Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

People

Location

1695 Main St, Hartford, CT 06120, USA

Lat/Long

41.7782331, -72.6776866

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

African American activist Mary Townsend Seymour (1873-1957) helped to establish a branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Hartford, Connecticut in 1917. Seymour was a leader in the Hartford branch of the NAACP and was an advocate for women’s right to vote and also labor rights.

Representing the Hartford branch of the NAACP, Seymour worked for women’s right to vote, supporting both the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association and the National Woman’s Party (NWP). At a mass suffrage meeting held in Hartford in January 1918, Seymour made a small financial contribution from the Hartford branch of NAACP to the NWP in support of their fight for women’s suffrage. In an April 21, 1919 letter from Seymour to Mary White Ovington, found in the NAACP Records held by the Library of Congress, Seymour recounted another contribution from the Hartford branch of NAACP that she made to the NWP after their “Prison Special” tour stopped in Hartford in March 1919:

“In pledging, I said, ‘I pledge five dollars in the name of the Hartford Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, urging that the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, without compromise be allowed to stand.’”

The “Prison Special” tour was a cross-country speaking tour that included NWP members who had been arrested and jailed as a result of their participation in suffrage demonstrations in Washington, D.C. The NWP used the “Prison Special” tour to further increase public sympathies for the suffrage movement and bring national attention to the passage of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, the name given to the proposed women’s suffrage amendment to the United States Constitution.

Along with her suffrage activism, Seymour was an advocate for African American women workers. The November 1919 edition of The Crisis, a publication of the NAACP, reported that Seymour spoke before a meeting of the Hartford American Labor Party regarding the conditions faced by African American women working in tobacco fields. Her address led to the Hartford American Labor Party taking up a “unanimous vote of ‘condemnation of the exploitation of colored women in tobacco fields.’” Also, as a result of Seymour’s urging, the Hartford American Labor Party appointed a committee to confer with the Central Labor Union regarding the working conditions of African American women in the tobacco industry. In the June 1920 edition of The Crisis, Seymour’s labor activism was further noted:

“It was among the women in the tobacco factories or warehouses, that Hartford’s most interesting work was done. … That these colored workers were being defrauded of their just wage was soon evident from the stories they told at an NAACP meeting to which they were invited; but to understand exactly their condition, Mrs. Mary Townsend Seymour, Vice-president of the Branch, herself donned working clothes, entered the factory and for a time worked at tobacco stripping and stemming. The stories that had been brought to her by the women, she found were all too true. … Mrs. Seymour urged upon the women organization in a union. Then came a storm of opposition from outside. This was a radical step and there was much talking and preaching against it. But a union was formed with sixty paid-up members. It then asked and received admission to the International and now has three members, among them Mrs. Seymour, seated in the Central Labor Union body composed of delegates from every labor union in Hartford.”

After women had achieved the right to vote with the passage and subsequent ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in August 1920, Seymour continued her activism as a leader in the Hartford branch of the NAACP and worked with the Women’s League of Hartford. In 1921, Seymour, as representative of the Hartford branch of the NAACP, joined with other African American women’s social and civic clubs in Hartford, including the Women’s League, to organize a mass meeting with former suffragist and activist Mary Burnett Talbert as the event’s main speaker.

Seymour remained politically active throughout her career. She died in 1957 at the age of 83. Her obituary published in the January 14 edition of the Hartford Courant referred to her as an “NAACP Leader” and “prominent member of the suffragette movement.”