Ida Gibbs Hunt
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Ida Alexander Gibbs Hunt (November 16, 1862 – December 19, 1957) was an advocate of racial and gender equality and co-founded one of the first
YWCA The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is a nonprofit organization with a focus on empowerment, leadership, and rights of women, young women, and girls in more than 100 countries. The World office is currently based in Geneva, Swit ...
s in
Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
, for African-Americans in 1905. She was the daughter of Judge Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, the wife of William Henry Hunt, and a longtime friend of
W. E. B. Du Bois William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relativel ...
. Along with Du Bois, she was a leader of the early Pan-African movement.


Early life and education

Ida's father, Judge Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, was one of the wealthiest African-Americans in the United States in the late nineteenth century. Before he acquired wealth, he and his wife, Maria Ann Alexander Gibbs, traveled from Pennsylvania to California and finally to Vancouver Island where Ida Alexander Gibbs Hunt was born on November 16, 1862, in Victoria, British Columbia. Ten years later, in 1872, the Gibbs family returned to the United States as an affluent family. The third child of five siblings, Ida was the eldest daughter. One of her sisters was Harriet Gibbs Marshall. At
Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1833, it is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational lib ...
, she completed a classical and scientific academic course in the Department of Philosophy and the Arts. She was a part of the first class of black women to graduate from the school in 1884 alongside
Mary Church Terrell Mary Terrell (born Mary Church; September 23, 1863 – July 24, 1954) was an American civil rights activist, journalist, teacher and one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree. She taught in the Latin Department at the M St ...
and
Anna Julia Cooper Anna Julia Cooper ( Haywood; August 10, 1858February 27, 1964) was an American author, educator, sociologist, speaker, Civil rights movement#Background, Black liberation activist, Black feminist leader, and one of the most prominent African Ame ...
. They counted among the first-generation of African-American women to graduate from a university. Gibbs was also elected president of the Oberlin Literacy Society. In 1892, she received a masters of arts degree. Oberlin College was the first college to accept and treat equally African-American men and all women.


Career and activism


Teaching

Gibbs taught Latin and mathematics before her marriage. She had to leave her teaching job upon marriage because until 1920, married women in the public school system in Washington, D.C., were forced to stop working. As a teacher, Gibbs taught English at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College in Normal, Alabama. She also taught at
Florida A&M University Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), commonly known as Florida A&M, is a Public university, public Historically black colleges and universities, historically black land-grant university in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. ...
in Tallahassee, Armstrong Manual Training High School in Washington, D.C., and
M Street High School M Street High School, also known as Dunbar High School, is a historic former school building located in the Northwest Quadrant of Washington, D.C. It has been listed on the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites since 1978 and it was li ...
, a prestigious African-American college preparatory school in Washington, D.C. In the 1920s, M Street High School, later renamed Dunbar High School, had four African-American women who had doctorates, Ida Gibbs being one of them, which brought a lot of attention to the school. On April 12, 1904, Gibbs married the diplomat William Henry Hunt at #14 N Street, NW in Washington, D.C. After she married, she left her career as an educator to join her husband in various consular postings abroad.


Diplomat's wife

After her marriage, Gibbs Hunt accompanied her husband on his diplomatic assignments, including to
Liberia Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to Guinea–Liberia border, its north, Ivory Coast to Ivory Coast–Lib ...
,
France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
,
Madagascar Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's List of islands by area, f ...
, and
Guadeloupe Guadeloupe is an Overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department and region of France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands—Basse-Terre Island, Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Guadeloupe, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galant ...
. Through her travels with her husband, Gibbs Hunt developed an international perspective on racial justice. Her time abroad exposed her to parallels between the African-American struggle in the United States and the struggles faced by African peoples in colonized territories.


YWCA and Red Cross work

Gibbs Hunt pursued her civil activism in a variety of ways. Promoting black education, civil rights, and woman's suffrage, Gibbs Hunt made her mark as an educator and
Pan-Africanist Pan-Africanism is a nationalist movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all indigenous peoples and diasporas of African ancestry. Based on a common goal dating back to the Atlantic slave trade, the Trans-Sa ...
. Between 1905 and 1907, Gibbs Hunt returned to the United States and endorsed Washington, D.C.'s new Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA). She organized the first Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) for black women and became a board member of the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA. In 1906, while attending the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) conference in Detroit, Michigan, Gibbs Hunt described how African women responded to Belgian colonists in the Congo. During World War I, Gibbs Hunt was active in the French Red Cross where she aided Belgian refugees and visited wounded Allied soldiers. After World War I, Gibbs began to write for ''
The Crisis ''The Crisis'' is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois (editor), Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly M ...
'' under the pen name Iola Gibson.


Pan Africanism

The
Paris Peace Conference Agreements and declarations resulting from meetings in Paris include: Listed by name Paris Accords may refer to: * Paris Accords, the agreements reached at the end of the London and Paris Conferences in 1954 concerning the post-war status of Germ ...
marked beginning of Gibbs Hunt's political leadership beyond her role as a diplomat's wife.Siegel, Mona L." Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women's Rights After the First World War". Columbia University Press, 2020. Internationally, she helped support W.E.B. DuBois in organizing many
Pan-African Congress The Pan-African Congress (PAC) is a regular series of meetings which first took place on the back of the Pan-African Conference held in London in 1900. The Pan-African Congress first gained a reputation as a peacemaker for decolonization in ...
es beginning in 1919. Gibbs encouraged
W.E.B. Du Bois William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relativel ...
to come to France where she was living in order to advocate for global racial equality in the peace negotiations. Gibbs Hunt likely introduced Du Bois to black, French legislator,
Blaise Diagne Blaise Diagne (13 October 1872 – 11 May 1934) was a French Senegalese politician who was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1914 to 1934, representing the Four Communes of French Senegal. He was the first person of full West African ...
, who pushed the French government for approval of the Pan-African Congress of 1919. W.E.B. DuBois relied on Gibbs Hunt for her fluency in French, her organizational work, and her political connections. Gibbs Hunt acted as the primary translator at the 1919 Paris Pan-African Congress. Her ultimate goal was to unite Africans across the diaspora around a common purpose. She also advocated for world disarmament and for the appointment of black representatives at the 1923 London Third Pan-African Congress in a paper entitled "The Colored Races and the League of Nations." Along with W.E.B. DuBois, she co-chaired the Conference's Executive Committee.


Civil Rights and Women's rights

Nationally, she was involved in the
Niagara Movement The Niagara Movement (NM) was a civil rights organization founded in 1905 by a group of activists—many of whom were among the vanguard of African-American lawyers in the United States—led by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. The Ni ...
as well as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (
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 ...
). Other organizations Gibbs Hunt was involved in included the ''Club Franco-Étranger'', the Book Lover's Club, the Bethel Literary Society, the Washington Welfare Association, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.Smith, Jessie Carney. "Notable Black American Women". United States, Gale Research, 1992. Gibbs Hunt, along with other like-minded African-American and African women, fought for racial and gender equality by advocating for a global women's coalition. Gibbs published articles in the ''Journal of Negro History'' and in the ''Negro History Bulletin'' including "The Price of Peace" (1938), "Civilization and the Darker Races" (n.d.), and the "Recollection of Frederick Douglas" (1953). Her writing allowed her to share her ideas regarding racial progress and reform that she learned from her experience living on three continents.


Death and legacy

Ida Gibbs Hunt died in Washington, D.C., on December 19, 1957. Though Du Bois is recognized as the leader of the Pan-African movement, Gibbs Hunt was the major organizer behind the 1919 conference, and an influential member of the Executive Committee in subsequent years.


References


Further reading

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gibbs, Ida 1862 births 1957 deaths Oberlin College alumni African-American educators African-American women educators American women educators NAACP activists 20th-century African-American people 20th-century African-American women