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Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray
In this definitive biography, Rosalind Rosenberg offers a poignant portrait of Pauli Murray, who played pivotal roles in both the modern civil rights and women's movements.
A mixed-race orphan, Murray grew up in segregated North Carolina before escaping to New York, where she attended Hunter College and became a labor activist in the 1930s. When she applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee, she was rejected because of her race. She went on to graduate first in her class at Howard Law School, only to be rejected for graduate study again at Harvard University this time on account of her sex. Undaunted, Murray forged a singular career in the law. In the 1950s, her legal scholarship helped Thurgood Marshall challenge segregation head-on in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.
When appointed by Eleanor Roosevelt to the President's Commission on the Status of Women in 1962, she advanced the idea of Jane Crow, arguing that the same reasons used to condemn race discrimination could be used to battle gender discrimination. In 1965, she became the first African American to earn a JSD from Yale Law School and the following year persuaded Betty Friedan to found an NAACP for women, which became NOW.
A mixed-race orphan, Murray grew up in segregated North Carolina before escaping to New York, where she attended Hunter College and became a labor activist in the 1930s. When she applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee, she was rejected because of her race. She went on to graduate first in her class at Howard Law School, only to be rejected for graduate study again at Harvard University this time on account of her sex. Undaunted, Murray forged a singular career in the law. In the 1950s, her legal scholarship helped Thurgood Marshall challenge segregation head-on in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.
When appointed by Eleanor Roosevelt to the President's Commission on the Status of Women in 1962, she advanced the idea of Jane Crow, arguing that the same reasons used to condemn race discrimination could be used to battle gender discrimination. In 1965, she became the first African American to earn a JSD from Yale Law School and the following year persuaded Betty Friedan to found an NAACP for women, which became NOW.
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First published April 3, 2017
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About the author
Rosalind Rosenberg
8 books15 followersRosalind Rosenberg is Professor of History Emerita at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century, Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think About Sex and Politics, and Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 101 reviews
July 10, 2017
Jane Crow is a very well written and researched book on the life of lawyer, activist, writer, and priest Pauli Murray. Pauli Murray is a person I believe everyone should get to know especially if they are not familiar with her like I was when I started reading this book. Her research played an important role in developing the legal argument to challenge racial discrimination in Brown vs. Board of Education. Murray also coined the term “Jane Crow” which challenged discrimination against women on the same lines as racial discrimination under Jim Crow laws. She was friends and colleagues with notable people such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Thurgood Marshall, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The most interesting aspect of her life was her struggle with her gender identity. Murray thought that she should have been a man and the author documents numerous occasions throughout Murray’s life where she had to reckon with her identity. The book is so well written that at times I felt like I personally knew Murray, this is probably a result of the many diaries and notes that Murray kept throughout her life. The biggest takeaway from this book is that throughout her life Murray was a fighter. She fought racism, sexism, and the patriarchy within the law, society, and in the church. More people should learn about Murray and I hope a film is made on her life at some point.
I end with one episode from the book that shows the type of person that Murray was. When Murray was a law student at Howard University she was one of a few women students enrolled. One day one of her professors made a comment that he did not know why women were in law school but since they were there the men in the school would have to put up with them. “Shocked and humiliated, Murray did not respond, but the professor ‘had just guaranteed’, she grimly remembered, ‘that I would become the top student in his class’.”
I end with one episode from the book that shows the type of person that Murray was. When Murray was a law student at Howard University she was one of a few women students enrolled. One day one of her professors made a comment that he did not know why women were in law school but since they were there the men in the school would have to put up with them. “Shocked and humiliated, Murray did not respond, but the professor ‘had just guaranteed’, she grimly remembered, ‘that I would become the top student in his class’.”
June 16, 2017
Pauli Murray is the person that coined the term “Jane Crow”, and was the first to legally address the twin oppressions of color and gender. I had seen her name mentioned in many places, but this is the first time I’ve read her story. Thank you to Net Galley and Oxford University Press for the opportunity to read it free in exchange for this honest review. This biography is for sale now.
Murray was born in North Carolina and was a labor activist during the turbulent 1930s. She was academically gifted and hardworking, but tormented by the issue of gender. 100 years ago, in the time and place into which fate dropped her, there was no recognition of trans people, and so her sense of herself (the pronoun she used) was that surely there was some unseen physical aspect to her body that must be male. She searched high and low for a surgeon that would perform exploratory surgery to discover whether she had an undescended testicle or some other material explanation to explain why she was convinced that she was actually male. It hurts to think about it. Those born after the early-to-mid-20th century cannot comprehend how the suggestion that gender could be binary was seen, and Murray was a devout Christian as well, and became an ordained Episcopal priest. By the time trans people gained respect from a significant percentage of Americans, Murray was no longer here.
Despite the misery and confusion that was inherent in such a life, Murray was prolific. She was declined a place at the University of North Carolina because of her race, and later denied a place at Harvard Law because of her gender. She graduated at the top of her class at Howard Law, the only woman in her class. Later she would be largely responsible for inclusion of the word “gender” in the title VII in 1964. Those of us that have benefited from that law—and there are a lot of us—tip our hats to her memory in gratitude.
Rosenberg has done a fine job in telling us about Murray. Her documentation is flawless and her narrative clear. At times—particularly in the beginning, before Murray’s career really catches fire—it’s a trifle dry, but I would prefer a clear, scholarly, linear narrative such as this one, over an exciting but sensationalized, less well documented telling any day of the week.
Those interested in the American Civil Rights movement and the history of the women’s rights movement in the USA should get this book and read it. Even if used primarily as a reference tool, it’s an indispensable resource, particularly to those with an interest in legal matters relating to discrimination and equity.
Murray was born in North Carolina and was a labor activist during the turbulent 1930s. She was academically gifted and hardworking, but tormented by the issue of gender. 100 years ago, in the time and place into which fate dropped her, there was no recognition of trans people, and so her sense of herself (the pronoun she used) was that surely there was some unseen physical aspect to her body that must be male. She searched high and low for a surgeon that would perform exploratory surgery to discover whether she had an undescended testicle or some other material explanation to explain why she was convinced that she was actually male. It hurts to think about it. Those born after the early-to-mid-20th century cannot comprehend how the suggestion that gender could be binary was seen, and Murray was a devout Christian as well, and became an ordained Episcopal priest. By the time trans people gained respect from a significant percentage of Americans, Murray was no longer here.
Despite the misery and confusion that was inherent in such a life, Murray was prolific. She was declined a place at the University of North Carolina because of her race, and later denied a place at Harvard Law because of her gender. She graduated at the top of her class at Howard Law, the only woman in her class. Later she would be largely responsible for inclusion of the word “gender” in the title VII in 1964. Those of us that have benefited from that law—and there are a lot of us—tip our hats to her memory in gratitude.
Rosenberg has done a fine job in telling us about Murray. Her documentation is flawless and her narrative clear. At times—particularly in the beginning, before Murray’s career really catches fire—it’s a trifle dry, but I would prefer a clear, scholarly, linear narrative such as this one, over an exciting but sensationalized, less well documented telling any day of the week.
Those interested in the American Civil Rights movement and the history of the women’s rights movement in the USA should get this book and read it. Even if used primarily as a reference tool, it’s an indispensable resource, particularly to those with an interest in legal matters relating to discrimination and equity.
January 14, 2019
A well-written, fascinating biography of a completely underrated pioneering legal scholar, theologian, journalist and poet. Amazing that the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray laid the groundwork for Ruth Bader Ginsburg's legal work to advance the rights of women and was the first Black feminist in American culture to elevate the notion of multiple oppressions facing Black women while also centering her life's work around explaining and describing why those oppressions were important to distinguish from the problems faced by Black men.
April 22, 2019
This is a dry, academic biography of a fascinating, little-known but impressive civil rights activist. Born in 1910, Pauli Murray was a mixed-race woman who today would be considered a transgender man, but during her lifetime this was a secret kept from all but her closest friends. After growing up in the segregated South, she became an early nonviolent civil rights activist; became a lawyer despite being rejected by one school for her race and another for her sex; authored some of the foundational legal scholarship that Ruth Bader Ginsburg relied upon heavily in briefing the first successful women’s rights case before the Supreme Court; helped found NOW, though she later broke with the organization over its prioritizing professional white women’s issues; was way ahead of her time in writing about what today we call intersectionality, recognizing how race, gender, poverty, and other disadvantages compound one another; became a tenured professor when almost no black women achieved this status; and finally gave that up to attend seminary and become the first black female Episcopal priest. She was also an author, whose poetry was read at Martin Luther King Jr.’s memorial service, and who wrote an excellent book, Proud Shoes, about her complicated family history.
It was an eventful life, to be sure, and Murray also suffered more than her share of setbacks. She struggled throughout most of her life to find decently paid employment, and never stayed at the same job more than five years. She struggled with her gender identity and sexuality (insisting that she wasn’t a lesbian because she was only attracted to feminine, heterosexual women). She struggled with mental health issues that sound a lot like bipolar, and was even involuntarily committed at one point, but this apparently cleared up after she finally had thyroid surgery. She had a complicated family situation, being orphaned young and raised separately from her siblings, then later in life becoming responsible for her elderly aunts – whose insistence that she return to North Carolina to visit required her to ride segregated buses, which at one point led to her arrest.
You would think no author could make this story boring, but Rosenberg kind of does. Now, it’s fair to say I wanted a narrative – the story of Pauli Murray – and Rosenberg gave me facts. Meticulously researched facts, no doubt about it, but still dry facts, with emotional content only occasionally referenced. There are a lot of names, dates and organizations in this book, a lot of details about Murray’s career, but no emotional core or throughline. Here’s an example:
Thacher Clarke, Murray’s young friend from Paul, Weiss, homed in on the problem of private employment discrimination when Murray sought her comment on Murray’s Fourteenth Amendment proposal. Thacher was by then married to the Reverend John Anderson, whom she had met in 1959 at the founding conference of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity (ESCRU), an organization aimed at ending race discrimination in the church. By 1962, Thacher was a mother on unpaid leave from a job she had taken at the New York State Division of Human Rights. She agreed with Murray’s arguments in her Fourteenth Amendment memorandum, but her work at the Division of Human Rights persuaded her that the bigger problem was private employers. New York, along with more than a score of northern and western states, had passed a Fair Employment Practice law in the years since World War II. As of 1964, however, the state still allowed discrimination in employment on the basis of gender; indeed, only two states – Wisconsin and Hawaii – barred private businesses from discriminating against women. Anderson urged Murray to broaden her equal rights efforts to encompass sex discrimination in the private sector.
Eh, okay. I learned from this book, but it was a long slog. I’d love to see someone write a popular biography of Murray though – there is so much great material!
It was an eventful life, to be sure, and Murray also suffered more than her share of setbacks. She struggled throughout most of her life to find decently paid employment, and never stayed at the same job more than five years. She struggled with her gender identity and sexuality (insisting that she wasn’t a lesbian because she was only attracted to feminine, heterosexual women). She struggled with mental health issues that sound a lot like bipolar, and was even involuntarily committed at one point, but this apparently cleared up after she finally had thyroid surgery. She had a complicated family situation, being orphaned young and raised separately from her siblings, then later in life becoming responsible for her elderly aunts – whose insistence that she return to North Carolina to visit required her to ride segregated buses, which at one point led to her arrest.
You would think no author could make this story boring, but Rosenberg kind of does. Now, it’s fair to say I wanted a narrative – the story of Pauli Murray – and Rosenberg gave me facts. Meticulously researched facts, no doubt about it, but still dry facts, with emotional content only occasionally referenced. There are a lot of names, dates and organizations in this book, a lot of details about Murray’s career, but no emotional core or throughline. Here’s an example:
Thacher Clarke, Murray’s young friend from Paul, Weiss, homed in on the problem of private employment discrimination when Murray sought her comment on Murray’s Fourteenth Amendment proposal. Thacher was by then married to the Reverend John Anderson, whom she had met in 1959 at the founding conference of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity (ESCRU), an organization aimed at ending race discrimination in the church. By 1962, Thacher was a mother on unpaid leave from a job she had taken at the New York State Division of Human Rights. She agreed with Murray’s arguments in her Fourteenth Amendment memorandum, but her work at the Division of Human Rights persuaded her that the bigger problem was private employers. New York, along with more than a score of northern and western states, had passed a Fair Employment Practice law in the years since World War II. As of 1964, however, the state still allowed discrimination in employment on the basis of gender; indeed, only two states – Wisconsin and Hawaii – barred private businesses from discriminating against women. Anderson urged Murray to broaden her equal rights efforts to encompass sex discrimination in the private sector.
Eh, okay. I learned from this book, but it was a long slog. I’d love to see someone write a popular biography of Murray though – there is so much great material!
July 10, 2017
If for no other reason, read this because Pauli Murray is a name we all should know, respect, and honor as one of the most influential, under-recognized Americans of the 20th c.
Rosenberg's biography is thoughtful, comprehensive, and unafraid to tackle subjects which are still evolving before our eyes, such as trans rights and separatism vs. integration. She dares readers to think more deeply about the history of human rights in the United States, particularly with respect to its failures (despite tremendous forces of leadership such as Murray) to insist on embracing intersections.
As humans of the 21st c. we have much to learn from Murray, and reading this book will help us begin to fill her shoes and keep on walking.
Rosenberg's biography is thoughtful, comprehensive, and unafraid to tackle subjects which are still evolving before our eyes, such as trans rights and separatism vs. integration. She dares readers to think more deeply about the history of human rights in the United States, particularly with respect to its failures (despite tremendous forces of leadership such as Murray) to insist on embracing intersections.
As humans of the 21st c. we have much to learn from Murray, and reading this book will help us begin to fill her shoes and keep on walking.
March 2, 2020
Reading other reviews, I'm starting to feel like I'm crazy for not digging this book. Pauli Murray is a fascinating individual who should be applauded and revered. Pauli's life, goals, and position in Civil Rights History is unquestionable.
HOWEVER! This book is beyond boring. Its narrative is all over the place. Its prose is akin to a law school history book and while I'm sure it's research and attention to detail is incredibly accurate, it makes for a baffling and frustrating read. Murray's tendency to jump from place to place, job to job, is realistic to someone with so large a scope of life, but makes for a hard to digest narrative. The writer really needed to find a more concise and interesting way to tell Pauli's story. Not the beat for beat, fact by fact, depisition manner she chose.
I think Pauli's story is more interesting than this book makes it out to be.
HOWEVER! This book is beyond boring. Its narrative is all over the place. Its prose is akin to a law school history book and while I'm sure it's research and attention to detail is incredibly accurate, it makes for a baffling and frustrating read. Murray's tendency to jump from place to place, job to job, is realistic to someone with so large a scope of life, but makes for a hard to digest narrative. The writer really needed to find a more concise and interesting way to tell Pauli's story. Not the beat for beat, fact by fact, depisition manner she chose.
I think Pauli's story is more interesting than this book makes it out to be.
June 2, 2022
I think this will take a couple of listens to get to grips with as there is a lot packed into it but a very interesting biography of a US civil rights activist.
July 30, 2017
Excellent in-depth bio of the Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray. Although I was somewhat familiar with her story, Rosenberg has written a fascinating critical and very personal presentation of her life and her life's work. The impact of her life on so many critical areas of African American history including law, sociology, theology, race, gender, etc was an eye-opener for me. As for too many Black women, her life was one of ups and downs, highs and lows including a life-long struggle with her own sexual orientation but she persevered. Her coining of the term "Jane Crow" to describe the gender/sexuality discrimination faced by women of color and her insistence that gender/sexuality must be included with any discussion on race as well as class mark her as a womanist forerunner.
July 7, 2021
I loved this book. We’ve been following the life of Pauli Murray. We visited her home and attended her childhood church in Durham, NC. What an amazing woman and story.
October 22, 2022
I really enjoyed this book. Pauli Murray was a woman, who deeply felt as if she was a man. She desired relationships with heterosexual females who would view her as the man in the relationship. She was highly influential and had significant relationships with Eleanor Roosevelt, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall. She coined the term Jane Crow, to indicate not only the struggles living as a black person, but difficulty living as a female.
June 16, 2017
A colleague and I started a work book club and this was our first selection. Pauli was so ahead of her time, it's unreal. Her personal identity struggles are relevant, and her dominance in the ideology of intersectionality is really inspiring. I learned so much, but the book can get pretty dense at times. Her meetings with Eleanor Roosevelt and James Baldwin and the deep dive into BedStuy real estate in the 1950s lightened it up and were particularly fun to read about. She is such a hero, and I'm thrilled to share her story around my office.
I do have to note: the pressing is on gorgeous paper but it weighs a literal ton. Oxford should reprint for commuters or expect a majority of sales to go to ereaders. It's worth the weight, but just beware.
I do have to note: the pressing is on gorgeous paper but it weighs a literal ton. Oxford should reprint for commuters or expect a majority of sales to go to ereaders. It's worth the weight, but just beware.
February 6, 2019
A brilliant visionary overlooked during her time.
I admire Pauli Murray. She paved the way for other Social Justice litigators and Civil Rights activists to achieve equality in this country w/ her 14th amendment strategy. Yet she was not applauded or appreciated during her time. It saddens me that she did not live to see the recognition, admiration and respect she finally deserves by the 21st century civil rights lawyers, grassroots activists, political science students, historians, etc.
I wish I had known her during her lifetime. To me she's Epic.
I admire Pauli Murray. She paved the way for other Social Justice litigators and Civil Rights activists to achieve equality in this country w/ her 14th amendment strategy. Yet she was not applauded or appreciated during her time. It saddens me that she did not live to see the recognition, admiration and respect she finally deserves by the 21st century civil rights lawyers, grassroots activists, political science students, historians, etc.
I wish I had known her during her lifetime. To me she's Epic.
March 11, 2018
The Rev. Dr. Murray was such a trailblazer and had such an interesting life, but this telling was really dry. Part of this may be because Murray's sister "sanitized" her papers, so the source material to really do this story justice may not be readily available.
This book is worth reading because its subject is important and under-acknowledged. But the definitive Murray biography may have to wait for more time to pass and/or more material to surface.
This book is worth reading because its subject is important and under-acknowledged. But the definitive Murray biography may have to wait for more time to pass and/or more material to surface.
Read
January 7, 2017Review forthcoming in Publishers Weekly.
August 19, 2021
So, the book's a bit scholarly, which is both to its credit (it's remarkably thorough, footnoted throughout, with primary source quotations and information) and slows it down a bit (there are a LOT of details, all of which are useful, interesting, and relevant, but it's not speedy reading). Rosenberg does an exceptionally good job, especially early in the book, of providing context. We learn, for example, not just that Murray's aunts are poor, but that they're poor despite full teaching careers and deep commitments to education because of the unfair salaries and inadequate pensions provided for Black teachers. And we see the machinations that led to the lower salaries and pensions and upended what had been relatively equal remuneration for white and black educators. Again and again throughout the telling of Murray's story, Rosenberg tells us how deliberate and endemic the obstacles she faces are. Rosenberg airs people's shocking expressions of racism and sexism and makes us see how Black women bore - and bear - the double burden in both social and, perhaps more importantly, practical ways that affect their ability to be independent, to have voice and agency, to ensure their own and their families' security, and to achieve even the sparest quality of life.
But we see all this through Murray's story of (mostly) overcoming it. Murray, it turns out, was a phenom - she was responsible, in part, for some of the most important substantive and legal progress made in the 20th century on women's and Black Americans' rights in the US. She also was one of the first people to identify intersectionality, if not with that term; indeed, her term was "Jane Crow."
Working her way through what appear to be (and for many people were ) the insuperable, overlapping obstacles of systemic racism, classism, and sexism while also overcoming her own internal struggles (as a trans-man before there was even a term for that state of being, as a hothead, and as someone prone to emotional breakdowns), she did the almost impossible: got herself through university, then through law school, then through a PhD program, then onto a faculty with tenure, then into the Episcopal priesthood, all while also literally changing the world with her legal reasoning, her writing, her non-stop pressure on everyone she COULD pressure to change inequitable, discriminatory, racist, sexist systems. She somehow managed to be indomitable, irrepressible, despite the massive emotional and societal challenges she faced. And she racked up a who's who of friends and supporters who clearly recognized how incredible she was and kept finding roles and platforms for her that would amplify her effect.
The book is so strong, but has one major lacuna: an explanation of HOW so many powerful people (including Eleanor Roosevelt) -who helped, supported, and recruited Murray time and again- came to know and respect her as they obviously did. Rosenberg gives us a lot of Murray's flaws, so that we are privy to her frustrations and failures, her collapses, but there's only evidence of - not equal insight into - her remarkable resilience and tenacity, her commitment, her willingness to take massive personal risks, or the initiation and then strengths of her relationships. There's almost the sense that Rosenberg deeply admires, but doesn't like, Murray after combing through all of her personal papers, yet Murray had intensely loyal family and friends (some of the latter in very high places) and Rosenberg just reports on that as almost faits accompli, rather than shedding any light on how it came to be.
In short, though, this is a worthwhile book about an incredible person battling the Goliaths of her day and winning again and again.
But we see all this through Murray's story of (mostly) overcoming it. Murray, it turns out, was a phenom - she was responsible, in part, for some of the most important substantive and legal progress made in the 20th century on women's and Black Americans' rights in the US. She also was one of the first people to identify intersectionality, if not with that term; indeed, her term was "Jane Crow."
Working her way through what appear to be (and for many people were ) the insuperable, overlapping obstacles of systemic racism, classism, and sexism while also overcoming her own internal struggles (as a trans-man before there was even a term for that state of being, as a hothead, and as someone prone to emotional breakdowns), she did the almost impossible: got herself through university, then through law school, then through a PhD program, then onto a faculty with tenure, then into the Episcopal priesthood, all while also literally changing the world with her legal reasoning, her writing, her non-stop pressure on everyone she COULD pressure to change inequitable, discriminatory, racist, sexist systems. She somehow managed to be indomitable, irrepressible, despite the massive emotional and societal challenges she faced. And she racked up a who's who of friends and supporters who clearly recognized how incredible she was and kept finding roles and platforms for her that would amplify her effect.
The book is so strong, but has one major lacuna: an explanation of HOW so many powerful people (including Eleanor Roosevelt) -who helped, supported, and recruited Murray time and again- came to know and respect her as they obviously did. Rosenberg gives us a lot of Murray's flaws, so that we are privy to her frustrations and failures, her collapses, but there's only evidence of - not equal insight into - her remarkable resilience and tenacity, her commitment, her willingness to take massive personal risks, or the initiation and then strengths of her relationships. There's almost the sense that Rosenberg deeply admires, but doesn't like, Murray after combing through all of her personal papers, yet Murray had intensely loyal family and friends (some of the latter in very high places) and Rosenberg just reports on that as almost faits accompli, rather than shedding any light on how it came to be.
In short, though, this is a worthwhile book about an incredible person battling the Goliaths of her day and winning again and again.
November 22, 2020
An incredible life, a tireless champion for the rights of Blacks, women, LGBTQ+, & the poor. Why didn't I learn about her in school, college or in the course of being a reader of Black history until now--in my sixties? A human rights trailblazer, a generation before the NAACP successfully argued the Brown case using the strategy she pioneered & failed with in court a generation earlier. She refused to sit in the segregated seat for Blacks on a bus, was jailed, refused bail & rallied people to the cause of integrating busses 15 years before Rosa Park's action. During WWII, as a law student at Howard University, she advised & taught strategies that came to be known as passive resistance to undergraduates who launched sit-ins that integrated lunch counters DC over a decade before the lunch counter sit-ins of the 1960s. She envisioned, authored & persuaded women's organizations to focus on using the 14th amendment & Title 7 to pursue women's rights instead of the ERA. She was also a co-founder of the National Organization for Women & on its initial board. Ultimately, advocates following her strategy got women added to Civil Rights legislation as a protected group & struck down reams of sexist legislation. She became the first Black women ordained Episcopalian clergy & championed more opportunities for women in the church. She pioneered the first law school in Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana. Barbara Friedan, Eleonor Holmes-Norton & Ruth Bader Ginsburg her mentees. She accomplished all this while fighting the daily obstacles of descrimination against her in jobs, college admissions, housing & battling with her gender identity, Anyone who wants to understand the march of human rights in America needs to understand Pauli Murray & this book is a great introduction.
the concept
the concept
October 29, 2020
It has taken me some time to read this book. Partly because I have little time for anything other than audio so had to squirrel away 10 pages or so before bed whenever I could keep my eyes open. And partly because this is a very dense and richly rewarding biography. Pauli Murray left copious historical notes of her life (and more she 'sanitised' in order that her gender identity remain in death, as cryptic as it had in her life) and Rosalind Rosenberg has excavated that life and sculpted the woman Murray was in great detail. I didn't really want to reach the end. I will miss having Pauli Murray's thoughts in my mind each night now it is done.
I loved this book for Rosenbergs' great retelling skill. I experienced Murray's flaws as I marvelled at her resourceful ingenuity and remarkable foresight. I could weep for what societal structure did not enable her. And how little known she is despite being one of the intellectual giants that so many names we do know, have stood upon the shoulders of.
I'll reflect on her life, work and intersectionality for a long time to come. Thank you Rosalind Rosenberg for your care, meticulous attention to detail and your storytellers gift. A true treasure.
(I call Murray she/her as the pronouns she may have chosen to adopt are unknown. But may have been more like they/them.)
I loved this book for Rosenbergs' great retelling skill. I experienced Murray's flaws as I marvelled at her resourceful ingenuity and remarkable foresight. I could weep for what societal structure did not enable her. And how little known she is despite being one of the intellectual giants that so many names we do know, have stood upon the shoulders of.
I'll reflect on her life, work and intersectionality for a long time to come. Thank you Rosalind Rosenberg for your care, meticulous attention to detail and your storytellers gift. A true treasure.
(I call Murray she/her as the pronouns she may have chosen to adopt are unknown. But may have been more like they/them.)
August 12, 2020
How did I not know about this woman!? As one book group member put it, she is the Forest Gump of the Civil Rights movement. She was at all the key events in one manner or the other. This book is meticulously researched and the writing is very accessible, even to those not in the law field. Pauli Murray led an incredible life amidst many challenges. Definitely worth the read.
January 2, 2022
Thoroughly researched biography of an extraordinary American. I think some episodes of Murray's life could have been drawn with a broader brush to make the text more readable. Personally enjoyed the brief mention of Suzy Post and the Kentucky ACLU. Excellent read for my annual commitment to read at least one biography of a great American.
January 5, 2022
Pauli Murray should be much better known. She has lead a fascinating life and was one of the most influencial civil rights activists and feminist lawyer. Ruth Bader Ginsburg's legal strategy in the 1970ies was based on Murrays insights concerning analogies between race and sex, and her concomitant idea to use the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution in order to outlaw sex discrimination.
February 15, 2019
I LOVED this book. Pauli Murray is such an important historical figure that needs to be talked about way more than they are. I thought that learning about them was amazing and I would recommend this novel to anyone and everyone.
February 11, 2019
3.5 stars rounded up. This is a well-researched account of a fascinating and important attorney/activist. I didn't care for the writing style - biographical suppositions such as "Her therapist probably told her...." really irk the hell out of me - but a worthwhile read.
January 19, 2019
The words “nevertheless, she persisted,” describe Pauli Murray well. She weathered having multiple doors shut in her face on the basis of race, gender, and activism, and she kept her sexual orientation? status? secret from all but a very few close friends. (Today we would most likely refer to her as transgendered.)
Trained as a lawyer at Howard University in the early 1940s her research and paper for a class her senior year provided a springboard for Thurgood Marshall’s and the NAACP’s civil rights litigation in the 1960s. A paper she co-wrote in the 1960s provided one leg of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s litigation on behalf of women’s rights in the 1970s. She served on JFKs Presidential Commission on the Status of women in the 1970s, and also helped found NOW, though she quickly backed away from the organization when she realized that it was going to cater to middle class white women. And in the 1980s she became the first black Episcopal priest in the U.S.
The words that came to mind when I finished this biography were guarded, visionary, and persistent.
I also found it rather depressing reading about all the nay sayers she faced in her life. This may be in part because of the academic orientation of the biography. The narrative also focused primarily on her external accomplishments and lack of the outward trappings of success, and not on her inner life or personal relationships. Personally, I found Julie Phillips' biography of Alice B. Sheldon/James Tiptree more compelling reading.
I had more questions about Murray when I finished the biography than when I started. Questions like, why did she want to become a priest? (her spiritual life and choices are not described in this biography.) How did she withstand the lack of professional success and economic instability of her early adult life? I wondered how a biography that focused on her spiritual life and family and personal relationships, would differ from Jane Crow. Was Murray satisfied with her life? What did she see as her greatest successes?
While Jane Crow is well worth reading, I found it rather dry and incomplete because it doesn’t discuss what motivates Murray and drives her. I hope there will be other biographies that explore these parts of her life.
Trained as a lawyer at Howard University in the early 1940s her research and paper for a class her senior year provided a springboard for Thurgood Marshall’s and the NAACP’s civil rights litigation in the 1960s. A paper she co-wrote in the 1960s provided one leg of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s litigation on behalf of women’s rights in the 1970s. She served on JFKs Presidential Commission on the Status of women in the 1970s, and also helped found NOW, though she quickly backed away from the organization when she realized that it was going to cater to middle class white women. And in the 1980s she became the first black Episcopal priest in the U.S.
The words that came to mind when I finished this biography were guarded, visionary, and persistent.
I also found it rather depressing reading about all the nay sayers she faced in her life. This may be in part because of the academic orientation of the biography. The narrative also focused primarily on her external accomplishments and lack of the outward trappings of success, and not on her inner life or personal relationships. Personally, I found Julie Phillips' biography of Alice B. Sheldon/James Tiptree more compelling reading.
I had more questions about Murray when I finished the biography than when I started. Questions like, why did she want to become a priest? (her spiritual life and choices are not described in this biography.) How did she withstand the lack of professional success and economic instability of her early adult life? I wondered how a biography that focused on her spiritual life and family and personal relationships, would differ from Jane Crow. Was Murray satisfied with her life? What did she see as her greatest successes?
While Jane Crow is well worth reading, I found it rather dry and incomplete because it doesn’t discuss what motivates Murray and drives her. I hope there will be other biographies that explore these parts of her life.
May 15, 2018
Definitely an unsung hero -- of the Civil Rights movement, as a founder of NOW -- and as transgendered before there was such a word.
March 3, 2018
Perfect pick for Black History Month and Women's History month. Appropriately I started reading it in February and finished in March.
Murray should be better known. She was one of the first to recognize that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment could be applied to argue against segregation, an argument that was used by Thurgood Marshall in winning the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that was supposed to have ended segregation in public schools.
Before Rosa Parks, she fought segregated restaurants in Washington DC (where only custom, not law dictated segregation) and was arrested in Virginia for protesting poor seating on an interstate bus.
She recognized the similarities between discrimination on the basis of race and of sex and wanted to use the Equal Protection Clause to fight sex discrimination.
A co-founder, with Betty Friedan, of NOW, from which she had to distance herself because right after its founding, she got a job with the EEOC. She had envisioned NOW as a women's version of the NAACP.
Coverage of her involvement with the women's rights movement provides a better understanding of why the Equal Rights Amendment did not pass. And it wasn't just because of conservatives and anti-feminists. Feminists themselves were divided on the best strategies for fighting for women's equality.
She helped fight discrimination in higher education.
Although LGBTQ rights were mostly under the radar in her day as an issue, she was sensitive to the marginalization of groups beyond blacks and women and spoke out in support of all marginalized groups being treated fairly. In fact, she opposed quotas as a way of atoning for past injustice and thought that focusing on diversity as a positive for groups was the way to fight discrimination without setting quotas. She was probably what would be considered transgender, referred to herself as a boy-girl and more heterosexual male than female but kept her struggle with the part of her identity mostly private; in the days before Renee Richards it simply wasn't something one divulged if one wanted to have a serious career.
And at the age when most people retired, she started a second career by going to divinity school
and fighting for the ordination of women priests in the Episcopal church.
It's also well written so it's not hard to follow.
I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, or what it was like to be transgender 50 years ago.
Murray should be better known. She was one of the first to recognize that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment could be applied to argue against segregation, an argument that was used by Thurgood Marshall in winning the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that was supposed to have ended segregation in public schools.
Before Rosa Parks, she fought segregated restaurants in Washington DC (where only custom, not law dictated segregation) and was arrested in Virginia for protesting poor seating on an interstate bus.
She recognized the similarities between discrimination on the basis of race and of sex and wanted to use the Equal Protection Clause to fight sex discrimination.
A co-founder, with Betty Friedan, of NOW, from which she had to distance herself because right after its founding, she got a job with the EEOC. She had envisioned NOW as a women's version of the NAACP.
Coverage of her involvement with the women's rights movement provides a better understanding of why the Equal Rights Amendment did not pass. And it wasn't just because of conservatives and anti-feminists. Feminists themselves were divided on the best strategies for fighting for women's equality.
She helped fight discrimination in higher education.
Although LGBTQ rights were mostly under the radar in her day as an issue, she was sensitive to the marginalization of groups beyond blacks and women and spoke out in support of all marginalized groups being treated fairly. In fact, she opposed quotas as a way of atoning for past injustice and thought that focusing on diversity as a positive for groups was the way to fight discrimination without setting quotas. She was probably what would be considered transgender, referred to herself as a boy-girl and more heterosexual male than female but kept her struggle with the part of her identity mostly private; in the days before Renee Richards it simply wasn't something one divulged if one wanted to have a serious career.
And at the age when most people retired, she started a second career by going to divinity school
and fighting for the ordination of women priests in the Episcopal church.
It's also well written so it's not hard to follow.
I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, or what it was like to be transgender 50 years ago.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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May 15, 2017A mixed-race orphan, Murray grew up in segregated North Carolina, before escaping to New York, where she attended Hunter College and became a labor activist in the 1930s. When she applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee, she was rejected on account of her race. Deciding to become a lawyer, she graduated first in her class at Howard Law School, only to be rejected for graduate study at Harvard University on account of her sex. Undaunted, Murray forged a singular career in the law.
In the 1950s, her legal scholarship helped Thurgood Marshall challenge segregation frontally in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case. When appointed by Eleanor Roosevelt to the President's Commission on the Status of Women in 1962, she advanced the idea of Jane Crow, arguing that the same reasons used to condemn race discrimination could be used to battle gender discrimination. In 1965, she became the first African American to earn a JSD from Yale Law School and the following year persuaded Betty Friedan to found an NAACP for women, which became NOW.
In the early 1970s, Murray provided Ruth Bader Ginsburg with the argument Ginsburg used to persuade the Supreme Court that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution protects not only blacks but also women--and potentially other minority groups--from discrimination. By that time, Murray was a tenured history professor at Brandeis, a position she left to become the first woman ordained a priest by the Episcopal Church in 1976.
Murray accomplished all this while struggling with issues of identity all her years of maturity. She believed from her youth that she was male and tried unsuccessfully to persuade doctors to give her testosterone or find part of male sexual organs, without any success. During her lifetime no social movement existed to support this transgender identity. She ultimately used her private feelings of being "in-between" to publicly contend that identities are not fixed. Remarkable achievement and a fine solid biography, based on archival records in the Radcfliffe College Schlesinger Library.
In the 1950s, her legal scholarship helped Thurgood Marshall challenge segregation frontally in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case. When appointed by Eleanor Roosevelt to the President's Commission on the Status of Women in 1962, she advanced the idea of Jane Crow, arguing that the same reasons used to condemn race discrimination could be used to battle gender discrimination. In 1965, she became the first African American to earn a JSD from Yale Law School and the following year persuaded Betty Friedan to found an NAACP for women, which became NOW.
In the early 1970s, Murray provided Ruth Bader Ginsburg with the argument Ginsburg used to persuade the Supreme Court that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution protects not only blacks but also women--and potentially other minority groups--from discrimination. By that time, Murray was a tenured history professor at Brandeis, a position she left to become the first woman ordained a priest by the Episcopal Church in 1976.
Murray accomplished all this while struggling with issues of identity all her years of maturity. She believed from her youth that she was male and tried unsuccessfully to persuade doctors to give her testosterone or find part of male sexual organs, without any success. During her lifetime no social movement existed to support this transgender identity. She ultimately used her private feelings of being "in-between" to publicly contend that identities are not fixed. Remarkable achievement and a fine solid biography, based on archival records in the Radcfliffe College Schlesinger Library.
January 7, 2019
Great book, couldn't finish because I only read at work and this is so comprehensive.
June 23, 2018
I really hope Pauli Murray becomes a more well-known figure (there are so many different biopic angles it's ridiculous). Murray was at the forefront of thought in so many intersecting civil rights struggles it feels like we're just catching up now. I hope to get my hands on Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage soon to learn more in Pauli's own words.
July 29, 2017
I do not want to discourage anyone from reading this book. The facts of Pauli's life and all she has accomplished is interesting and I would suggest others to read this book. To me, however, I just was not able to get through this book. But I repeat, I would suggest anyone read this book. The topic matter itself is interesting, it's just the writing, I found, was very hard to get through. This is the kind of book that as time passes, I would try reading again because I do believe that it is worth another shot.
December 12, 2018
Excellent book. I would have given it five stars, but I don't think it quite does justice to Murray's decision to leave her teaching position at Brandeis shortly after getting tenure, only to enroll in an MA program at a theological seminary. I also found a couple of silly editing problems, which are annoying, but forgivable. I imagine Roseberg was just kind of exhausted by the time she got to her final chapter, and Murray's decision to get yet another degree in her 60s must have made sense to Rosenberg, but it makes much less sense to the reader.
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