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Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray Illustrated Edition, Kindle Edition

by Rosalind Rosenberg (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 194 ratings
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Throughout her prodigious life, activist and lawyer Pauli Murray systematically fought against all arbitrary distinctions in society, channeling her outrage at the discrimination she faced to make America a more democratic country. In this definitive biography, Rosalind Rosenberg offers a poignant portrait of a figure who played pivotal roles in both the modern civil rights and women's movements.

A mixed-race orphan, Murray grew up in segregated North Carolina before escaping to New York, where she attended Hunter College and became a labor activist in the 1930s. When she applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee, she was rejected because of her race. She went on to graduate first in her class at Howard Law School, only to be rejected for graduate study again at Harvard University this time on account of her sex. Undaunted, Murray forged a singular career in the law. In the 1950s, her legal scholarship helped Thurgood Marshall challenge segregation head-on in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.

When appointed by Eleanor Roosevelt to the President's Commission on the Status of Women in 1962, she advanced the idea of Jane Crow, arguing that the same reasons used to condemn race discrimination could be used to battle gender discrimination. In 1965, she became the first African American to earn a JSD from Yale Law School and the following year persuaded Betty Friedan to found an NAACP for women, which became NOW. In the early 1970s, Murray provided Ruth Bader Ginsburg with the argument Ginsburg used to persuade the Supreme Court that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution protects not only blacks but also women - and potentially other minority groups - from discrimination. By that time, Murray was a tenured history professor at Brandeis, a position she left to become the first black woman ordained a priest by the Episcopal Church in 1976.

Murray accomplished all this while struggling with issues of identity. She believed from childhood she was male and tried unsuccessfully to persuade doctors to give her testosterone. While she would today be identified as transgender, during her lifetime no social movement existed to support this identity. She ultimately used her private feelings of being "in-between" to publicly contend that identities are not fixed, an idea that has powered campaigns for equal rights in the United States for the past half-century.
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  1. ISBN-13
    978-0190053819
  2. Edition
    Illustrated
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  5. Publication date
    April 3, 2017
  6. Language
    English
  7. File size
    12083 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Rosenberg brilliantly situates Murray at the forefront of post-WW II civil and women's rights movements....This major contribution to African American history and queer studies sheds light on Murray's lifelong struggles with gender identity. The feminist scholar and Episcopal priest identified as a man, established relationships with women, donned men's clothes, and during the 1930s unsuccessfully underwent hormone therapy in order to transition from female to male. A stellar and fascinating monograph that celebrates Murray's lesser-known accomplishments. Essential."--CHOICE

"Rosenberg offers a compelling look at a complicated woman."--Booklist, Starred Review

"A cradle-to-grave account about one of the most interesting, accomplished, and controversial figures in 20th-century America who is far too little known....Assiduous research and clear prose give [Pauli] Murray her due."--Kirkus

"Placing Murray in historical context with practiced ease, Rosenberg weaves these many threads together into an authoritative narrative that will introduce Murray to many future generations."--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"Rosenberg tells Murray's story as she lived it but also casts a well-informed, modern eye on the intersections and omissions within that life. Her striking interpretive work clearly shows what Murray herself suspected: that everything Murray did was 'part of history...an instrument for achieving things.'"--Foreword Reviews

"A fascinating look at the incredible life of Pauli Murray, a mixed-race, transgender scholar, lawyer, activist, priest, and trailblazer who played a pivotal role in the civil rights and women's movements of the 20th century."--The Advocate

"A splendid definitive biography....This thorough investigation into Murray's life is fascinating, as the author traces the intersection among gender, race, and politics."--Library Journal, Starred Review

"Historical figures aren't human flotsam, swirling into public awareness at random intervals. Instead, they are almost always borne back to us on the current of our own times. In Murray's case, it's not simply that her public struggles on behalf of women, minorities, and the working class suddenly seem more relevant than ever. It's that her private struggles--documented for the first time in all their fullness by Rosenberg--have recently become our public ones."--New Yorker

"A compelling read from start to finish....Like all the best biographies, this is more than just the story of a single figure. It is the story of America, told through the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality that have come to define it....Rosenberg's Jane Crow makes not only an important contribution to the fields of Black, feminist, and trans history, but also offers us the timely reminder that, as Murray herself once wrote, 'one person and a typewriter make a movement.'"--Lambda Literary

"A fresh perspective on this crucial slice of history."--Gay & Lesbian Review

"Rosenberg's research is thorough, and her lively style keeps readers engaged....[A]n edifying and enjoyable read."--Christian Century

"Beautifully crafted...[Jane Crow] underscore[s] the pleasures of biography as history."--The American Historical Review

"Rosenberg has done the world an immense favor by presenting, in all its triumph and pathos, the life (or perhaps 'lives' is more accurate) of this brilliant and defiant African-American."--National Catholic Review

"Meticulously researched, expansive in its coverage of Murray's many achievements, engagingly written overall, Rosenberg has given us the means to a greater appreciation of this most remarkable American, and provides a foundation for even further conversation about her significance and legacy."--North Carolina Literary Review

"Rosenberg has delivered an insightful, sensitive, and long-overdue biography that gives Murray her rightful place among the twentieth century's most important civil rights activitists."--Jeffrey J. Crow, North Carolina Historical Review

"Rosalind Rosenberg's Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray is a highly readable account of Murray's intense and life-long battle to confront social issues bound up in the entangled threads of race, sexuality, gender, and class... Her narrative has an immediacy that seamlessly connects Murray's personal and public lives."--Southern Register

"Jane Crow does justice to the powerful mind and personal pain of Pauli Murray and to the momentous events she had a hand in bringing to pass. This is a book that asks us to meet it with an energy and compassion that does honor to its subject and will change the way we understand our world." -- Nancy Kreml, Resources for Gender and Women's Studies: A Feminist Review

About the Author

Rosalind Rosenberg is Professor of History Emerita at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century, Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think About Sex and Politics, and Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B06XNP3BSY
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; Illustrated edition (April 3, 2017)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 3, 2017
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 12083 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 194 ratings

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Rosalind Rosenberg

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
194 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Jeanne Sturdevant
5.0 out of 5 stars A Woman for all This is a book that needs ...
Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2017
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A Woman for all
This is a book that needs to be read on many levels and from many directions. It is Civil Rights, gender rights, spirituality, religious diversity, identity. A testament of our past, present and future. Pauli Murray represents all of this and more. She is one of those individuals that floats on the periphery of history appearing here and there in books about and by others on the above subjects. You know the person is important by the number of times and places they appear, but you don't get to know much about them. Rosenberg's biography changes all that for Pauli Murray. Jane Crow is a well done if overly sentimental work on her subject. While she does discuss Murray's conflicts about gender identity, she does not give them the fullness they may deserve in helping us know Murray as a complete person. These conflicts drove her to be who she became as much as her intellect. Still this is a book on a person that has been long overdue for such a biography. It is not a book just for women, African Americans, spiritual enthusiasts, historians, it is for all of us.
14 people found this helpful
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Mary Robinson
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing read!
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2022
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This woman was courageous, wise and prescient! A hero for our time, and so rarely mentioned. Should be read and taught more frequently.
One person found this helpful
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Bonnie De Clark
5.0 out of 5 stars ... my life time and this is one of the BEST I've every read
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2017
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I have read thousand of books in my life time and this is one of the BEST I've every read! It's an inspirational story of a woman born before her time who achieved dramatic things in her life time given the disadvantages she was born with. Even being left-handed was a disadvantage for her!
I was first introduced to Pauli when I read Blanche Weisen Cook's brilliant trilogy of Eleanor Roosevelt and and when I read Susan Quinn's "Eleanor and Hick". If you relish inspirational stories about women who overcome overwhelming odds, this book is for you. And, it doesn't hurt that it's extremely well written.
16 people found this helpful
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Goodtherapy
4.0 out of 5 stars So close, but not close enough
Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2017
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Pauli Murray is an inspiring and disappointing figure. She was a brave, persevering person in the first half of her life, punctuated by the decompensations; in the second half, she was unable to find a conclusive position between careerism and conscience, and tried equivocal, milquetoast stances that (for appropriately different reasons) didn't satisfy her, or the world. Rosenberg's book reads more as a doctoral thesis than a trade book, and in a tone that increasingly indicates that she is aware her subject's life was like the light that failed. I think roughly the same of Gerald Gunther's "Learned Hand": scholarly portrayals of wounded souls who sought to insinuate their brilliance into the delivery of true justice... where most jurisprudence is mere gamesmanship. I spent a vacation in Newfoundland, reading it while looking at and walking in naive beauty, mourning over Murray's heroic aspirations and niggling shortcomings.
11 people found this helpful
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Dana
5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant visionary overlooked during her time.
Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2019
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I admire Pauli Murray. She paved the way for other Social Justice litigators and Civil Rights activists to achieve equality in this country w/ her 14th amendment strategy. Yet she was not applauded or appreciated during her time. It saddens me that she did not live to see the recognition, admiration and respect she finally deserves by the 21st century civil rights lawyers, grassroots activists, political science students, historians, etc.
I wish I had known her during her lifetime. To me she's Epic.
One person found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars A great read
Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2021
Verified Purchase
A biography that took me inside the life of Rev. Dr. Murray - so instrumental in the civil rights/feminist movement, who has been too long overlooked. Well-written and a good read. I recommend it highly.
One person found this helpful
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Cate F.
5.0 out of 5 stars Pauli Murray deserves much more recognition
Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2020
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Pauli Murray’s life and accomplishments should be far better known. Her analysis of the law had such a great influence on the arguments about Brown v Board of Education she should have been as honored as Thurgood Marshall. The biography is loaded with details found in her extensive archive of papers.
2 people found this helpful
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S.
5.0 out of 5 stars What an amazing woman
Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2018
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I became aware of Ms Murray when reading an article that included her name and some of her accomplishments. I immediately bought this book and her autobigraphy "Proud Shoes". What an amazing woman. This book should be mandatory reading for all women's studies students.
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