Category: Heritage

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2005

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Elizabeth Avery Meriwether and Lide Smith Meriwether

Elizabeth Avery Meriwether and her sister-in-law Lide Meriwether were pioneering champions for voting privileges for women in Memphis, in Tennessee, and nationally. Fortunately, they both had supportive husbands—Minor L. Meriwether, an attorney and brother Niles, the Memphis city engineer. The two Meriwether families lived in a single home on Peabody Avenue while Elizabeth and Lide went forth to work for temperance and women’s rights.

Elizabeth Avery Meriwether started advocating full equality for women long before such an idea was acceptable. Before their wedding on January 1, 1850, she and Minor signed a marriage contract agreeing to share and invest equally. In 1872, when Elizabeth read that Susan B. Anthony had been arrested, tried and fined for attempting to vote in Rochester, New York, she announced that she intended to vote in Memphis at the next election. “If I am arrested for that crime, she said, “I shall be glad to share Miss Anthony’s cell.” But when Elizabeth walked into the Fifth Ward polling place, she was handed a ballot, filled it out, and dropped it in the ballot box.

Afterward, she was never certain why she was not opposed but concluded that the poll workers probably did not count her vote anyway.

That same year, she founded her own newspaper, The Tablet. Every issue promoted votes for women. She used her own money to rent The Memphis Theatre, largest in town, and on May 5, 1876, flouting all rules of “ladylike” decorum, delivered a public address on women’s rights. More than 500 women attended. Next day, the Memphis Appeal reported that “Mrs. Meriwether has proven a worthy advocate of her sex. She was interrupted frequently with bursts of applause.” Not long after that she led a delegation of women appearing before the Memphis School Board to demand that in the name of justice, women and men teachers be paid the same salaries. They were unsuccessful, but the seeds of the idea that women should have equal economic opportunities had been planted.

During the 1880s, Elizabeth Avery Meriwether’s scope became national. She traveled with Susan B. Anthony, advocating votes for women in speeches from Connecticut to Texas. After she and her family moved to St. Louis in 1883, she continued her campaigning and pleading the cause before three national presidential nominating conventions.

Meanwhile in Tennessee, her sister-in-law had assumed the leadership role in the suffrage crusade.

Originally the editor of a literary journal for genteel females, Lide Smith Meriwether had championed the “rescue of fallen women” by taking prostitutes into her home and training them for other occupations.

A vigorous advocate for the temperance cause, her efforts as a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union to organize Southern black women resulted in the formation of black WCTU groups in several Tennessee communities.

In 1886, the National Woman Suffrage Association employed Lide to lecture and organize groups in the state of Tennessee. She mounted an intensive campaign and in two weeks visited most sizable towns and helped organize fledgling Equal Rights clubs in Nashville, Knoxville, Jackson, Greenville, and Murfreesboro. Lide organized a Woman Suffrage League in Memphis and was elected president. Later, in the 1890s, she was elected to several terms as president of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association and became their “Honorary President for Life” in 1900. Lide Meriwether, representing Tennessee, joined women from 27 other states in Washington in 1892 to testify before a U.S. House of Representatives committee hearing on woman suffrage.

Though they never stopped working all of their days for women’s enfranchisement, neither Lide Smith Meriwether, who died in 1913 at the age of 84, nor Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, who was 92 when she died in 1917, lived to see their dreams fulfilled. But the great victory won by a later generation of suffragists in Nashville in 1920 was built in no small part on a strong foundation created by the ground-breaking efforts of Tennessee’s crusading Meriwether sisters-in-law.

Women of Achievement
2012

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Dr. Georgia Patton Washington

Georgia Esther Lee Patton was born into slavery in 1864 in middle Tennessee. Her father died before she was born leaving her mother to care for her and her siblings. She worked as a laundress for 14 years until her death in 1880.

Somehow, despite limited opportunities, Georgia managed to complete high school, the only one of her family to do so. Then her siblings saved money to help her attend Central Tennessee College (now Fisk University) in Nashville where she graduated in 1890. Two and a half years later, she completed a medical degree at Meharry Medical College as one of two female graduates.

This daughter of slaves, a gifted student who had worked long hours to earn money to pay for her medical education, next scraped together funds to pay for a missionary trip to Africa! And who should be in the other berth on her trip across the Atlantic but Ida B. Wells-Barnett, heading to England to launch an anti-lynching campaign.

Georgia sailed on to Monrovia, Liberia. She began seeing patients. In a letter to her medical school dean, she wrote: “On examining my first case, remarks made by the natives were: ‘Patients in his condition never get well; we always expect them to die.’ After careful treatment and watching for two months he was able to leave his bed, and finally went to his work.” Her medical work was apparently exhausting and after two years, she returned to the United States, having herself contracted tuberculosis.

She opened a medical practice in Memphis. Her practice became “large and lucrative,” according to her medical school dean, G. W. Hubbard. She became the first black woman to receive both physician’s and surgeon’s licenses from the state of Tennessee.

She became well established among Memphis’s sizeable community of black middle class professionals. One of the most prominent was David W. Washington who had in 1874 become the first black letter carrier in the Memphis Post Office Department. He amassed a fortune in real estate. He was 12 years older than his bride. The two married in December 1897. In 1899 she gave birth to a son, Willie Patton Washington, who died soon after his birth.

Georgia was deeply involved as a volunteer in her church and community – and she also became known for her philanthropy, particularly with the Freedmen’s Aid Society. Her devotion to donating $10 in gold every month earned her the nickname “Gold Lady.”

She also was clearly a feminist. When the Freedmen’s letter of thanks was addressed “Dear Brother” she responded plainly: “I am not a brother… Say Sister next time.”

Five months later – after three years of marriage and only four months after giving birth to her second son – Dr. Georgia Patton Washington died, having never really regained her health due to the tuberculosis.

She was 36. Her baby son died soon after. Both are buried in Zion Cemetery, established by ex-slaves in 1867 on South Parkway East.

Dr. Georgia Patton Washington blazed the way for women of color in medicine, rising from slavery to care for patients as the first female African American physician and surgeon in Tennessee. We honor her tonight as a Woman of Achievement who still enriches our lives and whose story inspires us to push past any obstacle of birth, background or circumstance to become all we can become.

Women of Achievement
2009

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Alma C. Hanson

In 1922, the then 38-year-old Alma Hanson came to serve at the then-LeMoyne High School. She stayed until her death in 1962, at age 78, at the school she had helped nurture into LeMoyne College. During those years Miss Hanson dedicated her life to the growth of the school in order to improve the lives of the African American students who passed through its doors and thus to improve the lives of all African Americans living in the South.

Alma Hanson was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania in 1884. As a young girl she lived in Sweden and attended school there. A dedicated idealist, she studied business administration at New York University before joining the American Missionary Association of the Congregational Church. Her first assignment was to Palledelia, Alabama where she served until World War I, when she accepted a position with DuPont. In 1922 the American Missionary Association assigned her to LeMoyne High School. She moved into a small apartment on campus where she lived for the rest of her life.

For Alma Hanson, her work at the school was not just a nine-to-five job. She became involved in all aspects of life at LeMoyne-Owen as well as being active in civic groups in Memphis. According to Annette Hunt, Director of LeMoyne’s Hollis Price Library, Miss Hanson’s name is sprinkled throughout the college newsletters and archives. During her time, she was an intricate part of the success of the school and the success of its students. She was just a “good fit.”

For many years, Miss Hanson’s full-time job was treasurer of the school. She oversaw the financial transition of LeMoyne from a high school to a junior college to a 4-year college. During that time she also served in other capacities, at one time temporarily serving as acting president.

When she retired in 1952, she continued to live on campus and took on the job of Superintendant of Buildings and Grounds. She was especially fond of the grounds and cultivated a beautiful rose garden.

Over the years, Alma Hanson was active in the League of Women Voters, serving as board member and treasurer for eight years. Nominator and Women of Achievement Courage Recipient Anne Shafer says, “ (Miss Hanson) welcomed me to the board in 1958 as secretary. The racially integrated organization was new to me, and it was not popular in the South at that time. I had many things to learn about people and their role in a democratic government; (she) was patient and kind and a wonderful role model.”

Miss Hanson also loved theatre and music and had an excellent sense of humor. A 1960 article in the Memphis Press-Scimitar describes her portrayals of “illiterate” and “handicapped” voters in League of Women Voters skits. Though intended to be humorous, the skits were designed to make an important point about everyone’s right to vote.

Alma Hanson continued to be as active as possible until her death in 1962. At her death, it was found that from her meager pay as a missionary, she had saved $30,000, a substantial amount at that time. This was used as the seed money for the building that became the Alma C. Hanson Student Center, the first building on campus to be named after someone who had not served officially as president. At the dedication, the college said of her, “Her interests were as broad as the world. She knew no pettiness nor did she concern herself with parochial or provincial interests.”

Following her death, in keeping with her request, her body was cremated and her ashes scattered over her beloved rose garden.

Alma Hanson’s life of focused, determined service and lifelong commitment to her cause left the legacy of opportunity for generations of students at LeMoyne-Owen College. She shows us the possibilities of one individual’s devoted purpose – our 2009 honoree for Heritage, Alma Hanson.

Women of Achievement
2008

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Florence McIntyre

The beloved Memphis College of Art Professor Emeritus, Burton Callicott wrote, “A pure truth throughout my years has never ceased to strike me with enormous force is that but for McIntyre’s zeal and initiative, there would be no Memphis College of Art in the city today. The seed which sprouted and grew into Memphis College of Art was planted by Florence McIntyre in 1914.”

Born in 1878 into a prominent Memphis family, Florence McIntyre dedicated her whole life to the making and teaching of art to mid-southerners no matter what the circumstances.

After her education in Memphis, Miss McIntyre studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, attended classes of William Merritt Chase in Philadelphia and spent several summers at the artist’s colony at Woodstock, NY. Her extensive travels brought her into contact with many artists and exhibitions.

In July 1914, she invited prominent women to organize the Memphis Art Association. The first exhibition was held at the Nineteenth Century Club in November of that year. Memphians got to see works of Ralph Blakelock, Winslow Homer, George Inness and other famous artists of the time. Memphians’ interest in art began to grow.

Mrs. Bessie Vance Brooks, Woman of Achievement for Heritage in 2014, donated money in memory of her husband Samuel Hamilton Brooks to build an art museum in Memphis. With no other funds available, the Memphis Art Association became the first support group for the Brooks Museum. Florence McIntyre with her broad experience and education was hired to be the first director and the first exhibition opened there July 10, 1916.

Life in the art world is often complicated and political. There developed a disagreement between one art patron who wanted a $50,000 memorial to her husband to be placed on the Parkway, while another patron objected to having it located opposite his home. Florence McIntyre was caught in the middle of the dispute, which resulted in Abe Goodman, the chairman of the Brooks Art Gallery, being replaced and Miss McIntyre resigning in 1922 after six years as the first Director of the museum.

McIntyre’s unemployment didn’t last long. Her childhood friend and neighbor, Rosa Lee, asked her to become the director of the Free Art School then meeting at the Nineteenth Century Club. The enrollment grew so fast Miss Lee deeded her house at 690 Adams to the city in 1929 and later purchased the Woodruff-Fontaine house and repeated her generosity. Later the stables of the two houses were joined together in 1931 to make room for more classes. The school came to be known as the James Lee Memorial Academy of Arts and the enrollment grew to 700 students.

Through McIntyre’s leadership the program of art offerings grew from drawing, painting and sculpture to include crafts: batiks, pottery, metal and jewelry work. Departments of design and interior decoration were added. The stable became home to the performing arts named The Stable Playhouse. The school became an important civic enterprise and many graduates went on to become well known artists around the nation.

In 1935 controversy returned. Miss McIntyre hired George and H. Amiard Oberteuffer, a husband-and-wife team from Philadelphia to teach. With them came a spirit of modernism that she could not control, and dissention arose. During this time Miss Rosa Lee died and the split grew. Burton Callicott who taught at the school said, “In the spring of 1936 a schism occurred. The split was totally vertical: the Oberteuffers and other teachers, some Board members and some of the students left and founded a new school, The Memphis Academy of Arts (now Memphis College of Art).”

In spite of this Miss McIntyre continued her school at the Lee House until 1942 when Robert Lee died and the support of the Lee family stopped. But that didn’t stop her dedication; she then moved her classes across the street to her own home and kept the school going for 20 more years until her death May 15, 1963 at age 84. She taught art for 40 years to more than 10,000 Mid–Southerners.

Callicott, who was part of those who left with the modernists, says Miss McIntyre never spoke to him again but he is emphatic that Florence McIntyre should be honored. Mr. Callicott said, “There should be a memorial to Florence McIntyre. For many years, Florence McIntyre was art in Memphis.”

Women of Achievement
2007

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Barbara Hewett Lawing

Whether meeting with mayors, running political campaigns, or working for the rights of women or the rights of workers, Barbara Lawing approached the task at hand with preparation and passion.

Barbara was born in Eaton, Ohio in 1938 and grew up there on a farm with five sisters. She became a nurse and married Allan Akehurst in the early sixties. After his death, she moved to Memphis with her two young children. In 1964 she married Frank Lawing. Together, the couple had three more children.

Barbara always believed strongly in equal rights for all and during the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike, these beliefs led her to take action. She and five other homemakers approached then Mayor Henry Loeb and demanded that he support the union’s quest for equal rights and equal pay for these city workers.

In the seventies, her belief in equality and justice for all took her to the forefront of the women’s movement. She chaired the Legal Status of Women in Tennessee Committee for the League of Women Voters and she served as Legislative Coordinator for NOW. In 1977 she was a delegate to the National Women’s Year Conference in Houston. A member of Women in Construction and the Coalition of Labor Union Women and Tennessee’s only delegate who belonged to a labor union, Barbara participated in the Labor Caucus.

She gave voice to her beliefs in justice and equality on the political scene as well. Barbara held leadership positions in the Shelby County Democratic Women and the Tennessee Women’s Caucus and was parliamentarian for the Tennessee Federation of Democratic Women.

She helped manage several pivotal campaigns including those of both Harold Ford Sr. and Harold Jr. A long-time friend of Al Gore’s, in 1992 she worked in the Clinton-Gore campaign. She was a mentor and advisor to many local politicians including City Council member Carol Chumney and state Representative Mike Kernell.

In a 1973 article in the Memphis Press-Scimitar she said, “The American housewife has so much to give and whatever her party preference, she should get involved. Political decisions often affect women and mothers more closely than they do men, especially local issues such as education. We need to have some say-so but we have very little.”

While committed to breaking down barriers and seeking justice, Barbara’s family was always her priority. Saturdays and Sundays were reserved for the family and during the week, she always tried to be home for dinner. Her goal was to attend only one evening meeting a week, but during political campaigns, all bets were off. When her children were young, she often bundled them up and took them along.

In the late seventies and early eighties, the family fell upon hard times financially. Realizing that higher education would be a means to greater earning power for her family, Barbara enrolled at the University of Memphis. Working through the University College, she earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. She went on to teach economics for almost twenty years. She felt that athletes who attended her classes didn’t have the background they needed to be successful students, so for at least ten years she volunteered to tutor football players.

According to Carol Chumney, Barbara inspired her to “reach for her dreams.” A long-time friend said, “Barbara’s commitment in life was to women, to people of color and for people who were downtrodden, to make their lives better. Another said, “She believed in breaking down barriers, lived her values, and had a strong sense of social justice and equality for gender and race.” Following her death in 1998, Harold Ford Sr. said, “She was one of the warriors who went beyond race and said, ’I want what is right.’ She was just the greatest.”

Over the course of her sixty-eight years, Barbara Lawing worked tirelessly and passionately to seek justice and equality for all. Her life stands as an example and inspiration for women now and in the future.

Women of Achievement
2006

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Joan Fulenwider Strong

Born in 1907, Joan Fulenwider Strong spent the next 92 years living a full life at a fast pace, contributing to her community, working in her family’s business and raising a family.

In 1920 when Joan was 13, her family started a business, National Pressed Steel. Following in her mother’s footsteps, she joined the family business in 1938 at the age of 31. She served as president of Mental Health in Industry, a group in which was the only woman.

At the time of her death she was still active as a financial consultant and Vice President of National Pressed Steel. Not content to merely working as an executive in the steel company and raising her family, Joan became active in many civic organizations. By the time she entered local politics she’d been selected as one of Woman’s Home Companion ten national Women of the Year and as Woman of the Year by La Sertoma International.

From 1960 through 1967, Joan served in the Tennessee House of Representatives. During that time she cosponsored legislation to restore civil rights to the mentally ill and cosponsored the repeal of the so-called “Monkey Law” which prohibited the teaching of evolution in Tennessee public schools. A member of the Memphis/ Shelby County Safety Council, she worked for a law requiring newly manufactured cars have seat belts.

Joan worked during Mayor Ingram’s administration to get HUD programs and activities established in Memphis. She worked diligently with foreign students to assist them in getting their education. After World War II, she helped over 450 Holocaust survivors and displaced persons relocate to Memphis and the surrounding area. Joan always spoke her mind and said that she had “no reservations” about legislating consolidation of city and county schools and city and county taxes, issues that we’re still discussing.

Joan was a woman of tremendous energy. An article in the Press Scimitar in the spring of 1960 says, “In her spare time she looks after two Arkansas Delta Farms of 1,500 acres….. Mrs. Strong seems to manufacture spare time and is also active in the National USO and serves on the boards of the YWCA, the City Beautiful Commission, and was the Pilot Clubs Woman of the Year.

Joan had a lighter side as well. She loved hats. Her collection of over 450 hats included antique hats for women as well as a few hats for men. She is quoted again in the Press Scimitar as saying, “Hats are Good For Health.” She was pleased to make presentations on the topic and would bring along as many at 75 hats to display during these sessions. Her advise to women: “If you’re depressed, go out and buy yourself a new hat. It will make you feel better.”

As Joan Strong grew older, she maintained her energy and enthusiasm for life. She enjoyed celebrating her birthdays with bold feats. At age 83 she spent the night roaming the streets of Memphis on a motorcycle. At 85 she glided in an ultralight. She was quick to spin tales of family and about Memphis. She even knew Elvis and spoke of him as a “dear boy.”

She passed away in 1998. Joan Fulenwider Strong lived a life that is an example to us all. She served her community through hard work, consistent effort and with good humor and for that we honor her tonight.

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2015

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Emma Currin Barbee Wilburn

Rising from poverty, Emma Wilburn became one of the most successful and wealthy African-American businesswomen in Memphis in the early part of the 20th century. Her life is doubly impressive because she did this as a widowed mother of four during the height of the system of segregation, when the Jim Crow laws worked to keep African-Americans poor and at the bottom of society.

Born in Lauderdale County, Tennessee, in 1876, she was one of 13 children of former slaves Hudson and Harriet Currin. Before she was 25, she was widowed twice and left to raise four children on her own. Through hard work, she opened a small hotel in Halls, Mississippi, in the late 1890’s. But she saw more opportunity in nearby Memphis and moved there, working for the Zion Cemetery Company, which ran the oldest African-American cemetery in the city. The funeral business was one of the few ways African-Americans could be successful under segregation, since it involved the African-American community apart from white Southerners.

In 1914, she bought an existing funeral home and renamed it the Emma Wilburn Funeral Home. She made her business a success by hard work and showmanship. In a riding habit, on a white horse, she led each funeral procession to the cemetery. She was so successful she opened another funeral parlor in Dyersburg, Tennessee. She leased her Memphis funeral home to the National Burial Association in the 1930’s and bought 75 acres of land she named New Park Cemetery in South Memphis. At the time cemeteries for African-Americans in the South were small and hidden. According to historian Miriam DeCosta Willis, New Park was one of the premiere cemeteries in the whole South. At New Park, Emma Wilburn continued her funeral escorts and made the cemetery a community center for African-Americans. Each year, she held a popular community-wide memorial celebration, as well as sponsoring other social activities regularly, which made her well-known and popular. She founded the Tennessee Burial Association for African-Americans.

She taught her children the funeral business. Her son, Hudson Barbee, opened the Barbee Casket Company; her youngest child, Cutie, opened the Cutie Thomas Funeral Home in Lauderdale, Tennessee; her daughter Minnie and son-in-law Johnson Rideout opened a funeral home in Los Angeles, California.

In order to attend the opening of the business, in 1935 Emma Wilburn bought an American Airlines ticket. At this time when segregation was in place and airlines did not have Jim Crow seating, local authorities told her that her ticket was not valid. But she got in touch with the airline headquarters in Chicago to protest and won, becoming the first African-American woman to fly from Memphis on American Airlines and desegregating the airlines for future black passengers.

She died two years later in 1937, a wealthy, successful woman. For her strength as a single mother running a business, for her exceptional business ability at a time of severe disadvantage for African-Americans, and for her courage, we honor her tonight as our 2015 Woman of Achievement for Heritage.

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2017

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Mary Magdalene Solari

Less than a year after her birth near Genoa, Italy, in 1849, Mary Magdalene Solari was brought to Memphis by her parents. She went on to leave a legacy of artistic, civic and philanthropic achievements that still enrich our lives here and abroad – more than 150 years later.

Mary’s first art teacher was Mrs. Morgan at the Memphis Female Institute. Mary studied with her until 1882 when she left for Florence, Italy, for her health and to study under Casioli. Traveling abroad as a young woman was extremely uncommon during this time, but Mary knew the importance of this transition. The opportunity to study under a well-known artist would prove to be of personal as well as historical significance.

After only a short period of study, Casioli took notice of Mary’s undeniable talent and encouraged her to enter her works to the Academia de Belle Arte. During this era, however, the Academy would never accept the work of a female artist. The Academy was worried that women in the program would be distracting to the males studying there. Casioli insisted that Mary’s work be shown, and he submitted a few pieces anonymously. One of her black-and-white drawings won first prize while a drawing of the heads of peasants also took a prize.

When the Academy learned of the artist’s true identity, they wanted to cancel the prize but the press took up the subject. Historian J. P. Young wrote: “It ended by the young girl receiving her fairly earned prizes and honor and opened the door of the academy to women.”

Solari was an American woman artist making Italian art history and changing art education for all women. As Young wrote: “(I)t was found that men and women stimulated one another to their best. So the Academy remained co-educational, made so by a young Memphis woman through the real merit of her work.”

In 1890, she received her Master of Arts degree and entered the Beatrice Exposition, which was open to women and had 1,000 entrants. Solari won the highest awards in watercolor. The diploma and letters of merit entitled her to teach art in the government schools – fulfilling another of her goals.

After receiving her Academy degree, Mary returned to Memphis in 1892 and she continued to be a face of change for gender equality. In 1893, she broke another barrier – she was the only woman and Southerner on the Chicago World Fair’s Board of Judges for the Fine Art Department.

In 1897, at the Tennessee Centennial Exhibition in Nashville, she was in charge of the art exhibit in the pyramid-shaped building Memphis built to exhibit its wares. She also won prizes for oil painting, watercolor, crayon, landscape and antique collection. Her pictures hung in both the Memphis pyramid and the Parthenon built by Nashville to house general arts exhibition.

Mary opened a school of fine arts in the Randolph Building where she taught oil, water color, pastel and tapestry painting.
She began a series of Lenten Art Salons “with a view to gather the different choice flowers in literature, music and art…in Memphis.”

She became an advocate for those without a voice. She lectured on prison reform, juvenile offenders and industrial training in schools. She became an outspoken critic of horrid conditions at the City Hospital, erected for steamboat transients. She lectured on “If Christ Should Come to Memphis and Visit the Hospital What Would He See?” She sparked the interest of city officials and the press – a new hospital building was the result.

During World War I she lectured to sell war bonds to Memphis’ Italian community.

In her last years, she spent much of her time on her 176-acre farm on the Wolf River on the Raleigh Road east of National Cemetery. She raised Berkshire and Poland China hogs, chickens and Kentucky horses. There she was surrounded by her collection of treasures: antique tapestries including one of Abraham sacrificing Isaac; 14th century gold candelabra, Florentine lace, Etruscan curiosities and a set of silver from India.

In 1928, a year before she died, Mary made yet another contribution to the future of Memphis. She donated her home, art collection, and land, valued around $150,000, to Christian Brothers College. To this day, the school houses her art collection, and the sale of her home and land provided funds to purchase the land upon which Christian Brothers University sits today on Central Avenue in Midtown Memphis. Tennessee Gov. Malcolm Patterson called her gesture “a permanent investment in the interest of good citizenship.”

Mary Magdalene Solari changed the narrative of women’s contributions to society. She paved the way for women in the world of art, and she was a voice for change in the Memphis community.

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2016

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Lil Hardin Armstrong and Alberta Hunter

The Heritage Award this year is being given to two Memphis women who became renowned in the world of popular music: jazz legend Lillian (known as Lil) Hardin Armstrong and Blues icon Alberta Hunter.

As a jazz pianist, singer, composer, and bandleader, Lil Hardin Armstrong became the leading woman in early jazz, and an outstanding pioneer in a field dominated by men.

Alberta Hunter, nationally and internationally known as a Blues singer and songwriter during her lifetime, was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2011.

Both were born in the 1890’s and grew up in Memphis in the early 20th century. But while Lil Hardin studied piano at Mrs. (Julia) Hook’s School of Music and spent a year at Fisk University, Alberta Hunter learned music at church and on the streets, and left high school without graduating. Both felt pulled to Chicago, Alberta in 1911, Lil in 1918, where a vibrant African-American musical culture was being shaped. Both struggled to begin their careers in the cabarets and nightclubs springing up there—Lil Hardin Armstrong as a jazz pianist and Alberta Hunter as a Blues singer. By the 1920’s Lil Hardin was a pianist with the well-known King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, playing the Dreamland, the premiere Chicago club for African-Americans. There she met and married a trumpeter in the band named Louis Armstrong. Though they would later divorce, she kept his last name.

Also by the 1920’s, Alberta Hunter was a top singer in the Chicago clubs and cabarets, including the Dreamland, where she and Lil Hardin met and became friends. That decade Alberta added recording to her career, becoming a sought after recording artist, and began writing songs for herself and others. One of the first was “Down Hearted Blues,” which became Bessie Smith’s first smash recording in 1923. She branched out to other places, playing clubs and doing musical theater in New York, Paris, and London, becoming a national and international star.

Lil Hardin Armstrong was also recording by the 1920’s. As a pianist she was sought after for recording sessions, and she recorded from 1925-1927 as the pianist on Louis Armstrong’s classic “Hot Five” Okeh Records recordings, a celebrated series of records in jazz. She also composed some of the Hot Five’s best-known songs, including “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue.” She branched out and became the leader of her first band, the Lil Hardin Armstrong Band. She would create at least eight bands throughout her career, one of them an all-women band.

By the 1930’s, both women were broadcasting nationally on the radio, as well as playing clubs and recording. Lil Hardin recorded for Decca Records as a swing vocalist and band leader, and accompanied many singers on the piano, including Alberta Hunter. Hunter was at the height of her fame, a celebrated international star. Hardin Armstrong was the most prominent woman in jazz.
In the 1940’s, Alberta Hunter toured with the USO, singing for the troops in North Africa and Europe, while Lil Hardin Armstrong and her band continued to play in Chicago. Recording contracts and opportunities dried up and both women looked to other careers. Lil Hardin Armstrong trained as a tailor but ultimately kept creating clothes only as a sideline for friends. She briefly owned a restaurant and taught piano and French. She never gave up music, performing both as a soloist and accompanist. A version of her song “Just for a Thrill,” became a major hit for Ray Charles, while Peggy Lee and other top singers recorded her songs. In 1971, she collapsed and died while playing on an NBC-TV tribute show for Louis Armstrong.

After the war, Alberta Hunter started volunteering at the Joint Diseases Hospital in Harlem. Her experiences there and her mother’s death in 1954 acted as the catalysts for her to begin a career in nursing. She got her high school GED, went to nursing school, and had a 20-year nursing career at New York’s Goldwater Hospital. But she never totally gave up the Blues. After retirement, at over 80 years old, she began singing at clubs in limited engagements, becoming a national figure again. The Tennessee governor in 1978 declared an “Alberta Hunter Day,” and the Memphis Mayor presented her with a key to the city. Speaking at the Orpheum in response, she shocked the audience as she openly spoke out against the racism she faced growing up in Memphis and that still existed in the 1970’s. She continued in the Blues until her death in 1984.

Both Lil Hardin Armstrong and Alberta Hunter were outstanding women. Both pioneered public musical careers for women and left a rich legacy of musical contributions in jazz and the Blues to the world. They richly deserve to be named Memphis Women of Achievement and honored with the Heritage Award for 2016.

Women of Achievement
2004

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Eleanor “Dicky” Ehrlich

Eleanor “Dicky” Weile Ehrlich never stopped feeling lucky that she survived nine different German concentration camps.

So she never stopped teaching about the Nazi Holocaust. ‘‘There is too much to tell,’’ Dicky said. ‘‘There is so much yet not told. Just remember, it all did happen … and please keep it from happening again.’’

Dicky began life in Berlin where her mother owned a needlework shop and her father was a traveling manufacturer’s representative. As Hitler’s restrictions and persecution of Jews intensified, she and her parents moved in 1933 to Amsterdam where Dicky became a neighbor and sometime playmate of Anne Frank.

But soon the Nazis ended Holland’s 100-year neutral history by marching in with occupation soldiers. Eight times Dicky answered the door late at night to find Gestapo soldiers there. Eight times she talked or sang to them and they went away. A ninth time she didn’t awaken until two soldiers were looming over her bed.

The Weile family was loaded onto cattle cars to a camp in southern Holland. It was February 1943. The family was separated. Within eight months, her mother Tilla, who was assigned to tend to young children in the camp, caught scarlet fever. With only aspirin and sulfur available as medicines, Tilla died in November and was cremated. Dicky never forgot the smell of the smoke that blew over her as her mother’s body was incinerated.

Meanwhile, the Philips Company had persuaded the Germans to build in the camp a factory which would keep Dutch Jews in Holland as long as possible at a time when Jews from all over Europe were being shipped to death camps in Germany and Poland. Dicky always believed it was her training to build intricate radio tubes for V1 and V2 rocket weapons that delayed her departure to Auschwitz for a critical 10 months and saved her life. She was convinced that if she had arrived sooner, she would have been gassed with thousands of others.

Dicky reported with pride that she and her fellow inmates were able to damage about 60 percent of the instruments they made, without being detected, assuring that many of the German rockets never reached their mark.

In June 1944, she was shipped to Auschwitz, Poland, where three large chimneys turned the night sky orange and the stench of burning flesh was unreal. Though it was a while before she knew it, Dicky arrived in the notorious camp on D-Day, June 6. Her hair clipped short, number 81020 tattooed on her left arm, she was soon loaded on cattle cars again, bound for Reichenback in east Germany. She was moved four more times as the Germans dodged advancing Allied forces and kept the inmates manufacturing parts.

Finally, she arrived near Hamburg for the hardest work yet – shoveling mud to dig tank traps, ditches three yards wide and three yards deep, shaped like a V. Guards stood above, snapping whips to speed the exhausted workers.

Dicky was barely holding on. Fortunately, the Swedish Red Cross made a deal with Hitler to trade some concentration camp prisoners for German deserters. Dicky was on the second transport to Sweden. It was three days before the end of the war. She was 23 years old and weighed 88 pounds. She had spent over 2-1/2 years in nine concentration camps. She later learned that her father had been killed in the Auschwitz gas chamber on Oct. 1, 1944.

In 1948, she agreed to move to Atlanta to live with an aunt. Her ship arrived in the New York harbor as July 4 fireworks blasted. She met and married Sidney Ehrlich and began life as a wife, mother of two children and unstoppable public speaker. She became a deeply patriotic American who always flew a giant flag on Independence Day.

Wherever she lived in the United States, Dicky shared her story. She also taught teachers how to teach about the Holocaust: ‘‘To teach this to young people and to impress upon them how very lucky they are to live in this country with all of its freedoms, we must dig a little deeper – what does it do on a personal basis when all the freedoms we take for granted are taken away?’’

She described the forced walk of 2,000 inmates and 3,000 cows through snow for six days with paper shoes to wear and one slice of bread and snow to eat. She told about a trip that should have been three hours that went on for 11 days and nights, standing in a freight car with 209 other prisoners with three pieces of bread, no water and no modesty when allowed under a stopped train car to ‘‘use the bathroom’’ at gunpoint.

In 1997, she was interviewed and videotaped for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. Dicky Ehrlich died in Memphis on May 1, 2001. She was 78.

Friend and colleague Rachel Shankman, regional director of Facing History and Ourselves, said, ‘‘No one who ever met her will ever forget her. What made her special to the children and teachers was her ability to bring that hard history to life, and talk about it with humor and resiliency.’’

A teacher who heard Dicky speak in Arkansas several years ago wrote a two-page letter expressing the power of Dicky’s testimony in changing her life. ‘‘I know that I will move through the world differently now. I hope that I will be a better person. I believe that what you have done here is to become a rescuer. Somehow, some way, your words continue to make me grow.’’