K - 12 Educational Resource Hub
These free resources include curriculum materials, handouts, zines, and more. If you’d like to bring your class to visit the Pauli Murray Center for a group tour, please fill out our request form here. If you’d like our Director of Education and Outreach to come speak in your classroom (free for Durham public schools), please click here. Tour and speaking requests are subject to staff availability and must be booked in advance.
For questions about our educational resources, please connect with Anjalique Knight at education@paulimurraycenter.org.
Resources on this page include:
Pauli Murray: A Visionary for Justice Elementary and Secondary Grades Curriculum
Imp, Crusader, Dude, Priest Curriculum for 3rd, 4th, and 8th Graders
Pauli Murray: Civil & Women’s Rights Trailblazer and Pauli Murray: Fighting Jane and Jim Crow Curriculum for 9th - 12th Graders
Durham Civil Rights Map and Gender Expansive Zine
West End Coloring Book and Pronouns Hero Coloring Page
Pauli Murray: The Life of a Pioneering Feminist & Civil Rights Activist Curriculum Guide
This curriculum guide is designed to accompany eighth graders through Rosita Stevens-Holsey’s book Pauli Murray: the Life of a Pioneering Feminist & Civil Rights Activist. It can be adjusted to accommodate students across middle and high school grades through dynamic leveling activities. The curriculum is written in a “choose your own adventure” style, so you can select activities from each section to fit your class, or extend the curriculum by implementing multiple activities per lesson.
Below, you will find a brief video of Rosita Stevens-Holsey, Pauli Murray’s niece, offering a few words to students who are reading about her aunt. This video can be used as an introduction to the book she and Terry Catasus Jennings co-authored as an opportunity to connect students to Pauli Murray and her niece.
Pauli Murray: A Visionary For Justice Curriculum
This curriculum set explores the guiding question “How do words and images shape our world?” for primary grades, and “How can telling and documenting our stories be a form of activism?” for secondary grades.
Designed for 3rd/4th and 8th grade Durham Public Schools ELA Units 1–4, these materials are flexible and can be adapted for other grade levels, units, or subject areas. The curriculum aligns with North Carolina Common Core standards to support classroom relevance and instructional goals.
This resource is completely free to use, and we welcome your feedback.
Curriculum PDFs
This ELA curriculum for primary and secondary grades aligns with the North Carolina Common Core guidelines and can be modified for grade level and Unit.
Educator Feedback
With your comments, we can continue to make this curriculum relevant and current. For any questions or assistance, please contact Anjalique Abernathy at education@paulimurraycenter.org.
Pauli Murray: Imp, Crusader, Dude, Priest Exhibit Curriculum
Created by the Pauli Murray Center
GRADE LEVEL 3, 4, & 8
This is your portal for everything you need to teach about our Durham human rights hero Pauli Murray in your classroom.
The Pauli Murray Project developed a curriculum for 3rd, 4th, and 8th grade classrooms to accompany the exhibit. It is designed to ignite thinking about students’ own places in history and their skills as readers, writers, and citizens. Curriculum is tied to Common Core and NC Standards and centers on a fieldtrip to the exhibit.
Pauli Murray: Civil & Women’s Rights Trailblazer
GRADE LEVEL 9-12
This lesson will provide an overview of Pauli Murray’s incredible work, perseverance and accomplishments. Infused throughout the lesson are seven oral history clips from a 1976 interview with Pauli Murray, housed at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Southern Oral History Program. This lesson will broaden student understanding of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as bring to the forefront one of the most impactful trailblazers for civil and women’s rights.
Pauli Murray: Fighting Jane and Jim Crow
GRADE LEVEL 9-12
This lesson is part of The Role of Gay Men and Lesbians in the Civil Rights Movement series. This series introduces students to four lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) people of African descent, and their allies. All four—James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Pauli Murray, Bayard Rustin—were indispensable to the ideas, strategies and activities that made the civil rights movement a successful political and social revolution.
Pauli Murray: Understanding LGBTQ+ Identity: A Toolkit for Educators
Created by PBS Learning Media
GRADE LEVEL 9-12
In this video from First Person: Classroom, examine the life and legacy of one of America’s most influential equal rights leaders, Pauli Murray. Using video, discussion questions, teaching tips, and oral history activity, students learn about Pauli Murray and how her life intertwined with the Civil Rights and Women's Movement in the United States.
West End History Coloring Book
This downloadable coloring book lifts of the contributions of six former residents—Ernie Barnes, William Marsh, Jr., Pauli Murray, Benjamin Ruffin, Yusuf Salim, Peggy Tapp, and Daisy Gunn—of Durham’s West End Neighborhood.
What Are Pronouns? An Activity for All
Created by Sophia Ross-Hurtado, Pauli Murray Center staff
In this brief activity, learn more about pronouns and communication. This activity is accessible to people of all ages.
Durham Civil Rights Map
This is a community resource for teachers, students, residents and anyone interested in Durham, civil rights, human rights and social history. Each marker on the map includes photos, text, and audio. It is accessible on a phone, tablet or computer.
Created by Pauli Murray Center work-study students and interns from Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill
PMC Gender Expansive Zine
Created by the 2023 Summer Firebrands, the Pauli Murray Center’s Gender Expansive Zine explores gender identity and expression through a Black feminist lens. Our zine connects Pauli Murray’s journey with gender to the contemporary ways that we view and imagine our own gender journey(s). Including a fun quiz, different resources for further exploration, and more; grab your friends or just a journal and spend some time re-imaging what gender does and could look like in our world.
