Introduction to Daisy Lampkin, Part II

Throughout the 1920s Daisy continued to make herself a force in state-wide politics and the local community—crisscrossing the state helping to raise funds and drive membership for the State Federation of Negro Women’s Clubs, remaining active in the state Republican party, the Lucy Stone League, and the local Urban League. She would continue this work for the rest of her life. Beginning in 1929, however, she would leverage the relationships she had built into work of enduring national significance. She became an executive with the leading black newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier, and a national official with the most important organization of black political influence, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Daisy Lampkin, probably in the offices of the Pittsburgh Courier.

The Courier was one of the staples of black life in America, publishing multiple daily and regional editions and reaching black communities across America through a complex distribution network. The paper had begun in 1912 and through a fluke Daisy became one if its major stockholders. At some point in time (I don’t yet know when), Daisy, naturally, won a subscription contest for the Courier. To the winner the paper promised a brand new automobile, but was unable to deliver the car, a default that must have disappointed William. The paper, however, offered Daisy ownership shares instead. I do not yet know the pecuniary value of the transaction, but by the 1920s Daisy appears to have become one of the major shareholders of the paper. By the late 1920s she appears on mastheads as a vice-president. Later, in the 1950s she will be director of publicity. Her precise involvement in the paper is a matter of speculation at the moment, but a number of its well-known campaigns, from anti-lynching in the 1920s, to promoting black voting allegiance to the Democrats in the 1930s, to the famed “Double-V” campaign of the 1940s, all bear Daisy’s imprint. What is certain is that beginning in the 1920s, she became a friend and confidante to Robert and Jesse Vann, the owners and publishers of the Courier. Those friendships would constitute yet another legendary alliance in Daisy’s remarkable career. ​

Exterior of the offices of the Pittsburgh Courier on Center Ave., a staple in African American life and pillar of the Hill district community in Pittsburgh.

Gala event celebrating Mary McLeod Bethune, center. Daisy Lampkin is two ladies down to Bethune's right, in a light-colored dress. Jesse Vann, who took over the Courier on her husband's death, is two ladies down to Bethune's left, also in a light-colored dress. Daisy and Jesse were inseparable friends and colleagues.

​And yet even the contributions to the Courier recede into the background, for a time at least, beginning in the late 1920s. That is when Daisy affiliates with the NAACP. She would have known the Pittsburgh-area NAACP chapter leaders, and Ruth Bennet was already president of the Chester, Pa., chapter. By 1929 Daisy becomes regional field secretary for the association, helping to enlist members in the area; she single-handedly organized the group’s 1931 annual convention held in Pittsburgh. Always rising to the level of her extraordinary talents, by the middle-1930s Daisy was named national field secretary, meaning that she was responsible for driving membership of the organization throughout the entire country.

Daisy was responsible for bringing the NAACP's national convention to Pittsburgh in 1931. Here she is in the front row fifth from the left in light dress and brimmed hat. The famed scholar and activist WEB DuBois sits to her immediate left. Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP, sits five people further to the left.

​Daisy travelled tirelessly throughout the nation, including in the dangerous precincts of the south, organizing chapters, recruiting members, and raising funds; the society pages of the Courier often reported poor William attending events stag. In this work she was responsible for backstopping the membership of the organization during the period of its most historic work, the so-called “legal strategy” of the 1930s–50s. This was a period when, under the leadership of Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP would pour its energies into legal challenges to Jim Crow segregation, especially in the southern states. Focusing on electoral disenfranchisement and school segregation, the legal strategy would tear down pillar after Jim Crow pillar, resulting most famously in the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954/5. There is a legend I have not yet confirmed that Daisy made the phone call to Thurgood Marshall that enticed Marshall away from his struggling Baltimore firm to New York to undertake NAACP work. This seems not entirely likely; there were already magnetic pulls in place bringing Marshall onboard. But it is true that Marshall and Daisy enjoyed a very close relationship, Marshall asking her to become Thurgood Jr.’s godmother in 1956, and then traveling to Pittsburgh in 1957 to fete her at a dinner given in her honor.

A beaming Daisy moons over her godchild, Thurgood Marshall Jr. NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins immediately behind her. The proud Thurgood Sr. looks to camera behind Wilkins.

​Throughout all these industrious labors, Daisy never lost touch with her home in Pittsburgh and her community in the Hill. She was a stalwart member in, and volunteer for, her church, Grace Memorial Presbyterian. And she and William were devoted members of the famed Loendi Club, black Pittsburgh’s most lively social club. Loendi featured an endless calendar of events, parties, and celebrations. Famed musicians such as Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, and Lena Horne performed there regularly. C. L. R. James lectured there, and Branch Rickey was honored there.
 
Loendi was a nucleus of black creativity, but it was hardly the only generator of culture on the Hill. Any number of clubs and restaurants incubated talent such as Errol Garner, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, Earl “Fatha” Himes, and many others. Satchell Paige, Josh Gibson, and other stars of the Negro Leagues were regular patrons. The Hill was vital and lively and dynamic. And one reason for this vitality was the women, like Daisy Lampkin, who gave tirelessly of their volunteer efforts to build the institutions that knit the community together. From the beginning in 1912 Daisy was forever raising funds, holding benefits, and organizing for orphanages, schools, hospitals, and homes for the elderly. I have only scratched the surface of this work in my research, but it appears endless. I am struck by a pattern I see repeated over and over again that goes something like this: Daisy and a committee from the Lucy Stone League, holding organizing meetings at Grace Memorial, for a gala pageant of children’s performances to be held at the Hill district YMCA, for the benefit of the Industrial Home for Colored Girls on Francis St. in the Hill. In this way Daisy knit together organizations, to produce culture and entertainment for the neighborhood’s citizens, to raise funds for necessary social services. This is community building, and I suspect there have been few better at it than Daisy Lampkin.

Exterior of the Loendi Club. The area, known as the Lower Hill, was razed beginning in the 1950s to make way for urban redevelopment, notably a new auditorium/stadium known as the Civic Arena. That venue also no longer stands.

​By 1947 the fatigue caught up to her and “Mrs. NAACP” retired from the association. But she redoubled her labors with the Courier, serving as a mentor to many of the paper’s younger staff. She helped start the Pittsburgh chapter of The Links, another African American women’s charitable organization. She became increasingly active with Delta Sigma Theta, throwing herself into fundraising for that organization. She also raised funds for an interracial youth camp just outside of Pittsburgh. She eulogized Bethune in 1955. She was justly celebrated with dinners, fetes, and celebrations. She remained steadfastly active in her community. And she and William continued to take road trips, a custom they had begun soon after their marriage.

Daisy and many young admirers in the offices of the Courier.

I have not yet counted all the organizations to which Daisy devoted herself on an ongoing basis, but the number has to be at least two dozen, and likely many more. And she remained active to the end. She attended the March on Washington in 1963 and marched every step of the way. She walked a mile to the Lincoln Memorial where she had reserved seats. But she got lost in the crowd, could not find her seats, and stood for all the speeches. Then 80-year-old Daisy Lampkin walked back to the bus. “Whatta woman” exclaimed Courier editor Hazel Garland, “They don’t make ‘em like her anymore.” In 1964 Daisy was in Camden, New Jersey, on a street corner, orating and recruiting for the NAACP, when she suffered a debilitating stroke. She died several months later, in March 1965, at her home n Webster Ave. William joined her in 1974. They are buried together in Homewood Cemetery, near Robert and Jesse Vann, in a plot reserved for former Courier workers.
 
I invite readers to follow me at this blog for more on Lampkin as my research into her life continues. I’ll be discussing not only biographical elements in her life but also matters of historic significance as we investigate what Daisy Lampkin meant to the civil rights movement, to the women’s rights movement, and to Pittsburgh.
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--David J. Snyder