Born: 21 September 1898, United States
Died: 21 August 1987
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Frances Mary Jackson
African-American civil rights and labor activist and community leader Frances Mary Albrier grew up in Alabama, attending the Tuskegee Institute before earning her Bachelor’s from Howard University in 1920 and moving to California. But even once she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and trained for two years in nursing, Albrier had difficulty finding employment, which led to her involvement with the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). She joined the Black Cross Nurses, a women’s auxiliary of the UNIA created to provide health services and education to people of African descent internationally.
In 1938, Albrier was elected as a Democratic Central Committeewoman in Alameda County, California, running unsuccessfully for the Berkeley city council the following year. She played a key role in fighting employment discrimination against African-American teachers in Berkeley’s public schools, including establishing the East Bay Women’s Welfare Club.
In 1942, wanting to contribute to war efforts during World War II, Albrier trained as a welder. At first, the boilermakers’ union refused to accept her as a member even though she had completed twice the required number of training hours. They gave in following pressure from the community and the threat of a lawsuit from Albrier. Even then, she was transferred to an auxiliary union in Oakland due to the lack of a segregated auxiliary for African-Americans after she became the first African-American woman hired at Kaiser Shipyards.
Albrier received the NAACP’s Fight for Freedom Award in 1954.