The daughter of jazz bandleader and singer Cab Calloway, Murphy was one of the first African-Americans to teach in white schools in Virginia.
Her mother eventually returned to New York and Calloway was brought up by her maternal grandmother Viola Proctor who worked at Poindexter's Beauty Salon, owned by her sister-in-law Bertha Pointdexter.
[5] In 1961, she moved to Ikenne, Nigeria where she became the headmaster at Mayflower School for two years, then she returned to teach in Arlington County, Virginia.
Her father died later that year and Murphy paid tribute to him by founding the Cab Calloway Jazz Institute and Museum at Coppin State University, which promotes music education.
[3] She later had another son, Peter Brooks, who graduated from the New York University Tisch School for the Arts with an MFA in Film & TV production.
[1] As an undergrad, he transcribed and published the first written transcriptions of guitarists Joe Pass, Johnny Smith, and Wes Montgomery.
[3] In 1980, she married John H. Murphy III, head of the Afro-American newspaper, in the St. Andrew Chapel of St. James Episcopal Church in Baltimore.