The Reverend Doctor Pauli Murray

1910-1985, United States
Feast Day: July 1

an androgynous black woman wearing priestly vestments

Bio:

Pauli Murray is a lesser-known hero of the African-American civil rights movement and the women's rights movement in the United States. She spent her career fighting for equal rights for women and Black Americans, coining the term "Jane Crow" to refer to the intersectional oppression faced by Black women. Later in life, she became the first African-American woman to be ordained to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church. In spite of the importance of her work to 20th-century social justice movements, she remained somewhat obscure until she was named a Saint of the Episcopal Church in 2012 and honored with a feast day on July 1. Some have suggested that her gender nonconformity and lesbian relationships were a factor in her legacy being downplayed in comparison to figures like Rosa Parks or Ruth Bader Ginsburg. On the other hand, Reverend Murray did not seek personal fame during her lifetime, and much of her work was done "behind the scenes."

Part of my motivation for creating this icon of Reverend Murray was personal frustration with some of the discourse surrounding her gender identity and sexual orientation. As a "butch lesbian" myself, I understand Reverend Murray to be "one of us," and I view her as a teacher--not a blank slate for retroactive labeling of her personal identity. Her personal and professional prime years were also something of a "golden age" of lesbian culture in the US. The terms "butch" and "femme" were common identities for people involved in the lesbian subculture, and "lesbian" was a much broader umbrella term than it is today. I consider it a grave insult to Reverend Murray to assume that she didn't have the "correct words" or "couldn't find" avenues to express herself as she saw fit, and that she needs modern scholars (especially those who are white and/or non-butch) to categorize her "properly." I challenge all Murray scholars to engage a dialectical materialist approach when studying her relationship to gender and sexuality, and not to use her as a "test subject" for their pet theoretical frameworks.

The "butch experience" is complex and diverse and there are as many ways to be butch as there are butches. There are trans butches, cis butches, butches who "don't do gender," bisexual butches, asexual butches, butches who use testosterone or get surgeries, butches who don't, butches who use he/him pronouns, butches who use she/her pronouns, butches who use gender-neutral or neopronouns, butches who identify as women, butches who identify as lesbians but not as women, and so forth. Our community resists concrete labels and categories, and the unique intersections of our experiences deserve to be taken seriously and respected for what they are. That was also the bottom line of Reverend Murray's advocacy: rights and dignity for all people, regardless of how they are labeled by an inequitable society.

Iconography

Reverend Murray appears here in priestly vestments, including a purple stole--the color of remorse and repentance. She is a respected authority and reminds her flock of the coninual need to repent of our complicity in systems of injustice.
Her right hand is raised in a classical "blessing" gesture. Her legacy is a blessing to all people, regardless of race, gender, or other arbitrary divisions.
Her book reads "True community is based upon Equality, Mutuality, and Reciprocity." The need for flexible and equitable approaches to freedom and justice are a constant theme in her writing.

The Reverend Doctor Pauli Murray

Bio:

Iconography

Further reading about Pauli Murray: