Murphy, Carl James Greenbury

Impact on the world

A German professor at Howard University before joining the family paper full-time in 1918, Murphy used the Afro-American’s editorial pages to campaign for equal pay for Black teachers, the hiring of Black police and firefighters in Baltimore, and, working closely with NAACP attorneys Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall, the 1935 desegregation of the University of Maryland’s law school — a victory Marshall later publicly credited to Murphy’s support, two decades before Brown v. Board of Education. He built the Afro into a truly national operation with editions in Washington, Richmond, Newark, and Philadelphia, employed more than 200 workers at its peak, and led the Baltimore NAACP for years while four of his five daughters, along with his wife Vashti Turley Murphy, also profiled in this collection’s ranks, held roles at the paper; Murphy died on February 25, 1967, the very day Maryland repealed its 306-year-old ban on interracial marriage, a law the Afro had fought for decades.

Life & background

Born January 17, 1889, in Baltimore to founder John H. Murphy Sr., also profiled in this collection, and Martha Howard Murphy, Carl Murphy graduated with honors from Howard University, earned a master’s from Harvard, and completed a doctorate at Germany’s University of Jena in 1913 before chairing Howard’s German department. He joined the Afro-American full-time in 1918, took over as editor and publisher upon his father’s 1922 death, married Delta Sigma Theta co-founder Vashti Turley in 1916, and led the paper until his death in Baltimore on February 25, 1967, at age 78.

Sources

1. African American Registry; Encyclopedia.com; Baltimore Magazine