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The National Park Service, part of the Department of the Interior, on Jan. 11 designated the family home of Pauli Murray, the groundbreaking, queer, African-American human rights and social justice advocate, as a National Historic Landmark.

The Murray home is in Durham, N.C. “Just over 2,500 historic places bear this historic designation,” the National Park Service website states. Only three percent of our National Historic Landmarks are associated with women, people of color or the LGBT community, according to the National Park Service.

Murray, who lived from 1910 to 1985 and had a long-term relationship with a woman, was a lawyer, poet, writer, co-founder of the National Organization for Women, one of the first women to be ordained as an Episcopal priest and a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. As a Howard student, she organized sit-ins against eateries that discriminated against people of color. As part of her battle against both Jim Crow and, what Murray called Jane Crow, she crafted the legal strategy that ensured that sex discrimination was included in the Civil Rights Act.

“We are thrilled to be named a National Historic Landmark,” said Mayme Webb-Bledsoe, board chair of the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice, “and this designation recognizes Pauli Murray as the nationally significant human rights champion she was. Our goal is a visitor ready historic site in 2020 focused on history, arts education and activism.”

“Murray was a student of American history, who claimed her heritage as a descendent of free and enslaved African Americans, white slaveholders and Cherokee Indians … she would be pleased that her childhood home has been designated as a National Historic Landmark,” Patricia Bell-Scott, author of “The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice,” told the Blade in an email.