Pauli Murray Analysis

1683 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: How to promote anti discriminatory practices

A Protest For A Better World

Pauli Murray held multiple positions during her life; activist, lawyer, priest, and poet. In her 1989 autobiography titled, Pauli Murray: The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest and Poet, Murray narrates her life’s mission. Murray’s work is remarkable as it is viewed as a persistent fight against oppression and injustice. As an African American woman growing up during the early twentieth century, Murray faced discrimination such as Jim and Jane Crow head on. Murray connected with the countless amount of other people who were not represented equally in America during this time. What makes Murray extraordinary is that unlike the many that came before her, Murray made change happen. Murray …show more content…

As she became older and more educated, Murray refused to attend a segregated college. Murray claimed that this was her first open position against discrimination. Murray continuously grew more overt in her activities, not just against Jim Crow, but with gender inequality in America. Murray had a drive to attend the prestigious Columbia University, but had to accept the current reality of America when she was informed that no women were accepted there. This was the first introduction Murray had with “Jane Crow”. Murray uses the term “Jane Crow” to describe the “evil of antifeminism” and she made the connections that African Americans and women were fighting a similar conflict when it came to equal human rights. As Murray began to see more and more oppression and discrimination, she would begin to respond in more intense …show more content…

Throughout the subsequent years following her arrest in Virginia, Murray would face additional oppression. In the face of adversity, Murray continuously protested by participating in protests of restaurants in downtown Washington while attending Howard University Law School. At first, Murray was simply a participant there, but she insisted on doing more for the movement by serving as a student adviser. This began the evolution of Pauli Murray from a member into a forerunner in protests countering discrimination. During the process to integrate Washington’s downtown restaurants, Murray accomplished success and failure simultaneously. While Murray’s formation of protestors eventually received service at the restaurant, they were instructed to refrain from protesting afterwards. This message did not resonate amicably with Murray who had a determination to continue her non-violent methods with the sit in. Murray was beginning to gain more and more confidence with her protests as her sit in was an overall triumph; she was now ready to take on more leadership

Show More
Related

  • Gender & Jim Crow: Book Review

    1309 Words  | 3 Pages

    Glenda Gilmore’s book Gender & Jim Crow shows a different point of view from a majority of history of the south and proves many convictions that are not often stated. Her stance from the African American point of view shows how harsh relations were at this time, as well as how hard they tried for equity in society. Gilmore’s portrayal of the Progressive Era is very straightforward and precise, by placing educated African American women at the center of Southern political history, instead of merely in the background.

    Read More

  • Lucy Diggs Slowe: Equal Rights For Women Of Black Women

    1044 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Throughout her professional life, [Anna Julia Cooper] advocated equal rights for women of color...and was particularly concerned with the civil, educational, and economic rights of Black women” (Thomas & Jackson, 2007, p. 363).

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Mcguire's At The Dark End Of The Street

    1136 Words  | 3 Pages

    Malcolm X stated that the most disrespected, unprotected and neglected person in America is the black woman. Black women have long suffered from racism in American history and also from sexism in the broader aspect of American society and even within the black community; black women are victims of intersection between anti-blackness and misogyny sometimes denoted to as "misogynoir". Often when the civil rights movement is being retold, the black woman is forgotten or reduced to a lesser role within the movement and represented as absent in the struggle, McGuire 's At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power does not make this same mistake.

    Read More

  • Analysis of the New Jim Crow by Professor Michelle Alexander

    761 Words  | 2 Pages

    Professor Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, writes that a racial caste system existing in America reflect the Jim Crow laws that were "separate but equal" from the time of the Civil War until the passage of the Civil Rights Acts in the mid 1960's and which continue today. She is a graduate from Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University and clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the United States Supreme Court and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Subsequently, she was on the faculty of Sanford Law School serving as the Director of the Civil Rights Clinic before receiving a Soros Justice Fellowship and an appointment to the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. Professor Alexander has litigated civil rights cases in private practice while associated with at Saperstein, Goldstein, Demchak & Baller law firm, with additional advocacy through the non-profit sector, as the Director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Anne Moody's Coming Of Age In Mississippi

    1178 Words  | 3 Pages

    Anne Moody’s memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, is an influential insight into the existence of a young girl growing up in the South during the Civil-Rights Movement. Moody’s book records her coming of age as a woman, and possibly more significantly, it chronicles her coming of age as a politically active Negro woman. She is faced with countless problems dealing with the racism and threat of the South as a poor African American female. Her childhood and early years in school set up groundwork for her racial consciousness. Moody assembled that foundation as she went to college and scatter the seeds of political activism. During her later years in college, Moody became active in numerous organizations devoted to creating changes to the civil rights of her people. These actions ultimately led to her disillusionment with the success of the movement, despite her constant action. These factors have contributed in shaping her attitude towards race and her skepticism about fundamental change in society.

    Read More

  • Moynihan Negro Family

    1321 Words  | 3 Pages

    Beale, Frances. "Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female." An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought. New York: New, 1995. 146. Print.

    Read More

  • Anne Moody Paper

    1069 Words  | 3 Pages

    Anne learned from a young age that if you were a Negro, hard work will get you something, but most of the time, that something isn’t enough for what you need. This is the same for the fight against racial inequality. Though the programs made an impact and were successful in their own smaller battles, the larger battle still had yet to be won. Anne’s experiences had raised several doubts

    Read More

  • Anna Julia Cooper

    2460 Words  | 5 Pages

    The life of Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964) affords rich opportunities for studying the developments in African-American and Ameri can life during the century following emancipation. Like W.E.B. DuBois, Cooper's life is framed by especially momentous years in U.S. history: the final years of slavery and the climactic years of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's. Cooper's eclect ic and influential career mirrored the times. Although her life was privileged in relation to those of the majority of African-Americans, Cooper shared in the experiences of wrenching change, elevating promise, and heart-breaking disappointment. She was accordingly able to be an organic and committed intellectual whose eloquent speech was ensnarled in her concern for the future of African-Americans.

    Read More

  • Anne Moody's Involvement in the Civil Rights Movement

    1371 Words  | 3 Pages

    Anne Moody had thought about joining the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), but she never did until she found out one of her roommates at Tougaloo college was the secretary. Her roommate asked, “why don’t you become a member” (248), so Anne did. Once she went to a meeting, she became actively involved. She was always participating in various freedom marches, would go out into the community to get black people to register to vote. She always seemed to be working on getting support from the black community, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Son after she joined the NAACP, she met a girl that was the secretary to the ...

    Read More

  • Judith Sargent Murray

    1718 Words  | 4 Pages

    Three notable essays written by Murray about equality are: her earliest essay being Desultory Thoughts Upon the Utility of Encouraging a Degree of Self- Complacency, Especially in Female Bosoms (1784), On the Equality of the Sexes written in 1790, and Observations on Female Abilities in the third volume of The Gleaner written in 1798. In these essays Murray maintains that society must be based on a strict adherence to order - political, social, family, and personal order - while promoting a change of women's place within that order. The main distinct theme of Judith Sargent Murray's essays is equality between men and women. Murray emphasizes on the fact that society has shaped the role of women, and the only way to prove that women have equal minds is to give women the right to an education; also challenging the question of men being superior to women in several ways.

    Read More

  • Gender Inequality In The Soul Of Black Folk And The Yellow Wallpaper?

    1130 Words  | 3 Pages

    During the twentieth century, people of color and women, suffered from various inequalities. W.E.B. Du Bois’ and Charlotte Perkins Gilman (formerly known as Charlotte Perkins Stetson), mention some of the concepts that illustrate the gender and racial divide during this time. In their books, The Soul of Black Folk and The Yellow Wallpaper, Du Bois’ and Gilman illustrate and explain issues of oppression, dismissal, and duality that are relevant to issues of race and gender.

    Read More

  • Ain't Scared of your Jails

    1527 Words  | 4 Pages

    One of the first documented incidents of the sit-ins for the civil rights movement was on February 1, 1960 in Nashville, Tennessee. Four college African-Americans sat at a lunch counter and refused to leave. During this time, blacks were not allowed to sit at certain lunch counters that were reserved for white people. These black students sat at a white lunch counter and refused to leave. This sit-in was a direct challenge to southern tradition. Trained in non-violence, the students refused to fight back and later were arrested by Nashville police. The students were drawn to activist Jim Lossen and his workshops of non-violence. The non-violent workshops were training on how to practice non-violent protests. John Lewis, Angela Butler, and Diane Nash led students to the first lunch counter sit-in. Diane Nash said, "We were scared to death because we didn't know what was going to happen." For two weeks there were no incidences with violence. This all changed on February 27, 1960, when white people started to beat the students. Nashville police did nothing to protect the black students. The students remained true to their training in non-violence and refused to fight back. When the police vans arrived, more than eighty demonstrators were arrested and summarily charged for disorderly conduct. The demonstrators knew they would be arrested. So, they planned that as soon as the first wave of demonstrators was arrested, a second wave of demonstrators would take their place. If and when the second wave of demonstrators were arrested and removed, a third would take their place. The students planned for multiple waves of demonstrators.

    Read More

  • lucy stone

    817 Words  | 2 Pages

    A college education is something that women take for granted today, but in the 1800’s it was an extremely rare thing to see a woman in college. During the mid 1800’s, schools like Oberlin and Elmira College began to accept women. Stone’s father did a wonderful thing (by 19th century standards) in loaning her the money to pay for her college education. Stone was the first woman to get a college education in Massachusetts, graduating from Oberlin College in 1843. Her first major protest was at the time of her graduation. Stone was asked to write a commencement speech for her class. But she refused, because someone else would have had to read her speech. Women were not allowed, even at Oberlin, to give a public address.

    Read More

  • Allan Johnson The Gender Knot Analysis

    1115 Words  | 3 Pages

    “There is a double standard here that shapes our perceptions of men and women in ways that support patriarchy as a system. What is culturally valued is associated with masculinity and maleness and what is devalued is associated with femininity and femaleness, regardless of the reality of men’s and women’s lives”,( Johnson 64). In the movie Mona Lisa Smile, Betty’s mother was pressurizing Betty to make her husband read a poem at the wedding not just to act like he enjoyed the marriage but mainly because it was a tradition for men. When Betty said she didn’t care about it, her mother refused and still insisted that she should do it. Women are looked down upon when it comes to the assignment of gender roles and this is because of labels that the society has placed on the female gender. In a home, the father is always the head of the home, providing food and clothing for every family member but there are some women who like to be independent and would also love to work and make money and cater for the family. In the 19th century, women were told they were home makers and were not allowed to endeavor further in higher educational studies. Wellesley College was a college built to raise future wives and not future leaders meaning that society had already placed women below the ladder without any intention or thoughts of them climbing back

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison Biography

    1003 Words  | 3 Pages

    Her mother was a church-going woman and sang in the choir. Her mother didn’t work; she just stayed home and took care of the family. By being black, her parents faced lots of racism living in the south (1). Both of her parents had moved from the south to escape the racism and to find better opportunities. Living in an integrated neighborhood, Morrison did not become fully aware of racial divisions until her teens (2).

    Read More

More about Pauli Murray Analysis

Open Document