Race and Color, the ‘bible’ of the civil rights movement. Murray served on the 1961–1963 Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, being appointed by John F. Kennedy.In 1966 she was a co-founder of the National Organization for Women.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg named Murray as a coauthor of a brief on the 1971 case Reed v. Reed, in recognition of her pioneering work on gender discrimination. This case articulated the ‘failure of the courts to recognize sex discrimination for what it is and its common features with other types of arbitrary discrimination.’ Murray held faculty or administrative positions at the Ghana School of Law, Benedict College, and Brandeis University.
A few weeks after I moved to the city, The Bulls of Durham website featured Murray on her birthdate anniversary date in its post “Pauli Murray: Activist, True Feminist, Writer, Lawyer, LBGTQ Trailblazer, Priest, Bull City Saint.” It is the best brief read on Murray I’ve come across by a local writer. I highly recommend you take a few minutes to check it out. Here is great excerpt:
Pauli Murray had an incurable case of can’t-stop-won’t-stop. In March 1940, Pauli was arrested for refusing to sit in the back of the bus in Virginia, some 15 years before Rosa Parks put her foot down and inspired the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Pauli was always ahead of her time.
The following year she enrolled at her father’s Alma Mater Howard University to follow her dream of becoming a civil rights lawyer. She graduated with a degree in law and wanted to further enrich her studies in law at Harvard. She applied and was awarded the prestigious Rosenwald Fellowship, only to be rejected shortly after the award was announces based on gender.
She went on to the California Boalt School of Law where she completed her master’s thesis, The Right to Equal Opportunity in Employment. She would later be a champion in making sure ‘sex’ was included as a protected category in the 1964 Civil Rights act.
Last night, on my evening walk, I stumbled upon a vigil organized by March for our Lives Durham. Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. It was also the one-year anniversary of the mass-shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 were killed and another 17 injured.
It is so inspiring to witness these type of rallies, organized by students, taking place throughout the country. Last weekend, I attended the 13th annual HKonJ People’s Assembly and Moral March on Raleigh. As WRAL, a local news station, reported this week:
Saturday’s protesters planned to push for the repeal of House Bill 2, which limits LGBT rights and which bathrooms transgender people can use. Other topics included opposition to gerrymandering in redistricting and to the repeal of former President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul as well as how they feel about the current administration.
The News and Observer’s Virginia Bridges caught some of this activist action as well:
The Rev. William J. Barber II, former state NAACP president and founder of the national Poor People’s Campaign, said any society that carries out policies that hurt families and children is a failed society.
Thousands of North Carolina children are homeless, Barber said. Others don’t have health insurance, or have parents who work multiple jobs but still don’t make a living wage.
The fight has to continue, Barber said, as North Carolina’s actions have inspired others. ‘I need to know that y’all ain’t going to quit,’ Barber said. ‘We can’t turn around. We can’t stand down. We can’t stop because it doesn’t have to be this way. We must fight until the children are well.’
I believe somewhere up above Pauli Murray was smiling down on the thousands of people who marched from Raleigh’s Memorial Auditorium to the old Capitol Building. Her incurable case of can’t stop won’t stop seemed to permeate throughout Saturday’s crowd.
Last night, on Valentine’s Day, I witnessed a vigil, led by students, to remember those we lost only one year ago and to inspire each other to press forward in changing the state’s legislation. And sure enough, Rep. Marcia Morey (D-Durham) announced during this rally that she had just filed House Bill 86, the Gun Violence Protection Act, which she acknowledged wouldn’t likely pass, but that she and her colleagues will keep pressing forward with these type of bills and actions.
When I went to the Carolina Theatre to see On the Basis of Sex a few weeks ago, a group of teenagers offered me some of their extra tickets they had to the show. I was rather impressed such a large group of teenagers had gathered to watch this type of movie on a Friday night. And just last weekend, I had the opportunity to see the heart of Raleigh captured by the crowds, and filled with young people taking to the streets to express their concerns.
Black History Month is not just a tribute to the past because discrimination is not just a memory of the past. Black History Month is an annual call to action for us to contribute to the movement. I hope you remain inspired year-round by past civil rights icons such as Pauli Murray, but also by current marches, vigils, and rallies taking place throughout the country.
Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn.
Celebrating The Life Of The Late Pauli Murray, Activist, NAACP Chief Counsel, And Her ‘Incurable Case of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop’ curated from Above the Law
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