Becky Stone to Portray Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray

By Sarah Williams –

Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray was a lawyer, civil rights and women’s rights activist, Episcopal priest, poet, and life-long friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. 

Dr. Pauli Murray, the fourth of six children, was born in Baltimore, Maryland on November 20, 1910. Her parents were nurse Agnes Fitzgerald and educator William Murray. Her mother died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1914, and Pauli and her siblings were sent to live with their aunt, Pauline Fitzgerald Dame and their grandparents George and Cornelia Smith Fitzgerald in Durham, North Carolina.

Pauli Murray was the most influential woman you’ve never heard of. She took part in the movements for labor, civil rights and women’s rights. She was the first Black person to earn a JSD (Doctor of the Science of Laws) degree from Yale University. She was the founder of the National Organization for Women and eventually she became an Episcopal priest.

Murray taught, wrote, and argued for human rights, all while becoming a poet under the mentorship of Stephen Vincent Benet, and she was a life-long friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. A challenge from Murray on different issues went out to the President of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill as well as the President of the United States.

As an attorney, Murray’s out-of-the-box thinking helped bring about the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka and the inclusion of women in Title IX of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Murray stirred the waters, provoked those in power into action, and moved us closer to a society that benefits all of us.

Becky Stone, who will portray Pauli Murray, is an accomplished African American storyteller/actress who moved to Fairview, North Carolina from her home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania forty years ago. Since then, she has raised four children with her husband, an editor and publisher.

She holds degrees from Vassar College and Villanova University. She has worked in education and theater, indulging her creative spirit in storytelling, acting, singing, and some dancing. She says, “I learn something every time I step in front of an audience—about the audience, about the art, about myself.”

According to the Athens Chautauqua Society, Stone has presented Chautauqua characters Pauli Murray, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, and Josephine Baker.

This performance will be presented by Becky Stone on Sunday, February 18, 2024 at 3 p.m. at Calvary Presbyterian Church, 44 Circle Street in Asheville. There will be no admission charge for this performance, but donations are gladly accepted.