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

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

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 vo ...

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 22, 1893, in

Victoria, Texas Victoria is a city and the county seat of Victoria County, Texas, United States. The population was 65,534 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The three counties of the Victoria, Texas metropolitan area, Victoria Metropolitan Statis ...

, and grew up in

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

, 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 is a figure who, in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, plays a key role in the transition from the biblical judges to the United Kingdom of Israel under Saul, and again in the monarchy's transition from Saul to David. He is Veneration, ...

, 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 advent of through brakes, brakes on every wagon which could be controlled by the driver, made this role r ...

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 ...

, and moved to

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

. 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. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...

, 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. Her work in the community increased when the trends of racial discrimination at the time became more prevalent. She moved to

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

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

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

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 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 ...

, 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 nationally. In 1939, th ...

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 The Texas Women's Hall of Fame was established in 1984 by the Governor's Commission on Women. The honorees are selected biennially from submissions from the public. The honorees must be either native Texans or a resident of Texas at the time of t ...

. She also gave an interview in 1977 to the Black Women Oral History Project at Harvard's

Schlesinger Library The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is a research library at Harvard Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. According to Nancy F. Cott, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director, it is "the ...

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 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

*
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 Texas politicians Activists from Houston African-American suffragists American civil rights activists American women civil rights activists Huston–Tillotson University alumni Prairie View A&M University alumni People from Victoria, Texas Black Women Oral History Project Suffragists from Texas 20th-century African-American women politicians 20th-century African-American politicians

Early life and education

Career

Personal life and legacy

See also

References

External links