Florence Spearing Randolph

Biographical Database of Black Woman Suffragists

Biography of Rev. Florence Spearing Randolph, 1866-1951

By Amanda Beecher, Associate Professor, Ramapo State College

Rev. Dr. Florence Spearing Randolph was born on August 9, 1866 in Charleston, SC into one of the few African-American families that were free before the Civil War.[1] She graduated from Charleston's Avery Normal Institute before becoming a dressmaker.[1] She moved to Jersey City, NJ in 1885 when she discovered, on a trip to visit her sister, that she could earn nearly three times the wages for her work. She married Hugh Randolph of Richmond, VA in 1884,[2] who worked as a cook on a Pullman Company train and died in 1913 [1]. They had one child Leah Viola in 1887.[3]

Rev. Randolph joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in 1892, which combined social reform with Christian principles,[1] which were pillars of Rev. Randolph's work throughout her life. She secured a license to preach in 1897, was ordained a deacon in 1900, served as a delegate to the Third Methodist Ecumenical Conference in London in 1901 [7], and became an elder in 1903 in the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion church.[4] She worked in many different A.M.E. Zion churches in New York and New Jersey during the next 12 years, never collecting a salary as part of those duties.[1] In 1916 she became president of the Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the A.M.E. Zion church.

By 1915, Rev. Randolph belonged to many organizations whose mission was to improve the lives of people and reduce social inequalities. She organized the New Jersey State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs in 1915,[3] and served as President for 12 years. She was the President of the Missionary Society of New Jersey.[3] She also sat on the Executive Committee of New Jersey's Suffrage Association, in 1917, whose work culminated in the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.[3]

In February 1921, Randolph joined an NAACP delegation of 60 Black suffragists that met with Alice Paul and attempted to get the National Woman's Party to call for a Congressional investigation of Southern states that would not enforce the 19th Amendment for Black voters. The campaign was organized by Addie W. Hunton, NAACP field secretary and a suffragist in this database. Paul and the NWP turned down the proposal and the newly reorganized NWP set an agenda to focus on opposing continuing sex discrimination, an approach that led to the Equal Rights Amendment, first formally proposed in 1923.

She traveled throughout Liberia and the Gold Coast (now Ghana) between 1922 and 1924 in her efforts to expand foreign missions. [7] This work was inspired by her maternal grandmother who had over 25 years of city missionary work. [2]

In 1926 Rev. Randolph enrolled in Drew University, making her the first African-American woman to do so [5] and the University offers a Theological School prize in her name.[6] In 1933 Rev. Randolph was the first woman to be awarded an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Livingstone College in North Carolina.[1]