ACTIVISM We celebrate that the Pauli Murray Center has transformed into a space of resistance, reclamation, and respite, offering social-justice centered experiences that enliven Murray’s values. Foremost among these experiences are our name and gender marker change clinics, which support LGBTQIA+ folks in claiming their identities in partnership with the North Carolina Bar Foundation and attorneys from across North Carolina. CREATIVITY We honor Murray’s reminder that “...creativity is a form of activism…” by integrating art into all of the Center’s programmatic offerings, and by providing generative space for artists. Our Artist’s Day of Inspiration invites local artists to use the Center as a free workspace to nurture their craft, while our annual Pauli Murray Birthday Celebration invites local Black and LGBTQ+ artists to lead community artmaking activities, enabling us to support the local arts economy. Local partnerships with creators and creative spaces, like Backspace and an animator-educator team, have created pathways for us to provide unique, creative resources for our community, like the Pauli Murray Animated Miniseries. EDUCATION We ground in the fact that Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray was rooted in a rich legacy of education. Programs like our Pauli Murray Social Justice Teaching Fellowship enable us to support educators in sharing stories like Murray’s while retaining their jobs. Our monthly book club grounds people in the work of Black and LGBTQ+ authors; in 2025, we invited participants to move slowly through Murray’s own Proud Shoes to create deeper connections with their ancestral landscape and the roots of their activism. Finally, our Firebrand Internship Program helps us to shape the next generation of “firebrands,” activating college students from across the country to support the Pauli Murray Center in developing educational resources, public programs, and social justice-centered activations, like a pronoun ‘zine or gender- neutral clothing swap. FAITH We uplift Murray’s role as a transformative faith leader and Episcopal Saint by offering faith-based and spiritually-affirming programs. Our annual Pauli Murray Saint Day Service has been held in partnership with Rev. Dr. Murray’s home church, St. Titus’ Episcopal Church, since 2009. Our Pauli Murray Pilgrimage invites folks to mindfully travel to sites of significance in Murray’s childhood, in order to reflect, communally and individually, upon our own spiritual calling to uplift our community. Our True Community Gatherings invite members of local faith communities to examine Murray’s spiritual framework and empowers them to utilize the “True Community Curriculum” as a resource for their own faith communities HISTORY We connect people to the expansive histories associated with Pauli Murray; from their own life and work, to the rich contributions of the West End community. Most recently we piloted “Pauli 101,” an opportunity for folks to connect more deeply to Murray’s life and work through a 5 week interactive course. Students explored the themes of Murray’s legacy, community, words, intersectional identities, and work in the Civil Rights Movement. The goal of the course is to empower participants to lift up Pauli Murray’s life and legacy, which enriches our community and strengthens our collective responsibility to move social justice work forward. Annually, we join our West End neighbors, including the West End/Lyon Park Legacy Project and Morehead Avenue Baptist Church, in celebrating Black liberation on Juneteenth. PROGRAMS In 2020, the Pauli Murray Center team completed its Compass Programming Plan, a roadmap to the activities and offerings the Center would offer upon its opening. The plan was shaped by several years of input from a breadth of stakeholders, and ultimately identified five core programmatic themes: Activism, Creativity, Education, Faith, and History. These categories emerge directly out of the values, principles and practices that Pauli Murray demonstrated throughout her/their life. In our first year as an open Center, it has been a privilege to activate these program areas for the benefit of community. 25 Unique Programs 500+ Participants 39 Collaborations 12 13
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