IHSI Diversity Committee Monthly Resources
Each month, the IHSI Diversity Committee shares recommended reading and resources with the rest of IHSI staff. Curating and sharing these resources gives our team an opportunity to educate ourselves on various topics related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice.
Over the past couple of years, we have found that our team appreciates the ability to learn more about a subject they knew very little about or even may not have been aware of.
As an institute devoted to promoting all forms of health, we want to share these resources more broadly with our campus and community stakeholders. We hope that you will find them as useful as we have.
Civil Rights Activist Pauli Murray
Michelle Lore, REDCap Application Manager, shared resources to highlight a specific civil rights activist who she had spent a lot of time learning about.
Pauli Murray (1910-1985) was a civil rights activist, legal scholar, Episcopalian priest, and the most important person you've never heard of. In 1938, Murray advocated for the desegregation of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and in 1940 refused to move from the whites-only section of a bus in Virginia. Murray’s legal writings were incorporated into arguments in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), White v. Crook (1966), and Reed v. Reed (1971). Murray served on the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women (1961) and co-founded the National Organization of Women (1966). Murray also coined the term "Jane Crow" to express the gendered ways white people and institutions discriminated against Black women in the South - an early theorizing of intersectionality. Pauli Murray continued to break a variety of barriers, including becoming the first Black woman to become an ordained Episcopal priest in 1977, later being granted sainthood by the Episcopalian church in 2012.
If you have 5 minutes, read this biography.
If you have another 5 minutes, watch this video of how Murray was an inspiration for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
If you have 10-20 minutes, explore this online exhibit from the American Writers Museum.
If you have another 10-20 minutes, learn about The Pauli Murray Center in Murray's childhood home.
If you have over an hour, watch the documentary My Name is Pauli Murray on Amazon Prime.