if you're looking to be inspired by a cool durham-ite...

if you guys have noticed these murals around downtown (also all over the front gates of TROSA), they were put up last year to commemorate pauli murray (more information about her below). anyway, i went last year to hear a talk about the artist who put up these murals and the way they were made (community artwork - they threw block parties and invited locals to color in some parts before the artist finished them up -- why the portraits are so multicolored). anyway, it was utterly amazing. i highly recommend this event. also, it takes place in the community so you guys could meet some more non-dukies :D

November 19, 2009 7:00 pm
Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall
Lyons Park Community Center
1313 Halley Street at Kent Street (919 560-4288) Parking is available at secured lots by the center Free and open to the public

Pauli Murray was a champion for civil and human rights who grew up in Durham. Her insights and vision continue to resonate powerfully in our times. As a historian, attorney, poet, activist, teacher and Episcopal priest, she worked throughout her life to address injustice, to give voice to the unheard, to educate, and to promote reconciliation between races and economic classes. Her beautifully written memoir, Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family, was published in 1956. The book chronicles her roots and paints a compelling portrait of Durham during its formative years.

As the first annual Pauli Murray lecture, Beverly Guy-Sheftall will speak about this Durham native’s enduring legacy to civil and human rights. Sheftall is the founding director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center and the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies at Spellman College. She is also adjunct professor at Emory University’s Institute for Women’s Studies where she teaches graduate courses. Sheftall coedited the first anthology on Black women’s literature, Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature (Doubleday, 1980). In 2003, she coauthored Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women’s Equality in African American Communities (Random House, 2003).
Johnnetta Betsch Cole, currently the director of the Washington, DC Museum of African-American History.

The Pauli Murray Project will also be hosting a party at 3 pm on Sunday, November 22, to celebrate what would have been Murray's 99th birthday. This will also be at the Lyons Park Community Center. For more information, please see http://paulimurrayproject.org/one-more-event-post/