Category: Courage

Women of Achievement
1991

COURAGE
for a woman who, facing active opposition,
backed an unpopular cause in which she deeply believed:

Rita Underhill

In 1985, at a time when few people understood or even knew about the disease, Rita Underhill learned that her younger brother Max had AIDS.

He called from New York to tell her and to ask that she not yet tell their family. Rita was stunned. For over a year and a half she kept the sadness and concern to herself. Rather than turn her back on him, as so many have done, Rita provided her brother with the support he desperately needed. As his health declined Max at last decided to tell the rest of his family.

Rita, although a nurse, could find little information on AIDS: only a few paragraphs in a textbook and only one book in all the Memphis bookstores. She learned through underground channels that the drug AZT, an antiretroviral medication, could help AIDS patients. But in 1985 AZT wasn’t legal in the United States. So she flew to Mexico and brought back a supply for her brother.

Rita also helped him enter the first experimental clinical study in this country. At great expense Rita made countless trips from Memphis to New York City to be with Max. And in 1988 she faced his death with all the courage she could find.

But Rita didn’t stop caring about people with AIDS when Max died. Less than a year later, she took a job with the Aid to End AIDS Committee (ATEAC). Rita has spent recent years educating people about the disease. Initially, many people assumed that Rita had AIDS and refused to be near her. When some friends were hostile and couldn’t accept her work, she had the courage to give them up. Rita has conducted outreach programs to the gay, the African-American and the Asian communities, and to IV drug abusers. She speaks wherever and whenever she is asked, and last year reached 4,000 people.

With great courage, Rita Underhill daily faces the lives and deaths of people who have contracted AIDS. She brings to these interactions the same strength, love and warmth that helped her cope with her brothers’ disease and death.

Rita Underhill passed away on July 3, 2022.

Women of Achievement
1990

COURAGE
for a woman who, facing active opposition,
backed an unpopular cause in which she deeply believed:

Jocelyn Wurzburg

In 1968, Memphis was a focus of the nation’s turmoil following the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Jocelyn Dan Wurzburg stepped forward to take constructive, courageous action in our city.

Jocie became familiar with an organization in other cities called the Panel of American Women, and she single-handedly brought its services to Memphis. The Panel’s purpose was to eliminate racial and religious prejudice by going before groups to tell personal stories, answer questions and share outlooks. In 1990 this might seem tame, but in 1968 and the years thereafter, it was a tough assignment. Many groups took personal issue with the message and the messengers.

Jocie Wurzburg headed a group of about 40 women — black, white, Catholic, Jew, Protestant — who labored to learn new skills and educate each other on issues. Some of the Panel went with Jocie to the mayor’s office to lobby for reason in the volatile atmosphere. This effort made Time magazine, albeit derisively. The story reported on “housewives in white gloves …”

The Panel led her into other human rights work, including project director for the Memphis Martin Luther King Memorial 1976-77 and service on the Social Action Commission, Family Life Committee and Consultation on Conscience biennial sessions of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. She was appointed to the National Commission for the Observance of International Women’s Year and to the State Advisory Committee of the Civil Rights Commission.

Although the Panel of American Women ended service in 1980, Jocie Wurzburg’s work as a lecturer on equal employment and human relations continued and her career as a lawyer and divorce mediator began. Never one to stop organizing, she directed her love of music to the founding of the Jazz Society of Memphis.

It was not easy for this one-time East Memphis homemaker to become an activist — but an activist she was. The Panel of American Women was a courageous force in our city during those years. It was quoted, called upon, cited as a positive force. As her nominator said, “Jocie made all of that happen. She never got discouraged. She never let her energy flag.”

 

Jocelyn Wurzburg received the Shelby County Diversity Award in 2008. She also won the NAACP Life Time Achievement award in 2017. Later that year, Planned Parenthood awarded her the Judy Scharff Award for the Panel of American Women. The Tennessee Human Rights Commission established the Jocelyn Dan Wurzburg Civil Rights Award in her name. Today, she offers Mediation Services as a saner way of dealing with conflicts.

Women of Achievement
1989

COURAGE
for a woman who, facing active opposition,
backed an unpopular cause in which she deeply believed:

Josephine Burson

Josephine W. Burson, the daughter of Lithuanian immigrants was taught by her parents that America is the land of freedom and opportunity and that there is an open door for everyone.

Josie’s involvement with the Democratic Party began in the traditional way — she did her share of telephoning and mailings. She went on to head the Democratic Women’s Committee to elect Senator Estes Kefauver. Despite opposition by the newspapers and with her hard work, Kefauver won the election, ending a long hold on politics in Memphis by the Crump forces. She also headed the Women’s Division of the Tennessee campaign for the national Kennedy-Johnson ticket.

Prior to 1960, political campaigns in Memphis had been just as segregated as water fountains and restaurants. The Kennedy-Johnson campaign signaled an end to that division. The campaign was being conducted by an integrated group, but when it was announced that Lady Bird Johnson would appear in Memphis, it was assumed that there would be two meetings as there had always been — one white, one black. Josie, however, refused to participate in a segregated event. At that time the only place that would accommodate an integrated meeting was the MWCA, which was too small. Challenged to find a larger location, she succeeded in signing the first contract for the newly-renovated Ellis Auditorium. Thus began a new, more open era in Memphis.

Josie was the first cabinet appointment announced by Gov. Buford Ellington and she served as Commissioner of Employment Security from 1967 to 1971. As a volunteer in Hadassah, Burson rose from chapter president to national vice-president. In these positions she has worked for the welfare of the State of Israel. Since 1981 she has been an employee of Senior Citizen Services, where she has worked with the deinstitutionalized elderly.

In 1975, Josie was selected National Mother of the Year by American Mothers. The 50th mother to make a presentation, she spoke movingly of being a first generation American. Her parents came to America seeking the American dream and their children achieved it. Taught by her family the history of persecution of European Jews, Josie Burson has worked with courage to live in a land where persecution of any segment of the population should never occur.

 

Josephine Burson passed away June 9, 2009.

Women of Achievement
1995

COURAGE
for a woman who, facing active opposition,
backed an unpopular cause in which she deeply believed:

Nickii Elrod

Nickii Elrod knows how to tackle the big boys. Sexism and racism in the pages of a major metropolitan newspaper? Let her at it! A railroad trying to kill a historic neighborhood? Here comes Nickii! Poor children needing a warm smile and an open heart? Tell her where they are …

Nickii came to The Commercial Appeal in 1969 as a staff reporter in what was then the “women’s section.” She had already had one career – as an Air Force wife who lived in 27 cities around the world in 27 years. She came to Memphis, the biggest city near her hometown of Greenwood, Miss., to rebuild following her divorce.

She was for many years the only feminist in the newsroom. She embraced as her own the task of being the translator in Memphis of the struggle for women’s equality. She persevered, despite the prevailing legacy of male domination and ignorance of women’s issues at the newspaper and throughout the region.

When the historic Tennessee Year of the Woman Conference was held in Clarksville in June 1977, Nickii shipped a page-one story every day. “I totaled 16 hours of sleep in four days,” she later said, and in one 24-hour stretch she worked 22 straight hours.

Her sense of fairness also reached to people of color. She joined the National Council of Negro Women and the NAACP. She wrote about issues in the black community and incorporated black people into stories about Memphis and the area in general, something that was not common then. As Angus McEachran, editor and president of The Commercial Appeal wrote of her in a nominating letter: “Not all that she wrote about were popular topics of the day, but she had the courage of her convictions and the tenacity to carry them through.”

The same courage carried Nickii when the Missouri Pacific Railroad started eminent domain proceedings to take over large tracts of land in Rozelle-Annesdale in 1975. The railroad’s plan would have turned a stable South Memphis neighborhood into a mega-center for handling cargo and 18-wheeler trucks.

Nickii joined the effort to save the neighborhood and the antebellum Raynor House. Against everyone’s advice, she bought the house, and in 1978, just short of her 60th birthday, she moved in and began its restoration, got it placed on the National Register of Historic Places and saved the house and the neighborhood.

Nickii retired from the newspaper in December 1986, but the path she blazed so courageously is still open. She led the way in coverage of women as community players beyond the “society pages.” Nickii Elrod gave Memphis women – black and white – their many voices.

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
1988

COURAGE
for a woman who, facing active opposition,
backed an unpopular cause in which she deeply believed:

Alzada Clark

In a 25-year career as a labor organizer, Alzada Clark has braved personal threats and racial epithets in Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma. In 1965 she became the first black woman organizer of state employees in Tennessee and she is responsible for establishment of the local Service Employees International Union.

She was asked in 1967 to organize the women in a furniture plant in Canton, Mississippi. She went into that racially troubled state to help the employees. When the vote failed, she told the men in charge that she would lead the effort next time. Thanks to Alzada’s leadership and courage, at the end of a year of work the vote did pass and the union was organized.

When workers received their first salary increases, two came to Alzada to thank her. One, a black man, said, “Now I can eat a piece of steak more than once a year.” The other man, who was white, said, “Now my kids won’t have to wear tennis shoes in the winter.”

Later, Alzada organized the furniture workers in her native Memphis and in several other Mid-South towns. While president of the local Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, she became the first woman elected to the national position of Second Vice President. That organization also awarded her the Fannie Lou Hamer Award for her efforts on behalf of the people.

Alzada is a vocal civil rights activist and served on the NAACP board. When she sees a problem of injustice she speaks up, despite the possibility of being jailed or losing a job. Often in her career she has required the assistance of bodyguards.

In the words of one nominator, “She has the determination and the courage to seek what is right morally, what is good, and what is noble. She stands as a beacon of light amid the darkness.”

 

Alzada Clark passed away November 26, 2009.

Women of Achievement
1987

COURAGE
for a woman who, facing active opposition,
backed an unpopular cause in which she deeply believed:

Margery Rumbarger McSweeney

Despite active opposition, Margery Rumbarger fought for the cause of women to have the right to give birth to their children in their own homes, with the assistance of midwives.

Ninety percent of all births worldwide occur in the home. Currently, the majority of births in this country take place in hospitals. Yet in recent years a growing number of women have decided to give birth at home. Reasons for this include the wish for more participation in the process and more control of the decisions surrounding birth.

While home birth is not for all women, the birth process is a natural part of the life cycle. Margery believes that for women at low risk, home birth should remain an alternative. It is her strong belief in this philosophy that led Margery and a friend to found the Homebirth Midwifery Service in 1980. Since that time she has assisted more than 200 babies into the world.

But home birth remains controversial in our high-tech society. In March 1984, as a result of her lay midwifery practice, Margery was fired from her position as a pre-natal health care educator for the Shelby County Health Department. After the Civil Service Merit Board ruled the firing was improper, she was reinstated and offered a transfer to the Tuberculosis Clinic, which according to state guidelines is a “high health risk.” She refused the transfer and was offered another to the Immunization Clinic. She refused that as well.

Three years later she still is involved in a lawsuit against the Health Department. Margery believes that the turmoil is a result of “strong prejudice in the medical community” against law midwives. Yet Margery Rumbarger, an R.N. with the highest level of obstetrics training available, continues to courageously practice lay midwifery in order to provide women with an alternative in which she deeply believes.

Margery’s lawsuit against the Shelby County Health Department was settled in federal court in 1988. The Department wrote Margery a formal letter of apology and paid her a financial settlement for her time off work. She chose not to return to the Heath Department, and works part time as a supervising nurse with a home health agency while continuing her midwifery. She had assisted about 370 deliveries as of February 1994.

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
1986

COURAGE
for a woman who, facing active opposition,
backed an unpopular cause in which she deeply believed:

Maxine Smith

Memphian Maxine Smith first challenged racial bigotry when she was eight years old and kept asking for “Mister” Joseph Atkins when visiting her father at the Veterans Administration hospital, despite the clerk’s rebuke, “We don’t refer to niggers as Mister.”

Since 1957 when she was denied admission to Memphis State University graduate school despite her Master’s degree from Middlebury College in Vermont, Maxine Smith has been, in the words of former Memphis Police Director Buddy Chapman, “the conscience we should have had.”

One of the first female members of the Memphis NAACP board, Maxine was appointed executive secretary in 1962. She coordinated boycotts, which forced downtown merchants to desegregate, and sit-ins that opened public facilities — libraries, restrooms, parks, drinking fountains — to African Americans.

The instigator of “Black Mondays” in 1969 when 67,000 black students stayed home from school, Maxine has been referred to as the most powerful woman in Memphis. Along the way, she has been jailed, threatened, maligned, despised. She often has cried herself to sleep and her health has suffered from the demands of the life work she chose.

Admittedly strong-willed and stubborn, Maxine Smith says she will not stop until there is perfect racial equality. “I believe in what I am doing,” this courageous woman says.

 

Maxine Smith served as the Executive Secretary of the NAACP Branch of Memphis, held a position on the Memphis Board of Education, was elected president of the Memphis Board of Education in 1991, and continued in those roles until her retirement in 1995. Smith was presented with the Freedom Award by the National Civil Rights Museum in 2003, and Maxine Smith STEAM Academy was named in her honor.

She passed away April 26, 2013.

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
1985

COURAGE
for a woman who, facing active opposition,
backed an unpopular cause in which she deeply believed:

Minerva Johnican

The year was 1972 and Minerva Johnican, teacher and librarian, dared to run for public office in a city controlled mostly by conservative white men.

She didn’t win that first time, nor the second time. But three years later, when she was appointed to the County Commission in 1975, Minerva became the first black female Commissioner in Shelby County, Tennessee.

When she ran for Congress and was defeated in 1982, many people thought that Minerva had made a fatal mistake by opposing “the singularly most powerful man in Shelby County” at that time — U.S. Rep. Harold Ford. But she had turned her back on her namesake, the Roman goddess of wisdom, as some thought. Minerva stepped over political party lines. She stepped over the lines of race and gender, too, to form a constituency which carried her to victory in 1983 as the first black person to win an at-large position on the Memphis City Council.

Minerva Johnican dared to challenge society’s imposed boundaries to win a triumph for blacks and for women. She remains her “own” woman.

 

Ms. Johnican ran for city mayor in 1987 and finished in second place behind incumbent mayor Dick Hackett. She was the first African-American woman to be a serious candidate for the position. In 1990, she became the first African-American and the first woman to serve as Shelby County Criminal Court Clerk. In her tenure as clerk, she won three national awards. Ms. Johnican worked on Steve Cohen’s 2006 and 2008 races for the 9th Congressional District in Memphis.

Minerva Johnican passed away on March 8, 2013, at the age of 74.