Pauli Murray

Song in a Weary Throat

Pauli Murray received the 1988 RFK Book Award for Song in a Weary Throat.

Song in a Weary Throat is the autobiography of Pauli Murray, an American civil rights and women’s rights activist, lawyer, teacher, author, Episcopalian priest, and descendant of a North Carolina slave and slave owner. The first African-American to receive a J.S.D. from Yale Law School, Murray fought for civil rights and women’s rights as a lawyer and would go on to co-found the National Organization for Women in 1966. In 1973, Murray joined the Episcopal Church as a priest, and was named an Episcopal saint in 2012. She died in 1985.