Born: 9 August 1884, United States
Died: 10 March 1965
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
American suffragist and civil rights activist Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin worked for change for more than 50 years as a speaker, fundraiser, organizer and political strategist with organizations like the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW).
Lampkin started hosting suffrage meetings in her Pittsburgh home in 1912, organizing other African-American women as part of the New Negro Women’s Equal Franchise Federation. The Federation was later renamed the Lucy Stone League, and Lampkin’s skills as a leader and speaker resulted in her becoming president of the league in 1915 – a position she would hold until 1955.
She became more involved in the national movement of African-American women’s clubs, and she eventually rose to the role of National Board Chairwoman for the NACW. She worked and associated with activists like Addie Waites Hunton, Mary Church Terrell, Charlotte Hawkins Brown and Mary McLeod Bethune, and helped Bethune establish the NCNW in 1935. She organized Pittsburgh chapters of the Urban League and NAACP, and served as Chairwoman of the Allegheny County Negro Women’s Republican League, vice-chairwoman of the Negro Voters League of Pennsylvania and vice-chairwoman of the Colored Voters Division of the Republican National Committee. As a stockholder, and later vice-president, of the Pittsburgh Courier, she used her roles as writer, editor and executive to raise funds and awareness for social justice causes. In 1924, she and other African-American leaders met with President Calvin Coolidge in 1924 to discuss racial equality – she was the only woman in attendance.
In 1930, Lampkin was appointed the NAACP’s first regional field secretary, where she proved so effective at organizing and fundraising that she was made National Field Secretary in 1935, a role she would hold until 1947. In this capacity, she helped lead the organization’s lobbying for a Congressional anti-lynching bill. She is also credited with recruiting young Thurgood Marshall (who would go on to become the first African-American Supreme Court Justice) to the NAACP Legal Defense Committee in 1938.