A Continued Effort to Preserve Pauli Murray’s Legacy
A Continued Effort to Preserve Pauli Murray’s Legacy
Iron Mountain is proud to announce our continued support of the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice. This new grant is dedicated to preserving the legacy of Dr. Reverend Murray as a leading, yet unacknowledged, activist through continued historical preservation and educational program planning. Dr. Reverend Murray serves as an example of what a leader looks like: someone who gives a voice to marginalized communities and dedicates her life to bettering her community.
A trailblazer, Dr. Reverend Anna Pauline Murray, a long time civil rights activist, women’s rights leader, and LGBTQ+ advocate, has long gone unrecognized. “Pauli” Murray was a human rights activist, historian, attorney, poet, and teacher who continuously fought for equality. In fact, 15 years before Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, Pauli Murray did the same; 20 years before the Greensboro sit-ins, she organized her own restaurant sit-in in Washington, D.C.. Moreover, Dr. Reverend Murray served as an advisor to both President Roosevelt and Kennedy, helping to steer them while simultaneously advocating for a variety of rights. Iron Mountain is proud to participate in the conservation of Pauli Murray’s legacy, assuring that her work and history are safeguarded.
In 2015, Iron Mountain awarded a grant to the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice (PMC) through the Living Legacy Initiative, which seeks partnerships with museums and other nonprofit organization to help them protect items of cultural significance. Through the grant, Iron Mountain supported the funding for the preservation and renovation of Pauli Murray’s home in Durham, North Carolina. Fortunately, with Iron Mountain’s financial support, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated her home as a National Treasure.
“Iron Mountain’s investment in the Pauli Murray Family home provided the crucial bricks and mortar preservation funding that transformed our dilapidated, abandoned 1898 house into an historic site worthy of designation as a National Historic Landmark which we achieved in 2016,” said Pauli Murray Project Director, Barbara Lau. “Our partnership with Iron Mountain created excitement about our project locally and nationally and helped us to leverage $35,000 in additional foundation funding. At our April 1, 2017 Homecoming celebration, our accomplishments and community value were acknowledged by local, state and national elected officials, Fitzgerald/Murray family members, and representatives of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. IM was the spark that lit the preservation fire and launched us to the success we are enjoying today.”
The entire Iron Mountain team is honored to support PMC. We know that PMC will serve as a place of learning and activist inspiration. “Until Iron Mountain’s partnership, I hadn’t heard of Pauli Murray. Too often, women, people of color and LGBTQ people don’t make the history books, said Bryce Tache, Director of Inclusion and Diversity at Iron Mountain. “Now Murray has become one of my personal heroes. I’m so proud Iron Mountain is helping share her life and legacy.”