Liberating God, we thank you for the steadfast courage of your servant Pauli Murray, who fought long and well: Unshackle us from bonds of prejudice and fear so that we show forth your reconciling love and true freedom, which you revealed through your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
On July 1, the Episcopal Church celebrates the feast of Pauli Murray, civil rights activist, lawyer, poet, priest. In our church, Pauli Murray is known as the first African American woman to be ordained to the priesthood, but her boundary-breaking legacy expands far beyond the fight for women’s ordination. As a lawyer, Pauli Murray’s work had a powerful impact in the cause of women’s rights and civil 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 Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, and in 1966, she was a co-founder of the National Organization for Women. Murray taught new generations of legal practitioners and scholars, serving in faculty or administrative positions at the Ghana School of Law, Benedict College, and Brandeis University.
In 1977, Pauli Murray became the first black woman to be ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. In her priesthood and in her poetry, Murray offers a vision of the healing of the world that looks upon the wounds of history with honest and open eyes, that laments that which is broken in human beings together, and that yet sings God’s grace and hope for new creation, a new humanity.
This Sunday, July 2, we celebrate her legacy.
Here are a number of resources to learn more about Pauli Murray:
The Pauli Murray Project, based in North Carolina, offers a wide variety of resources, but my favorite is the online exhibit: Imp, Crusader, Dude, Priest.
Celebrate the feast day on July 1 at 7 pm (ET) with the Union of Black Episcopalians from St. Titus Episcopal Church in North Carolina. Tune in on Facebook Live.
Read some of the poetry of Dark Testament: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/pauli-murray.
Learn about the complexity of identity in Pauli Murray’s life in this article from The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/the-many-lives-of-pauli-murray
