First published posthumously in 1987, Pauli Murray\'s Song in a Weary Throat was critically lauded, winning the Robert F.
Now, more than thirty years after her death in 1985, Murray--poet, memoirist, lawyer, activist, and Episcopal priest--gains long-deserved recognition through a rediscovered Memoir that serves as a powerful witness (Brittney Cooper) to a pivotal era in the American twentieth century..
Murray sets these thrilling high-water marks against the backdrop of uncertain finances, chronic fatigue, and tragic losses both private and public, as Patricia Bell-Scott\'s engaging introduction brings to life.
We also read Betty Friedan\'s enthusiastic response to Murray\'s call for an NAACP for Women--the origins of NOW.
Murray\'s activism led to relationships with Thurgood Marshall and Eleanor Roosevelt--who respectfully referred to Murray as a firebrand--and propelled her to a Howard University law degree and a lifelong fight against Jane Crow sexism.
An early Freedom Rider, she was arrested in 1940, fifteen years before Rosa Parks\' disobedience, for sitting in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus.
We then follow Murray north at the age of seventeen to New York City\'s Hunter College, to her embrace of Gandhi\'s Satyagraha--nonviolent resistance--and south again, where she experienced Jim Crow firsthand.
In fact, throughout her life, Murray would struggle with feelings of sexual in-betweenness--she tried unsuccessfully to get her doctors to give her testosterone--that today we would recognize as a transgendered identity.
Orphaned at age four, she was sent from Baltimore to segregated Durham, North Carolina, to live with her unflappable Aunt Pauline, who, while strict, was liberal-minded in accepting the tomboy Pauli as my little boy-girl.
In a voice that is energetic, wry, and direct, Murray tells of a childhood dramatically altered by the sudden loss of her spirited, hard-working parents.
At last, with the republication of this beautifully crafted memoir, Song in a Weary Throat takes its rightful place among the great civil rights autobiographies of the twentieth century.
Yet Murray\'s name and extraordinary influence receded from view in the intervening years; now they are once again entering the public discourse.
Kennedy Book Award and the Lillian Smith Book Award among other distinctions.
First published posthumously in 1987, Pauli Murray\'s Song in a Weary Throat was critically lauded, winning the Robert F
