Dr. Anna Arnold Hedgeman led a life devoted to education, politics and civil rights. Among her achievements – she was the only woman present at the organizing meetings for the historic 1963 March On Washington event.
Hedgeman was born July 5, 1899 in Marshalltown, Ia. and raised in Anoka, Minn. She enrolled in the state’s Hamline University and became its first Black student and graduate, earning a degree in English in 1922. While at the university, Hedgeman was inspired to become an educator after hearing famed civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois speak.
After teaching for a spell at Mississippi’s Rust College, Hedgeman went into a career in organizing the all-Black branches of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in Springfield, Ohio, Jersey City, N.J., Harlem, Philadelphia, Pa., and Brooklyn, N.Y. between the period of 1924 and 1936. She married musician Merritt A. Hedgeman after the end of her YWCA tenure. (READ MORE)
