Born: November 20, 1910, Baltimore, MD

Education: Hunter College, B.A., 1933; Howard Law School, LL.B., 1944; University of California–Berkeley, LL.M., 1945; Yale University, S.J.D., 1965; General Theological Seminary, M. Div., 1976

Died: July 1, 1985, Pittsburgh, PA

Murray is revered for Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family (1956), which traces her family's contributions to education, service, and citizenship ca. 1860s–1950s. Activist and scholar, she resisted race, class, and gender injustice. Her States’ Laws on Race and Color (1951), said Thurgood Marshall, was the bible for the NAACP's strategy of “direct attack” on segregation. Cofounder of the National Organization for Women (1966), she became the first black woman priest in the Episcopal Church (1977). Elected to sainthood, she is profiled in Holy Women, Holy Men (2012).

She fought Jim Crow. Her best known challenge built on the NAACP's unsuccessful suit (1933) of a black applicant to the University of North Carolina Pharmacy School. Motivated by that case, she applied to its graduate school in 1938. In his rejection letter, the dean reminded her that “members of your race are not admitted to the University.” Elsewhere, she engaged in nonviolent protest against the color line. Virginia police arrested Murray for violating the state's segregated seat law on a Greyhound bus in 1940. As a Howard Law School student during World War II, she not only challenged sexism in her classes but also helped organize sit-down protests at white-only restaurants.