Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

People

Location

1-23 Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL 36088, USA

Lat/Long

32.428532, -85.70478

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

Adella Hunt Logan was born in 1863 in Sparta, Georgia amidst the Civil War to a free woman of African and Cherokee descent and a white planter. She went on to graduate from Atlanta University and was a lifelong advocate for racial equality and women’s suffrage, as well as the second woman to join the faculty of Tuskegee University (1883) where she taught English and social studies. She also became the first librarian at the University and served as the head of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC) suffrage department. Throughout her career, Hunt Logan fought against discrimination in the suffrage movement, seeking to highlight the importance of enfranchisement for all women.

A noted lecturer and writer, Hunt Logan authored several articles relating to women’s suffrage and racial equality. Most notably, she wrote two pieces which remain key documents to understanding the equal suffrage movement: the first titled “Woman Suffrage,” which appeared in The Colored American, and “Colored Women as Voters,” which appeared in The Crisis. Her articles argued not only for the importance of equal suffrage for women, but for woman of color in particular. Hunt Logan was also a founding member of the Tuskegee Women’s Club when it was formed in 1895 and a life member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Hunt Logan passed away on December 12, 1915 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Sadly, she did not live to have the chance to cast a ballot herself; however, her legacy as an advocate can be seen in the writings of her granddaughter, historian Adele Logan Alexander, who authored a biography about her grandmother in 2019, titled: Princess of the Hither Isles: A Black Suffragist’s Story from the Jim Crow South.