Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin

Activist and publisher

• Born: ca. 1883
• Birthplace: Washington, DC
• Died: March 10, 1965
• Place of death: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Also known as: Aunt Daisy; Daisy Elizabeth Adams; Daisy Lampkin; Daisy E. Lampkin

Significance: Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin was a suffragist and civil rights activist. A member of numerous organizations, her membership drives and fundraising for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) brought her national recognition.

Background

Details about Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin’s birth are uncertain. According to government records, Lampkin was born on August 9, 1883, in Washington, DC. Other sources vary on the year, giving 1883, 1884, or 1888. They vary on her birthplace as well, giving Washington, DC, or Reading, Pennsylvania. Her parents, Rosa Ann Proctor and George S. Adams, raised her in Reading. In 1909, after attending high school, she moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There she ran a manicure business out of her home.

Activist and Publishing Careers

In 1912, Lamkin began organizing consumer protests and women’s suffrage campaigns with neighborhood women. She made impassioned speeches on street corners and held meetings in her home. Committed to gaining racial equality for Black people, she was active in a number of civic, social, and political organizations.

One of the first groups Lampkin joined was the New Negro Women’s Equal Franchise Federation, which soon became the Lucy Stone Women Suffrage League and then the Lucy Stone Civic League. She served as its president from 1915 until 1955. While the group originally focused on women’s suffrage, it branched out into civic engagement and racial equity after women’s right to vote was secured in 1920.

Lampkin worked as an organizer for the National Association of Colored Women and the Pittsburgh branch of the NAACP. She co-chaired the national NAACP’s antilynching campaign in Pennsylvania in 1929. Her work with these and other groups led to the NAACP appointing her a regional field secretary in 1930. Five years later, she was promoted to national field secretary. Lampkin traveled around the country to gain new members, raise money, and organize branches. Highly successful in her endeavors, she enrolled more new members and raised more funds than any other member up to that point. In recognition, she was named the NAACP Woman of the Year in 1945. Lampkin resigned the national field position in 1947 due to health issues and then became the first female member of the NAACP’s board of directors.

Her work with other groups included co-founding the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) in the 1930s and serving on the boards of the Urban League and the Council of Churches, among others. Nationally known for her work on behalf of the NAACP and as a civil rights activist, she was invited to the White House in 1924 and met with President Calvin Coolidge and a group of Black leaders—all men—to discuss racial discrimination.

Active in politics, Lampkin was the vice chair of the Negro Voters League of Pennsylvania and of the Colored Voters’ Division of the Republican National Committee in the 1920s. For the National Republican Convention of 1924, she was an alternate delegate at-large. Indeed, she was affiliated mostly as a Republican but became a Democrat after Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected and created the New Deal.

Lampkin also helped to organize community fundraisers for national causes. During World War II, she led a drive to finance the war by raising two million dollars for war bonds in Alleghany County, Pennsylvania.

Lampkin was also a publisher. In 1913, she acquired stock in the Pittsburgh Courier, a weekly Black newspaper. Over the years, she acquired more stock until she became the majority owner. In 1929, she became the newspaper’s vice president, a position she held until 1965. She also served as a writer and editor and used the newspaper to champion causes of interest to her, such as promoting political candidates she favored or working to defeat candidates with racist attitudes and policies. During her tenure, the paper overcame financial difficulties to become a prominent national publication, with as many as 250,000 subscribers at one point.

In October 1964, Lampkin had a stroke while attending a NAACP meeting in New Jersey. She died at home on March 10, 1965. A few months before her death, she was honored with the NCNW’s first Eleanor Roosevelt–Mary Bethune World Citizenship Award.

In 1983, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission installed a historical marker on her home on Webster Street. In 2020, a reproduction of her home was added as a regional landmark to the Miniature Railroad and Village at Carnegie Science Center.

Impact

Lampkin was instrumental in mobilizing Black Americans so their voices could be heard. She had a tremendous impact on the NAACP and grew its membership such that it became a leading civil rights group by the 1950s and 1960s. She also helped facilitate individuals’ efforts to pursue their ambitions by helping them find housing, jobs, and financial assistance. Two such beneficiaries of her aid were Thurgood Marshall, who became the first Supreme Court justice of African American descent, and K. Leroy Irvis, who became the first Black Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

Personal Life

Lampkin married William Lampkin in 1912. Her husband, primarily remembered as a restaurateur, also worked variously as a truck driver, a chef, and a laborer in a steel mill. They raised their goddaughter, Romaine Childs, whose mother died about a year after her birth. She also later helped raise Childs’s son, Earl Douglas. Lampkin was an active member and an elder of Grace Memorial Presbyterian Church.

Bibliography

Culgan, Rossilynne Skena. “The Tiny Building That Pays Tribute to a Larger-Than-Life Civil Rights Leader.” Atlas Obscura, 23 Feb. 2021, www.atlasobscura.com/articles/daisy-lampkin-pittsburgh. Accessed 31 Mar. 2023.

“Daisy E. Lampkin Historical Marker.” ExplorePAHistory, explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-2EA. Accessed 31 Mar. 2023.

Galle, Karen. “Daisy E. Lampkin: Activist for Racial and Gender Equality." Pennsylvania Heritage, Winter 2020, paheritage.wpengine.com/article/daisy-lampkin-activist-racial-gender-equality. Accessed 31 Mar. 2023.

Levin, Steve. “Daisy Lampkin Was a Dynamo for Change.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2 Feb. 1998, www.post-gazette.com/blackhistorymonth/19980202lampkin.asp. Accessed 31 Mar. 2023.

McKenzie, Edna. “Daisy Lampkin: A Life of Love and Service.” Pennsylvania Heritage, Summer 1983, paheritage.wpengine.com/article/daisy-lampkin-life-love-service. Accessed 31 Mar. 2023.

“Miniature Railroad Adds Daisy Lampkin Home.” North Hills Monthly Magazine, 30 Nov. 2020, www.northhillsmonthly.com/2020/11/30/337323/miniature-railroad-adds-daisy-lampkin-home. Accessed 31 Mar. 2021.

Smith, Breanna. “Let’s Learn from the Past: Daisy Lampkin.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 13 Mar. 2013, www.post-gazette.com/life/lifestyle/2013/03/14/Let-s-Learn-From-the-Past-Daisy-Lampkin/stories/201303140417. Accessed 31 Mar. 2021.