Introduction

Pauli Murray (1910-1985) was a poet, lawyer, and priest, as well as a significant figure in the civil rights and women's movements. Our interdisciplinary roundtable demonstrates Murray's foundational contributions to critical race theory and black feminist theology, recognizes how her poetry articulates crucial ideas about justice and hope, and analyzes her engagements with—and at times wariness about—identities, including transgender, sexual, and racial identities. We consider how the breadth of Murray's work provides contemporary scholars and democratic activists with resources to envision a common freedom struggle that takes seriously realities of racism and heterosexism.

While she did not identify publicly as a lesbian or transgender person, Murray preserved in her archives evidence of how in the 1930s and 1940s she experimented with cross-dressing and sought hormonal treatments so that she might live as a man, as well as letters that document lifelong sexual, romantic, and marital love for women. Also in the 1940s, Murray was in the vanguard of black activists to use nonviolent direct action. A decade before the Montgomery bus boycott, Murray organized sit-ins of segregated restaurants in Washington, DC and was arrested for sitting in the front section of a bus in Virginia.

Murray pioneered the category Jane Crow to describe discrimination she experienced as a result of racism and sexism. In the 1960s, her reflections about the intersection of race and sex were crucial to expanding equal protection provisions for African American women. A cofounder of the National Organization for Women, Murray insisted on the interrelation of all human rights. In seminary in the 1970s, Murray developed a black feminist critique of emerging black male and white feminist theologies. After becoming the first African American woman Episcopal priest in 1977, Murray emphasized the particularity of African American women's experiences, while proclaiming a universal message of salvation.

This roundtable recognizes how Pauli Murray's interdisciplinary work exposes a complex array of social structures of inequality and oppressions. By reflecting on Murray's personal experiences and the legacy of her work in a number of fields, contributors to this section trace connections between transgender studies, queer theory in religion, critical race theory, and black feminist theory and theology. By considering Murray's struggles to build strategic alliances, the roundtable reflects on the practical challenges of coalition politics and recognizes Murray's persuasive vision of justice that grapples with dominant understandings of race, sexuality, and gender.