"Daisy Elizabeth Lampkin" (August 9,1883-March 10,1965)

Was an American suffragette,civil rights activists,organization executive,and community

practitioner whose career spanned over half a century.Daisy effective skills as an orator,fundraiser,organizer,and political activists guided the work being conducted by the National Association of Colored Women (NACW);NAACP,National Council of Colored Women and other leading civil rights organizations of the Progressive Era.Born in Washington D.C.,Daisy was educated in Reading,Pennsylvania.She was the daughter of George Adams born in Virginia &Rose Proctor born in Charles county,Maryland.Daisy grandparents were Joseph Jenifer Proctor & Elizabeth Swann,free persons of color.It was also during this time that she became intimately involved with the national framework of the black women's club movement.Her leadership within the women's club movement introduced her to circles within the federation of women's clubs,the National Association of Colored Women (NACW),in which she served as National Board Chairwoman.During this period she developed collegial friendships with black women's movement leaders such as Addie W. Hutton, Mary Church Terrell and Charlotte Hawkins Brown.Still her most noted partnership would come through her association and friendship with Mary McLeod Bethune,with whom she would later assist in founding the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW)in 1935.Upon securing the right to vote,she became increasingly involved in civic engagement advocacy effort on both the local and national level.Daisy served as Chairwoman of the Allegheny County Negro Women's Republican League ,vice-Chairwomen of the Negro Voters League of Pennsylvania and vice-Chairwoman of the Colored Voters Division of the Republican National Committee.She established the first Red Cross chapter among black women's and organized local chapters of both the Urban League and NAACP in Pittsburgh.Most notably,she was made a stockholder and subsequently vice-president of the Pittsburgh Courier,which she used to raise funds for social justice causes and events.In her role as writer,editor,and executive,the paper became the top African-American-run circulating paper in the world during the 1950s.Daisy influence in national politics would eventually take her to the White House to meet with then President Calvin Coolidge and other noted black leaders regarding racial equality in 1924.Reflective of both the period and Daisy position,she was the only woman in attendance at the meeting.These efforts would eventually lead to then national secretary of the NAACP, Walter White recruiting Daisy as the first field secretary for the organization.Here her efforts to organize and bolster the image of the NAACP nationally have become legendary.In her 1931,she singled-handedly organized the NAACP'S 1931 National Convention in Pittsburgh.Her fundraising and organizing skills so impressed NAACP leadership that in 1935,she moved from regional to National Field Secretary of the organization.That same year,while continuing to establish local NAACP chapters and participating fundraising efforts,Daisy along with Walter,spearheaded the organization's drive to pass a federal anti-lynching bill in the United States Congress.While many historians haved noted her involvement in the Button Campaign which derived as a part of efforts to increase awareness around the anti-lynching laws amongst blacks,her political astuteness is often is often not fully capture in their description of her role.Daisy direct involvement within the lobbying efforts on behalf of the bill far by white southern anti-lynching activist Jessie Daniel Ames,because of its anti-states' right stance.Black women thoroughly disgusted by Jessie stance,called a meeting with her and some of her supporters,in Atlanta in 1935.Daisy who had been involved with the confrontation with the National Woman's Party and who was now a field secretaryfor the NAACP,began the discussion.The Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching's(ASWPL) silence,she said,was strengthening the position of  of congressional opponents of that bill.They  "[would]" take new courage and they "[would]" use it to their advantage when they can stand on the floor and say that the...southern white women did not endorse the Costigan-Wagner Bill.While other black leaders such as Nannie Helen Burroughs and Mary Bethune proved to be more conciliatory in their understanding of southern white women's opposition to the anti-lynching law,Daisy continued to decry the lack of support amongst her supported Walter peers.Such insistence garnered Daisy the image of the no-nonsense community activist that she was most known for during the era.In addition to her lobbying and fundraising efforts,Daisy has also been credited with recruiting a young Baltimore attorneyand future Supreme Court Justice,Thurgood Marshall to become a member of the NAACP Legal Defense Committee in 1938.Thurgood  would go on to lead the organization in its successful litigation in Brown vs.the Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme of Court.While she resigned as national field secretary in 1947,Daisy continued to serve on the organization's executive board.She suffered a stroke while at the NAACP membership drive in Camden,New Jersey,and died several months later.