Personal Outrage & Civil Rights Activism:
Pauli Murray as a Student and Advocate for Change
Abstract
Many historians have acknowledged how activists who were
part of the “long civil rights movement” challenged racial
discrimination decades before the 1950s and the 1960s, when
Martin Luther King, Jr. shepherded the call for change. World
War II was a turning point. During the war, African Americans
objected to segregation in the armed forces, a policy that
contradicted American wartime rhetoric. Those African
Americans who did not go to war also protested and
demonstrated to show their discontent. Pauli Murray was one
young activist who would go on to become a civil rights
lawyer, a founder of the National Organization for Women,
and the first African American woman to be ordained in the
Episcopal Church. A young law student at Howard University
during World War II, Murray helped lead protests against the
segregation policies of a Washington, D.C. restaurant. Even
before the war, Murray challenged the University of North
Carolina’s rejection of her graduate school application
because of her race and was arrested in Virginia in 1940 for
refusing to sit on a broken bus seat. While the participation of
young people in the civil rights movement in the 1960s has
long been recognized, Murray’s civil rights inspired activities
demonstrate the passion of students to enact change even
before that pivotal era. Murray was an activist who led – and
helped others lead—an early civil rights sit-in movement that
would inspire civil rights leaders in the 1960s. Her use of
peaceful protest and her passion for civil and women’s rights
would be a model for generations to come.
Chronology
November 20, 1910: Pauli Murray was born in Baltimore
1938: Gaines v. Canada
1939: Pauli Murray’s University of North Carolina application
was rejected
1940: Murray’s Virginia bus incident
1943-44: Little Palace Cafeteria sit-in demonstrations
1948: President Harry Truman desegregated the United
States Armed Forces
1955-56: Montgomery Bus Boycott
1960: Greensboro Sit-Ins
1977: Murray ordained in the Episcopal Church
July 1, 1985: Pauli Murray died in Pittsburgh
Michaela Marini
Advisor: Dr. Angela Lahr
Evidence Significance
The scholarship on the long civil rights movement
University of North Carolina Rejection shows that civil rights agitation started before the
“…[U]nder the Laws of North Carolina, and under the resolutions demonstrations of the 1960s. Pauli Murray was
important to the earlier movement because her
of the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina, personal experiences helped motivate her to bring
members of your race are not admitted to the University.” - Dr. change. The University of North Carolina’s
Franklin Porter Graham rejection of her application led her to challenge the
school’s president and the explanation of UNC’s
policy. Her arrest in Virginia motivated her even
- Pauli Murray applied to UNC in 1938 and was rejected because of her more to fight for civil rights, using non-violent
race. means to challenge her arrest. This personal
- Murray wrote several letters to the president of UNC and questioned incident led her to peruse her law career at Howard
why she was rejected. University. While Murray was at Howard, many of
her male classmates were being drafted to fight in
World War II. Murray and some of her female
classmates felt helpless, so they decided that they
would fight racism in the nation's capital of
Washington D.C. They strategically planned sit-in
Arrested in Virginia demonstrations at the Little Palace Cafeteria. After
“It was foolish of me to expect humane treatment within the segregation system; to make the a few days, the restaurant changed their
system work fairly would threaten the entire structure of white supremacy which Jim Crow was segregation policies and allowed African
Americans to dine in the restaurant. These
designed to reinforce.” - Pauli Murray personal experiences influenced Murray’s life of
activism in pursuit of the ideas that would carry into
- Murray was traveling to South Carolina for Easter but was stopped in Virginia because of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
segregation laws on a Greyhound Bus.
- Murray and her friend were arrested for fighting back against the segregation policy.
Select Bibliography
Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd. "The Long Civil Rights Movement
and the Political Uses of the Past." The Journal of
American History 91, no. 4 (2005): 1233-263.
doi:10.2307/3660172.
Little Palace Demonstrations Murray, Pauli. Interviewed by Geena Rae McNeil.
February 13, 1976. https://snccdigital.org/events/pauli-
“What I believed was that all these little bits of agitation would go murray-organizes-howard-student-sit-ins/.
toward that vital and I hope not too distant awakening process.”
- Pauli Murray Murray, Pauli. Song in a Weary Throat. New York: Harper
& Row, 1987.
- Murray and other students from Howard University strategically planned
Sugrue, Thomas J. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten
non-violent sit-in demonstrations at the Little Palace Cafeteria in Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. New York:
Washington D.C. Random House, 2008.
- Students went in by threes and filled the empty seats in the restaurant
Acknowledgements
waiting to be served. When they were not, they stayed and read
magazines, textbooks, etc. I would like to thank Dr. Lahr for all her help over the past
two semesters of capstone. Without her I would not have
- The restaurant closed for forty-eight hours and the restaurant decided to completed my research. I would also like to thank my
change their segregation laws. peers in capstone for all their suggestions and support to
get through this long process.