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• 1 2023-03-21T19:50:36+00:00 Pauli Murray 15 Biography of Pauli Murray plain 2023-04-25T15:48:39+00:00
  
  Pauli Murray was an American civil rights activist, lawyer, poet, and feminist. She was born Anna Pauline Murray on November 20, 1910, in Baltimore, Maryland. She was a strong advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which sought to enshrine gender equality into the U.S. Constitution. Her involvement with the ERA dates back to the 1940s when she served as a consultant to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Committee on Civil Rights, which recommended the inclusion of an equal rights amendment in its 1947 report. Murray continued to push for the ERA throughout her career, and in 1967, she co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW), which made the ERA a central part of its mission. As a member of NOW's board, Murray helped lead the fight for ratification of the amendment. In 1970, Murray wrote a groundbreaking article for Ms. magazine titled "Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII," which argued that sex discrimination should be treated as a form of legal discrimination similar to racism. Murray's article helped to shape the legal arguments used to support the ERA. Murray also played a key role in drafting the text of the ERA. In 1972, she was appointed to the President's Commission on the Status of Women and worked on the commission's report, which included a recommendation for the ratification of the ERA. Murray also helped write the text of the ERA itself, and her proposed language was incorporated into the final version of the amendment. Despite Murray's efforts and those of countless other activists, the ERA fell short of ratification by the required number of states before the deadline set by Congress in 1982. Nevertheless, Murray's advocacy for the ERA helped to raise awareness of the need for gender equality in the United States and laid the groundwork for future efforts to enshrine those rights in law.