November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985
by Margaret (Meg) McCann, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Durham, 2012
THE REV. DR. PAULI MURRAY, Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill, 1977
The Rev. Dr. Anna Pauline (Pauli) Murray was many things – writer, lawyer, professor, and advocate for the rights of African Americans and women. She was also the first African American woman ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church. In 2012, she was memorialized as a saint in The Episcopal Church.
Pauli’s maternal grandmother, Cornelia Fitzgerald (Mrs. Robert), was the daughter of a slave, Harriet, and a slave owner, Sidney Smith. Cornelia was baptized in 1854 at The Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, as “one of the five servant children belonging to Miss Mary Ruffin Smith.” Cornelia had her own daughters baptized at St. Matthew’s, Hillsborough, and raised them as Episcopalians.
Pauli was born in Baltimore and baptized at St. James’ Episcopal Church. At age 3, after her mother died, she came to live in Durham with her maternal grandparents and her mother’s sister, Pauline. The family worshiped at St. Titus’ Episcopal Church, which Pauline and a third sister, Sarah, had helped establish. At age 9, she was confirmed by the Rt. Rev. Henry B. Delany, Suffragan Bishop for Colored Work who later, on his deathbed, said to Pauli, “You are a child of destiny.”
Perhaps Pauli’s first inclination of a call to ordination came in 1955 when her Aunt Pauline was dying and Pauli read to her from the Book of Common Prayer. After planning the memorial service for her partner, Renee Barlow, in 1973, she responded to a stronger call and entered General Theological Seminary. Three years later, The Episcopal Church approved the ordination of women priests, and Pauli was one of the first women (as well as the first African American woman) to be so ordained, on January 8, 1977.
When celebrating her first Eucharist at The Chapel of the Cross on February 13, 1977, Pauli read from her grandmother Cornelia’s Bible, from a lectern given in memory of Cornelia’s owner, Mary Ruffin Smith. (This was also the first Eucharist celebrated by a woman in North Carolina.) In her autobiography (Song in a Weary Throat), Pauli wrote, “Whatever future ministry I might have as a priest, it was given to me that day to be a symbol of healing. All the strands of my life had come together. Descendant of slave and of slave owner, I had already been called poet, lawyer, teacher, and friend. Now I was empowered to minister the sacrament of One in whom there is no north or south, no black or white, no male or female – only the spirit of love and reconciliation drawing us all toward the goal of human wholeness.”
In February 2007, in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Pauli’s ordination, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori preached at The Chapel of the Cross, saying, “I know that I stand here today only because she [Pauli] stood here before me. Her proud shoes carried many others down the road to freedom.” (Proud Shoes is the book Pauli wrote about growing up in Durham.)
More information is available at paulimurrayproject.org.