Audiobook19 hours
Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage
Written by Pauli Murray and Patricia Bell-Scott
Narrated by Allyson Johnson
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
Poet, memoirist, labor organizer, and Episcopal priest, Pauli Murray helped transform the law of the land. Arrested in 1940 for sitting in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus, Murray propelled that life-defining event into a Howard law degree and a fight against "Jane Crow" sexism. Her legal brilliance was pivotal to the overturning of Plessy v. Ferguson, the success of Brown v. Board of Education, and the Supreme Court's recognition that the equal protection clause applies to women; it also connected her with such progressive leaders as Eleanor Roosevelt, Thurgood Marshall, Betty Friedan, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Now Murray is finally getting long-deserved recognition: the first African American woman to receive a doctorate of law at Yale, her name graces one of the university's new colleges. Handsomely republished with a new introduction, Murray's remarkable memoir takes its rightful place among the great civil rights autobiographies of the twentieth century.
Related to Song in a Weary Throat
Related audiobooks
Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Baptized in Tear Gas: From White Moderate to Abolitionist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ida B. the Queen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody: The Making of a Black Theologian Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Last Negroes at Harvard: The Class of 1963 and the 18 Young Men Who Changed Harvard Forever Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Selected Works of Audre Lorde Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor's Fight for Fairness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Unbought and Unbossed Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lifting as We Climb: Black Women's Battle for the Ballot Box Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Surviving the White Gaze: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Are One: The Story of Bayard Rustin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Letter from Birmingham Jail Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Waking Up White: and Finding Myself in the Story of Race Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Women Will Save the World: An Anthem Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Standing Our Ground: The Triumph of Faith Over Gun Violence: A Mother's Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Political Biographies For You
John Adams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enough Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Romney: A Reckoning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward's Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The White House Plumbers: The Seven Weeks That Led to Watergate and Doomed Nixon's Presidency Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5V Is For Victory Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lincoln Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Assassination Vacation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Benjamin Franklin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fear: Trump in the White House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dressed for a Dance in the Snow: Women's Voices from the Gulag Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Team of Rivals Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Peril Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5To Rescue the Constitution: George Washington and the Fragile American Experiment Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Watergate Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Song in a Weary Throat
Rating: 4.71875 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
16 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As the tags I added to this review show, Pauli Murray was deeply involved in making history throughout much of the twentieth century. In addition to her accomplishments as activist, attorney, academic and priest, she was a graceful, honest writer with a passion for getting the detail straight and a reliable sense of when to put herself front and center and when to step aside in telling of her life. This is one of the most fascinating autobiographies I have ever read and deserves to be an American classic.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I first read about Pauli Murray while researching women abolitonists and Civil Rights leaders for my quilt I Will Lift My Voice Like A Trumpet. I was pleased to be granted access to the e-galley of Pauli's memoir, first published in 1987, now available in a new edition. The forward is by Patricia Bell-Scott, author of The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Justice.Pauli was born in 1910 and was raised by her school teacher aunt. Pauli was a gifted student who attended Hunter College in New York City. During the Depression she found employment with the WPA as a teacher and began to publish her poetry and a novel. She found a mentor in Stephen Vincent Benet.During the war years and early 1950s Pauli became involved with Civil Rights, challenging segregation, and formed a relationship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1941 she began her law studies at Howard University and helped to form CORE and the development of passive resistance.Harvard law school would not accept Pauli based on her sex. She attended the University of California Boalt School of Law. Her thesis was on equal opportunity in employment. With her color and sex against her, Pauli had trouble making a living practicing law.In 1956 she published a book on her family history, Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family. She taught law in Ghana for several years. Back in the US she resumed work in Civil Rights and became active as a feminist and was an organizer for NOW.In her later life, Pauli worked for equal opportunity for women as church leaders. She became the first African American woman ordained to the Episcopal priesthood.Pauli saw huge changes in her lifetime. At her birth she was labeled colored, but chose to the designation Negro. During the rise of black power movements she resisted the term black, resenting its lower case nomenclature. She was a pacifist and anti-segregationist who had trouble with the rise of Black Power movements and the younger generation's demanded for separate campus organizations. Early she was attracted to Socialism and spent her last years as in the priesthood.The memoir is filled with details about the work for Civil Rights prior to the more known stories of Rosa Park and Martin Luther King, Jr. There are vivid descriptions of traveling in the Jim Crow south, the closed doors to her race and her sex, the poverty she and her educated family endured.Pauli's voice is direct and open. She admits to her ignorance and mistakes, her learning curves and limitations. Her accomplishments speak for her determination and courage.It was wonderful to hear, in her own voice, Pauli's amazing life.I received a free egalley from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.