Pauli Murray Center to celebrate grand opening of trailblazing priest's childhood home
The restored Durham, North Carolina, house were Pauli Murray spent part of her childhood. (Photo courtesy of the Pauli Murray Center)
The Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice on September 7 will celebrate the grand opening of the space that will anchor the nonprofit’s programming—the restored 1898 house that belonged to Murray’s grandparents and where the civil rights leader and trailblazing Episcopal priest spent part of her childhood.
Murray, who was born in 1910, lived there after her mother’s death in 1914 until she graduated from Hillside High School and headed to Hunter College in New York, according to the center’s online biography. (Because later in life Murray expressed ambiguity about her gender, the center and others sometimes refer to Murray by other pronouns, such as they and their.)
The nonprofit center in Murray’s name opened in 2012, and its executive director, Angela Thorpe Mason, said that it had always envisioned that its work would be housed in Murray’s childhood home, where it could offer programs in history and social justice to the community.
