Ebook Song in a Weary Throat Memoir of an American Pilgrimage Pauli Murray Patricia BellScott Books

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A prophetic memoir by the activist who “articulated the intellectual foundations” (The New Yorker) of the civil rights and women’s rights movements.

First published posthumously in 1987, Pauli Murray’s Song in a Weary Throat was critically lauded, winning the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and the Lillian Smith Book Award among other distinctions. Yet Murray’s name and extraordinary influence receded from view in the intervening years; now they are once again entering the public discourse. At last, with the republication of this “beautifully crafted” memoir, Song in a Weary Throat takes its rightful place among the great civil rights autobiographies of the twentieth century.

In a voice that is energetic, wry, and direct, Murray tells of a childhood dramatically altered by the sudden loss of her spirited, hard-working parents. Orphaned at age four, she was sent from Baltimore to segregated Durham, North Carolina, to live with her unflappable Aunt Pauline, who, while strict, was liberal-minded in accepting the tomboy Pauli as “my little boy-girl.” In fact, throughout her life, Murray would struggle with feelings of sexual “in-betweenness”―she tried unsuccessfully to get her doctors to give her testosterone―that today we would recognize as a transgendered identity.

We then follow Murray north at the age of seventeen to New York City’s Hunter College, to her embrace of Gandhi’s Satyagraha―nonviolent resistance―and south again, where she experienced Jim Crow firsthand. An early Freedom Rider, she was arrested in 1940, fifteen years before Rosa Parks’ disobedience, for sitting in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus. Murray’s activism led to relationships with Thurgood Marshall and Eleanor Roosevelt―who respectfully referred to Murray as a “firebrand”―and propelled her to a Howard University law degree and a lifelong fight against "Jane Crow" sexism. We also read Betty Friedan’s enthusiastic response to Murray’s call for an NAACP for Women―the origins of NOW. Murray sets these thrilling high-water marks against the backdrop of uncertain finances, chronic fatigue, and tragic losses both private and public, as Patricia Bell-Scott’s engaging introduction brings to life.

Now, more than thirty years after her death in 1985, Murray―poet, memoirist, lawyer, activist, and Episcopal priest―gains long-deserved recognition through a rediscovered memoir that serves as a “powerful witness” (Brittney Cooper) to a pivotal era in the American twentieth century.

Ebook Song in a Weary Throat Memoir of an American Pilgrimage Pauli Murray Patricia BellScott Books

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Product details Paperback 624 pages Publisher Liveright; 1 edition (May 8, 2018) Language English ISBN-10 1631494589

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Song in a Weary Throat Memoir of an American Pilgrimage Pauli Murray Patricia BellScott Books Reviews :

Song in a Weary Throat Memoir of an American Pilgrimage Pauli Murray Patricia BellScott Books Reviews

• An excellent autobiography about a little known woman who had a fascinating meaningful life. Very well written
• Get this book immediately! A huge piece of history very few people know about.
• I first read about Pauli Murray while researching women abolitionists and Civil Rights leaders for my quilt I Will Lift My Voice Like A Trumpet. I was pleased to be granted access to the e-galley of Pauli's memoir, first published in 1987, now available in a new edition. The forward is by Patricia Bell-Scott, author of The Firebrand and the First Lady Portrait of a Friendship Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Justice.
  
  Pauli was born in 1910 and was raised by her school teacher aunt. Pauli was a gifted student who attended Hunter College in New York City. During the Depression, she found employment with the WPA as a teacher and began to publish her poetry and a novel. She found a mentor in Stephen Vincent Benet.
  
  During the war years and early 1950s Pauli became involved with Civil Rights, challenging segregation, and formed a relationship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1941 she began her law studies at Howard University and helped to form CORE and the development of passive resistance.
  
  Harvard law school would not accept Pauli based on her sex. She attended the University of California Boalt School of Law. Her thesis was on equal opportunity in employment. With her color and sex against her, Pauli had trouble making a living practicing law.
  
  In 1956 she published a book on her family history, Proud Shoes The Story of an American Family. She taught law in Ghana for several years. Back in the US she resumed work in Civil Rights and became active as a feminist and was an organizer for NOW.
  
  In her later life, Pauli worked for equal opportunity for women as church leaders. She became the first African American woman ordained to the Episcopal priesthood.
  
  Pauli saw huge changes in her lifetime. At her birth, she was labeled colored but chose to use the designation Negro. During the rise of black power movements, she resisted the term black, resenting its lowercase nomenclature. She was a pacifist and anti-segregationist who had trouble with the rise of Black Power movements and the younger generation's demands for separate campus organizations. Early she was attracted to Socialism and spent her last years as in the priesthood.
  
  The memoir is filled with details about the work for Civil Rights prior to the more known stories of Rosa Park and Martin Luther King, Jr. There are vivid descriptions of traveling in the Jim Crow south, the closed doors to her race and her sex, the poverty she and her educated family endured.
  
  Pauli's voice is direct and open. She admits to her ignorance and mistakes, her learning curves and limitations. Her accomplishments speak for her determination and courage.
  
  It was wonderful to hear, in her own voice, Pauli's amazing life.
  
  I received a free galley from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
• An exceptional life well lived, Pauli Murray's experiences, intellect, and accomplishments exceed those of many whom we know more about. Well worth reading and truly enjoyable.
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