The Pauli Murray Center
Welcome to the Pauli Murray Center in Durham, North Carolina. The light blue two-story house before you is the childhood home of Pauli Murray, a pioneering writer, labor and civil rights activist, legal scholar, feminist, priest and lifelong learner whose visionary work helped shape the civil rights landscape in the 20th century. Pauli Murray was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1910, but moved to this home in the West End neighborhood of Durham, North Carolina, after her mother died in 1914. Pauli grew up with her maternal grandparents, along with their two children. Pauli’s mixed race family and experiences growing up in Durham in the early 20th century would instill a sense of faith and justice in her that carried into her life and work. Join professor of humanities and religious studies, Doctor Anthony B. Pinn. Activist and community organizer Jesse Huddleston, Pauli Murray’s niece Rosita Stevens-Holsey, and seminary student Aimee Waltz-Reasonover as they share their connection to Pauli Murray and reflect on Pauli's legacy as it was shaped through this historic home.
Stop 1. West End Community
The Fitzgerald home sits along a sloping hill located in the West End neighborhood, one of the oldest and largest neighborhoods in Durham. The street includes other homes and a church, with the sprawling Maplewood Cemetery visible directly behind the home. Traveling north along the street. Residences are replaced by brick warehouses and shops that meet the bustling thoroughfare of the neighborhood, West Chapel Hill Street Durham grew rapidly due to industrialization after the Civil War, and the West End became a prominent hub where both business owners and workers lived. The neighborhood was divided along racial lines, however, and after the Fitzgerald family established one of the most prominent brick making businesses in the area, Pauli Murray’s grandfather Robert Fitzgerald built their family home here, in what Pauli Murray describes as “The Bottoms” - an undesirable part of West End prone to flooding. Growing up in a segregated neighborhood shaped Pauli and her family's experiences of race and her later work in combating racial injustice.
Rosita Stevens-Holsey
Well, even though she came as a very young child to Durham, little less than four years old, she was, very astute and quite an observer of life. So she lived in Baltimore, Maryland, where she, lived in a pretty palatial circumstances. She lived with her brothers and sisters, and they had a big home and really didn't want for most things. So when she came here, the house was beautiful. It was very small. but she immediately noticed the difference of how white people lived, black people lived, and her surroundings.
Jesse Huddleston
Many of the historically black neighborhoods in Durham were areas here that were less desirable, that really people didn't want to live in. This particular part of town was often called the “Bottoms” because all these different hills kind of come to a point. There's also the cemetery. So just imagine the kind of like flooding that might happen or just the different smells or senses that might come when it's like really hot and maybe there aren't as many trees, so there's not as much shade.
Stop 2. Environmental Racism in Durham
Behind the house lies a white gravel service road that separates the residential section of the Carroll Street Homes from the rows of headstones that comprise Maplewood Cemetery. The resting place for several of Durham's most prominent white families, the cemetery remained segregated during Pauli's childhood, and did not permit African-Americans to be buried on the land. During Durham's rapid industrialization and growth, the city commandeered surrounding land and expanded the Maplewood Cemetery towards the Fitzgerald property. Pauli recalls how the well on their property became contaminated with runoff from the cemetery, forcing them to source their water a few miles away. After the cemetery expanded, the land around the house was also prone to flooding, with stagnant water tainted by runoff. From this vantage point, we can also see a later addition to the house in the form of a rectangular single story. This back addition was heavily impacted by the contaminated runoff from the cemetery, causing it to be demolished in 2015 and reconstructed.
Jesse Huddleston
Understanding that history and bringing it to the present, there's a way in which those decisions made during segregation have a real set of implications and consequences for what's happening now. And so there are parks here now. Right? Like I said, there are birds chirping and people walking their dogs through the cemetery and just living their lives, and they may not recognize, oh, if I throw that ball and lands in the creek and I go in there to get it out. What might be in that water? That's been there for decades. And this isn't about blaming anyone, it's about understanding what's happened so that we can take care of one another and take responsibility for the decisions that were made for the realities that we've inherited.
Stop 3. Cornelia Smith
From the street, looking up towards the house, there's a wide stretch of lawn that was once a yard with an orchard. Nurtured by Pauli Murray's grandmother, Cornelia Smith. Pauli recalls her grandmother's tenacity and strength, raising six children with Robert while he went blind. Cornelia was a proud and outspoken woman. Pauli recalls that her grandmother's “special fighting piece was trespassing,” as she maintained the family property that she and Robert had done so much to build. Cornelia’s values were shaped by the complexity of her ancestry. Raised in a plantation household by the wealthy white Smith family, her mother Harriet was enslaved by the Smith family, and her father was Sidney Smith, one of the Smith's sons. Born from violence and ostracized by white society, Cornelia was forced to grow up between these two worlds of the Smith household. Pauli recalls that her grandmother would strive to identify herself with the best of her father's world and reject all associations which linked her to slavery. Influenced by her upbringing, Cornelia would instill the importance of education in her children and eventually in her granddaughter Pauli.
Rosita Stevens-Holsey
So Cornelia was, Aunt Pauli's grandmother, and she was an offspring of Harriet who had been enslaved on the Smith plantation, I believe is in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. And, she was considered to be, very smart and, very beautiful. But Cornelia seemed to, suffer from some kind of emotional or mental anxiety, but because of all that Cornelia had gone through, as a child, she would have these outbursts. She felt very connected to the slave holders that she lived with, as well as, the colored side of her family there, though there was conflict there. She always talked about the white blood that ran in her body and the fact that, her father was, a well thought of gentlemen with money and prestige, she would often yell this, out on the porch or out on the property if, somebody insulted her. This is something that Aunt Pauli would not have heard of or known about had she been in Baltimore, but also, it helped her understand why Cornelia was like she was.
Dr. Anthony B. Pinn
So Pauli Murray’s early years are rather traumatic. The murder of her father, death of her mother. She's raised by one of her aunts, but she argues that one of the lessons that she learned from her family is that we are not defined by the opposition we encounter. We are defined by our response to that opposition. And so, within her family, there was always a desire to push against modes of injustice, both on the personal level and with respect to community. Now, Pauli Murray argues that with respect to her family, issues of race could be delicate. Not everyone had an understanding of race and the way in which her family has been raised. They don't all share Pauli Murray's growing sense of race, but there is a clear understanding that injustice is not okay. We use the resources available to us to push against injustice, that we have an obligation to do this sort of work. And one of the lessons that Pauli Murray gets from her aunt is that critical thinking skills and community strategies are vital, that we cannot respond to injustice in a way that is simply emotional, that it has to be thought through. It has to be intentional, and it has to be connected to how folks are actually experiencing the world. So education is always important for Pauli Murray, right? Education is always important for her. For her, this becomes a way to secure the kind of tools, the kind of equipment that will allow her to have impact with respect to the world.
Jesse Huddleston
In Proud Shoes, Pauli is talking about facing up to the truth of her family history, one that is very complicated and filled with a lot of violence and, like, struggle. Pauli’s great great grandfather, or maybe great great great grandfather, served on the UNC Board of Trustees for years, and his sons, raped a woman who bore four children, one of which is Pauli’s grandmother. At the same time, Pauli’s Fitzgerald lineage is one where free people of color decide to come from the north and settle here after the Civil War, wanting to, with their values of faith and education, be rooted in the United States South and help other people rooted here, particularly formerly enslaved folks, learn and practice a faith that celebrates who they are, and so they grew their family here. Cornelia marries into this family, and so all of that is what Pauli grew up in, and it very much shapes Pauli’s understandings and ideas of justice, of equality, of faith, of education, of community.
Stop 4. Robert Fitzgerald
Traveling up the small hill to the house, you are greeted by the wide, welcoming front porch that runs the length of the facade. This space is where Robert Fitzgerald, Pauli's grandfather, would sit on the porch swing and teach Pauli by having her recite the newspaper to him. Robert Fitzgerald was born in Delaware in 1840, the third oldest of 12 children. Robert, similar to Cornelia, received a formal education from a group of Quakers in New Castle County at a time when limited educational opportunities existed for African-Americans. Robert was both profoundly religious and righteous, enlisting to fight for the Union in the Civil War despite being disabled. He also went on to teach and educate newly freed enslaved people after the war. Resolute and strong, Robert was committed to building a home for his family. Pauli recalls, “it was as if he had built himself into the structure, for it had his stubborn character.”
Rosita Stevens-Holsey
Robert was a Fitzgerald who had come specifically to the South to, I think you would call, pull up colored people. That one of the good things that happened once, colored people were emancipated from their slavery was that they really tried to help other people. It was important for people to have a better livelihood, to be able to earn, money, to be able to, understand really what was going on around them because if they couldn't read it, really put them in a position of being taken advantage of. So he, instilled those kinds of values in her. Also, he shared with her the kind of life that he had lived, why he volunteered to fight for the Union, what that meant to go off to war in a country when they didn't know exactly how it would end, who would win, and in a sense, how he would be rewarded. So they had many long conversations about, his time in the military. He also, like, Pauli, he was a person who never gave up, even when he had lost most of that eyesight in one eye. He went when the, Army discharged him because of his health, then he tried with the Navy. He was able to stay in the Navy for a while, and then he was discharged, and then he went, back to the Army. So he really wanted to fight for the country that he hoped it would become, and fight for the side that was saying, slavery should be abolished.
Stop 5. Pauli's Family
Entering the house, we come to a corridor with a living room space to the right of the staircase leading to the upstairs rooms. These living spaces were where the Fitzgerald family would meet and converse, surrounded by a rich kaleidoscope of family heirlooms that reflected their values and experiences throughout Pauli Murray’s life it was her connection to others that helped shape her. Her family instilled a profound sense of faith, justice, and self-determination, from which laid the foundation of her lifelong passion, fighting for the rights of diverse communities. As Pauli entered young adulthood, she began to question her gender and sexual identity. After a brief marriage to a man, Pauli became acutely aware of her internal struggle to express herself. Pauli would go on to have close partnerships with women and realize a non-normative identity that transcended the restrictive ideas about gender and sexuality that were prevalent in 20th century America.
Rosita Stevens-Holsey
Eventually, she realized that she was not sure about some things in terms of her gender, and she wrote to doctors and psychologists and psychiatrist asking for help. She hoped that if she took hormone treatment or some other kind of medical interventions, that she could find out if she were a man who was born into a woman's body or why she had some of that seem to be more attracted to females than she was to males, but she also had to publicly deny that from the standpoint that if she had two strikes against her already, as someone who was dark skinned or someone who was female, to add another challenge to her whole being would probably make her, make it impossible for her to get any kind of job or position that she should have been entitled to because of her education and experience. Not until, what turned out to be the weekend before Aunt Pauli died, had Aunt Pauli ever discussed with family her feelings about women and what she had gone through all of her life in relationship to gender issues and, people that she loved, and when I was told this, in 2022, it just so hurt me that all of the other things she had had to deal with, as an individual, as a human being, to be burdened with the fact that the people who loved her the most, the people who knew her the most, the people that she was closest to, her family, she still didn't feel comfortable sharing that because she didn't want to be rejected by us.
Dr. Anthony B. Pinn
And you get with Pauli Murray, a kind of troubled conversation concerning issues of sexuality, right? So with Pauli Murray, how she self describes will change over time, and I think lots of scholars in the 21st century want to read her in a way that is supportive of 21st century agendas, nut Pauli Murray, it's it's more complex than that, right? There are periods in which she uses she, there periods in which she argues that what's available to her in terms of naming options don't quite cover who she is and how she moves through the world. So you get these sorts of complexities. It seems to me one of the lessons we might learn from that is a recognition that these categories are fluid, and that folks have to have opportunity to self-describe, and that we are not locked in to any one particular way to self-described, that as we touch the world and are touched by the world, how we self-describe with respect to sexuality might shift as our understanding of relationship on the personal level and on the collective level shifts and changes, our understanding of our own sexuality might shift and change. And it seems to me if we look at Pauli Murray’s life, we see a model of how that might happen.
Jesse Huddleston
Pauli’s family is characteristic of many families in the United States, particularly the US South. If we reckon with the truth of Pauli’s ancestry, we understand that there are white folks and black folks. There are folks with a lot of wealth, land, power, and folks with a lot less, working class people. Again, people who valued practicing Christianity, people who valued education and scholarship, and I think these values shaped and followed Pauli throughout his life and shaped their decisions as a writer, a scholar, an organizer, a poet, a priest, a lawyer. It feels important to also lift up the name of Irene Barlow, Pauli’s long term partner. They were together for more than two decades until Irene's death, and I know that their shared faith anchored them in a special way. The people that Pauli chose to surround herself with, I imagine, saw her for who she was, for who they were, and their fullness and their wholeness, and even if they didn't always have the language, or even if they didn't have the culture to normalize or celebrate it, my sense is that there was a kind of love, understanding, and support that was offered and that allowed and enabled Pauli to do the things that Pauli was able to do in his life.
Stop 6. Visionary for Justice
Across the hall and past the stairs, you can find the parlor and writing room. Reading, writing and education were important to the Fitzgerald family, and Pauli would spend her formative years here learning how important the art of writing could be. In this parlor and writing space, we can imagine Pauli typing away at the keys of a typewriter. Later in life, Pauli's writing would inform the legal strategy of Thurgood Marshall during the Brown v. Board of Education case, which led to the desegregation of schools. In the 1960s, Pauli co-founded the National Organization for Women (Now) to continue to advocate for gender equality. Along with Dorothy Kenyon, she coauthored Ruth Bader Ginsburg's brief for Reed v. Reed, which successfully argued against the preferential treatment given to men in administering a estates. Pauli Murray continued to work in academia throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s. After teaching constitutional law in Ghana, she returned to the United States to study at Yale Law School, and in 1965 was the first African American to receive a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from the program. Pauli continued to work in academia until the 1970s, when she left her professorship at Brandeis University to become an Episcopal priest. She would be ordained in 1977 as the first African-American woman Episcopal priest.
Rosita Stevens-Holsey
Aunt Pauli used, often a typewriter, and she would consider it like confrontation by typewriting and by typewriter, and she would she could fire off these letters, to radio stations or to anybody who she thought could help, and she found this effective, and she did the same with us. She would write letters to us. She would take our letters and correct our grammar and send them back to us with red marks all over them and tell us to do better. So I learned as a young child that education was very important, that I needed to not only mimic the kinds of things that she did, like express my opinions to, important people or to elders, but also to be able to do it in good form. She not only used her letters, she wrote to newspapers things like what we would consider, op-eds now maybe, or letters to the editor that started me doing the same kind of thing. I learned the power of the pen, I called it, or the power of words, and I was always fascinated by her language and her brilliant use of words, and I understood like my mother that Aunt Pauli, too, was a wordsmith.
Jesse Huddleston
When we think of human rights today, so much of that is shaped by Pauli. Whether we recognize it or not, Pauli managed to define so many institutional barriers throughout her life, and I know it inspires me today. Folks know Thurgood Marshall, folks know Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and they may not know that without Pauli, we don't have Thurgood, we don't have Ruth the way that we understand them as pillars of justice for our country, the United States. It was Pauli’s argument that Thurgood used to win Brown v. Board. It was Pauli’s partnership with Ruth on a particular essay that really put Ruth on a path towards the Supreme Court. Understanding this history and how Pauli is the common denominator, not just with these two, but Eleanor Roosevelt with so many people that we name and honor and celebrate as examples of the best parts of humanity, it feels like such an opportunity to recognize the ways that Pauli’s work, that Pauli’s legacy shapes where we are today. So much of what Pauli said then still rings true now.
Amy Waltz-Reasonover
When she was, ready to seek ordination, we had just had the Philadelphia Eleven who were the 11 first women who dared ordination in the Episcopal Church, and they were all white. So those those first 11 deacons did ordination and they did, and Pauli was right after that. That sort of intersectional work of who she was in the church and, as a black woman, as a feminist, as, an attorney who knew the way forward for women and feminism, has not only shaped our public policy, it's shaped our private policy as well. For those of us who follow behind her in the church, it's shaped church polity, and we continue in that work. We continue leading the church forward and society forward in the ways of justice when it comes to women, gender equality, sexual equality, all of these, all of these ways intersect, and of course, for Pauli Murray, and racial equality. And for me, that would be in disability equality. All of those things inform one another. There's no separating them. So, the work that that benefits one of us benefits all of us.
Stop 7. Academic and Civil Rights Career
Ascending the staircase. Imagine all of the steps - preparation, pursuance, setbacks and triumphs - that were needed in order for Pauli Murray to accomplish all that she did in her unwavering commitment to civil rights. Pauli Murray’s upbringing and identity informed her intersectional work, which would become the foundation to help realize equal rights today. Embarking on her journey into higher education starting in the 1930s, Pauli rejected the idea that her achievement meant attending the all black college in Durham. She faced racial and gender based discrimination while seeking admission to schools to attend. Despite these challenges, Pauli graduated top of her law class at Howard University and continued post-graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. During the 1940s and 1950s, Pauli Murray's visionary writing and activism had a significant impact in shaping the Civil rights movement. Her work included coining the term “Jane Crow” to describe the gender discrimination she experienced in racialized spaces, A visionary precursor to the foundations of intersectional theory, later developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Dr. Anthony B. Pinn
Pauli Murray always had a rather complex sense of the world, and the barriers that we encounter, right? Always sensitive to these various barriers. Now, Pauli Murray didn't necessarily use the 21st century language of intersectionality, but she understood that relationships, to the degree they were fundamental, were shaped by or hampered by a range of social codes. So Pauli Murray was sensitive to the way in which race impacted life. She was sensitive to the ways in which gender impacted life. She was sensitive to the ways in which class impacted life. For her, this was personal. That her movement through the world always involved of necessity, a sensitivity to how the US monitored and understood these social codes. And for her, that personal experience spoke to a larger reality that this is the world that black folks are encountering and that to the degree we want to do justice by black folks, it requires recognizing the various ways in which black folks are impacted, that to simply talk about race for her was to miss the mark, because it does not fully capture how black women encounter the world. So for her, intersectionality wasn't simply a conceptual framework. It was the felt reality of life in the 20th century as she encountered it. So her work is always sensitive to this. It seems to me that Pauli Murray is at least implicitly asking a really important question in our work, in our struggle: who have we forgotten?
Jesse Huddleston
Pauli in their time was blazing a trail of truth and inviting people in positions of power. To be more honest, when they use certain words like freedom, like equality, like justice, but their actions felt a lot more like violence, and domination and injustice. Pauli told the truth and invited folks to be not just more honest, but more just and better understand the ways that they were missing that mark.
Stop 8. Aunt Sallie and Aunt Pauline
Arriving at the second floor and turning right, we come to the bedroom, Pauli shared with her Aunt Pauline. Sally Fitzgerald and Pauline Fitzgerald Dame, for whom Polly was named after, were Pauli's maternal aunts, who lived with the family at the house during Pauli's childhood. Sally and Pauline were both teachers. Polly recalls hearing the songs of schoolchildren drifting down the hill in the afternoons, a sign that her aunts would be coming home soon. Both Pauli's aunts, like their father Robert, were highly respected by the community. As a young child, Pauli would learn how to read by sitting in and observing Aunt Pauline's classes, despite being too young to be officially enrolled in school. Pauli maintained to closeness to her aunts throughout her life, as seen in letters they exchanged over the years.
Rosita Stevens-Holsey
So Aunt Sallie and Aunt Pauline were sisters to, Aunt Pauli’s mother, Agnes, and they were the two sisters that lived with their family in 906 Carroll Street. I think it's obvious, and it would have happened anyhow, that Aunt Pauli would be influenced by the fact that they were educators, and that they taught young children to read and to write and help them through their formative years. They taught her the value of choice. So when there was anything that, she was supposed to do, let's take something as simple as chores, she would, they would say, everybody in the family is a part of the family, and everyone in the family should pull their share. No matter what it was, she was always given a choice. So the things that she didn't particularly like, the girly, girly things, she refused to, so she didn't. She wasn't interested in sewing or mending or a lot of the housework, she wouldn't necessarily want to do, but if she could be outdoors and do something like going to the store or taking a package to her neighbor, she wanted to do, and in Baltimore, with the other brothers and sisters, it was, you're going to do this, and that was something that really influenced her, and she could express: I'd rather do this than that. And I think that really might seem very simple, but that was really a good foundation to go along with the other things that she learned.
Stop 9. Pauli’s Legacy
Taking a final look at the bedroom of grandmother and grandfather Fitzgerald, we leave the interior of the home and descend to look at the Pauli Murray center and its context from a bird's eye view. It is important to contextualize Pauli Murray’s work as part of the wider civil rights movement during the 20th century. Pauli was part of a wider ecosystem of individuals who worked together in different ways to contribute towards the shared goal of equality. Pauli was a visionary who was thinking and writing critically to imagine and generate possibilities. Fannie Lou Hamer was an organizer who helped to empower and educate black communities against discriminatory voting practices. John Lewis participated in and organized powerful nonviolent protests and later became a U.S. House representative. Take a moment to think about your role in your community. What ways might you contribute to your local causes and organizations? How do you personally make an impact in your community?
Rosita Stevens-Holsey
So Aunt Pauli is certainly someone that most people, could say it was a very accomplished woman, she was a poet, a writer, she wrote essays, she wrote op-eds, she, used her ability to use words to express things that she cared deeply for or things that she was upset about, but more important than just maybe trying to inspire someone to become a teacher or a lawyer or a priest or anything like that, I think her life also is a wonderful example of never giving up, of always having hope, of always keeping your eye on the prize, of always speaking what you truly feel and hope that people will accept it, of not, I would say, of feeling as though your thoughts and and your philosophy and your values are as important as anybody else's, and not allowing anyone to, whether it's emotionally or physically, to knock you down, to feel secure in those things that you want to do and to be willing to fight for them, literally, figuratively.
Dr. Anthony B. Pinn
She was a gadfly. For Pauli Murray, you can't make progress if you don't disrupt, and so she was really sensitive to that. And Pauli Murray, it seems to me, had a very different sense of discomfort. That for her discomfort was not a problem. It was an opportunity, and this is why she's pushing Martin Luther King Jr. to think differently. This is why she's pushing W.E.B. Dubois to think differently. Right? This is why she's pushing feminists to think differently. Because it's only once they reach the point of discomfort that they're able to see the world as others encounter it, and this is deeply important for her. And for Pauli Murray, it was also important for us to name our pain. That part of the process for her is naming pain. So when she's a seminary student, there are students who really don't like her style because she's up front, she's vocal, and she's calling people to account. She's writing to faculty members and to students, reminding them that they are forgetting segments of the population, that the Christian faith requires them to address them, and in response to one student who has some difficulty with her, she argues in relationship to the Suffering Servant that yes, this Christian faith means that we are, and of course, I'm paraphrasing, it means that we are going to encounter discomfort, that we are going to encounter pain. She said nothing about the gospel says we can't name that pain and can't say we are in pain, and she says, brother, this hurts, right? So with Pauli Murray, you get a sense that we have to be visible and vocal about the damage that our social arrangements are doing. With that we cannot suffer silently. We have to be vocal about this and it's and being vocal that one, we gain something of our humanity, and secondly, we're able to hold people accountable.
Jesse Huddleston
I think it's important to share and preserve Pauli Murray’s legacy because the problems that we are facing now aren't going away. They are before us, challenging us and inviting us to be better, to do differently, and if we take what Pauli teaches us, if we receive what Pauli offers us in their life's work, there are so many assets, so many points and sources of strength and energy that I think move us towards wholeness, move us towards closer towards dignity. And some may argue, well, we may never get there. But we often talk about how Pauli has said something along the lines of, I lived long enough to see my lost causes found, and whether or not we're successful, whether or not we win, isn't necessarily the point. If we preserve and perpetuate a better way of being, and the people after us are able to be better and do differently, that's the win.
Amy Waltz-Reasonover
Pauli Murray, what does Pauli Murray mean to me? Pauli Murray means that I can be, who I who I want to be, who I feel God is calling me to be. because Pauli did it first. So, I'm, gender non-binary, lesbian, who is a seminarian, and, I don't have a whole lot of people who I can look to and say that person, somehow embodies me, that that person is like me, and in the Episcopal Church, we recognize, Pauli Murray is a saint. That's how I learned who Pauli Murray was, and, in them I saw myself. I saw a person who struggled with their, gender identity and, eventually found peace with that, while not struggling with their sexual identity. They knew who they were. I know who I am and still God inexorably called them, and I see that, in my own life, I felt God inexorably calling me, in the same ways or in similar ways that God called Pauli Murray. I also have intersectional identities. I'm, I'm disabled and deaf and queer and, in a lot of ways, the first or one of the first in my field, and so being able to see, Pauli Murray and the example that they set, it just, it just means that it's possible for me.
Stop 10. Conclusion
Thank you for joining us on this tour of the Pauli Murray House in Durham, North Carolina. The Pauli Murray House embodies the enduring qualities of the tenacious and proud Fitzgerald family that would come to shape Pauli Murray’s own work and life. It was the lessons learned, stories shared, and connections made here in this home that would inspire Pauli Murray to pursue a transformative life that she lived not only for herself, but for others.
Rosita Stevens-Holsey
It also is one of the few places in North Carolina that, is a National Historic Landmark, and definitely one of the few places that represent, a genderfluid kind of person who happens to be black and who has accomplished so much that most of the world doesn't even know about.
Dr. Anthony B. Pinn
Not taking Pauli Murray seriously, not exploring and trying to understand what she offered over the course of decades, we do ourselves a disservice. That there's something about her approach to the world that ought to inform and influence our understanding of the world.