January Newsletter: A Note from our Executive Director

“I love America…”
-Pauli Murray, interview with Genna R. McNeil, PhD, February 1976

Happy New Year, Friends:

This year, Americans commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. As I grapple with this against the backdrop of our current political landscape, I’m reminded that Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray’s activism is grounded in her Americanness. 

Murray writes and talks about being an American, and her patriotism, pretty consistently. Her thoughts around her American identity are compelling. 

In Proud Shoes, Murray describes placing a Union flag atop their grandfather’s grave (against the backdrop of Confederate flags) as a youth as an act of defiance and pride. 

In a 1976 interview with historian Genna R. McNeil, Murray shared how labor organizing across class and racial lines during the Great Depression sparked their radical ideals, and fueled their patriotism. 

After graduating from Howard University School of Law, Murray boldly declared “I am an American” in what many consider to be their personal mission statement, “American Credo”.

Murray recounts in her penultimate memoir, Song in a Weary Throat, that teaching in Ghana in the 1960s reinforced that America is “home,” and that Black Americans were born of survivors. 

Murray’s Americanness served as the foundation for their activism and radical ideals. They understood that freedom and their American identity were not something that should be withheld, nor something that should be earned; rather, they were part of Murray’s inheritance based on how their ancestors built America, what their ancestors sacrificed for America, and how they survived and resisted in America. A child of the Jim Crow South, Murray rejected the notion that Black Americans were inferior, and called out segregation, discrimination, and prejudice as anti-American. Murray used this to craft a vast vision: that all people living in the United States should be protected legally, and treated with dignity socially, no matter their race, color, gender, or nationality. This, Murray felt, would create a pathway for America to fulfill the prophecy that all are created equal. 

Pauli Murray’s vision for mankind is rooted in her American identity. As we celebrate 100 years of Black History Month commemorations, let’s also be reminded that Murray’s vision is distinctly birthed from her lived experience as a Black American from the U.S. South.

Onward,

Angela Thorpe Mason
Executive Director 
Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice