Born in 1910 in Baltimore, Maryland, Pauli Murray was not only a queer, black, nonbinary visionary who was way ahead of her time, she was a trailblazing luminary, activist, lawyer, writer, poet, author, and priest. All her firsts were years before others were to follow. As Rosa Parks, in 1955, refused to move to the back of the bus, Pauli had done so in 1940, 15 years prior. This would be the life of Pauli Murray. Tirelessly working, yet always in the background. Pauli was also the first to fight for gender equality, civil rights, women’s rights, co-founding the National Organization for Women. She was the only woman in her law school, graduating as valedictorian, and elected Chief Justice of the Howard Court of Peers. In 1977 Pauli was the first black woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest. It has recently been announced that her image will be the face of the 2024 25-cent coin.

Her biographical movie begins in her own powerful voice  “My name is Pauli Murray, and my field of concentration has been on human rights. My whole personal history has been a struggle to meet the standards of excellence in a society which has been dominated by the ideas that blacks were inherently inferior to whites and women were inherently inferior to men.”

A movie worth watching, “My Name is Pauli Murray” can be found on Amazon prime video.