Pauli Murray was a Black, gender queer lawyer, poet, legal theorist and Episcopal priest. S/He was a radical and a visionary who often operated behind the scenes but left their mark on the labor, civil rights and women’s movement.
Murray was always ahead of their time. S/he was arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus in Richmond before the Montgomery Bus Boycott took hold. S/he successfully organized sit-ins to desegregate restaurants in Washington, D.C. Murray was part of Thurgood Marshall’s legal team to desegregate schools. S/he embodied intersectionality in both life and scholarship decades before Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term.
Murray started as a labor organizer but fought in the realms of civil rights and gender equality. Throughout their career Murray was always striving to do more. S/he not only helped Betty Friedan found the National Organization for Women, they were also the legal genius behind the strategy to apply the same reasoning used to attack race discrimination to undermine gender discrimination. This idea was taken up by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who successfully convinced the Supreme Court that the Equal Protection Clause applies to women.
Murray was a visionary who insisted on being their whole self- gender queer, poet, and priest. S/He was the manifestation of low ego/high impact and was ahead of her time.
