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Girl Reading

AP U.S. Government/
Women in Politics

The purpose of this page is to support teachers who would like to supplement teaching women's political issues in the AP U.S. Government & Politics course. Since all of the required documents are written by men, we are working on compiling primary sources by women for each course unit.

Teaching Pauli Murray in AP U.S. Government & Politics

  • 1940: arrested for refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus

  • 1948: Candidate for New York City Council

  • 1954: Brown v. Board of Education 

  • 1961: Appointed by JFK to Presidential Commission on the Status of Women

  • 1964: Helped write Title VII of the Civil Rights Act​

  • 1966: Co-founded National Organization for Women (NOW)

  • 1970s: Campaigns/marches for the Equal Rights Amendment

  • 1971: Ruth Bader Ginsburg credits Murray with legal analysis critical to establishing the equal protection clause applies to women in Reed v. Reed 

  • 2020: SCOTUS ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that "sex" mentioned in Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects from discrimination at work on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity

  • Quotes

    • "Given the tendency of privileged groups to retain their power and privilege and to play one disadvantaged group off against another, and given the accelerating militancy of Women's Liberation, there is a grave danger of a head on collision of this movement with the movement for black liberation unless our decision makers recognize and implement the rights of all."​

      • Testimony, House Committee on Education and Labor, 1970​

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Pauli Murray House, North Carolina

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