the youngest of seven children.Her family moved to Chicago,Illinois,after the death of her daddy,in the 1880s,well before the Great Migration of the early twentieth century.In Chicago she
became involved in social work at two charity organizations,Kings Daughters and Hull House,founded by Jane Adams (who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931).
In 1893 Lugenia met John Hope,a student at Brown University,in Providence,Rhode Island,at the World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago.
The couple married in 1897 and moved to Nashville Tennessee,where she worked in the community,teaching crafts while John taught at Roger Williams University.The Hopes eventually had two sons,John & Edward.In1898 the couple moved to
Atlanta,and John began teaching at Atlanta Baptist College(later morehouse college),becoming the school's president in 1906.Noticing social decay in Atlanta's African American neighbor Lugenia,along with
several other women,formed the Neighborhood Union in 1908.The group
elected her,a commanding but calm and expert administrator,president.Despite her involvement in numerous organizations ,
she is most recognized for leadership in the Neighborhood Union,which laid
the ground work for the grassroots component of the civil rights movement
and became an international model for community building.Lugenia recruited morehouse students to interview community members in order
to assess their needs,and she quickly realize the extent to which African American in Atlanta suffered from a lack of sanitary homes and schools,medical and dental care,and recreational
opportunities.Under Lugenia's from 1908-1935,the Neighborhood
the Union carried out health education
campaigns,demanded better conditions at schools,and sponsored arts recreational activities for youth.In additional the union "cleaned up"African Americans districts of undesirable moral characters,
which included gamblers & prostitutes.Lugenia was more radical than her peers.In the era of Booker T.Washington,in which accommodation was more accepted than confrontation,she was headstrong and demanding.It was her social and economic position as the middle-class wife of a university professor that afforded her the authority to lead and to confront white institutionalized racism.During World War II (1917-18) Lugenia became Special War Work Secretary for the YWCA's War Work Council.She organized services for returning African American Jewish soldiers and oversaw the training of hostess-house workers at Camp Upton in New York.Later on,an African American woman became more involved with
the YWCA,she challenged the organization's discriminatory practices,calling for African American leadership of African American branches in the South.Following the Great Flood of 1927,which devastated much of Arkansas,Louisiana and Mississippi.Lugenia was appointed to U.S. president Herbert Hoover's Colored Advisory Commission.The Commission working with the American National Red Cross,concluded that African American victims of the flood had been victims of discrimination during relief efforts.In 1932 she became the first vice president of the NAACP Atlanta chapter.During her tenure she oversaw the creation of "citizenship schools," basic six-week courses that introduced African American to the role of government
and civic participation.The campaign reached hundreds if not thousands of Atlantans.After her John's death in 1936,Lugenia moved to New York City.Conflict with the incoming Morehouse president may have played a role in her move.In 1937 she became an assistant to Mary McLeod Bethune,the director of Negro Affairs for the National Youth Administration,a New Deal program.She also continued to work for the NAACP,periodically visiting its headquarters in Washington,D.C.Over the course of her career Lugenia was actively involved in a number of other organizations,including the Commission on Interracial Cooperation,the National Association of Colored Woman's Club (in which she advocated for women suffrage),the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching,the National Associated of Colored Graduate Nurses,and the International Council of Women of the Darker Races.For periods at a time she lived with her niece Emma in Chicago,her son John in Nashville,and her other son Edward in Washington,D.C. she died in Nashville,and her ashes were released from the tower of Morehouse College.
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