I met and got to know Pauli Murray at Yale Law School in 1960 where she was a mentor and dear friend during my three years there. In her sixties she answered a call to the priesthood and enrolled in seminary and in 1977 she became the first African American woman to be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church and was later designated an Episcopal saint. Rosa Parks’ famous actions in Montgomery by many years. Her protest against segregated transportation in Washington, D.C. Pauli was a sit-inner before the 1960s sit-in movement of my generation, a founding member of the National Organization of Women (NOW) and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), a member of the Equality Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and a longtime close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. She was a college vice president and professor in universities in the United States and Africa. Pauli Murray was a superb groundbreaking civil rights lawyer and the first African American to receive a J.S.D. I recently had the joy of being the first overnight guest at the new Pauli Murray College at Yale University after the dedication of the new residential college named in her honor. Anna Pauline “Pauli” Murray, a writer, scholar, Episcopal priest and civil rights warrior who spent her extraordinary life challenging barriers and systems of discrimination in all forms. This verse is from the poem “Dark Testament” by the Rev.
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