Starred review from January 16, 2017
Historian Rosenberg (Divided Lives) thoughtfully crafts this deeply researched biographical study of civil rights activist Pauli Murray (1910–1985), whose life and work crossed multiple categories of 20th-century identity and politics. Born into a mixed-race, socially aspirational family in the Jim Crow South, Murray was orphaned young and raised within her extended family. During her adult life, Murray worked variously as a labor organizer, unpaid activist, and journalist for the black press. She went on to become a lawyer, teach in Ghana, earn a J.S.D. from Yale, win tenure at Brandeis, and eventually leave professorship to become an Episcopal priest. Rosenberg shows how Murray pursued an intersectional activism, repeatedly identifying the ways in which race, class, and gender worked together to constrain opportunity. The biography also deftly explores Murray’s relationships and private struggles with identity. From childhood, Murray understood herself to be male, repeatedly seeking (unsuccessfully) medical treatment for gender dysphoria; she was also attracted to, and formed lasting relationships with, women during an era when both same-sex attraction and transgender identity were suspect categories. Placing Murray in historical context with practiced ease, Rosenberg weaves these many threads together into an authoritative narrative that will introduce Murray to many future generations.
Starred review from March 15, 2017
Rosenberg (emerita, history, Barnard Coll.; Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century) has written a splendid definitive biography of African American lawyer and activist Pauli Murray (1910-85). The inspiration for this latest book comes from the discovery of Murray as the precursor to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment while Rosenberg was working on Divided Lives. This thorough investigation into Murray's life is fascinating, as the author traces the intersection among gender, race, and politics. In doing so, Rosenberg successfully covers the various aspects of Murray's experience. From her legal scholarship on race discrimination, which encouraged Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to attack segregation as a violation of equal protection in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), to her being the first known black female Episcopal priest, exploring transsexuality in the mid-20th century. A similar study can be found in Sarah Azaransky's The Dream Is Freedom: Pauli Murray and American Democratic Faith. VERDICT Readers interested in black history, legal history, feminism, or LGBTQ studies will find this to be a noteworthy account.--Misty Standage, Ivy Tech Community Coll., Evansville, IN
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 1, 2017
A cradle-to-grave account about one of the most interesting, accomplished, and controversial figures in 20th-century America who is far too little known.Pauli Murray (1910-1985), who fought valiantly against Jim Crow prejudice, came to be known as "Jane Crow" due to her mixed-race heritage, her female gender, and her own perception of herself as transgender. As Rosenberg (Emerita, History/Barnard Coll.; Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think About Sex and Politics, 2004, etc.) shows, Murray, never at ease psychologically, descended from a long line of mentally ill family members, and orphaned early--her father was murdered, and her mother was rendered frail by repeated childbirth--overcame countless obstacles throughout her life. She left her racially charged North Carolina home to earn a college degree in New York City, bounced back from being rejected for graduate studies at the University of North Carolina because of her part-black heritage (even though her white great-great-grandfather had served on the governing board there), graduated from Howard University Law School, and began influencing public policy outside academia. Murray's work on discrimination influenced lawyers and judges to desegregate public schools, protect the constitutional rights of women, and move toward protecting other minorities as well. She considered herself queer in terms of sexuality, often dressing so that distinguishing her gender proved difficult; in terms of gay and queer rights in general, she was clearly way ahead of her time. Later in life, Murray inspired Betty Friedan and others to co-found the National Organization for Women, smashed academic barriers at Brandeis University, and earned ordination in the Episcopal Church as the first female black priest. One of Rosenberg's most fascinating extended anecdotes illuminates Murray's struggle to write and publish her 1956 memoir, Proud Shoes. She gained attention as a memoirist around the same time that Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin were also breaking racial and class barriers as authors. Assiduous research and clear prose give Murray her due.
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Starred review from February 15, 2017
Activist and lawyer Murray spent her life publicly fighting discrimination against blacks and women, while privately fighting for her own sense of sexual identity. Part of a mixed-race family of relative privilege, she grew up in segregated North Carolina before moving to New York for college in the activist 1930s and became a labor and civil-rights advocate. She challenged conventions throughout her school and professional career, getting rejected from the University of North Carolina on account of her race, and, after graduating from Howard Law School, from Harvard on account of her gender. Murray developed friendships with many of the progressive luminaries of the time, including Eleanor Roosevelt (see Patricia Bell-Scott's The Firebrand and the First Lady, 2016, for a rich account of their friendship), Thurgood Marshall, and Betty Friedan. Her legal scholarship formed the basis for Marshall's challenge to school segregation in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education, and her advice to Friedan led to the formation of the National Organization of Women, as she argued against what she called Jane Crow. She later became the first woman to be ordained a priest by the Episcopal Church. But Murray lived in emotional turmoil, believing herself to be a man in a woman's body long before science and society were ready to grapple with transgender issues. Historian Rosenberg offers a compelling look at a complicated woman.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)