Saturday, November 14, 2015

PAULI MURRAY

Reading PAULI MURRAY: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A BLACK ACTIVIST, FEMINIST, LAWYER, PRIEST AND POET (1987), I burst into tears of joy, upon learning that her determined, "soldier-like" effort to aid a visually impaired law school classmate, Billy Jones of East St. Louis, Illinois, who was excluded by all other study groups at Howard, due to such, culminated in her getting the highest grade on the final exam in "Bills and Notes," an especially demanding course! I was moved not merely because this incident involved my alma mater , Howard Law School; not merely because of her acts of kindness to Billy Jones; but, in addition to these, as she writes: "I had been so absorbed in the process of getting the material across to Billy that, without realizing it, I had applied the educational principle that the best way to master a subject is to try to teach it to someone else." (P. 219) There is a present reward for righteousness, as exemplified above! That fact brings me joy!