An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 4/18/2021
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"Nothing is done unless women do it."
Daisy Elizabeth Lampkin (neé Adams) is today best known for being the first woman ever elected to the national board of the NAACP, but her oratorical skill spans a nearly 50-year commitment to the causes of womens' suffrage and civil rights.
Born in 1884 Pennsylvania, Daisy can be said to have entered into a life of activism almost straight out of high school. An early aptitude for motivational speaking led to her joining a number of local womens' suffrage leagues, which in turn connected her to the National Association for Colored Women (NACW), an organization for which she would later be named chair.
Her activism brought her to the attention of the up-and-coming Pittsburgh Courier, which ran a profile piece on her in 1912. As a consequence, she developed a strong relationship with that particular newspaper --boosting its sales and subscriptions while also penning a number of editorials for voting rights. That same year she married William Lampkin, a Pittsburgh restauranteur, which further connected her to the community and propelled her into a life of speechmaking and organization. By 1915 she had been named to president of the Lucy Stone League. Such was her notoriety that she was ultimately elevated to vice-president of the Courier Publishing Company in 1929, and the Pittsburgh Courier itself would eventually become the top African-American-run circulating paper in the world. Lampkin's influence would eventually take her to the White House in 1924 to meet with then-President Calvin Coolidge and other noted black leaders regarding racial equality --the only woman to attend.
Between 1930 and 1964, Lampkin served as an officer of the NAACP: first as regional secretary, then national secretary, and finally on the board of the directors --the first woman ever to do so (1947-1964). Throughout this time she pushed to increase membership and delivered speeches across the U.S., tirelessly advocating for greater voting rights for Black Americans, partnering with such luminaries as Mary Church Terrell (see Lesson #29 in this series) and, perhaps most significantly, Mary McLeod Bethune (see Lesson #49 in this series). Apocryphally, during her time as regional secretary (circa 1938), she is said to have recruited a young Baltimore-area attorney named Thurgood Marshall to the NAACP's legal defense committee.
Upon her retirement from the NAACP, she was honored with the Eleanor Roosevelt-Mary McLeod Bethune World Citizenship Award, from the National Council of Negro Women.
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