Annie Pride Washington

Biographical Database of Black Women Suffragists

Biographical Sketch of Annie Pride Washington, 1878-1957

By Thomas Dublin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Binghamton University

Annie Pride was born in May 1878 in Virginia, the fourth of eleven children of John and Laura Pride. Her father worked as a barber in 1880 and 1900. The family lived in Lynchburg and Annie completed high school and then graduated from Hampton Institute in 1899. In December 1905 she married Allen Washington, twelve years her senior. Her husband was employed at Hampton Institute and served as commandant of cadets between 1916 and his death in 1930. The couple did not have children.

Annie Washington registered to vote with Caroline Smith Isham in the fall of 1920. The white Registrar "boldly told Mrs. Washington that he did not intend to be bothered with a lot of colored women. They intended to just let a few register." Washington and Isham were among those Black women who did successfully register to vote.

Washington's name appears twice in local papers when she sold lots of land in Hampton in 1932 and 1937. In the earlier transaction she was listed as the seller along with R.R. and Jennie Moton. R.R. Moton had served as Commandant of Cadets at Hampton Institute and had hired Allen Washington as his assistant. In 1915 he succeeded Booker T. Washington as the principal of Tuskegee Institute, Jennie Moton was a supporter of woman suffrage.

In 1940, at 61, Annie Washington, now a widow, worked as a matron of a boys' dormitory at a college in Durham, NC. At some point she moved back to Hampton, where she resided at the time of her death in Durham in April 1957. She is buried in the Hampton University Cemetery.

Sources:

Brent Tarter, Marianne E. Julienne and Barbara C. Batson, The Campaign for Woman Suffrage in Virginia (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2020), 48—49 and 147.