Category: Post War/Modern Period (1946-1999)

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Mary A. Holmes, d. 1986

Mary Holmes and Akron’s Civil Rights movement grew up together. In 1918, she was one of the founders of the NAACP in the city. In the 1920s, she was a staffer for the African-American newspaper. In 1940, she made her way to president of the Council of Negro Women. By the 1960s, she was with the Summit County Community Action Council as a “housing adviser.”

She never planned on that life. “I never planned to get knocks on my head, but somebody’s got to get the knocks to get things done,” she told the Beacon Journal in 1975. “My biggest pleasure is doing something for somebody.”

Born in Buchanan, Va., Holmes attended high school in Charleston, W.Va. She moved to Akron in 1918. Conditions for African Americans in the city were bad. Everything seemed to be segregated. It was little wonder that Holmes would help found the city’s NAACP chapter as soon as she moved to town.

For a time, Holmes worked as a stenographer/bookkeeper for a small manufacturing company. In 1921, she, along with William B. Johnson and William Byrd, started theBlack and White Chronicle, a weekly newspaper covering the city’s African-American community. Holmes was bookkeeper/proofreader/reporter for the newspaper. Opie Evans remembered that Mary Holmes was vital to the newspaper’s life. “You know, that Mary Holmes was everything in that office. She really kept that paper going” (Beacon Journal, Feb. 11, 1991).

After the newspaper folded in 1927, Holmes held a variety of jobs from catering to domestic work and continued to be a leader in the African-American community. She was the secretary of the Colored Women’s Republican Club and president of the Council of Negro Women. She also served as the secretary of the Woman’s Auxiliary of the NAACP. In 1962 to 1964, when racial tensions were highest in Akron, Holmes was president of the city’s NAACP.

Holmes worked with the Summit County Community Action Council “for about as long as anyone can remember,” the Beacon Journal reported. In 1975, she was a “housing adviser,” helping set up the Emergency House for families displaced by eviction or forced out of their homes by disasters, and worked at the North Akron Neighborhood Center.

In 1975, she announced that she was retiring. When she looked back over her long career in Akron, she could see progress. As far as segregation was concerned, Akron was a better place to live. In 1978, the churches in the community acknowledged her role in the city by giving her the “Brotherhood Action Award.”

Holmes died in Akron on April 9, 1986.

 

Photo courtesy of the Beacon Journal.

. –Kathleen L. Endres

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Mary Peavy Eagle, 1909-2003

Mary Peavy Eagle, founder of the Akron Council of Negro Women in 1932, had a singular mission in her life, to improve the conditions African Americans faced in Akron, Ohio.

Eagle credited a walk on Glenwood Avenue with opening her eyes. A teacher had taken her children out to recess and it seemed to Eagle that the two or three little African-American children “looked a little less cared for than the others. So then I thought – I see this, so now I’ll have to do something about it.”

Eagle got together a group of women and started a club. “I wanted the mothers to take more pride in their children. We encouraged the parents to join the PTA; visit the schools; meet the teachers, and get to know each other. This would make it easier for the children to do well in school. We also worked with the schools in educational programs. We were successful at that. If there was any way that could help a mother by finding clothing for her children we did. We secured clothing, more food, and what not. We helped any child.” One of her biggest concerns was getting an African-American teacher at Bryan school. Eventually African-American teacher Herbert Bracken was appointed to that school over the protests of some white parents (Oral Black History Project, 1990, The University of Akron Archives).

It was that activism that led Mary Eagle to be the first African-American woman president of a PTA in Summit County.

Eagle, then Mary Peavy, came to Akron in 1924 from Checotah, Okla. Her father came to work in the rubber factories and found a job with Miller Rubber. The Peavys were a big family. Mary was the eldest of seven. Several of her sisters, particularly Anne and Sarah, were also leaders in the African-American women’s community in Akron. Mary Peavy attended old North High School.

By 1927, barely out of her teens, Mary Peavy was superviser of the Young Ladies Progressive Club. Sisters Sarah and Anne were also officers. The club provided services to the poor. They distributed groceries and money to needy families. Other officers included Cora Armstrong, Addie Mae Williams, Ruth Coffee, Ada Driskill and Velma Varner.

In 1929 Mary Peavy married Isaac Thomas Eagle, a Goodyear rubber worker who was also from Checotah, Okla.

In 1932, when most African Americans were struggling during the Depression, Eagle started the Council of Negro Women to coordinate efforts among the neighborhood clubs. In 1936, African-American leader Mary McLeod Bethune copied Eagle’s model and created the National Council of Negro Women.

Eagle did not stop with the Council of Negro Women. She continued her activism throughout her life. In the late 1930s, Eagle heard about a slum clearance program, one of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s WPA projects. Eagle contacted her councilman, Ray Thomas, and asked for help. He agreed and the slums on North Street were replaced by the brick homes of Elizabeth Park Homes.

Eagle was always a Democrat. She remained active in Democratic politics throughout her life. She sipped tea with first lady Bess Truman and was invited to President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. She was also a delegate to the 1954 UNESCO conference in Washington, D.C.

Eagle, a lifetime member of the Mt. Zion Baptist Church, had two daughters, one a teacher in the Akron Public Schools and the other a public relations executive in Houston.

Eagle is buried at Glendale Cemetery.

 

Photo courtesy of The University of Akron Archives.

–Kathleen L. Endres

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Ruth Ebright Finley, 1884-1955

Ruth Ebright Finley, “girl reporter, sob sister, feature writer” for the Akron Beacon Journal in the early 20th century, went on to a career as an editor, a biographer, an expert on American quilts – and one of the greatest clairvoyants of the 20th century.

It’s a long trip from Akron to the afterlife but was an easy one for Finley because she lived two quite separate lives.

Ruth Ebright was born in Akron, the daughter Dr. L.S. Ebright and his wife, the former Julia Ann Bissell. Her father himself lived a kind of dual existence, one as a physician and one, for a time, as the postmaster of Akron.

Ebright was well educated for her day. She enrolled in Oberlin in 1902 but returned to Akron the next year to go to old Buchtel College (now The University of Akron). She never completed her degree.

Instead she started her reporting career with the Beacon Journal. This was a time of sob sisters and sensational journalism. Ebright won a name for herself when managed to get an interview with the former Akronite wife of inventor Thomas Alva Edison. She then went on to the oldCleveland Press. She was best known for her stories on the working conditions of labor women and she is credited with helping get a bill passed that was designed to benefit working women. It was while at the Cleveland Press that she met and married Emmet Finley, an editor there.

Finley had a varied journalistic career after that. She was woman’s page editor of the Cleveland Press, fiction editor of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, managing editor for the old Washington Herald, woman’s editor of the Enterprise Newspaper Association, assistant editor ofMcClure’s magazine and editor of Guide Magazine and theWoman’s National Political Review.

There were many dimensions to Finley’s life. Building on her interest in quilts and quilting, she wrote the book, Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them. Part of the movement to reawaken American interest in quilts and quilting, Finley designed the quilt given first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. There was a certain irony in this because Finley was a critic of the New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the first lady on the pages of the Woman’s National Political Review, the periodical she edited.

Finley was also an historian of sorts. In 1931, she published a biography of antebellum magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale. The Lady of Godey’s: Sarah Josepha Haleis still considered an important resource on Hale and her popular woman’s periodical.

Even as Finley continued her career as an editor, quilt expert and historian, she and her husband were exploring different aspects of reality.

As Joan and Darby, the Finleys became chronicling their exploits in the afterlife in their 1920 book Our Unseen Guest. That book chronicled how they first got involved in the paranormal. In Cleveland in 1916, they played with a Ouija board and met their guide to the afterlife, a volunteer ambulance driver who had died in France the year before. Although Our Unseen Guest quickly became a classic in psychic literature, the Finleys were able to keep their involvement in the paranormal secret.

Ruth Ebright Finley died in 1955. Her husband had died five years earlier. The couple did not have any children. Ruth Ebright Finley’s papers are located in The University of Akron Archives.

Photo courtesy of The University of Akron Archives.

–Kathleen L. Endres

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Anna Trowbridge Viall Case, 1883-1965

Mrs. Anna Trowbridge Viall Case earned her place in Akron history with her service to the public schools by being on the Board of Education longer than any other woman up to that point. She also earned a place in history for her service to the community through involvement in various civic organizations. Her contributions were so great, in fact, that the Beacon Journal named her Akron’s Woman of the Year in 1938.

During her 24 years on the Board of Education–10 as president–Case brought about many innovations. She promoted the employment of African-American teachers; she helped formulate programs to help mentally handicapped students; she worked to coordinate services between the Summit County Mental Health Association and the schools so that troubled pupils could get the help they needed; and she pushed for expanded vocational and recreational facilities for Akron schools. When she retired from the Board of Education in 1957, the Akron school system was better because of her association with it.

Part of her success revolved around her personal style. Case made it her business to be familiar with everyone associated with the schools, from the custodians to the principals, from the bus drivers to the teachers. She disliked controversy. She allowed everyone to have their say and tried to work out compromises. She also had strong administrative skills, following through on her many responsibilities.

Case also served as president of the Akron and Summit County Federation of Women’s Clubs at a time when the organization faced real crises. Inez Crisp had resigned as president, citing health reasons, but political charges loomed in the background. Not only was Case able to rebuild the group but she also expanded its membership. In 1926, the end of her term, the Beacon Journal marveled at the Federation’s successes. “Mrs. Case has served as head of the local federation for the last two years and during that time the organization has enjoyed its most successful years, also increased its membership more than one-third.” Case then went on to a statewide position in the organization — vice president of the northeast district of Ohio Federation. As vice president, she oversaw 16 branch federations, which represented 162 separate clubs. Upon her election as vice president, the following comment was made about Case: “Truly a woman who undertakes to steer this largest of all women’s organizations through a two-year term of office is making a sacrifice worthy of a real citizen.”

Case also became the vice president of the Travelers’ Aid Society, third vice president of the Women’s Association of the First Congregational Church and president of the New Century Club. In addition to being a charter member of the Woman’s City Club, she was also director and chairman of committees in that organization.

She served on the executive board of the Akron Home and School League. She was also an associate member of the Akron branch of the National Story Tellers’ League and she was head of the women’s committee to organize a speaker’s bureau to help the Community Chest campaign. The Community Chest was the forerunner of United Way.

Case was also on the educational publicity committee and the chairman of the board “to aid the Better Akron Federation in the work of all its agencies.” She was a member of the College Club, the League of Women Voters and president of the Young Women’s Christian Association from 1917-1919. In 1925, she was appointed to vice president of the Ohio Public Health Association, which brought her back to her educational and personal roots.

Anne Trowbridge Viall was born in Tallmadge, Ohio, in 1883. She attended Lake Erie College, originally planning to be a teacher. During her senior year, however, she shifted her career plans to social work. In 1905 she was a district visitor for Cleveland’s Associated Charities, delivering milk tickets and eggs to TB patients in the Haymarket district, primarily Polish and Hungarian immigrants. In 1908, she was named city supervisor. Her career ended in 1911 when she married Claude Case, a veterinarian at the Akron Veterinary Hospital, and moved to Akron. The couple, who resided at 26 Orchard Road, had one son.

Photo courtesy of The University of Akron Archives.

–Janelle Baltputnis

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Geraldine Virginia Braley, 1890-1964

Geraldine Virginia Braley was the first and, for decades, the only woman who was president of a bank in Akron, Ohio. She never advocated equality with men. However, she promoted women into most of the key positions in the bank she ran.

Braley was born in New Martinsville, W.Va., but her formative years were spent in Thurston, Ohio. She attended elementary and high school in Fairfield County’s centralized school system and attended business college in Columbus, Ohio.

She got a job at a Columbus ice cream firm and came to Akron to manage that company’s office in that city. She then went to work for the old Hower Department Store as the manager of its business office.

It was while she worked there that she first heard of a new bank about to open. In 1921, she joined Society Savings and Loan as its first employee. The bank quickly became successful, so successful, in fact, that the trustees questioned the wisdom of having a woman involved. Braley was let go and she soon found a job in the office at B.F. Goodrich.

Those bank trustees, however, realized that they had made a terrible mistake; they wanted her back and offered her the position of assistant treasurer. Braley returned and never left Society Savings, which became First Federal Savings and Loan of Akron, again.

Braley became an expert in the banking industry. She read all the trade publications; she attended banking conferences; she went to school at The University of Akron and took classes in savings and loans and psychology. She knew her field and she got along well with the customers. The Beacon Journal reported in 1937 that she enjoyed helping wage earners achieve home ownership.
In 1941, she was named chief officer of the bank with the title of executive secretary. In 1943, she was elected president and was elected president every year until she retired in 1960.

Braley contended there were three ingredients for success in business: a mathematical mind, an expertise in the field (based on study and reading of trade publications) and knowledge of her business from the bottom up.Anyone — male or female, who had that mathematical mind and was willing to put in the time and effort, could achieve success in banking or any other business, she argued.

In her career, however, she preferred to work with women. She trained them; she put them through every phase and part of the organization; then she promoted them to positions that women seldom held in banking at the time. In return, a colleague said she “expected loyalty, production, accuracy and speed….”

Braley was well respected nationally in the banking industry. She was named to key committees of the U.S. Savings and Loan League. She was also elected president of the Summit-Portage County Savings and Loan League.

After her retirement, Braley moved to Passaic, N.J. She died there in 1964 at the age of 73.

Photo courtesy of the Beacon Journal. 

–Kathleen L. Endres

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Martha Walters Averett, 1906-1982

Martha Walters of New York probably never could have predicted what a trip to Akron in 1941 would bring – a marriage, a breaking of a color barrier in the city’s hospitals and a lifetime of contributions to her adopted hometown.

Walters had been born in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Washington, D.C., just a few blocks from the White House. She went to college there, Howard University; after graduation, she headed for New York and the Lakeland School for Nursing. There were hard times in New York during the Great Depression; but Walters, by then a registered nurse, found work with the New York Health Department. And there she might have stayed, if it had not been for that trip to Akron.

She met A.L. Averett, married and settled down in wartime Akron. Finding work was no problem; she worked at a doctor’s office. Then, in 1946, she decided to apply as a nurse at Akron City Hospital. No Black nurse had ever worked in any of the city’s hospitals before. Nonetheless, Akron City Hospital hired her and one more color barrier in medicine was broken.

Estelle Rogers, her daughter, told the Beacon Journal that there was segregation in the hospital, “whether it was by floors, wings or sections on a floor.” Averett cared for white patients, some of whom didn’t appreciate it. Nonetheless, Averett worked hard and impressed her supervisors. She was eventually promoted to supervising nurse.

Just as things were looking up professionally, Averett suffered a heart attack and had to retire. But that just opened a new phase to her life. She shifted her attention to the Akron Community Service Center and Urban League; she became the first president of the Northside Citizens Council. But, again, poor health struck her; in 1959 a debilitating stroke left her bedridden.

This, in turn, began yet another career. She began counseling troubled teens in 1961. She treasured the time she spent with these youngsters. “The stories differ: illegitimate young men with high intelligence and low grades; desperate daughters sometimes seeking shameful solutions to their troubles; fear; tension; hidden disease; despair,” she told the Beacon Journal. “These are my children and I thank their parents for sharing them with me.”

Her mixture of questions “sugar-coated with warmth and compassion” brought positive results with the teens, the Beacon Journal reported. Fifteen of her first 17 teens were in college in 1966.

Honors and awards followed. In 1967, Zeta Phi Beta sorority named her Woman of the Year; in 1970 she received the Akron Touchdown Club service award; in 1974 she won the Governor’s Community Action Award.

Martha Averett died Aug. 13, 1982 in Akron. She was 76 years old. Urban League Director Vernon Odom remembered her as “one of Akron’s great ladies.”

Photo courtesy of the Beacon Journal.

–Kathleen L. Endres

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Daisy L. Alford-Smith

Daisy L. Alford-Smith, champion for the underprivileged, uses her background in health care and public policy-making to help the citizens of Summit County.

Although little is known about her early life, Alford-Smith holds the following degrees: a Nursing Diploma from Montefiore Hospital School of Nursing in Pittsburgh; a B.S. in Nursing from the University of New York; an M.S. in Technical Education from The University of Akron, and a Ph. D. in Urban Education from Cleveland State University.

In addition to teaching at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Alford-Smith has lectured extensively around the world, including Zimbabwe, Africa, and Bangkok, Thailand.

Alford-Smith has spoken before many groups about issues regarding health care and minorities. Some of these groups include the International Nursing Conference in Korea and the Democratic National Convention’s Black Caucus Delegation here in the United States.

The mother of three children of her own and a blended family of two more, Alford-Smith has dealt with health care issues personally in her own family. Her daughter, Kym Sellers, a well-known radio personality, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Alford-Smith and her daughter work to raise awareness and financial support for African-Americans who suffer from the disease.

Akron, Ohio, is where Alford-Smith currently serves as the director of the Summit County Department of Job & Family Services, although she is involved in many programs that deal with health care. She has worked with the Olivet Institutional Baptist Church Health and Education Institute, the Center for Urban & Minority Health at Case Western Reserve University. Besides being the director of the Cleveland Department of Public Health and the deputy director of the Ohio Department of Human Services, Alford-Smith has also been the branch manager and administrator for Staff Builders Health Care Services in Akron, a company that delivers health care products and services in a tri-county area.

Because faith is an important part of her life, Alford-Smith works in support of faith-based health care and Charitable Choice programs in Ohio. Her testimony in Washington, D.C., has given credibility to one of the first pilot programs for faith-based health care in the country.

Alford-Smith is a member of the following professional organizations: the Cleveland Council of Black Nurses, the Akron Black Nurses Association, the National Forum of Black Public Administrators, the Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Black Women’s Political Action Committee, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, LINKS, Inc., County Commissioners Association of Ohio and the United States Conference of Local Health Officers. She is currently the first vice president of the National Black Nurses Association and is a past graduate of Leadership Cleveland.

Past board memberships and committee seats include the American Red Cross-North Central Ohio, the Ohio United Way, United Negro College Fund, Womenspace, Buckeye Health Center and the Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program.

Because of her tireless efforts to improve health care, Alford-Smith has received numerous awards such as Joan L. Andrews Professional Service Award, Crain’s Cleveland Business Leaders of Today Award and Woman of Influence Award, the 24th Annual YWCA Greater Cleveland Woman of Achievement Award, the Plain Dealer’s Outstanding Accomplishments in Welfare Reform Award, and the Distinguished Achievement Award from Arlington Church of God, Akron, to name just a few.

In photo, Alford-Smith poses with daughter Kym Sellers. Photo courtesy of the Kym Sellers Foundation.

–Penny Fox