Lillian Parker Thomas Fox | Alexander Street Documents

Introduction by Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar

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Lillian Parker Thomas Fox, Introduction by Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar. Included in Part II: Black Women Suffragists, <p>Introduction by Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar. (Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2018)</p> .

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Biographical Database of Black Woman Suffragists

Biography of Lillian Parker Thomas Fox, 1857-1917

By: Melissa Levesque & Raghd Haiek
Undergraduates, University of Michigan-Dearborn

Lillian Parker Thomas Fox was born in Chicago in the early 1850s to Reverend Byrd Parker and Jane Janette Thomas. She grew up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin and then moved to Indianapolis, where she began to write for The Freeman, the first illustrated African American national weekly newspaper.

Fox became the first African American woman to write for the white Indianapolis press and the only woman on the editorial staff of the Indianapolis Freeman. Fox spent her life writing, speaking, and educating women and men, often discussing issues surrounding the health of the people of the African American community and education for African American women. She focused her writing and speeches on integrating the African American and white communities of Indianapolis.

In addition to civil rights work, Fox concentrated on suffrage as a means of helping African American women. Fox was the Indiana State Organizer for the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), an organization that supported African American women by focusing on issues such as suffrage, lynching, and civil rights. On February 12, 1904, Fox organized a meeting in Indianapolis to start organizing the Indiana State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs.

During her suffrage journey, Fox also worked closely with Ida B. Wells in the National Afro-American Civil Rights Organization. Fox became the Indianapolis delegate for this organization, while Ida B. Wells organized the delegates to take on the issue of bridging African American communities. The group wanted to benefit from the 14th and 15th amendment, which, respectively, awarded citizenship rights to all American citizens and voting rights to African Americans. Because of her dedication, the organization elected Fox, and civil rights editor and journalist, T. Thomas Fortune, to the executive committee as vice presidents.

As she got older, Fox continued her work advocating for African American women. In 1903, Fox founded the Woman's Improvement Club; one of her biggest accomplishments. The combination of fourteen years of building contacts with the white community and her experience being a journalist became the tools she relied on to help her build her Women's Improvement Club. Fox's club focused on providing opportunities to African American women for self-expression and growth, and it supported health care for African American tuberculosis patients, as well as other funding to African American community members.

Fox died in Indiana on August 29, 1917 from a cerebral hemorrhage. According to her last will and testament, Fox left her remaining money "to educate some worthy young colored woman" designated by the executor of her will, George W. Cable. Coming from an educated background, with her father being a pastor and her mother being a schoolteacher, Fox took full advantage of the opportunities given to her and made it her life's mission to extend that education others and African American women in particular. In her will, Fox left her two trunks of books to "the Colored Young Women's Christian Association of Indianapolis, as a foundation for a Library for that Association; the same to be designated as Lillian Thomas Fox Contribution." The suffering African Americans endured even two generations after the end of slavery inspired Fox's leadership. Her work reflected a commitment to advance the position of African Americans, particularly women, through education and a chance to change society for the better.

Image Source: Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America. https://dp.la/item/665aff39ae1fda27bbdff3ad67bf23f9?q=Lillian%20Parker%20Thomas

Sources:

Alexander, Shawn Leigh. An Army of Lions: The Civil Rights Struggle before the NAACP. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.

Bodenhamer, David J., The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis. Indiana University Press, 1994.

Certificate of Death: Lillian Thomas Fox. Filed 30 Aug. 1917. Indiana State Board of Health.

Journalism, Indiana University, Lillian Thomas Fox - 2014. Indiana: The Media School at Indiana University, 2014.

Last will and testament of Lillian Thomas Fox. 8 Jun 1915.

Majors, Monroe A. (Monroe Alphus), b. 1864. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/ items/510d47df-75c 1-a3d9-e040-e00a180 64a99.

Marion County, Indiana Federation of Colored Women's Clubs. Indiana: Marion County, 19 Nov. 2014.