Rosalind Rosenberg

The words “nevertheless, she persisted,” describe Pauli Murray well. She weathered having multiple doors shut in her face on the basis of race, gender, and activism, and she kept her sexual orientation? status? secret from all but a very few close friends. (Today we would most likely refer to her as transgendered.)

Trained as a lawyer at Howard University in the early 1940s her research and paper for a class her senior year provided a springboard for Thurgood Marshall’s and the NAACP’s civil rights litigation in the 1960s. A paper she co-wrote in the 1960s provided one leg of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s litigation on behalf of women’s rights in the 1970s. She served on JFKs Presidential Commission on the Status of women in the 1970s, and also helped found NOW, though she quickly backed away from the organization when she realized that it was going to cater to middle class white women. And in the 1980s she became the first black Episcopal priest in the U.S.

The words that came to mind when I finished this biography were guarded, visionary, and persistent.

I also found it rather depressing reading about all the nay sayers she faced in her life. This may be in part because of the academic orientation of the biography. The narrative also focused primarily on her external accomplishments and lack of the outward trappings of success, and not on her inner life or personal relationships. Personally, I found Julie Phillips' biography of Alice B. Sheldon/James Tiptree more compelling reading.

I had more questions about Murray when I finished the biography than when I started. Questions like, why did she want to become a priest? (her spiritual life and choices are not described in this biography.) How did she withstand the lack of professional success and economic instability of her early adult life? I wondered how a biography that focused on her spiritual life and family and personal relationships, would differ from Jane Crow. Was Murray satisfied with her life? What did she see as her greatest successes?

While Jane Crow is well worth reading, I found it rather dry and incomplete because it doesn’t discuss what motivates Murray and drives her. I hope there will be other biographies that explore these parts of her life.

I am currently reading Song in a weary throat, Pauli Murray’s autobiography. I find the voice and the story more compelling here, though since she was so guarded about her sexual inclinations she does not discuss them, or the struggles she had because she felt she was a male in a woman's body. I’m glad Rosenberg does. A lifelong Episcopalian, she doesn't discuss her spiritual life in detail, but it is present throughout the book. I will probably obtain a copy of Proud Shoes, her memoir of her family as well. I'm finding her interesting, admirable, and likable.… (mere)