Christia V. Daniels Adair (October 22, 1893 – December 31, 1989) was an

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

suffragist Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to v ...

and civil rights worker based in Texas. There is a mural in Texas about her life, displayed in a county park which is named for her.

Early life and education

Christia V. Daniels was born October 22nd, 1893

Victoria, Texas Victoria is a small city in South Texas and county seat of Victoria County, Texas. The population was 65,534 as of the 2020 census. The three counties of the Victoria Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 111,163 as of the 2000 censu ...

and grew up in

Edna, Texas Edna is a city in Jackson County, Texas, United States. The population was 5,499 at the 2010 census and 5,987 at the 2020 census. Edna is the county seat. Edna is the gateway to Lake Texana, which covers the site of Texana, Texas. Edna has ...

, the daughter of Ada Crosby Daniels, a laundress, and Hardy Daniels, who had a hauling business.Bernadette Pruitt
''The Other Great Migration: The Movement of Rural African Americans to Houston, 1900-1941''
(Texas A&M University Press 2013): 176. She had an older half-sister whom her mother had legally adopted, and two younger brothers. Her early life was heavily influenced by her Christian religion, which she professed at 11, and her involvement with the Methodist Church. She attended

Samuel Huston College Samuel ''Šəmūʾēl'', Tiberian: ''Šămūʾēl''; ar, شموئيل or صموئيل '; el, Σαμουήλ ''Samouḗl''; la, Samūēl is a figure who, in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, plays a key role in the transition from the bi ...

, which her godfather co-founded and trained to teach at the Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College, graduating in 1915.Nancy Baker Jones
"Christia V. Daniels Adair"
''Handbook of Texas Online'' (accessed July 4, 2016).

Career

Christia Daniels taught at public schools in Edna for three years and then left teaching in 1918 after she married Elbert H. Adair, a

brakeman A brakeman is a rail transport worker whose original job was to assist the braking of a train by applying brakes on individual wagons. The earliest known use of the term to describe this occupation occurred in 1833. The advent of through brakes, ...

for the

Missouri-Pacific Railroad The Missouri Pacific Railroad , commonly abbreviated as MoPac, was one of the first railroads in the United States west of the Mississippi River. MoPac was a Class I railroad growing from dozens of predecessors and mergers. In 1967, the railroad o ...

, and moved to

Kingsville, Texas Kingsville is a city in the southern region of the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Kleberg County. Located on the U.S. Route 77 corridor between Corpus Christi and Harlingen, Kingsville is the principal city of the Kingsville Micropo ...

. Here, she joined a women's group and fought against gambling establishments and organized petition drives for women's suffrage. Despite the success of the

women's suffrage movement Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to gran ...

, she was prevented from voting in Texas and turned away from a polling place due to state decreeing that black Americans could not vote in primaries, even though she was allowed to register to vote. This incident prompted Adair to begin working with the

civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...

. Her work in the community increased when the trends of racial discrimination at the time became more prevalent. Christia Adair (13270285254)

She moved to

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

in 1925, and joined the city's chapter of the

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...

in 1943. She served the chapter as executive secretary from 1949 or 1950 to 1959,Linda L. Black
"Female community leaders in Houston, Texas: a study of the education of Ima Hogg and Christia Daniels Adair"
(PhD diss., 2008, Texas A&M University): 155. through the period of the landmark

Smith v. Allwright ''Smith v. Allwright'', 321 U.S. 649 (1944), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court with regard to voting rights and, by extension, racial desegregation. It overturned the Texas state law that authorized parties to set their in ...

case. After the case was decided in favor of Smith, the Houston chapter of the NAACP became a popular target for bomb threats. She refused to divulge the group's membership rolls to police due to the belief that the Houston police were trying to procure the list in order to break up the chapter, under the guise of claims of barratry. She was one of the chapter members who testified during the trial regarding the attempted seizure of the chapter's records. Adair worked on desegregation of the

Houston Public Library Houston Public Library is the public library system serving Houston, Texas, United States. History Houston Lyceum and the Carnegie Library The Houston Public Library system traces its founding to the creation of the second Houston Lyceum in 18 ...

, airport, hospital, and public transit facilities, as well as department store dressing rooms. She was part of the effort to make black Texans eligible to serve on juries, and to be hired for county jobs. Adair co-founded the Harris County Democrats, an integrated organization, and in 1966 was the first African-American woman elected to the state's Democratic Executive Committee (though she refused her seat on the committee in protest). She was also active in the

Methodist Episcopal Church The Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) was the oldest and largest Methodist denomination in the United States from its founding in 1784 until 1939. It was also the first religious denomination in the US to organize itself on a national basis. In ...

from childhood, and was the first woman on the denomination's general board. Adair was honored during her lifetime, as the namesake of a county park and community center in Houston, which includes a

John T. Biggers John Thomas Biggers (April 13, 1924 – January 25, 2001) was an African-American muralist who came to prominence after the Harlem Renaissance and toward the end of World War II. Biggers created works critical of racial and economic injustice. He ...

mural about her life; and in 1984 when she was inducted into the Texas Women's Hall of Fame. She also gave an interview in 1977 to the Black Women Oral History Project at Harvard's Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.

Personal life and legacy

Christia Daniels was widowed in 1943 and died in 1989 at 96. Her papers are archived in the collection of the

, within the

African American Library at the Gregory School African American Library at the Gregory School is a branch of the Houston Public Library (HPL) in the Fourth Ward, Houston. The library preserves historical information about the African-American community in Houston. It is the city's first librar ...

in the Fourth Ward.Christia Adair Collection
MSS.0017, An Inventory of her Records at the African American Library at the Gregory School, Houston Public Library.

References

External links

* - at the

University of Texas Library A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which rou ...

Christia Adair Interview Transcript
OH-31; T-32. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. {{DEFAULTSORT:Adair, Christia 1893 births 1989 deaths 20th-century American women politicians 20th-century American politicians Activists from Houston African-American suffragists American suffragists American civil rights activists Women civil rights activists Huston–Tillotson University alumni Prairie View A&M University alumni People from Victoria, Texas Black Women Oral History Project Texas suffrage 20th-century African-American women 20th-century African-American people 20th-century American people

Early life and education

Career

Personal life and legacy

See also

References

External links