Pauli Murray's Prophetic Imagination: Brown v. Board , and the Struggle for Equal Rights in the United States

Abstract: This essay examines the life and work of writer and nonviolent labor organizer Pauli Murray (1910-1985), who, as a law student at Howard University, developed the novel strategy that Thurgood Marshall and NAACP lawyers would use to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) in the landmark civil rights case, Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Murray committed her life to the struggle for equal rights not just for Black people but for women as well. Her brilliant legal theorizing also laid the groundwork for Reed v. Reed (1971), a decision that ruled gender discrimination unconstitutional. Murray's biography shows a creative imagination that conjured an inclusive world free of racism and sexism and one that would be welcoming to all human beings, regardless of their class and sexuality.