Pauli Murray

Intersectional civil rights pioneer who shaped landmark anti-discrimination laws

Before Pauli Murray (1910-1985) coined 'Jane Crow' to describe Black women's oppression, they had already desegregated restaurants through 1940s 'stool-sitting' protests and organized the 1944 Howard University sit-ins. Their 1951 book 'States' Laws on Race and Color' became the NAACP's legal bible, directly influencing Thurgood Marshall's Brown v. Board arguments.

As co-founder of NOW in 1966, Murray introduced intersectionality through the concept of 'double jeopardy' discrimination. Their 1965 EEOC memo established legal protections against sex-based employment discrimination, later embedded in Title VII. In 1977, Murray became the first Black woman Episcopal priest while continuing queer rights advocacy.

Murray's gender-nonconforming identity - using 'they/them' pronouns in private writings - predated modern LGBTQ+ terminology. The Supreme Court cited their Fourteenth Amendment theories in both Reed v. Reed (1971) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), making Murray one of few activists to shape both racial and marriage equality jurisprudence.