Pauli Murray Center denounces removal of the priest’s biography from National Park Service website

The National Park Service website about the Rev. Pauli Murray Family Home, a National Historic Landmark, has been edited to remove a biography of Murray as well as references to Murray’s transgender and queer nature. Photo: Pauli Murray Center

[Episcopal News Service] The Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice in Durham, North Carolina, has denounced the removal of a biography of Murray from the National Park Service website about the Murray Family Home, a National Historic Landmark.

Murray, who was a pioneering attorney who fought against racial and gender discrimination, was the first Black woman to be ordained a priest in The Episcopal Church, in 1977. They died in 1985.

A press release from the center said it “condemns the federal government’s efforts to erase Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, and their invaluable contributions to our society, from the digital record.”

It added, “The federal government has disabled at least one webpage, and scrubbed language related to Murray’s transgender and queer identities on others, on the National Park Service website,” alongside “other figures and sites recognized by NPS, including the Stonewall National Monument, Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and others.”

After taking office on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders aimed at removing references across federal agencies and departments to issues of diversity and “gender ideology.” By early February, agency websites began to remove mention of transgender or queer people and changed the acronym LGBTQ (for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) to LGB.

The center’s statement noted, “Members of the LGBTQIA+ community have always been a part of the rich fabric of our society. Rev. Dr. Murray exists in a lineage of LGBTQIA+ Southerners who have advanced social justice work on a national scale, and whose contributions have gone on to shape history. Erasing this truth at the federal level censures American history and compromises the work of transgender and queer activists who stand in Murray’s wake today.”

Angela Thorpe Mason, the center’s executive director, said in the statement, “We will not be deterred from uplifting Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray’s identity, life and legacy as we work toward addressing today’s inequities and injustices. We equally condemn the federal government’s actions and stand firm in ours. The Pauli Murray Center will be a space for us to continue to articulate what we know to be true.”

Last September the center celebrated the grand opening of the former Murray home, which serves as the space where the center conducts a variety of programs.

Murray, who was born Anna Pauline Murray in Baltimore, Maryland, shortened her name to “Pauli” after college to reflect a less-gendered identity. As described in an ENS story from 2022, Murray went on to study law at Howard University, the only woman enrolled, and graduated first in the class of 1944. Murray was the first African American to earn a doctor of the science of laws from Yale University Law School. They were a co-founder of the National Organization for Women and the Congress of Racial Equality.

As a lawyer, Murray argued against “Jane Crow,” in recognition of their struggle against both racial segregation and gender discrimination. In 1940, Murray was arrested for disorderly conduct for refusing to move to the back of a bus in Petersburg, Virginia, 15 years before Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama. Murray also organized restaurant and lunch counter sit-ins in Washington, D.C., 20 years before the famed Greensboro, North Carolina, protests.

Former NAACP President and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall called Murray’s book, “States’ Laws on Race and Color,” the bible of the civil rights movement. Another future Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, named Murray as coauthor of a brief on the 1971 case Reed v. Reed, in recognition of her pioneering work on gender discrimination.

Murray was also one of five pioneering women selected to be featured in the U.S. Mint’s American Women Quarters program.

By action of General Convention in 2018, Murray  was added to the calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts; their feast day is observed on July 1.

The Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska is hosting a special Pauli Murray weekend in April, including an April 4 screening of the documentary film “My Name is Pauli Murray” followed by a panel discussion, and the world premiere on April 5 of a new choral work, “Sincerely Yours, Pauli Murray,” sung by the River City Mixed Chorus.

— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.