Pauli Murray

Pauli Murray, born on November twentieth, nineteen ten, in Baltimore, Maryland, was a trailblazing American civil rights activist, legal scholar, and Episcopal priest. Orphaned at a young age, she was raised by her maternal aunt in Durham, North Carolina. At the age of sixteen, she moved to New York City to pursue her education at Hunter College, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in nineteen thirty-three.

Murray's commitment to civil rights was ignited in nineteen forty when she was arrested for sitting in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus. This pivotal moment, along with her involvement in the socialist Workers' Defense League, propelled her towards a career in civil rights law. She enrolled at Howard University School of Law, where she was the only woman in her class, graduating first in nineteen forty-four. Despite her achievements, she faced gender discrimination that prevented her from pursuing post-graduate studies at Harvard University, which she famously termed