The Dream Is Freedom Pauli Murray and American Democratic Faith

On August 28, 1963, Pauli Murray joined hundreds of thousands of other Americans in the March on Washington. Murray, a seventh generation Episcopalian, marched with a delegation from her New York City parish church. Then, as a lawyer and committed civil libertarian, she reversed course to meet up with a delegation from her local ACLU affiliate and marched under its banner. She called the March "the nearest thing I've seen to judgment day. You know our romantic notions about judgment day? Well, these were great throngs, you know, it was like the great gettin' up morning." That Murray understood her religious and political commitments as interrelated ways to participate among the great throngs of marchers offers a glimpse into Murray's political and theological practice and thought. Murray was a poet, a lawyer, a professor, a lesbian, and a trailblazing civil rights and feminist activist. She wrote passionately about American democratic faith and the possibilities of racial reconciliation. She insisted on the interrelation of all human rights, even as many civil rights and feminist leaders ignored her. When, late in her life, she became an Episcopal priest, her sermons focused on the particularity of African American women's experiences while proclaiming a universal message of salvation. The Dream is Freedom introduces Murray as a democratic theorist who employs a theological idiom to make trenchant and persuasive critiques about the possibility of racial justice in America.

Sarah Azaransky teaches in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College, Harvard Divinity School, and the University of Virginia.