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Simkins, Mary Modjeska Monteith
American civil rights activist known for her lifetime commitment to progressive causes.The child of prosperous parents, Henry Clarence Monteith and Rachel Evelyn Hull Monteith, Modjeska was instilled early on with a sense of both gentility and the duty to fight for equality. After graduating from Benedict College in 1921 with a B.A., she remained at the school until she was hired by the Booker T. Washington School in Columbia, South Carolina a year later. When she married Andrew Whitfield Simkins in 1929, Modjeska was required to leave her job due to the city policy that married women could not teach in public schools.In 1931, Simkins began working for the South Carolina Tuberculosis Association as Director of Negro Work, establishing clinics and educating the population about the disease. In addition to organizing for several alternative political parties, she was one of the founding members of the South Carolina Conference of Branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1942, due to her civil rights activities, she was fired from her job with the Tuberculosis Association.Elected as state secretary of the NAACP the same year, she led victorious fights for equalizing the pay for African American public school teachers and countermanding the segregated primary elections in South Carolina. Simkins and the NAACP helped to desegregate the South Carolina public schools by filing Briggs v. Elliot in 1951, paving the way for Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which ended legal segregation in public schools. Despite her many successful projects, she was not re-elected to her post as state secretary due to her affiliation with the Communist Party. Turning her focus on issues of community development, Simkins worked for the African American–owned Victory Savings Bank in Columbia until her retirement.Sign up to recieve email alerts from African American Studies Center
