Photo by Tony Rinaldo

“While I was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, I used the Pauli Murray Papers at the Schlesinger Library to write my book Defying Dixie, in which Murray is a central character. These papers are vast—a gold mine for researchers on women, race, and social activism in the mid-twentieth century. The fellowship made it possible for me to come to know Murray in an intimate way.

“After Defying Dixie was published, I had the great good fortune to give a talk about Murray’s life to a public audience at the Radcliffe Institute. That experience brought the fellowship full circle for me, since it represented exactly what Pauli Murray had in mind when she left her collection to the Schlesinger Library.”

Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore is the Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History at Yale University and the author of four books on American history. Reviewing her book Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919–1950 (Norton, 2008), the Los Angeles Times said, “Painstakingly researched and vividly told, Defying Dixie is, by any standard, a formidable achievement.”

Gilmore has held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. In 2006–2007, she was the John Hope Franklin Senior Fellow at the National Humanities Center.

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