Dear Friends:

In recent months, the Pauli Murray Center has weathered online attacks. These attacks suggest that the people we serve are of no value. My team and I hold this vile hostility in tension with what we strive to build each day for every person in our community: a space that offers hope, healing, and joy to people the world over.

Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray reminds us that, for everyone, but most especially those of us who find ourselves on the margins and at the intersection of identities that are intentionally obscured, safety and dignity are the bare minimum. As I shared with a vast audience at last week’s National Trust for Historic Preservation National Preservation Summit, Murray saw their work to craft a society in which all people were protected legally, and treated with dignity socially, as their “duty.” The Pauli Murray Center team has chosen to take their cues from Murray.

We amplify Murray’s childhood home as a beacon for hope. In remembrance of Murray, we surface the reality that those on the margins often have the greatest capacity to envision, organize, and build towards a just future.

We invite people to Murray’s ancestral landscape as an opportunity for healing. In remembrance of Murray, we convene people with wounds, both shallow and deep, to heal. Murray, the people who raised her, and the community she loved, were healers and connectors. So are we.

Finally, we activate the Pauli Murray Center as a space of joy. In remembrance of Murray, may we recall that joy was critical to Murray’s being. It’s how they survived, and how we will too.

Thank you for standing alongside us as we do this work. We hope you will join us this LGBTQ History Month in our space of hope, healing, and joy, as we offer abundant opportunities for connection and celebration.

Onward,

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