Black Women and Politics in New York City

Images

Eunice Hunton Carter, an attorney, NCNW leader, and one-time candidate for the New York State Assembly in Harlem, pictured here speaking at the microphone. Ruth Whitehead Whaley is on the far left; Maud Gadsen is next to Carter. (Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations— James C. Campbell, photographer, undated) Layle Lane, a teacher, civil rights activist, and labor leader, ran for elected office in Harlem numerous times on the Socialist Party ticket between 1934 and 1950. (Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, 1945) Pauli Murray worked in the Works Progress Administration in New York City during the Great Depression, led a successful sit-in to desegregate a luncheonette while a law student at Howard University in the 1940s, and ran for city council on the Liberal Party ticket in Brooklyn in 1949. A legal scholar and feminist, Murray was a key participant in the Senate debate over the inclusion of “sex” amendment in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Photo of Murray, 1935–1945. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University) Maude Richardson, a highly respected and consummate community activist in Brooklyn and a member of the Republican Party, ran for elected office three times in the 1940s. In 1946,she lost her campaign for the assembly to the Democratic incumbent by fewer than one hundred votes. (Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Collection, undated) Ada B. Jackson, a renowned Brooklyn activist and civil rights advocate, abandoned the Republican Party for the American Labor Party in 1946, when she ran against Maude Richardson for the New York State Assembly. Pictured here, Jackson (on the left) is giving an award to playwright Maxine Wood for “aiding oppressed minorities” with her Broadway play, On Whitman Avenue. Vivian Baber, star of Wood’s award-winning drama, is standing next to Jackson; Milton Goell, president of the Brownsville Neighborhood Council, is on the far right. (Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Collection, 1946) Ruth Whitehead Whaley is being sworn in by Mayor Vincent Impellitteri to serve on the powerful New York City Board of Estimates. (Photographer—Nichols. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, 1951) Honorable Bessie Buchanan was the first African American woman elected to the New York State Assembly in 1954. She represented the Twelfth Assembly District in Manhattan through 1962. (Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations) Constance Baker Motley, a former attorney with the NAACP LDF, is pictured here as the Manhattan borough president. She was the first woman to win this office. (Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, Moss Photo Service, 1965) Dorothy Height was a leading voice in African American women’s organizations and for civil rights for more than seventy years. She served as the president of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority (1947–1956) and president of the National Council of Negro Women (1957–1998). She was a member of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, 1961–63. (Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Washington, D.C., undated) Dr. Jeanne Noble served as president of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority from 1958 to 1963. A professor of education at New York University, she was tapped by President Johnson in 1964 to create the Women’s Job Corp, part of the War on Poverty. (Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Washington, D.C, undated) Brooklyn Congresswoman and presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm on the campaign trail in California. Chisholm remained in the Democratic Party primary until the convention in Miami, Florida in July 1972. She served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1969 through 1982. (Photo by Rose Greene) Anna Arnold Hedgeman, a member of Mayor Wagner Jr.’s cabinet (1954–58), three-time candidate for elected office, and one of the key organizers of the 1963 March on Washington, is pictured here with New York Governor Averell Harriman and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Archives at the National Afro-American Museum and...