For the “learn something new every day” files…
My friend, Yale lecturer Stuart Semmel
This week I connected with a college classmate, Stuart Semmel, who lives on the campus of Yale University. His wife, Professor Tina Lu, is Head of College of Pauli Murray College and he’s Associate Head as well as a senior lecturer in history and the humanities. When he first mentioned this information I had to ask, “What’s Pauli Murray College?” He replied that its one of the two new residential colleges at Yale (the other is Benjamin Franklin College) and that he’d be happy to give me a tour. By the way, a residential college is akin to the houses at Hogwarts—it’s a student’s home base for all four years of their Yale experience.
I didn’t ask, “Who’s Pauli Murray?” I should have because I didn’t know, but at that point I was distracted by thoughts of what sort of modern concrete and glass behemoth had been plopped down amid Yale’s beautiful Georgian and Gothic structures. I assumed that’s what usually happens with new construction on historic campuses.
During my visit with my classmate I was delighted to make these two discoveries:
1.) Pauli Murray College is a gorgeous gothic style stone and brick construction. Robert A.M. Stern Architects designed it. I marveled over the old world touches, especially the intricate stone work which, Stuart pointed out, features a variety of symbols and quotes meaningful to Yale and to Pauli Murray.
“I thought they didn’t build like this anymore,” I said in wonder.
Stuart explained that stonemasons had actually been brought out of retirement to help with the construction by training a new generation of builders. I was thrilled to learn this brand of magic won’t disappear from existence.
2.) I did ask, at last, “Who’s Pauli Murray?” and learned, with even more amazement, that this residential college at Yale had been named for an African American woman and a fierce one at that. But I’d never heard of her.
What I’ve learned about Pauli Murray so far is absolutely fascinating. A Salon article by Brittney Cooper refers to Murray as “the most important legal scholar you’ve likely never heard of.” That’s a compact way of describing an impressive list of Murray’s trailblazing accomplishments. Here’s how NPR.org laid them out in a 2015 story:
- She was arrested in 1940 for refusing to move to the back of a bus, protesting a Virginia law requiring segregation on public transportation — 15 years before Rosa Parks’ similar protest sparked a bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.
- In 1944, Murray graduated at the top of her class from the Howard University School of Law, where she encountered gender discrimination from faculty and fellow students. It was there that she coined the term “Jane Crow” to refer to sex discrimination — the sister of Jim Crow.
- Mademoiselle magazine named her “Woman of the Year” in 1947.
- The NAACP, then led by Thurgood Marshall, used arguments from a law school seminar paper by Murray as part of the organization’s legal strategy in Brown v. Board of Education. He later called her book States’ Laws on Race and Color“the Bible for civil rights lawyers.”
- She was appointed to President John F. Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women.
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In 1965, Murray became the first African-American to receive a J.S.D. degree from Yale Law School. She wrote scholarly works such as “Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII” and “Roots of the Racial Crisis: Prologue to Policy,” both of which provided incredible insight into the pressing civil rights issues of the time. Following law school, she served as council for civil rights cases, working to challenge discrimination via the court system. [This information comes from Yale’s website.]
- She co-founded the National Organization for Women in 1966.
- She was the first African-American woman to be ordained a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1977.
- She received an honorary degree from the Yale Divinity School in 1979. [This information comes from Yale’s website.]
- In 2012 she was welcomed into Episcopal sainthood, more than 25 years after her death.
The article adds, “A black feminist lesbian who ‘favored a masculine-of-center gender performance during her 20s and 30s,’ she dedicated her work to challenging preconceived notions of race, gender, sexuality and religion.”
You can see symbols reflecting this aspect of Murray in this Yale stonework (right) that also features an incredibly true and beautiful line from one of her poems: “Hope is a song in a weary throat.”
I say this is what I’ve know so far because I plan to keep reading about Murray and I hope you’ll want to do so too. Here are a few links. Enjoy and keep learning!
Articles
An American Credo, an essay by Pauli Murray.
The Many Lives of Pauli Murray, by Kathryn Schulz, published in The New Yorker.
Books
Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage by Pauli Murray (Liveright).
Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray by Rosalind Rosenberg (Oxford).
