The Pauli Murray Center began as a public 
humanities, community-based initiative of the 
Duke Human Rights Center in 2009 known as 
the Pauli Murray Project (PMP). This project 
was aimed at promoting open dialogue among 
Durham residents about the historical roots of 
contemporary social issues; documenting hidden 
stories of social justice activism; celebrating Pauli 
Murray’s life and legacy and continuing her work 
for social change.
After several years of successful programming, 
PMP was made aware of the impending 
demolition of the Fitzgerald family home at 906 
Carroll Street. In partnership with the Southwest 
Central Durham Quality of Life Project (QOL), 
PMP was able to save the historic house in 2011 
by adding it to a land bank set up by QOL and 
managed by Self-Help Credit Union.
As the scope of the PMP expanded with 
the additional opportunity to steward the 
development of Pauli Murray’s childhood 
home, a strategic action plan was developed. 
The plan’s first goal was to establish a 
nonprofit organization that supported both the 
programmatic efforts and the development of a 
historic site/gathering place. The Pauli Murray 
Center for History and Social Justice, established 
June 18, 2012, is that nonprofit organization.
Since becoming a nonprofit organization, the 
Pauli Murray Center for History and Social 
Justice developed its activities and programs 
with direct cues from Rev. Dr. Murray’s vision, 
story, and approach to social justice and human 
rights advocacy. Murray believed in freedom and 
justice for all and the promise of democracy in 
America. For her/them, this meant emancipation 
won through the communal struggle for universal 
civil rights and through a personal journey 
of liberation. Engagement with history, the 
“whole past” as described in Proud Shoes, is 
the gateway to this struggle, be it social history 
or familial legacy. For the Pauli Murray Center, 
this path leads us to invite everyday people to 
activate contemporary social justice work by 
adopting Murray’s activist framework; which 
requires that we have a clear mission, concrete 
action steps to execute that mission, and a strong 
set of values to ground those action steps. 
The Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice is a three-quarter-
acre site in Durham, North Carolina anchored by Murray’s childhood 
home, built by her grandparents Robert and Cornelia Fitzgerald in 1898. 
Delaware native Robert George Fitzgerald was an educator, brick maker, 
and Civil War veteran. His wife, Cornelia Smith Fitzgerald, was born 
enslaved in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Together they built the home 
that later housed three generations of family members including their 
grandchild Pauli Murray.
ORIGIN STORY
“
True emancipation lies in the acceptance of the whole 
past, in deriving strength from all my roots, in facing up 
to the degradation as well as the dignity of my ancestors.”
Pauli Murray
Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family
6

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