Modjeska Monteith Simkins

Mary Modjeska Monteith was born on December 5, 1899, in Columbia, South Carolina, the eldest child of Henry Clarence Monteith, a brick mason, and Rachel Evelyn Hull Monteith, a teacher. Raised in a household that prized education and self-respect, she completed her studies at Benedict College, earning a bachelor of arts degree in 1921, and began her working life as a teacher at Booker T. Washington High School.

In 1931 she entered public health as Director of Negro Work for the South Carolina Tuberculosis Association, becoming the state's only full-time, statewide African American public health worker. That labor among the sick and the poor sharpened her conviction that justice and health could not be separated, and it carried her toward organized struggle.

In 1941 she assumed the office of secretary of the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP — a body she had helped found — and held that post until 1957, the only woman among its officers for much of that time. She stood at the center of the fight for equal teacher pay, the campaign to end the all-white Democratic primary, and the school-desegregation case Briggs v. Elliott, helping shape the petition that became part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education. For this she endured threats and gunfire aimed at her home, yet never withdrew.

She died on April 5, 1992, in the city of her birth. Modjeska Monteith Simkins gave her whole life to the dignity of her people, and her steadfastness endures as a light for all who follow.