Adella Hunt Logan, a fair-skinned Black woman, wasn’t content with the privileges of being “white passing” in the early 20th-century United States. She wanted to use her position to fight against Jim Crow, segregation – and especially, she wanted her people to have the right to vote!
White women were organizing for their own voting rights – and even used explicit racism to build coalitions among Northern and Southern white women.
But they WERE organized and seemed to be making progress. So Logan came up with an ingenious plan.
She “passed” as white and infiltrated meetings with white suffragettes! She took this information and used it to help organize our people.
Despite all of this, Logan felt completely hopeless. But why?
She had worked so hard, but progress was too slow. After a series of personal problems including battling kidney disease and being treated for depression with electroshock therapy, Logan tragically ended her own life by jumping from a building.
Her life was over – but was her work over too?
No! Her daughters continued their mother’s fight for justice – and eventually the groundwork she laid contributed to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Logan’s innovation and refusal to abandon her people to assimilate into whiteness were crucial in our long fight for liberation.