Pauli Murraay
The late civil rights activist and first woman Episcopal priest, Pauli Murray, is among five women to be honored on U.S. quarters. Murray also has ties to the predecessor of today's United Women in Faith. (AP File Photo via RNS)
Religion News Service | Feb. 14, 2023
The first Black woman to be ordained in the Episcopal Church, who was also a trailblazing lawyer, civil rights activist and writer, will be honored on the U.S. quarter next year.
Pauli Murray, whose 1977 ordination to the priesthood was just one in a long series of firsts, has been chosen by the U.S. Mint as one of five honorees for the American Women Quarters Program.
She is noted in United Methodist circles for writing a seminal book on American racism funded by the Women's Division of the Methodisst Church.
Emily Jones, racial justice executive for United Women in Faith, expressed the organization's pleasure at the honor given Murray:
"The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray was a deeply inspiring and groundbreaking leader in the work of racial justice. As a lawyer, scholar, priest, and civil rights icon, Dr. Murray broke barriers, created powerful legal precedents, and left behind a lasting legacy of systemic change. United Women in Faith is proud of our foremothers’ support for Dr. Murray's work along the way, commissioning the groundbreaking publication, States' Laws on Race and Color, which was used in Brown v. Board of Education in Little Rock, Ark.
“May Dr. Murray's extraordinary life be an example that spurs all of us forward in the relentless pursuit of justice."
Mint Director Ventris C. Gibson said in a statement: “All of the women being honored have lived remarkable and multi-faceted lives, and have made a significant impact on our Nation in their own unique way,”
But many scholars now recognize that though richly deserving of the honor, Murray, who died in 1985, was also gender-nonconforming and may be the first such person to appear on a U.S. coin. Murray sometimes presented as a woman and sometimes as a man. Feeling trapped in a woman’s body, Murray begged doctors to prescribe hormone therapy. They refused.
“We know Pauli did not conform to gender norms," said Barbara Lau, executive director of the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice in Durham, North Carolina. “So we feel very comfortable saying that Pauli was gender-nonconforming.”
On its website, the Pauli Murray Center uses "they/them" pronouns to refer to Murray.
Murray may be best known as a civil rights activist who helped shape the legal argument for the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling. In a final law school paper at Howard University School of Law, Murray wrote that “separate” could never be “equal.”
Episcopal priest
The Rev. Pauli Murray is shown as she is ordained at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 8, 1977. Murray was the first Black woman ordained as a priest of the Episcopal Church. She resigned a professorship at Brandeis University to become a candidate for the priesthood. (AP Photo via RNS)
In 1951, Murray published a book on segregation laws that Thurgood Marshall — who argued the Brown case before the high court and later became a Supreme Court justice himself credited as “the bible of the civil rights movement.” This book was supported with financial assistance from Methodist women of that era.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, before she became a Supreme Court justice, also credited Murray’s arguments in a legal brief she wrote while arguing a 1971 Supreme Court case that banned gender discrimination based on the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
At age 66, Murray was ordained a priest and celebrated Holy Eucharist at the same Chapel Hill, North Carolina, parish where Murray’s grandmother, a slave, had been baptized. In 2018, Murray was added to the Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints, with a July 1 feast day. The Union of Black Episcopalians followed in renaming the Maryland chapter in Murray's honor.
In recent years, Murray has been the subject of several scholarly books and a 2021 documentary film, “My Name Is Pauli Murray.” In 2016, Murray’s childhood home in Durham was named a National Historic Landmark. Yale University named a residential college after Murray that same year.
Alongside the quarter, Lau said Murray’s achievements are finally getting their due. She said the mint first reached out to the Pauli Murray Center a year ago, looking for permission to use Murray's image.
“Maybe the world is finally ready to embrace and lift up the vision of Pauli Murray,” Lau said. “That was just not true in Pauli’s life.”
The American Women Quarters program began last year and will continue through 2025. The mint is issuing five quarters each year. Those included alongside Murray in 2024 include Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color to serve in Congress, and Zitkala-Ša, also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, a writer, composer, educator and political activist for Native Americans’ rights.
RNS Photo by Kit Doyle
Shimron
Yonat Shimron
Yonat Shimron is an RNS National Reporter and Senior Editor. United Methodist Insight Editor Cynthia B. Astle contributed to this article. This article may only be reproduced elsewhere with a Religion News Service subscription and permission from United Methodist Insight.