Biographical Database of Black Woman Suffragists
Biographical Sketch of Irene Augusta Moore West, 1890-1975
By Lisa Hendrickson, Independent Historian
Irene Augusta Moore was born September 30, 1890 in Perry County, Alabama to Marshall J. Moore (1857-1922) and Agnes Violet McClain Moore (1863-1935). Both of her parents were school teachers and the family, including Irene and her siblings Inez, Henry, Scott, Edgar, and Albertine, lived at 720 Jackson Street in Montgomery, AL. Irene graduated from Alabama State Normal College, now Alabama State University and also attended Tuskegee and Hampton Institutes. After graduating, she became a teacher and continued to live at home. On October 7, 1915 she married Dr. Alexander Wayman West, a wealthy dentist who owned his own practice. Born March 22, 1883 in Alabama to Reverend Greene B. West and Elvia Edward West, Alexander completed his undergraduate schooling at Knoxville College and then graduated from Meharry Medical and Dental College in 1911. When Alexander registered for the WWI draft in 1918, they were living with his parents at 830 East Grove in Montgomery, AL. They had three children, Alexander W., Jr. (1917-1988), Irene B. (1919-2021), and Marshall Greenberry West (1918-1919). By 1930 they owned a home at 713 South Jackson Street, also in Montgomery.
As was the case across the South, the road to gaining suffrage for Black women in Alabama took many years to achieve. After a stall on early efforts in Alabama, woman suffrage picked up momentum in the 1910s. The Selma Suffrage League was created in 1910, followed by the creation of the Birmingham Equal Suffrage League in 1911. On October 9, 1912, Alabama suffragists formed a statewide group called the Alabama Equal Suffrage Association (AESA) by combining the Selma Suffrage League and the Birmingham Equal Suffrage League. The AESA was affiliated with the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and established its headquarters in Birmingham. The Alabama Federation of Colored Women's Clubs was created in 1910 and fought for woman suffrage in addition to working on other issues to improve the lives of people in their community. As the Alabama State Legislature was considering the Nineteenth Amendment in July of 1919, suffragists from all over Alabama traveled to Montgomery to lobby for woman suffrage. Due to the influence of strong anti-suffrage opponents and key senators, the amendment was rejected on July 17, 1919. Not a lot is known about Irene's suffrage involvement, but given her activist spirit, it is possible that she was part of the suffrage lobbying group. Later in life she was involved with the League of Women Voters.
After the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified (Alabama did not ratify it until 1953), African American women were frequently thwarted in their attempts to register to vote, blocked by obstructionist tactics including outright refusals, threats, poll taxes, and literacy tests. In the book titled Suffrage at 100: Women in American Politics Since 1920, Stacie Taranto and Leandra Zarnow write that, "In Montgomery, Alabama, registrars turned away three pairs of husbands and wives: the Reverend P. W. Walls, who was the pastor of the A.M.E. Church, and 'wife', Professor Harry S. Murphy, who was a former secretary of the Montgomery NAACP, 'and wife', and Dr. A.W. West, and 'wife'. The wives were unnamed, but apparently the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment sent not only them but also their husbands to the polls. These men were described as "prominent members of the race," a status their wives presumably shared. That status, however, did not shield them from discrimination at the registrar's office." Taranto and Zarnow also discuss the reasons why husbands and wives might have gone together to register to vote explaining that, "the company was welcome because it offered a measure of safety and because the presence of 'respectable' associates might reduce the odds that applicants would be treated with discourtesy." All three couples who were denied the right to vote were members of the St. John A. M. E. Church where Reverend Polk W. Walls was the pastor.
Irene was a member of many civic organizations including the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Women's Political Council (WPC). In 1946 she became treasurer of the WPC and as a member, she worked on voter registration, issues in education, and segregation issues on city buses and recreational facilities. According to the Alabama Department of Archives and History, "On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated public bus to a white man. Her cause was quickly adopted by the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, which launched a boycott of the Montgomery bus company - led by E.D. Nixon and a then-unknown minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. Citizens, both black and white, organized car pools instead of riding a bus. Numerous attempts to break the boycott failed and after 381 days the Montgomery Bus Boycott ended with the complete desegregation of the public transportation system in Alabama." Rosa Parks was a member of St. John AME Church and at the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott Trial; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. held a mass meeting at the church on March 19, 1956.
Even though West was in her 60s, she was one of the most involved activists in the Montgomery bus boycott, driving people to and from work and distributing information. Martin Luther King wrote about her in his memoir of the boycott, Stride Toward Freedom, calling her "the real mother of the movement" In her memoir The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, Jo Ann Gibson Robinson wrote, "The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was pledged to protect, defend, encourage, enlighten, and assist the members of the black community against unfair treatment, prejudice, and unacceptable subordination. To keep down violence, to make the movement Christian-like, and to follow the "passive resistance doctrine" of non-violence, the ministers accepted official positions in the new association as leaders of the boycott." She also wrote that "The MIA Executive Board, consisting of about thirty-five men and women, was appointed by the people. These were persons the MIA members felt would speak out without fear and speak with authority as representatives of the black protesters. They included men such as Mr. E. D. Nixon, known for years to fight discrimination. From the WPC, Mrs. A. W. West, Sr., and I were named."
Robinson also wrote that, "Irene West had been one of the first women to join the WPC when it was founded. Mrs. West was a wealthy lady, everyone believed, and one of the most prominent women in black Montgomery. She was the wife of Dr. A. W. West, Sr., who was a dentist. That lady spent much of her time fighting for the cause of first-class citizenship. She was a fine woman, a fighter against discrimination, against City Hall, where bigots such as Mr. Clyde Sellers reigned. She belonged to many social and benevolent clubs, and had many friends of the higher echelon. But she had many friends everywhere and on all levels. She loved her children and her family, but she also loved people. She embraced them all. Her goal was to make the world a fair, honest place where all men would be free. She thought of color as only "skin deep," and she felt that neither the white nor the black race would ever be free until all people were free. She worked toward that end for her entire life. And she valued education as the preparation agent that would, with prayer, get a person to the destination of his choice. She wanted to help, to contribute in any way she could, because she was humanitarian, and she loved Montgomery. She was blessed by God, and she wanted to give back to people as she had been given to ⎯ that is, her prosperity. Mrs. West was nearly sixty years old when she and I were arrested at the same time and hauled to the police headquarters for incarceration. She lived to see her philosophy materialize, for she maintained good health and worked with the WPC for civil rights to the very end. Before she passed on, she was making inquiry as to the grounds gained for a better world."
Dr. Alexander West died April 10, 1952 as is buried in Lincoln Cemetery located in Montgomery, AL. Irene West passed away on September 7, 1975 and is also buried in Lincoln Cemetery.
Sources:
Federal Manuscript Censuses: 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940
Alabama County Marriage Records, 1805-1967
U.S. WWI Draft Registration cards, 1917-1918
Find a Grave website
Taranto, Stacie and Leandra Zarnow, Suffrage at 100: Women in American Politics Since 1920, JHU Press, 2020, pp. 77-79.
Liette Gidlow, "Resistance after Ratification: The Nineteenth Amendment, African American Women, and the Problem of Female Disfranchisement after 1920," in Women and Social Movements in the United States, 21:1 (March 2017).
King, Martin Luther, Stride Toward Freedom, Harper Collins Publishers, 1958.
Harper, Ida Husted, The History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6 (New York, J. J. Little & Ives, 1922), pp. 2, 4,5.
Burnes, Valerie Pope, "Will Alabama Women Vote? The Women's Suffrage Movement in Alabama from 1890-1920," Alabama Review, January 2020, pp. 28-39.
Garrow, David J. ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, University of Tennessee Press, 1987, Ch. 2, pp. 8, 11. https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/protest/text5/robinsonbusboycott.pdf
Irene West online biography, The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute website www.kinginstitute.stanford.edu
"King begins boycott trial: holds mass meeting at St. John AME Church," The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute website www.kinginstitute.stanford.edu
Alabama Department of Archives and History
"Prominent Colored People Married," The Montgomery Times, October 8, 1915, pg. 11.
"Dr. West Passes After Many Years of Service," Alabama Tribune, April 18, 1952, pg. 1.
"West," The Alabama Journal, September 11, 1975, pg. 36 (her obit)
Montgomery, Alabama police photos of participants in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, February 21, 1956. Mrs. A. W. West #7043. (Alabama Department of Archives and History)
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/node/7125?page=24
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