Murray never gave up her fight for the values that sprang from her lifelong Episcopalian faith. In a moment of despair after her 1940 arrest, she wrote in her diary that it was “dangerous” to dwell on her “weaknesses.” “The great secret,” she told herself, “is not to think of yourself, of your courage, or of your despair” but of “Him for whom you journey.”

In 1973, she entered New York’s General Theological Seminary to prepare for the priesthood, a job from which she knew she would be excluded because of her gender. But in 1976, the Episcopal Church conference voted that “no one shall be denied access” to the priesthood on account of sex. In 1977, Murray became the first black woman ordained as an Episcopal priest. The Episcopal Church made her a saint in 2012.

As Murray looked back on her activism in a 1976 interview, she recalled: “In not a single one of these little campaigns was I victorious. In other words, in each case, I personally failed, but I have lived to see the thesis upon which I was operating vindicated. And what I very often say is that I’ve lived to see my lost causes found.”

Some may argue that it is impossible to bind all of slavery’s wounds; after all, there are other residential colleges at Yale named for slaveholders such as George Berkeley, Timothy Dwight and Ezra Stiles. But John C. Calhoun is the only one whose fame came from his guiding role in a racial regime that enslaved people, inspired secession and formed the specious legal foundation for a century of discrimination.

Yale students of color, especially those who live in Calhoun College, and the thousands who protested last fall do not need any more teachable moments on the injustices he wrought. They feel the legacy of those injustices every day.

So did Murray. As she organized her papers near the end of her life, she came across newspaper clippings published during her attempt to enroll in graduate school. The headlines called her a “Negress” and “colored.” She wrote in the margins of the yellowed clippings, “Did it hurt? Yes!!” and “Ouch!”

This week at Yale, the arc of justice bent both ways. It reached back to sustain Calhoun’s name on a college where students of color have to live throughout their Yale experience. But it moved forward to sustain the Yale community with Pauli Murray’s lived imperative to fight injustice. Murray, not Calhoun, represents Yale values today; yet his name remains. Murray, not Calhoun, teaches us the lessons we need to learn about discrimination in all of its manifestations.

When A. Bartlett Giamatti, Yale’s president at the time, presented an honorary doctorate in divinity to Murray in 1979, he told her: “You are an inspiration to those who seek the upward way for the soul and for society. Others have always followed after.” It is only a matter of time before Calhoun will be forced to make his exit, and Murray will, once again, see her “lost causes found.”