As part of our effort to practice human rights at home as well as far away, the Duke Human Rights Center sponsors a Durham project that seeks to use the legacy of one of our most illustrious daughters, Pauli Murray, to spur more knowledge about our past and build a constituency interested in positive change for the future.
“Activating history for social justice” is one way of putting this.We are also asking Durham residents what reconciliation would look like for them and how do we begin talking about the past, good and bad. Durham is often portrayed as the place where, albeit in secret, black and whites “got along.” After all, both Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois used Durham as an examples of how their views on race and progress — as segregated communities helping themselves or integrated communities with equal rights — were the right ones. Yet there was violence and injustice resulting from slavery, segregation and the “quiet rage” or one race dominating and exploiting another.
We’re using the “sites of conscience” museum movement as one way to show how the past can be harnessed to a more open and inclusive future.
The local newspaper, the Durham Herald-Sun, has been covering the project with a great deal of interested. There was a front page story in the August 9 Sunday edition; and an opinion piece today.
The Sunday story:
BY DAWN BAUMGARTNER VAUGHAN : The Herald-Sun
dvaughan@heraldsun.com
Aug 9, 2009
DURHAM — Pauli Murray’s life story can be an example for many facets of our community — white, African-American, women, men, the faithful. The woman who grew up in Durham and affected society well beyond it is the subject of a local project to educate people about her legacy. She was a poet, a lawyer, civil rights and women’s rights activist, and a priest.
Murray’s heritage was white, black and Native American. She became the first female African-American to be ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. And her 1956 family history, “Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family” discussed issues of identity that are uncomfortable for some even today.
A public art project in Durham this past February featuring murals of Murray was the catalyst for The Pauli Murray Project. Fourteen colorful murals representing Murray were painted at six sites by “Face Up: Telling Stories of Community Life,” sponsored by the Duke Center for Documentary Studies.
Barbara Lau, director of the Pauli Murray Project, said there are a lot of people in Durham who don’t know about Murray. “We want to introduce her and her ideas to Durham,” she said.
The project is part of the Duke Human Rights Center at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, and aims to use Murray’s legacy to explore Durham history and promote reconciliation and dialogue that may lay the foundation of the proposed Durham History Museum.
Lau said they hope the project will spark a grassroots effort to read and discuss “Proud Shoes.” The Durham County Library has a book club pack of “Proud Shoes,” providing several copies to check out at once, plus a reading guide. A public discussion will be held Wednesday night at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, facilitated by Courtney Reid-Eaton and the Rev. Brooks Graebner, who both serve on the steering committee.
Murray’s family history is also local Episcopalian history, said Graebner, rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Hillsborough.
Murray’s great-grandmother Cornelia Fitzgerald was born into slavery in Orange County to her mother, Harriet, and a white slave-owning father in the Smith family. As a child, she was brought to church by the woman who owned her — and was also her aunt — at The Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill.
Murray discussed her ancestry in “Proud Shoes,” which has been reprinted multiple times. Cornelia Fitzgerald married a biracial schoolteacher in Orange County who was a Union veteran that came South during Reconstruction to teach. The couple lived in Hillsborough at first, attending St. Matthew’s Episcopal and baptizing their children there, including Pauline Fitzgerald Dame. Dame was Murray’s aunt and a founding member of St. Titus Episcopal Church in Durham. Dame also raised Murray after her parents died.
After Murray was ordained an Episcopal priest, she celebrated Eucharist at The Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill. July 1, the date of her death in 1985, is being considered as a feast day in the Episcopal Church. Proposed at the General Convention this summer, it was moved to committee for a process that could take a few years to complete.
Graebner, diocese historiographer, said Murray’s nomination as a saint also helps the predominantly white Episcopal Church to examine its own racial history and grapple with its complicity in slavery. The balcony at St. Matthew’s was once the slave section.
After the Civil War, St. Titus was founded by African-Americans in Durham and remains the only predominantly African-American Episcopal congregation in the area, Graebner said.
“It is important for us to be talking about this — that we remember what this racial history is. ‘Proud Shoes’ opens very interesting windows into that complex, painful history,” he said.
For Reid-Eaton, a member of St. Joseph’s, which is hosting the book discussion Wednesday, “Proud Shoes” showed her that Murray was a visionary thinker to talk about race and incendiary issues in the 1950s.
“She strove to be a fully integrated human being, proud of all her identities — African-American and part white, Irish and Native American,” Reid-Eaton said. She said that like Murray, she too is a person of mixed heritage as most African-Americans are. Her husband is white, and it is important to them to raise their children in a world where they can embrace all that they are.
“People tend to be pretty single-minded about race. I think it’s hard for people to accept that people can be both black and white, not have to choose one or the other. For example, our president,” she said. She said that while the term African-American is used to describe black people, but not all black people are African-American. Her own ancestry is Caribbean.
“Race is very complicated and we try to simplify that, making things black and white,” Reid-Eaton said. “Pauli Murray is someone who was talking like this, like I’m talking now, in 1956. That’s amazing. Her writings have been an incredible gift to me.”
And an opinion piece by the same reporter today:
What will Murray’s legacy be?
Aug 10, 2009
Whooo … Are … You? The caterpillar in “Alice in Wonderland” poses the question in fantastical puffs of smoke, but the question is a sober one. A thoughtful one. We can all give a quick answer: our name. I’m Dawn. Americans like identifying ourselves by our occupations, too. I’m a journalist. We move on to parenthood, where we live, where we’re from, where we went to school, our political persuasions, our social activities, our religion — really the list is endless.
Somewhere in there is race. Some people, like me, don’t usually mention it because it’s not significant to them. I’m not reminded daily of being white. It’s something I take for granted, in that any discrimination I feel would be based on gender, not race. If I were a Duke professor breaking into my own house, police probably wouldn’t be very suspicious of me.
While our president and events in the news lately have brought to light our national reaction to America’s racial relations, reconciliation and history, someone raised here in Durham brought up the subject half a century ago. That would be Pauli Murray. Perhaps you’ve seen her face splashed in bright colors of paint on buildings around the city.
I wrote the story that ran Sunday about the latest developments in The Pauli Murray Project, started at Duke earlier this year. Murray’s accomplished life spanned much of the 20th century. She was the first African-American Episcopal priest. She broke gender and racial barriers and was a lawyer and a poet. I think we can all find a way to identify with her on some level. She called people out. That’s what I like best about her. She questioned authority. She literally would not sit at the back of the bus.
Murray also showed us that not everyone is just white or just black. At a time when any black heritage at all meant that you were black, period, Murray wrote about her multiracial family history in “Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family.” It was published in 1956. Pause and think about that for a minute. That was way before I was born, but I know enough U.S. history to know that our country was just waking up to stamping out the injustice white Americans shoved onto African Americans. We certainly weren’t a cross-racial nation joining in a round of beers together at the White House.
I wrote my column last week about a Durham man who went out of his way to return a found laptop computer because it was the right thing to do. Murray called out her ancestors and discussed her family history publicly because it was the right thing to do. She questioned the admissions policy at UNC and Harvard because it was the right thing to do. Doing the right thing can present itself in myriad ways.
The right thing for us to do in Durham, as the city that raised Murray, is to recognize what she has done for us as a city and a country. How the Pauli Murray Project takes shape may be guided by its steering committee, but the result will be completed by you.
What will Pauli Murray do in Durham, now 24 years after her death? Will she spark conversation? Will her image grace more public art space than the murals? Will her legacy inspire fellow Hillside High graduates to succeed? Will she inspire women to become priests or lawyers? Will Durham spread the word about one of its own? I don’t have the answer. You do.
Now, Pauli Murray wasn’t the first and won’t be the last person who grew up in Durham and went on to do great things. If you think a Durhamite that has been forgotten or overlooked deserves some attention, let me know.
Check out the Pauli Murray Facebook page for more!
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