Episcopal Priest

Attorney and Civil Rights Activist

The Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray was a lifelong civil rights attorney and activist against racial and sexual discrimination. She was the first African-American female Episcopal priest.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Murray lost her mother when she was 3. She was sent to Durham, North Carolina to live with her maternal grandparents and aunts. Raised by older relatives, Murray grew up with a strong sense of independence and self-reliance.  

In 1933, Murray graduated from Hunter College and taught for the WPA Worker’s Education Program. Wishing to pursue legal studies, she applied to the University of North Carolina, but was rejected on the basis of race. This discrimination impelled Murray to pursue a Bachelor of Law degree at Howard University and become active in the civil rights movement. She joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and organized sit-ins to end segregation at restaurants in Washington, D.C. Murray cofounded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), along with Bayard Rustin, who was openly gay.

Denied admission to Harvard Law School due to her gender, Murray earned her master’s degree at the University of California, where she focused on equal rights for women. She became the first African-American female deputy attorney general of California.

Murray returned to New York and practiced law privately for five years. Her book “States’ Laws on Race and Color” (1951) was described by Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall as the bible for civil rights lawyers. In 1956, Murray published “Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family,” a biography of her grandparents’ struggle with racial prejudice.

In the 1960’s, President Kennedy appointed Murray to the Committee on Civil and Political Rights. She worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement. Murray spoke out against the marginalized role black women played in movement leadership.

Though Murray never identified as a lesbian, her longest lasting relationships were with women.  Refusing to accept her homosexuality due to its association at the time with mental illness, she ultimately self-identified as a heterosexual man.

In 1977, Murray became the first African-American female ordained an Episcopal priest. She died at age 74. Her autobiography “Songs in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage” (1987) was published posthumously.

Episcopal Bishop

b. February 23, 1954

“My top priority is serving God’s people in God’s church.”

The Rt. Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool is the first out lesbian bishop in the Anglican Communion—an association of Anglican and Episcopal churches around the world. Glasspool follows in the footsteps of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Anglican bishop, who was consecrated in 2003.

Born on Staten Island, New York, Glasspool is the daughter of a conservative Episcopal priest. She attended Dickinson College and graduated magna cum laude. She received the college’s Hofstader Prize as the outstanding woman in her class.

Glasspool entered the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1976. At the time, the ordination of women was controversial and the church was generally unreceptive to LGBT participation.

Glasspool’s father was opposed to women’s ordination. Nevertheless, he supported his daughter’s calling. “In his own gracious way, he sort of separated out public and private,” Glasspool told Newsweek. While still a seminarian, she attended the church’s General Convention, where she made a presentation regarding the ordination of homosexuals.

Glasspool was ordained an Episcopal deacon in 1981. She became a priest and, later, assistant to the rector at St. Paul’s Church in Philadelphia, before accepting the rectorship at a church in Boston. While in Boston, she met her life partner, Becki Sander.

In 2001 Glasspool was chosen as canon to the bishops of the Diocese of Maryland. She was elected bishop suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in 2009. That same year, the Episcopal General Convention resolved, “God’s call is open to all.”

Glasspool is the 17th woman to become an Episcopal bishop and the first out lesbian to become a bishop in the Anglican Communion. Her controversial election gained worldwide attention, helping shape the international debate about LGBT clergy in Anglicanism. Since 2015 Glasspool has served as a bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of New York.

Glasspool and Sander, a Ph.D. social worker, have been together since 1988.