Carrie Williams Clifford

Biographical Database of Black Woman Suffragists
Biography of Carrie Williams Clifford, 1862-1934

By Mary-Elizabeth Murphy
Assistant Professor of History
Eastern Michigan University

Carrie Williams was born in 1862 in Chillicothe, Ohio and graduated from high school with honors where she developed passions for literature and theater. She yearned to be a teacher, but the Ohio public schools banned African American women from employment. In 1883, Carrie Williams moved to Parkersburg, West Virginia to teach school. In 1886, she married William H. Clifford and the couple settled in Cleveland, Ohio. William Clifford served two terms in the Ohio House of Representatives. Carrie and William Clifford had two children: Maurice and Joshua. Clifford balanced motherhood with social engagement. She was a founding member of the Minerva Reading Club, which blended discussions of great authors with social welfare in the city. In 1898, the Minerva Reading Club became part of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and Clifford served as the Assistant Recording Secretary as well as president of the Ohio State Federation.

In 1908, William Clifford received a government appointment in the Treasury Department and the family moved to Washington, D.C. As a resident of the nation's capital, Clifford participated in causes that were both local and national. In 1911, she published a book of poetry entitled Race Rhymes, and in 1922 another volume called The Widening Light. Clifford wrote in a political voice as she addressed Jim Crow streetcars, the controversial film, Birth of a Nation, and the Atlanta Race Riot in 1906. Clifford's poems also appeared in black newspapers. Beyond her career as a poet, Clifford served as a leading political activist in the black community. She was involved in the Niagara Movement, helped to form a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Washington, D.C., and raised money to pay off the mortgage at Frederick Douglass's house. She also joined the Interracial Committee, an organization dedicated to fostering understanding between black and white citizens. Clifford worked hard to raise awareness about the inhumanity of lynching through her poetry and her politics. One of her poems, "Little Mother," focused on the brutal lynching of Mary Turner, who was eight months pregnant when she died.

She marched in the suffrage parade held in Washington, DC in March 1913 on the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration and reported on Black participation in the event in an article, "Suffrage Paraders," that appeared in the April 1913 issue of The Nation.

In February 1921, Clifford joined a contingent of Black women suffragists organized by Addie Hunton of the NAACP that met with Alice Paul just days before the National Woman's Party convention met in Washington, DC. The group lobbied Paul and the NWP to call on Congress to appoint a committee to investigate violations of the 19^th Amendment in Southern states that denied Black women the right to vote. Paul equivocated and the convention voted down the motion to take this stand as an organization.

Clifford's commitment to civil rights continued all her life. She was a member of the Anti-Lynching Crusaders of the NAACP and helped to organize a Silent Parade in the nation's capital in 1922, which showcased black Washingtonians' support for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. Above all, Carrie Williams Clifford continually fought for the dignity of African American women, whether it was marching in a woman suffrage parade, linking women's voting power with children's welfare, and sharply denouncing the proposed monument to the faithful slave, "Mammy," fittingly, through a poem. In 1934, she died in her home in Washington, D.C.

Sources:

In addition to her books of poetry, information on Clifford can be found in a cursory examination of black newspapers from the 1890s until the 1930s. Two obituaries are illuminating: "Mrs. Carrie Clifford, One of NAACP Founders, Dies," Baltimore Afro-American, November 17, 1934, 22; and "Mrs. Carrie Clifford dies Following Brief Illness," Pittsburgh Courier, November 17, 1934, 9. Her poem, "Black Mammy," appeared in the Washington Tribune on February 10, 1923.

For a recent treatment of Clifford, see Cathleen D. Cahill, "Black Women's Activism through History and Poetry," in Black Perspectives, accessible online at https://www.aaihs.org/black-womens-activism-through-history-and-poetry/.

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