Federal Agency Deletes Website Page On Durham’s Pauli Murray; Censors Other References to Queer History

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Good morning, readers.

Poet, legal scholar, actual saint, and Durham’s adopted patron saint, Pauli Murray was ahead of their time in so many ways. 

Murray was the first African-American to receive a doctor of juridical science. The first African American woman in the U.S. to become an Episcopal priest. Murray was arrested for sitting in the white section of a bus 15 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Murray’s legal work was foundational to the idea that the constitution’s Equal Protection Clause protects from not only racial discrimination but gender discrimination. 

But, as INDY’s Sarah Edwards reports, it appears Murray’s thinking on gender identity, decades before President Trump decreed there are only two genders, is what led to a National Parks Service page memorializing this trailblazing legacy to be deleted. 

“Historian Rosalind Rosenberg, author of Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray, asserts that Murray identified as a transgender man but did not have the information or acceptance available during her lifetime to describe it,” the NPS page, now only accessible via Wayback Machine, had said.

Murray’s page was deleted as part of a federal sweep of content related to LGBTQ+ history. In recent weeks, for example, a page on the Stonewall Uprising has been censored, and references to the word “queer” as well as the “T” and “Q+” in “LGBTQ” have been removed. In a statement to NPR, NPS said the changes were made pursuant to executive order. 

Check out Sarah’s story to learn more about Pauli Murray’s legacy, recent censoring of government content related to transgender people and gender identity, and what the Pauli Murray Center says you can do in response. 

Have a good weekend.

 —Sarah W.

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