Fannie Barrier Williams - Social Activism

Social Activism

In Chicago, leaving behind her teaching career, Barrier Williams became active among local community activists and reformers. She was director of the art and music department of the Prudence Crandall Study Club, an organization formed by Chicago’s elite African-American community. With her husband, she worked for the Hyde Park Colored Voters Republican Club and the Taft Colored League.

Associating with both Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, she represented the viewpoint of African-Americans in the Illinois Women’s Alliance and lectured frequently on the need for all women, but especially black women, to have the vote. Her women’s rights was recognized when she was the only African-American selected to eulogize Susan B. Anthony at the 1907 National American Woman Suffrage Association convention.

Barrier Williams was among the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She also helped found the National League of Colored Women in 1893 and its successor, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896. She was involved in the establishment and development of other reform and service oriented organizations, including:

• Provident Hospital, in 1891, an inter-racial medical facility that included a nursing training school that admitted black women.
• Frederick Douglass Center, in 1905, a settlement house.
• the Phillis Wheatley Home for Girls.
• the National Federation of Afro-American Women, 1895, working with Mary Church Terrell.

When Barrier Williams was nominated to the prestigious Chicago Women’s Club in 1894, she and her supporters received threats, both public and private. Barrier Williams continued to fight for inclusion and was admitted in 1895. She was also the first black and the first woman on the Chicago Library Board.