Sarah Massey Overton
Sarah Massey Overton (1850-1914) was a suffragist, women's rights activist, and African-American rights activist.[1][2] She was born in Massachusetts but moved to California in the 1880s.[2] There she attended St. Phillip’s Mission School.[2] In 1869 she married, and then she ran a catering business with her husband.[2] In the 1880s she became a leader in the fight to allow African-American children in California to attend public school.[2] In 1906 she cofounded San Jose’s Garden City Women’s Club, and as a member of it she lobbied in favor of interracial women’s club coalitions for women's suffrage.[2][3] She lobbied for women's suffrage in the 1911 statewide election in California, and was vice-president of San Jose’s interracial Suffrage Amendment League.[2] She also did voter registration of men in California who supported women's suffrage, doing this through the Political Equality Club of San Jose.[3] She was also president of the all-black Victoria Earle Matthews (Mothers) Club, which helped girls and women who had been sexually abused or threatened with such.[2] She had a daughter named Harriet and a son named Charles.[4]
References
- ^ "The African-American Suffragists History Forgot". MAKERS. October 22, 2015. Retrieved 2015-10-24.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Overton, Sarah Massey (1850-1914) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed". The Black Past. 1914-08-24. Retrieved 2015-10-24.
- ^ a b Herbert G. Ruffin (28 March 2014). Uninvited Neighbors: African Americans in Silicon Valley, 1769–1990. University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 45–. ISBN 978-0-8061-4583-9.
- ^ Delilah Leontium Beasley (1919). The Negro Trail Blazers of California: A Compilation of Records from the California Archives in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, in Berkeley; and from the Diaries, Old Papers, and Conversations of Old Pioneers in the State of California ... Times Mirror printing and binding house. pp. 232–.