Federal government cuts funding for Durham’s Pauli Murray Center. What we know.
The Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice in Durham has lost over $300,000 in federal funding because its work related to the pioneering human rights activist and legal scholar “no longer serves the interest of the United States,” according to a letter sent to its director.
On Friday, the Institute of Museum and Library Services notified center director Angela Thorpe Mason that a grant worth $330,800 had been canceled because the center was “no longer consistent” with the institute’s priorities.
The grant paid for a part-time worker and the creation of new community programs and a curriculum for eighth-grade classes around the state about Murray, an American activist and advocate who fought for civil rights and gender equality and the expansion of legal protection for LGBTQ+ people. She grew up in Durham, was an Episcopal priest and the first Black person to earn a doctorate from Yale Law School.
A new school, Murray-Massenburg Elementary, named for the activist and first Black female principal in Durham, Betty Dorthea Massenberg, also opened last year at 3901 S. Roxboro St.
“We lose the ability to connect our community to valuable services and resources,” Thorpe said. The center’s full-time team is just five people, and the multi-year grant would have made up 20% of the center’s funding for 2026.
The Pauli Murray Center’s termination cited Executive Order 14238, “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” which Trump signed in March to diminish elements of the government “the President has determined are unnecessary.”
Last month, the National Park Service pulled a web page about Murray as federal agencies deleted references to transgender people after Trump’s executive order recognizing only male and female genders. Murray is referred by she/her and they/them pronouns on the center’s website.
“The notion that Pauli Murray’s life, work, and legacy are essentially un-American is something that is abhorrent to me,” Thorpe said. “Particularly when you consider the person Pauli Murray was. [She] believed so deeply in the promise of America that she quite literally dedicated her life to shaping a vision for American where people could life free, whole, unoppressed lives regardless of race, class, gender or sexuality. That to me is as American as can be.”
Last year, the Institute granted over $7.2 million to North Carolina institutions, according to the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, which oversees the state’s museums. Of that, over $400,000 went to African American history, art and cultural programs.
In the last year, the center has contributed about $40,000 to the local economy, according to Jesse Huddleston, the center’s board chair. Murray’s childhood home at 906 Carroll St., built in 1898, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016 and serves as the home of the center.
“We have overcome much and have come so far, not just by faith but also by the cooperative actions of countless people, rooted in a shared understanding that the legacy of Pauli Murray must be preserved and amplified, despite every oppressive attempt to render it invisible,” Huddleston said.
Thorpe said the center will look for more funding sources from the private sector in Durham and the state.
“In this moment, it has become even more crystallized that our work matters,” she said. “We continue to do our work, we continue to find creative ways to share Pauli’s story, to connect our community to valuable resources. This loss of funding does not stop our work, and to me, only signals that our work is important again, if a small site like ours is being attacked so violently.”
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This story was originally published April 16, 2025 at 1:42 PM.