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Thyra Edwards

Thyra Johnson Edwards (December 25th, 1897 - July 9th, 1953) was an American educator, social worker, journalist, labor, and civil rights activist, internationalist and Pan-Africanist.

Thyra Edwards was amongst the many black activists, who sought out communism as a means of conquering social justice.

Early Life

Thyra Johnson Edwards was born on December 25th, 1897 in Wharton, Texas. Her parents were, Horace Ferdinand Edwards and Anna Bell Johnson Edwards. Edwards’s grandparents were runaway slaves who migrated from Missouri to Illinois in efforts to escape racism.

Family History

Edward’s mother was a teacher in Wharton County , the county where Edwards spent a substantial portion of her adolescence. Both of Edward’s parents were involved in local work and social reform within their community.

Within their community, Edward’s and her family were amongst the few black families. This experience gave Edward’s her first experience with racial disparities. The Edward’s family later relocated to Houston, a central for black people at the time.

Radicalization

Being a black woman growing up in the South in the 1900s, Edward’s life experiences naturally radicalized her.

While Edward was in high school, she held close friends with black and white girls her age. She recalls her personal interracial friendships and noticing how their skin-tones were a determining factor in their daily experiences.

Her interracial friendships gave her one of her first-hand experiences with economic “differences” between black and white families. While walking home from school, Edward’s took note of the community imbalances, such as nicer homes, where her peers lived.

These first hand experiences exposed Edwards to the racial, economic, and cultural disparities.

The Soviet Union

In the early 1930s, Edwards traveled to the Soviet Union to “explore “for the soviet promise of a better society”. Edward’s trip to the Soviet Union was a significant adventure for her and supported her views , like the value of communism to civil rights and sexual liberation. Edward’s trip to the Soviet Union particularly strengthened her fascination in radicalization and the usefulness of it.

Education

Thyra Edwards graduated from Houston Colored High School in 1915. She trained as a social worker at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. She also studied labor politics at Brookwood Labor College,[1] and pursued further studies at the International People's College in Elsinore, Denmark, in 1933.[2]

Edwards started as a teacher in Texas, right after high school. She became a charter member of the Houston chapter of the NAACP when it formed in 1918. In 1919, she began working for the Houston Social Service Bureau as a family visitor, where she began her work in social work. The next year moved to Gary, Indiana with her sister, Thelma.

She was based in Indiana former the next twelve years, working as a teacher, social worker, and juvenile probation officer, interracial activist, while lecturing and becoming more active in labor and civil rights work. In 1925 she became a child placement specialist with the Lake County Board of Guardians. In 1927 she helped to open the Lake County Children's Home, and she served as its director for three years. She was one of the founders of Gary's Interracial Commission in 1924, and served on the board of the John Stewart Social Settlement Center, a settlement house serving African-Americans in Gary. She organized the Business and Professional Women's Club in Gary. She spoke at the National Negro Business League conference in St. Louis, Missouri in 1927. She was vice-president of the Gary Council of Social Agencies, and active in the city's YWCA.[2]

Edwards traveled in Europe in 1929, and moved to Chicago in 1931, to be a social worker with the Joint Emergency Relief Commission, while living at the Abraham Lincoln Centre, a settlement house. She soon became active with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a black union based in Chicago, and with the Progressive Miners of America in southern Illinois. In 1933 she was part of forming the Chicago Scottsboro Action Committee. She was a awarded a scholarship from this committee to study at Brookwood Labor College.

Edwards acquired a job as a caseworker for the Joint Emergency Relief Commission. In mid-1930s, she traveled in England, Scandinavia, Austria, Germany, and the Soviet Union,[3] then on the Spain to work with child refugees of the Spanish Civil War.[4] As head of the women's committee of the National Negro Congress during World War II, she taught about the Soviet Union at the Carver School.[5]

Communist Work

In the early 1930s, Thyra Edwards traveled to Europe for work in international affairs. Edward’s visited Sweden, Finland, Poland, Germany and France. Her most significant travel was her time in Paris.

Throughout her time in Paris, Edwards led a travel seminar, titled, The European Seminar of International Relations. Edward’s travel seminar was an international group of social workers who were involved in European social movements, such as the rise of communism and socialism. The European Seminar of International Relations traveled to Spain, and the Soviet Union, which was a “safe haven” for black radicalists at the time. Edwards then attended the International Congress against Anti-Semitism Racial Discrimination.

While Edwards was studying organizing and studying in Europe, she traveled to Spain, where she spent a significant amount of organizing during the Spanish Civil War.

In the course of Edward’s time in Spain, she worked alongside her academic peers, surveying colonies of children who were evacuated and relocated due to the war. Her work was monumental and inspirational for those around her. Langston Hughes admired, and acknowledged her work. Edward’s time in Europe was notably powerful. So much so that, when Edwards returned back to America she continued pursuing her organizing work for Spain.

Edward’s was a influential and significant member of numerous different organizations, significantly, her work in the Negro Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy allowed her to continue working/fighting for Spain from America.

Personal Life

Thyra J. Edwards married steelworker James Malcolm Garnett in 1924; they divorced a year later. She married again, to Murray Gitlin, in 1943. They lived in Italy after 1948, where he was working with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

In 1946, Edward’s was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. She was then later diagnosed with breast cancer.

Thyra Edwards Gitlin died in New York, 1953, aged 55 years, from breast cancer.

The Thyra Edwards Papers are archived at the Chicago History Museum. Actor William Marshall was Thyra Edwards' nephew, the son of her sister, Thelma Edwards Marshall