Bertha McNeil

1. Year: 1930; Census Place: Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia; Enumeration District: 0281; FHL microfilm: 2340034 

2. 1912_hu_howarduniversity12howa

3. Plastas, M. (2011). A Band of Noble Women: Racial Politics in the Women’s Peace Movement. United States: Syracuse University Press.

4. Cahill, Cathleen D.. Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement. United States, University of North Carolina Press, 2020.

Alpha Kappa Alpha woman Bertha Clay McNeil was an American peace activist, civil & women’s rights fighter and educator. 

McNeill was born on November 12, 1887 in Wilmington, North Carolina, to Lucy Alice Reeves and Henry Clay McNeill with a large number of siblings. She attended the Gregory Normal Institute of Wilmington, North Carolina, the first school established in the city that could legally educate Black students. She went on to acquire her teaching certificate and upon moving to Washington DC promptly enrolled in Howard University. While attending she  became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and the Howard University Women's Club.

After her graduation in 1908, (yes, that graduation class of 1908) 💗💚  she briefly taught in Baltimore and then transferred to the famed M Street High School  where she taught from 1909 until 1957. She then became an adjunct professor at Howard. 

One month after Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority’s 1910 political presentation of Mrs. Mary Church Terrell’s  Citizenship: A woman’s role at Howard University, McNeill, along with Terrell and other collegiate women,  founded the College Alumnae Club.

 These women included  Alpha Kappa Alpha women Sara W. Brown, Otelia Cromwell, Julia Brooks, Georgianna Simpson, and eventual Delta Sigma Theta women Mary Cromwell,  Nancy Fairfax Brown & Mary Church Terrell. Its purpose and colors were  similar to that of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and was composed of primarily of members of Alpha Kappa Alpha women and their college graduate female friends and family. While the primary base was made up of mostly Alpha Kappa Alpha women, the group came to be home to a number of prominent members of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. Such examples include Mary Cromwell, baby sister to Otelia Cromwell, Nancy Fairfax Brown, younger sister to Sarah Brown, Eliza Shippen, Louise Jimmie Bugg, and Grace Coleman to name a few. The CAC became known from April 1923 as the National Association of College Women.  

It was this and her collegiate connection to  Howard that allowed for McNeil, The Howard girls and most all of the black women  to participate in the Women’s suffrage March of 1913. She used her status as a “college woman” as her place while she marched along the parade route.  The first suffragist parade in Washington D.C. was organized by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns for the day before President Wilson's inauguration in March 1913. 

During her teaching career, McNeill was the faculty advisor for Dunbar High School's student newspaper, edited several journals for organizations, and contributed articles to African-American newspapers. 

She was also one of the few Black activists who were members of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), McNeill joined the organization in 1934. The following year she became chair of its Interracial Committee, later renamed the Committee on Minorities and Race Relations, where she pressed for diversification of membership and recognition of civil rights issues as part of the peace movement. She led the organization to oppose lynching and Jim Crow laws and to adopt policies against scheduling meetings and congresses in segregated facilities while actively supporting school desegregation. She also chaired the Committee on Special Problems of Branches, which was responsible for handling accusations against WILPF and its members under McCarthyism.

McNeil served as a national vice president of the US branch of WILPF for at least five terms and represented the national organization as a delegate at four international congresses. In 1954, she became the chair of the Washington, D.C. WILPF section and served in that capacity until 1960. McNeill remained active in the WILPF until her death in 1979.

She was also a member of the League for Industrial Democracy and Women's Trade Union League. Her activism within various organizations often overlapped, as for example when she fought women having to register for the draft along with her sorority sisters from Alpha Kappa Alpha and other organizations. Among her other accomplishments she was a founder of Association of Deans of Women and Advisors to Girls in Negro Schools, and may have been a founder of the Epsilon Sigma Iota Sorority Incorporated.