Frances Murphy recounted numerous occasions when her father, Carl J. Murphy, and W.E.B. Du Bois would walk through their Baltimore neighborhood, Morgan Park, discussing strategies for handling civil rights cases and fundraising. The Morgan Park neighborhood was developed in 1917 and attracted African American faculty and staff of Morgan College. While living in this community, Murphy was credited for organizing fourteen people in the Afro-American office in 1935 to form an active Baltimore branch of the NAACP. Two of the most noted group members were Thurgood Marshall and Lillie Jackson. Marshall served as solicitor general while Jackson held the office of branch president for
thirty-five years.