Book Review Corner- Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family

July Book Review by Catie Hodsdon

Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family

by The Reverend Doctor Pauli Murray

Proud Shoes, originally published in 1956, is a family memoir of The Reverend Doctor Pauli Murray. Pauli Murray was the first black person to receive a JSD from Yale University and channeled much of her advocacy efforts to civil rights. Thurgood Marshall called her work States’ Laws on Race and Color the “bible” of the Civil Rights Movement, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg referenced her work as she tackled sex discrimination in her early career. Pauli Murray was also a founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW). And in 1977, Dr. Murray was the first black woman ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. She was added to the names of saints by the church’s 77th General Convention in 2012 and we celebrate her saint day on July 1. Her legacy is one of advocacy and reconciliation.

In this memoir, Murray shares the history and genealogy of her maternal grandparents, Robert and Cornelia Fitzgerald, while also offering her own perspective on being raised by these two individuals in Durham, NC. It explores the complex racial and social dynamics that came from merging these two families: her grandfather, a Union soldier in the Civil War and fervent schoolteacher with the Freedmen’s Bureau, and her grandmother, the daughter of an enslaved woman and her volatile master in Chapel Hill, teetering the line between these two worlds. She also reflects on and shares her grandparent’s experience of how racial identity impacted their life and opportunities. As Patricia Bell-Scott states in the foreword, there are several reasons we should read this work. The first is simply because of who Pauli Murray was and “for what she, nurtured by her family, helped this nation become.” The second is that this work offers an example of the healing power of narrative. It is a stark reminder of how important it is to simply sit down with our neighbors and listen. Listening to another’s story – their history – is healing, it is part of the work of reconciliation, and it offers a much richer perspective of the world around us. As Bell-Scott suggests, this literary work offers insights into a culture struggling to “find ways to talk about our connections to each other.” Understanding our collective history is the necessary work to further explore our connectedness to one another and further a deeper understanding of the Kingdom of God. As Dr. Murray’s grandfather entered in his diary in July of 1867, “The past is the key of the present and the mirror of the future, therefore let us adopt as a rule, to judge the future by the history of the past, and having key of past experience, let us open the door to present success and future happiness.”

The collect for The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray’s Feast Day:

Liberating God, we thank you for the steadfast courage of your servant Pauli Murray, who fought long and well: Unshackle us from the chains of prejudice and fear, that we may show forth the reconciling love and true freedom which you revealed in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

For more information on Pauli Murray: https://www.paulimurraycenter.com/