(Image source: Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute.)
I remember the first time I heard her name. It was 1989 and I was helping out in the little church where she had last been Vicar, Church of the Holy Apostles, Baltimore, MD. She had died of pancreatic cancer in 1985 and the people there were still deeply grieving her loss.
It was after mass and I was hanging out in the sacristy with the Altar Guild. I've learned, over the years, that the "small talk" you make with the Holy Servants of the Altar can tell you big things about the church and Her people.
"She was a force of nature," one of the Altar Guild Ladies said, with unmistakable sadness as she filled a cruet with water at the sink. "A real force of nature. The Holy Spirit just hung around her bony shoulders like Superman's cape."
She began to rattle off her accomplishments. "Oh sure, you heard all about those lunch counter sit-ins that the NAACP organized? Huh! Well, Mother Pauli was doing that in DC years -Decades! - before it occurred to The Boys that it would be a good strategy for a non-violent demonstration."
She shook her head and sighed, "That was just the first of a lot of firsts. First Black woman law school graduate at Howard University, first Black person to earn a JSD (Doctor of the Science of Law) degree from Yale Law School, first Black woman ordained as an Episcopal priest."
She laughed, "You didn't want to say 'no' to Mother Pauli. Huh! She'd just find a way to do it anyway, even if she never got credit for it." She dried her hands and said, "I'll bet you didn't know that she wrote the legal argument for Thurgood Marshall's Brown v Topeka Kansas Supreme Court case that stopped segregation - well, made it illegal, anyway."
I later learned that Murray’s 746-page book, “States’ Laws on Race and Color,” written in 1948, was a definitive work used for decades by jurists and civil rights activists. Marshall called Murray’s book “the bible for civil rights lawyers.”
Her name was also listed as a co-author on the brief argued by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1971 in Reed v. Reed. Years later Ginsburg said, “We knew when we wrote that brief that we were standing on her shoulders.”
"You know," I said, "with all due respect, I went to a very progressive seminary in The Episcopal Church. I'm sorry - I apologize - but, I've never heard of this woman before."
"Hmph," she said, looking me right in the eye with steely brown eyes, like a mother about to teach her child an important lesson in life. She shifted her ample weight, tilted her head to one side, slung her cleaning cloth over her shoulder, and said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "I wonder why that is?"
I got it. Instantly. But, I didn't know just how deep that prejudice ran. It was one of the first times I was aware of the importance and the impact of "intersectionality" and the complexity of issues that make up our total identity.
"You gotta read her book, "Proud Shoes." More people need to. But they won't. Nobody cares. Well, none but Jesus."
"Look," she said, "up there on the shelves. See it? You can't have it - not even borrow it - but they have several copies at the Baltimore Public Library. Some of us made sure of that. And, right next to it is her other book. See? "Song in a Weary Throat". Get that one, too, when you're at the library."
As I looked at the shelf, not only were her two books there but also a few books of her poetry. There was also a three-ring binder of some of her sermons and a pamphlet she, Pauli, had put together which provided instructions on how a poor, inner-city congregation could make its own Afro-centric vestments out of sheets and pillowcases and napkins, trimmed with Kinte cloth.
As I remember, there were also handwritten notes of things Pauli felt were important to include, like the name and contact information of the woman in Baltimore who could get Kinte cloth for you inexpensively.
I realized that that bookshelf was a little shrine in memory of Mother Pauli. There were several books and religious symbols - mostly African-themed - that had probably been in her office and left by the family as keepsakes for the congregation.
She moved closer to me and, as she spoke, I felt her hand at my back. I knew that not only did this woman think that "Mother Pauli" was important enough for her to take the time out of her day to teach this newly ordained White girl something about this Giant of Justice, but she also thought I was worth it.
I got the clear sense that this woman was telling me parts of the story of Pauli Murray in the hopes that I might be inspired - or, at least curious - to know more. And maybe, just maybe, I would be able to tell people about her and the work she had done, so that Pauli would eventually earn her place in history.
I felt awash in gratitude but I also understood the responsibility I was being given. I've tried very hard, all these many years later, not to let her down. What I didn't know - couldn't know at the time - was the resistance I would get from people who would rather just let her name collect dust like the books on the shelves in the sacristy of that old, inner-city Episcopal church.
Back in the day, nobody said the word "lesbian". Even gay men and lesbian women had a hard time saying the actual "L-word". But, to be Black and female and lesbian? Well, that was all just a bit too much for some folks.
It wasn't until a sister priest who was also Black pulled me over and told me about her "gender confusion issues" that I got the full picture. "You mean, she was a dyke?" I said, using the only language I had at the time for masculine-looking women.
"Yeah, I guess that's what you'd call it," she said, deeply embarrassed. "I mean, it was more than that, you know? I don't know how to explain it. It was more than just being gay. I think . . . well, I don't know, but I think . . . well, let's just say that I think, sometimes, she got confused, being a woman in a man's world."
Years - decades - later, I would come to understand that Pauli Murray was what we would call today "non-binary" and "gender fluid." I came to understand that she suffered from the same sexism as writer Zora Neale Hurston, whose brilliant work was deeply controversial in her community because it was feared that her portrayal of Southern Black dialects and folkways out of context furthered racist stereotypes.
I also understood that the same homophobia that denied the brilliant strategic and organizational skills of Bayard Rustin, the principal architect of The March on Washington, and the brilliance of author and essayist James Baldwin also tried to deny Pauli Murray her well-deserved place in American history.
The truth will have out, and their brilliance is now embraced and their stories are being told. I believe that is due, at least in part, to the brilliant work of Black authors like Kelly Brown Douglas who, in her book, "Sexuality and the Black Church," suggests that issues such as homophobia and sexism in the Black church and community are clearly a response to the virulent and dominant White exploitation of Black sexuality.
Today, we have the "alphabet soup" of inclusion: LGBTQIA+++. Today, we continue to work on the racism and sexism that is in the very air we breathe. Today, we continue to work on the unrelenting prejudice against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
Today, movies and documentaries about James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin, and Pauli Murray are made and viewed widely. Today, Pauli Murray - the woman who celebrated her first Eucharist at the altar in the same chapel where her grandmother, then a slave, was baptized - is celebrated and remembered in the Lesser Feasts and Fasts on July 1. (Imagine!)
But, without the foundational, brilliant, courageous, persistent, tenacious, and resilient work of people like Pauli Murray, we would not be where we are today.
I saw a meme on BlueSky the other day that I think, if Pauli were alive today, she, herself, might have authored it. It said,
"You can not take the DEI out of Imgao Dei."
"Hope is a song in a weary throat," wrote Pauli in one of the first poems of hers I ever read in that raggedy, broken-down old sacristy in that inner-city church in Baltimore, MD.
It's more important, now more than ever, to find our voices and sing out the hope we know in Jesus. And, I'll say to you what that wonderful Altar Guild Lady said to me at Holy Apostles Church, so many decades ago, "And, why do you think that is?"
I hope something good happens to you today.
Bom dia. NB: I'm going to say this here, again, and I'll keep repeating it: Black History is American History. We need Black History not for Black people but for White people who have been seriously impoverished and do not know or have an appreciation for the contributions Black people have made to American History. We know even less of the Black women who have made enormous contributions at equally enormous cost. So, please, White people: read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest as much information as you can during Black History month, that it may inspire you to continue to learn all the rest of the months of the year and all the days of your life. Especially in these days of the attempted elimination of DEI.
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