Carrie Clifford

"The Equal Suffrage Parade was Viewed by Many Thousand People From All Parts of the United States"

Article in Broad Ax Newspaper, March 8, 1913, #23, Found online 

"...There remains to be mentioned the part taken by the Colored women.  They were much in evidence, were accorded every courtesy and did nothing to reflect discredit on the race.  Prominent among the Colored women in the procession were Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, Mrs. Carrie Clifford, Mrs. Daniel Murray and Miss Gibbs.  A feature of the College section was a very pleasant bevy of Colored girls, all looking quite nifty in caps and gowns.  They were greeted with hearty applause all along the line.  Many of them were attending the "M" street High School".  Julius F. Taylor, Chicago--Washington, DC March 3, 1913  

James C. Waters, Jr. added a paragraph describing the snubbing of Ida Wells Barnett by the Illinois delegates that did not deter her from successfully participating in the parade.  

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Carrie Clifford provided the names and occupations of the colored women in the parade in an article, "Suffrage Paraders", in The Crisis Magazine (p. 296, Vol. 5, No. 6, April 1913).  W.E.B. DuBois also wrote an editorial about the parade in the same issue of The Crisis (p. 289, Vol.5, No. 6, April 1913).  Both articles are available online.  

According to Mrs. Clifford, the young women in caps and gowns whom Julius F. Taylor described as students of M Street High School, were actually students from Howard University.

See Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition by Lucy G. Barber (2004) for more information.

Carrie W. Clifford

Carrie Williams Clifford was an African-American author and equal rights advocate during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.

Clifford was born in September 1862, in Chillicothe, Ohio. She spent most of her youth in Columbus, Ohio. As an adult, she first taught school in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Clifford eventually met William H. Clifford. The two married in 1886, and they moved to Cleveland, Ohio that same year. William Clifford served in the Ohio legislature. He was one of the first African Americans to do so.

In Cleveland, Carrie Clifford founded the Ohio State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, an organization created to assist African-American women in attaining equal rights and opportunities. Clifford also became an author, publishing several collections of essays and poems, including Sowing for Others to Reap, Race Rhymes, and The Widening Light. Clifford also served as the editor of the "Women's Department" for the Cleveland Journal, an historically African-American newspaper. She also became a proponent of the Niagara Movement, W.E.B. DuBois's attempt to secure equality for African Americans with whites. Like many African Americans, Clifford objected to the racism and sexism that existed in the United States of America at this time.

In 1908, the Cliffords moved to Washington, D.C., where Carrie Clifford remained active in the Niagara Movement and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Clifford continued to author and to publish essays and poems. She died on November 10, 1934.

Citations from letters:

Clifford, Carrie Williams, and W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois. Letter from Carrie W. Clifford to W. E. B. Du Bois. Washington (D.C.), January 28, 1927. Web. 12 Dec 2021. <http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b037-i488>.

MLA

Clifford, Carrie Williams, and W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois. Letter from Carrie Clifford to W. E. B. Du Bois. Highland Beach (Md.), 1934. Web. 12 Dec 2021. <http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b069-i286>.