Last night I attended an event here at the Cathedral, a preview of the Pauli Murray Cantata (Sincerely Yours, Pauli Murray—Rebel With a Cause). Performed by San Diego Women’s Chorus, the San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus and under the direction of Dr. Kathleen Hansen.
For those of you not familiar with her, the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray was an extraordinary person (Pauli used she/her pronouns as was common during her time—she was born in 1910– but very likely would have used they/them or even he/him pronouns now). For purposes of this letter I will use the pronouns she did.
The one refrain I keep hearing as people learn about Pauli is “how did I not know about her?”
She had a vision of a world, born out of experience, and the ability to see beyond what was, and what could be. And she had a faith in the justice, peace, and reconciliation made possible by the God she served her whole life.
Here are a few of things, the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray accomplished: she was a teacher at the New York Remedial Reading Project and published articles for the NAACP. Her writings made her a force to be reckoned with in the Civil Rights Movement. And that was just the beginning. In 1944 Pauli graduated at the top of her law school class at Howard University. The only woman.
Upon graduation from Howard University, she went to the University of CA Bolt Hall and received a Master of Law degree. Her thesis was The Right to Equal Opportunity in Employment.
Later on she received a Doctorate of Judicial Science from Yale, and was the first African American to earn a doctoral degree from Yale.
Her accomplishments post graduation are also too numerous to list, and they are nothing short of amazing, but I do want to mention a few.
She wrote a book, States Law on Race and Color, which Thurgood Marshall, then head of the legal department of the NAACP, and later a United States Supreme Court Justice, called the “Bible” for Civil Rights litigators.
President John F. Kennedy appointed her to the Committee of Civil and Political Rights as part of his Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. She, along with Better Friedan and others founded the National Organization for Women (NOW), although she eventually moved on in because she felt NOW did not adequately address the status of Black and working class women.
The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray also served on the faculty of Brandeis University for several years.
And if all that wasn’t enough, following the death of her long time partner, while in her sixties, at a time in which she could have happily retired, she attended the General Theological Seminary in New York and became an Episcopal Priest. One of the first women priests and the first woman of color. It could not have been easy to be an African American lesbian in her sixties, but she persevered and become as Bishop Susan said last night, “a prophet,”
So how is it possible so many people have not heard of her? Well we can guess, but we can and must change that.
Finally among the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray’s many accomplishments, she was a gifted, and published, poet. Below is a portion of her poem, “Dark Testament Verse 8” which speaks beautifully to the power of hope to move and inspire us.
Hope is a song in a weary throat.
Give me a song of hope
And a world where I can sing it.
Give me a song of faith
And a people to believe in it.
Give me a song of kindliness
And a country where I can live it.
Give me a song of hope and love
And a brown girl’s heart to hear it.
Hopefully you had a chance to attend the preview last night! The entire cantata will performed on Saturday, November 7, at 7 pm, 2026 at the Joan Irwin Jacobs Theater. Click here for details.
