An Unknown Negro Girl without Title or Prestige, 1940–1946

This chapter explores Pauli Murray’s continuing civil rights activism, emerging feminism, and legal training during World War II. Murray joined the Workers Defense League and campaigned to save sharecropper Odell Waller from execution. The experience partially inspired Murray to become a lawyer. While studying at Howard University, Murray became conscious of sexism, which she labelled “Jane Crow.” Murray’s mental health, sexual identity, and gender identity all continued to trouble her. She initiated restaurant sit-ins to protest segregation in Washington and reported on the 1943 Harlem race riots for a socialist newspaper. Murray also completed a master’s degree at Berkeley before becoming the first African American Deputy Attorney General of California.

CHAPTER VI

WHEN Tom, an' please your honour, got to the shop, there was nobody in it, but a poor negro girl, with a bunch of white feathers slightly tied to the end of a long cane, flapping away flies—not killing them.——'Tis a pretty picture! said my...