Introduction by Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar
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Emma V. Lee Kelley, 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 Women Suffragists, 1890-1920
Biography of Emma V. Lee Kelley, 1867-1932
By Megan Lounsberry, Electronic Resources Librarian, LSU and Thomas Dublin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, SUNY Binghamton
Emma V. Lee was born in Virginia in 1867 and married Robert Kelley in 1893. The federal manuscript census for the fourth ward of Norfolk in 1900 lists her husband as a fish monger and Emma as a "wash woman." The couple were lodgers with no co-resident children. Later censuses, though, reveal a daughter, Buena Vista, born in 1894. Robert Kelley died sometime after the 1900 census and subsequent censuses record Emma as widowed. In 1930 Emma Kelley resided with her married daughter, Buena Vista, who later became active in the National Council of Negro Women. Kelley had been very successful financially. Her home in Norfolk according to the 1930 census was worth $15,000, placing her among the wealthiest of African Americans in that city.
According to her 1921 biographical sketch, Kelley attended Hampton Normal Institute for three years and taught for some years in rural schools. In 1910 she worked as a laborer in a tobacco factory in Norfolk; in 1920 and 1930 she was listed as an organizer and then an executive in a fraternal lodge. Other sources note her as the founder in 1902 of the Daughters of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, a women's auxiliary to the well-known black fraternal, IBPOEW. In 1926 she published a history of the auxiliary, Kelley's History of the Daughters of the I.B.P.O.E.W.: Organized June 13, 1902, Norfolk, Va., which had a long life and was reprinted in 1931, 1943, and 1961.
Her 1921 bio sketch detailed her work with the Daughter Elks. She founded the group and served as Grand Secretary from 1903 to 1921, and most likely continuously after the publication of the sketch. She was also field organizer for some years, and the sketch notes: "She set up personally a third of the Temples now in existence." In 1926 Kelley had an exchange of letters with W.E.B. Du Bois about an article that Du Bois was planning to publish about the educational program of the Daughters of the IBPOEW.
The final paragraph of the 1921 biographical sketch that appeared in Caldwell's History of the American Negro: Virginia Edition notes:
Few women of her race have a firmer grasp or more intimate knowledge of conditions in the country over than has Mrs. Kelley. It is gratifying to note that she has prospered financially in connection with her work and is one of the well-to-do women of her race in Norfolk. She believes that better conditions are to be hoped for by improvement in the schools, by better housing and by woman suffrage.
The Campaign for Woman Suffrage in Virginia (2020) notes: "The registrar [in Norfolk] ruled that Emma Virginia Lee Kelley and four other women failed to answer correctly the questions he asked them and refused to register them. They engaged several African American lawyers and took the registrar to court, where he humiliated himself when he gave an incorrect answer to at least one of the same questions he had asked them and disqualified them for answering incorrectly."
For another biographical sketch of Kelley, see Margaret Edds's sketch, also in this database.