[Durham INC] Author-activist's landmark home cleaned up (N&O)

[John Schelp]

Author-activist's landmark home cleaned up
Virginia Bridges, News & Observer, 7 Nov 2010

About 30 volunteers gathered in the West End on Saturday hoping to put a new shine on a fading landmark, the childhood home of one of the city's most notable residents.

Layers of debris left from homeless squatters covered the dirty carpets in Pauli Murray's former home at 906 Carroll St. About 9 a.m., local residents, college students, and other volunteers started peeling off the boards on the windows, bagging the mess strewn across the floors, and stripping layers of carpet that covered old hardwood stairs Murray mentioned in her book "Proud Shoes: The story of an American Family."

"We have been working together since 2001 to tell the stories of these communities, and this is really one of the biggest stories we want to tell," said Barbara Lau, director of Duke University's Human Rights Center Pauli Murray Project. [http://paulimurrayproject.org/]

"We want more people to know about her. We want this place to become a place where people can learn about her work, her activism for fighting for human rights for everyone."

For years, Murray's life and work appeared to be overlooked, like those of other African-American women, Lau said.

But as the nation expanded its list of historical characters, attention has turned to Murray's story. It included being denied admission in the 1930s to graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill because of her race and to Harvard University because of her sex. She went on to become a civil rights lawyer, an author and storyteller, a poet, and the first African-American woman ordained in the Episcopal Church...

Full article... http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/11/07/786906/author-activists-home-cleaned.html