Pauli Murray lived in a world that gave lip service to rights for all, but which failed to provide them to people of color, women, and trans and gay communities. She called attention to these injustices in their protests through civil disobedience, legal work, and ordained ministry. By breaking barriers and confronting conventions, Pauli’s acts of protest were true to the teachings of Jesus Christ and America’s founding mothers and fathers. Her struggle benefits us today through recent Supreme Court decisions, particularly in the support she directly provided for American trailblazers Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Thurgood Marshall, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

In 1941 Pauli refused to take a broken seat at the back of a bus in Virginia. Holding firm that all are created equal, she took a seat reserved for “whites only” and was arrested. As a revolutionary she protested indignity. As a patriot she fought relentlessly that fairness should be a common denominator accorded to all Americans. In creating a more perfect union, without the advantages of the white, male, straight, and propertied framers, Pauli Murray strove to extend essential rights to all Americans without qualification.

Pauli Murray speaking at American Council on Human Rights Workshop, New York City, 1952. Courtesy of Harvard U. Schlesinger Library