[Durham INC] Happy 100th, Pauli Murray (guest column in today's Herald-Sun)

[John Schelp]

Guest column: Like Pauli Murray, we must create our own future
Barbara Lau and Robert Fitzgerald Murray III, Herald-Sun, 20 Nov 2010

Pauli Murray lived an extraordinary life. Born 100 years ago on Nov. 20, Murray was raised in the West End neighborhood surrounded by her accomplished, multi-racial Fitzgerald relatives.

At age 21, Murray's first vote was just 12 years after women won that right. It was a time when Jim Crow laws segregated blacks from whites in all facets of life. Murray described the racism as the "the atmosphere one breathed from day to day, the pervasive irritant, the chronic allergy ... like a deadly snake coiled and ready to strike ... that no matter how neat and clean, how law-abiding, how scrupulous in paying our bills and taxes, it make no essential difference in our place."

-> Free & Open to Everyone: 100th birthday party for Pauli Murray. Sunday at Lyon Park Center (see below).

In a poem, Murray reflected, "I've been cast aside, but I sparkle in the darkness." Despite self-doubt reinforced by a society that made little room for her ambition, she channeled her vast energy into gaining a college and legal education, publishing books of history, law and poetry and advocating for the equal treatment of African Americans and women. Committed to human rights, Murray became an Episcopal priest in her final years, preaching the gospel of reconciliation.

At her centennial, what are Pauli Murray's lessons? She was a patriot, embracing non-violence to fight for democracy despite the glaring hypocrisies of 20th century America. She advocated for the human rights of all people. She risked her own safety and the security of her family when she was arrested for sitting in at lunch counters and refusing to move to the colored section of the bus. At 27, she challenged the state of North Carolina's legal segregation in higher education by applying for admission to a UNC Chapel Hill graduate program. Through her example and her writing, Murray taught us to claim our rights, honor our ambition, speak out and tell the truths of our lives. In "Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family," a memoir of growing up in Durham, Murray concludes that liberation is only attainable by "accepting the whole past ... in facing up to the degradation as well as the dignity of my ancestors."

But why isn't Pauli Murray more prominently featured in our history books alongside well-known activists like Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks?

Her contemporaries agree that Pauli Murray was hard to get along with. Her passion for justice sometimes translated into unwelcome directives. She was profoundly impacted by the battles she didn't win, often retreating into her own depressions. She felt her exclusion deeply -- articulating the double jeopardy of being a woman and a person of color by coining the term "Jane Crow."

Men who admired her work as a civil rights activist were not keen on her feminism, and women who embraced her feminism were often unwilling to bear her criticism of their movement's racial politics. Few were willing to accept her intimate relationships with other women. She often disagreed with other activists. Into the 1970s, Pauli Murray referred to herself as Negro despite the rising black power movement, a decision that brought her much disdain.

But the obstacles of one decade can be the strengths of another. In many ways, Murray was well ahead of her time and remains a fresh and challenging figure. She crafted a life of her own choosing. Historian David Thelen writes, "People make their own history -- it doesn't happen to them."

Pauli Murray's most important lesson is that each of us must address the human rights issues of today: economic and environmental injustice, gender-based pay inequities, immigrants' rights, the explosive growth of the prison-industrial complex, homophobia, equal access to quality education and our ongoing engagement in international armed conflicts.

But how do these issues affect us in Durham and why do their historical roots matter? We have yet to fully address our past and tell the story of urban renewal, class divisions and labor activism. One hundred years after Murray's birth, we are still learning to walk in her "proud shoes."

We must listen to and embrace the stories of mill workers and industrialists, long-time residents and newcomers, civil rights workers and those who tried to maintain segregation, the shapers of the "New South" and those who still hurt from the everyday violence of exclusion and racism.

Like Pauli Murray we cannot get stuck in the past. We must create our own future, charting a course of open dialogue, equality and mutuality, a "true community" as Murray professes, "that affirms the richness of individual diversity as well as the common human ties that bind us together."


Barbara Lau and Robert Fitzgerald Murray III wrote this on behalf of the Pauli Murray Project at the Duke Human Rights Center.

Source: http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/10388538/article-Like-Pauli-Murray--we-must-create-our-own-future?

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Pauli Murray
100th Birthday Party
Sunday, November 21, 2010 --3-5 p.m.
   
Community, Family Life and Recreation Center at Lyon Park
1313 Halley Street at Kent Street
     
Free and Open to Everyone
     
* Cake! Poetry! Celebration! Mayor's Proclamation of Pauli Murray Day!
   
* Exhibit: Pauli Murray, Birth of an Activist
     
* Share You Favorite Pauli Murray Poem or a poem inspired by Pauli Murray

* Design Presentations about Pauli Murray's Childhood home by NCSU students
     
For More Information: www.paulimurrayproject.org

To build a better Durham the Pauli Murray Project engages a diversity of residents to lift up the vision and legacy of activist, scholar, feminist, poet, and Episcopal priest Pauli Murray in order to tackle enduring inequities and injustice in our community.

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