Elijah J. McCoy

Elijah J. McCoy was born on May 2, 1844, in Colchester, Ontario, Canada. His parents were fugitive slaves who had escaped from Kentucky to Canada via the Underground Railroad. In 1847, his family returned to the United States, settling in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

At an early age, Elijah showed an interest in mechanics, often taking items apart and putting them back together again. Recognizing his abilities, his parents saved enough money to send the 15-year-old Elijah to Edinburgh, Scotland, where he could study mechanical engineering. He returned home to Michigan after becoming certified as a mechanical engineer.

Despite his qualifications, McCoy was unable to find work as an engineer in the United States due to racial barriers. Skilled professional positions were not available for African Americans at the time, regardless of their training or background. He accepted a position as a fireman and oiler for the Michigan Central Railroad. As a fireman, McCoy was responsible for shoveling coal onto fires which would help to produce steam that powered the locomotive. As an oilman, he was responsible for ensuring that the train was well lubricated. After a few miles, the train would be forced to stop and he would have to walk alongside the train applying oil to the axles and bearings.

To improve efficiency and eliminate the frequent stopping necessary for lubrication of the train, McCoy decided create a method of automating the task. In 1872, he developed a “lubricating cup” that automatically distributed oil evenly over the engine’s moving parts. He obtained a patent for this invention later that year. McCoy’s invention allowed trains to run continuously for long periods of time without pausing for maintenance. The “lubricating cup” met with enormous success and orders for it came in from railroad companies all over the country. Other inventors attempted to sell their own versions of the device but most companies wanted the authentic device, requesting “the Real McCoy.”

In 1868, McCoy married Ann Elizabeth Stewart but Elizabeth passed just 4 years later. In 1873, he married Mary Eleanor Delaney and settled into Detroit, Michigan.

McCoy remained interested in continuing to perfect his invention and sold some percentages of rights to his patent to finance building a workshop. He made continued improvements to the “lubricating cup.” It was modified in order to apply it to different types of machinery. Versions of the cup would soon be used in steam engines, naval vessels, oil-drilling rigs, mining equipment, in factories, and construction sites. Although McCoy's achievements were recognized in his own time, his name did not appear on most of his inventions because he sold his patents.

In 1916 McCoy created the graphite lubricator which allowed new superheater trains and devices to be oiled. In 1920, Elijah established the “Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company.” This allowed him to produce lubricators with his own name. With his new company, he improved and sold the graphite lubricator as well as other inventions which came to him out of necessity. He developed and patented a portable ironing board after Mary expressed a need for an easier way of ironing clothes. When he desired an easier and faster way of watering his lawn, he created and patented the lawn sprinkler.

In 1922, the McCoys were involved in an automobile accident. Both suffered severe injuries. Mary died from the injuries and Elijah never fully recovered from his. Elijah McCoy died in the Eloise Infirmary in Detroit, Michigan, on October 10, 1929.

Lloyd Hall

Lloyd Hall was born on June 20, 1894 in Elgin, Illinois. His grandmother came to Illinois via the "Underground Railroad" at the age of sixteen and his grandfather came to Chicago in 1837. Hall’s family eventually moved to Aurora, Illinois where he attended West Side High School. While he was in high school, he was an honor student; the captain of the school debate team; and competed in baseball, football and track. Hall graduated in 1912 in the top 10 of his class.

After graduating school, Hall studied pharmaceutical chemistry at Northwestern University, earning his bachelor degree in the field. He then earned his master's at the University of Chicago. At Northwestern, Hall met Carroll L. Griffith, who would later go on to become the founder of Griffith Laboratories.

Hall was soon hired by the Western Electric Company through a telephone interview. When he showed up for his first day, however, he was told by a personnel officer that “we don’t take niggers.” He then began working for the Chicago Department of Health as a chemist and was promoted in 1917 to senior chemist. The next year he moved to Ottumwa, Iowa where he held the position of chief chemist at the John Morrell Company. During this time, World War I broke out and Hall received an appointment as Chief Inspector of Powder and Explosives for the United States Ordnance Department.

On September 23, 1919 Lloyd married Myrrhene Newsome, a teacher from Macomb, Illinois. Two years later, the couple moved to Chicago where Lloyd began working for the Boyer Chemical Laboratory where he took the position of chief chemist and focused on the emerging field of food chemistry, and began looking at a way of preserving meats with chemicals. In 1922 he moved on to Chemical Products Corporation where he served as President and Chemical director of their consulting laboratory and often consulted with Griffith Laboratories. In 1925, Hall was offered a position with Griffith Laboratories as chief chemist and director of research. Hall accepted the position and remained there for the next 34 years.

Hall had been working for a number of years exploring different areas of food chemistry and upon joining Griffith Laboratories began looking into methods for preserving foods. Up to that point, foods, and especially meats had been preserved by using table salt. Nitrogen-containing chemicals were also used to preserve meats. It was found that nitrates chemically changed into nitrites and then into nitrous acid caused the meats to maintain a healthy, red color (the process was referred to as curing meat). Hall found, however, that when sodium chloride, sodium nitrate, and sodium nitrite were used in order to preserve and cure the meat, the nitrates and nitrites penetrated the meat much faster than did the sodium chloride. In doing so, the nitrates and nitrites adversely affected the meat by breaking it down before the sodium chloride had a chance to preserve it. In order to correct this, Hall found a while of encasing the nitrates and nitrites within a sodium chloride “shell” by utilizing a process called “flash-drying” the crystals over heated rollers. This allowed the sodium nitrate to be introduced to the meats first and dissolved, and then the nitrates and nitrites were able to penetrate the “preserved” meat and therefore “cure” it.

Hall next addressed a problem which arose when meats were stored in containers. The sodium chloride/nitrate/nitrite combination tended to absorb the moisture from the air inside the container and caused them to form a caked mass on top of the meat. Hall was able to determine that by adding a glycerin and alkali metal tartrate to the original combination, the glycerin and tartrate would effectively absorb the moisture without “caking” and thus preventing the chloride/nitrate/nitrite combination from absorbing it.

Hall also maintained an interest in sterilizing foods, utensils, and tools. Although many people thought that certain spices and flavorings also had the added benefit of preserving foods, Hall found that many of these agents actually exposed the foods to an abundance of germs, molds, and bacteria. Hall set out to prevent this while at the same time allowing the spices and flavorings to retain the aroma and color (many of these lost their color and aroma and flavor when exposed to high, sterilizing temperatures.) He eventually found a gas called ethylene oxide, which he introduced to the foods within a vacuumed environment which eliminated the germs and bacteria while maintaining appearances, taste, and aroma.

These contributions to food preservation and sterilization revolutionized the way foods were processed, prepared, packed and transported, eliminating spoilage and health hazards and improving efficiency and profitability for food suppliers. In the course of his work, Hall would publish more than 5 scientific papers and receive more than 100 patents. He also served as an advisor to the United States during two World Wars, served on dozens of advisory panels and boards and received hundreds of awards and accolades.

In 1959, Lloyd Hall retired from Griffith Laboratories and moved to Pasadena, California where he died in 1971. He left behind a legacy as a pioneer in the field of food chemistry and is responsible for improving health conditions in all areas of the food industry.

Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Anita St. Hill was born on November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York to immigrant parents from the Caribbean. Her father was an unskilled laborer who sometimes worked in a factory that made burlap bags. But when he could not find factory employment, he worked as a baker's helper. Her mother was a skilled seamstress and domestic worker but she had trouble working and raising the children at the same time. Because of this, in November 1929, she and her two sisters were sent to Barbados to live with their maternal grandmother.

There they lived on their grandmother's farm where Shirley attended a one-room schoolhouse. She did not return to the United States until May 19, 1934. As a result, Shirley spoke with a recognizable West Indian accent throughout her life. In her 1970 autobiography, she wrote "Years later I would know what an important gift my parents had given me by seeing to it that I had my early education in the strict, traditional, British-style schools of Barbados. If I speak and write easily now, that early education is the main reason." Regarding the role of her grandmother, she later said, "Granny gave me strength, dignity, and love. I learned from an early age that I was somebody. I didn't need the black revolution to tell me that.”

In 1939, Shirley attended Girls' High School, a highly regarded, integrated school that attracted girls from throughout Brooklyn. Shirley met Conrad O. Chisholm in the late 1940s. He had come to the U.S. from Jamaica in 1946 and would later become a private investigator who specialized in negligence-based lawsuits. They married in 1949 in a large Caribbean-style wedding.

Shirley Chisholm earned her Bachelor of Arts from Brooklyn College in 1946, where she won prizes for her debating skills and was a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. After graduating, she began her career as a teacher in a nursery school and went on to earn a master's degree in elementary education from Columbia University in 1952. Chisholm also served as director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center from 1953 to 1959 and as an educational consultant for New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare from 1959 to 1964.

Chisholm was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1965 to 1968. During her time in the legislature, she succeeded in getting unemployment benefits extended to domestic workers. She also sponsored the introduction of a SEEK (Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge) program to the state. This provided disadvantaged students the chance to enter college while receiving remedial education. In 1968, she ran for the United States House of Representatives from New York’s 12th congressional district. In general election, Chisholm managed up upset victory over James Farmer, Jr., who was the director of the Congress of Racial Equality (a civil rights organization) and had enormous Republican support. She won by an approximately two to one margin and became the United States' first African American congresswoman.

Chisholm was initially assigned to the House Agricultural Committee. Given her urban district, she felt the placement was irrelevant to her constituents. She expressed her feelings about the assignment to a rabbi who suggested that she use the surplus food to help the poor and hungry. Chisholm met with Bob Dole and worked to expand the food stamp program. She also helped create the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). For her hard work, she was eventually placed on the Education and Labor Committee, her preferred committee. She remained on this committee until she retired from congress.

In 1969, Chisholm became one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus. That same year, she became a founding member of the National Women’s Political Caucus. She said that she had faced much more discrimination during her legislative career because she was a woman than because of her race. Therefore, all those hired for her office were women, regardless of race.

On January 25, 1972, Chisholm formally announced her presidential bid. Calling for a “bloodless revolution”, she became the first major-party African American candidate to make a bid for the U.S. presidency. This also made her the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s nomination, Senator Margaret Smith ran for the Republican nomination in 1964. Her campaign had plenty of struggles. People didn’t see her as a serious candidate, only a symbolic political figure. She was ignored by most of the Democratic Party and didn’t receive much support from her black male colleagues. She expressed frustration about the “black matriarch”. "They think I am trying to take power from them. The black man must step forward, but that doesn't mean the black woman must step back." Altogether during the primary season, Chisholm received 430,703 votes, which was 2.7 percent of the votes and represented seventh place among the Democratic contenders. Chisholm said she ran for the office "in spite of hopeless odds ... to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo."

After leaving Congress in 1983, Chisholm taught at the all-women Mount Holyoke College. At Mount Holyoke, she taught politics and sociology. She focused on undergraduate courses that covered politics as it involved women and race. During this time, Chisholm continued to give speeches at colleges, visiting over 150 campuses. She told students to avoid polarization and intolerance: "If you don't accept others who are different, it means nothing that you've learned calculus." She also traveled to visit different minority groups, urging them to become a strong force at the local level.

Chisholm retired to Florida in 1991. In 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated her to be United States Ambassador to Jamaica, but she could not serve due to poor health and the nomination was withdrawn. In the same year she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Shirley Chisholm died on January 1, 2005, at the age of 80. In November 2015, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

Dr. Charles Sifford

Charles Sifford was born on June 2, 1922, in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was exposed to golf from the courses of North Carolina, where Sifford worked as a caddie. He earned 60 cents a day on the courses, nearly of all of which went to his mom to help keep the household going. Sifford was a quick learner. By the age of 13, he could shoot par. He realized then that he wanted to make golf his full-time job. He also realized that he wanted the impossible: the chance to play in golf's biggest tournaments against its best players.

As a young golfer, Sifford earned a living coaching. He also played, picking up impressive victories at non-PGA events. He dominated the Negro National Open, winning the title six times in the 1950s. It helped that he had the encouragement and friendship of some of sports' most prominent black athletes, including Jackie Robinson, who'd broken baseball's color barrier in 1947. The same year he broke into the major leagues, Robinson counseled Sifford on his quest to make it on the PGA tour. "He asked me if I was a quitter," Sifford later recounted. "He said, 'OK, if you're not a quitter, go ahead and take the challenge. If you're a quitter, there's going to be a lot of obstacles you're going to have to go through to be successful in what you're trying to do.' I made up my mind I was going to do it. "

Meanwhile, as the Civil Rights era started to take shape, pressure was mounting on the PGA to strip out its offensive "Caucasian Only" membership clause from its bylaws. The first major hurdle was crossed in 1948, when African American golfers Bill Spider and Teddy Rhodes finished with good enough scores at the Los Angeles Open to earn automatic entry into the PGA-sponsored Richmond Open in California. But tour officials blocked their entry. They also did some legal side-stepping by getting sponsors to agree to label their tournaments "Open Invitationals" in order not to invite black players to compete in the events.

Yet, for Sifford some important groundwork had been laid. In 1957, he made history when he not only qualified for the Long Beach Open, but won it, making him the first the African-American golfer to beat white players in a PGA co-sponsored tournament. In 1961, he broke further ground when, under pressure from the California attorney general, the PGA permitted Sifford full membership on the tour.

In 1967, Sifford made history again when he won the Greater Hartford Open, the first fully sanctioned PGA event ever won by an African American. Two years later, he took home the top score at the 1969 Los Angeles Open. The excitement for everyone, both black and white, around Sifford's wins was profound. "Charlie Sifford, Negro, 46, father of two, his own golf teacher, a short little man with a mustache, was a curious hero in a country-club sport," wrote Sports Illustrated after the L.A. Open. "A black lady journalist raced onto the green and kissed him. Don Newcombe, the ex-Dodger pitcher, ran out and grabbed his hand. And huge, happy swarms of Charlie's fans, all colors, surrounded him, tearfully delirious. Black guys who can't play the game whooped, and white guys who've never seen a country club whooped."

Sifford competed in about 422 PGA tournaments; coming in second twice, registering five third-place finishes, and winning nearly $350,000 in prize money. On the senior circuit he was equally successful, winning the 1975 Seniors' Championship and collecting $930,000 in winnings.

More importantly, he helped pave the way for future African American golfers including Lee Elder, the first African American to play the Masters in 1975, and Tiger Woods. "He took the punishment, the ridicule and he still persevered," Earl Woods, Tiger's dad, once said. "For that, he should always be remembered. Because nobody else did it but him. He was the first one." Tiger Woods referred to Sifford as "the Grandpa I never had," and that, without Sifford, "I probably wouldn't be here. My dad would have never have picked up the game. Who knows if the clause would still exist or not? But he broke it down"

The significance of Sifford’s achievements has not been lost. In 2004, Sifford was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, just the 104th athlete and first African American to receive the honor. On June 22, 2006, he received an honorary degree from the University of St Andrews as a Doctor of Laws. Then in 2009, the Charlie Sifford Exemption was created. This allows for the invitation of a player to the Northern Trust Open (formerly the Los Angeles Open) who represents the advancement of golf's diversity. In 2014, President Obama presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.

Dr. Charlie Sifford died on February 3, 2015, at the age of 92. In a statement, PGA President Derek Sprague said, "His love of golf, despite many barriers in his path, strengthened him as he became a beacon for diversity in our game. By his courage, Dr. Sifford inspired others to follow their dreams. ... Golf was fortunate to have had this exceptional American in our midst."

Dr. Mae Jemison

Mae Carol Jemison was born on October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Alabama, the youngest child of a carpenter and an elementary school teacher. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois, when Jemison was 3 years old to take advantage of better educational opportunities there, and it is that city that she calls her hometown.

Throughout her early school years, Jemison's parents were supportive and encouraging of her talents and abilities, and she spent a considerable amount of time in her school library reading about all aspects of science, especially astronomy. During her time at Morgan Park High School, she became convinced she wanted to pursue a career in biomedical engineering, and when she graduated in 1973, she entered Stanford University on a National Achievement Scholarship.

Jemison was very involved in extracurricular activities at Stanford and served as head of the Black Student Union. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering in 1977. Upon graduation, she entered Cornell University Medical College. While at Cornell, Jemison studied in Cuba and Kenya and worked at a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand.

After she obtained her M.D. in 1981, Dr. Jemison interned at Los Angeles County/University of Southern California Medical Center and later worked as a general practitioner. For the next two and a half years, she was the area Peace Corps medical officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia where she also taught and did medical research. Following her return to the United States in 1985, Dr. Jemison made a career change and decided to follow a dream she had nurtured for a long time. In October of that year, she applied for admission to NASA's astronaut training program. The Challenger disaster of January 1986 delayed the selection process, but when she reapplied a year later, Dr. Jemison was one of the 15 candidates chosen from a field of about 2,000.

When Dr. Jemison was chosen on June 4, 1987, she became the first African-American woman to be admitted into the astronaut training program. After more than a year of training, she became the first African-American female astronaut, earning the title of science mission specialist. She was responsible for conducting crew-related scientific experiments on the space shuttle.

When Dr. Jemison finally flew into space on September 12, 1992, with six other astronauts aboard the Endeavour on mission STS47, she became the first African-American woman in space. During her eight days in space, she conducted experiments on weightlessness and motion sickness on the crew and herself. In all, she spent more than 190 hours in space before returning to Earth on September 20, 1992. Following her historic flight, Dr. Jemison noted that society should recognize how much both women and members of other minority groups can contribute if given the opportunity.

In recognition of her accomplishments, Dr. Jemison received a number of accolades, including several honorary doctorates, the 1988 Essence Science and Technology Award, the Ebony Black Achievement Award in 1992, and a Montgomery Fellowship from Dartmouth College in 1993. She was also named Gamma Sigma Gamma Woman of the Year in 1990. Additionally, in 1992, an alternative public school in Detroit, Michigan, the Mae C. Jemison Academy, was named after her.

Dr. Jemison has been a member of several prominent organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Chemical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and served on the board of directors of the World Sickle Cell Foundation from 1990 to 1992. She has also served as an advisory committee member of the American Express Geography Competition and an honorary board member of the Center for the Prevention of Childhood Malnutrition.

After leaving the astronaut corps in March 1993, Dr. Jemison accepted a teaching fellowship at Dartmouth. She also established the Jemison Group, a company that seeks to research, develop, and market advanced technologies. In 1999, Dr. Jemison founded BioSentient Corp and has been working to develop a portable device that allows mobile monitoring of the involuntary nervous system. BioSentient has obtained the license to commercialize NASA's space-age technology known as Autogenic Feedback Training Exercise (AFTE), a patented technique that uses biofeedback and autogenic therapy to allow patients to monitor and control their physiology as a possible treatment for anxiety and stress-related disorders. BioSentient is examining AFTE as a treatment for anxiety, nausea, migraine and tension headaches, chronic pain, hypertension and hypotension, and stress-related disorders

A. Philip Randolph

Asa Philip Randolph was born on April 15, 1889, in Crescent City, Florida. His parents were huge supporters of equal rights for African Americans and general human rights. In 1891, the family moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where Randolph would eventually attend the Cookman Institute, one of the first institutions of higher education for blacks in the country.

After graduating from Cookman in 1911, Randolph moved to Harlem with the desire of becoming an actor. During this time, he studied English literature and sociology at City College; held a variety of jobs, including an elevator operator, a porter, and a waiter; and developed his rhetorical skills. In 1912, Randolph founded an employment agency with a Columbia University law student, Chandler Owen, called the “Brotherhood of Labor”. The goal of the organization was organizing black workers. He began his efforts when, while working as a waiter on a coastal steamship, he organized a rally against their poor living conditions.

In 1913, Randolph married a Howard University graduate and beauty shop entrepreneur named Lucille Green, and shortly thereafter organized a drama society in Harlem known as “Ye Friends of Shakespeare.” He would play several roles in subsequent productions by the group. In 1917, during World War I, Randolph and Owen founded a political magazine, “The Messenger”. They began publishing articles calling for the inclusion of more blacks in the armed forces and war industry, and demanding higher wages. Randolph also tried to unionize African American shipyard workers in Virginia and elevator operators in New York City during this time.

After the war ended, Randolph became a lecturer at the Rand School of Social Science. In the early 1920s, he unsuccessfully ran for offices in New York State on the Socialist Party ticket. Randolph became more convinced than ever that unions would be the best option African Americans.

In 1925, Randolph founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP). Serving as its president, he sought to gain the union's official inclusion in the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which frequently barred African Americans from membership. The BSCP was met with resistance, primarily from the Pullman Company, which was the largest employer of blacks at that time. But Randolph battled on, and in 1937, won membership in the AFL, making the BSCP the first African American union in the United States. Randolph withdrew the union from the AFL the following year, however, in protest of ongoing discrimination within the organization, and then turned his attention toward the federal government.

Following the United States' entrance into World War II, Randolph planned a march on Washington to protest discrimination in the war industry workforce. He called off the march after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order that banned racial discrimination at government defense factories and established the first Fair Employment Practices Committee.

After World War II, Randolph again took on the federal government by organizing the League for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation. That group's actions eventually led President Harry S. Truman to issue a 1948 executive order banning racial segregation in the U.S. Armed Forces.

In 1955, Randolph became a vice president of the newly merged entity AFL-CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations). He would continue to protest the systemic racial prejudice he found in the organization and thus formed the Negro American Labor Council in 1959. Around this time Randolph also began to devote his energies to broader civil rights work. In 1957, he organized a prayer pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. to draw attention to the delay of school desegregation being implemented in the South.

In 1963, Randolph, along with the other “Big Six”, organized of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, during which he spoke to an integrated crowd of nearly 250,000 supporters. He and remaining “Big Six” memembers were among the handful of civil rights leaders to meet with President John F. Kennedy after the march. With Kennedy discussing the potential Congressional push needed to strengthen the civil rights bill, Randolph told him, "It’s going to be a crusade then. And I think that nobody can lead this crusade but you, Mr. President."

The following year, for these and other civil rights efforts, Randolph was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Soon after, he founded the A. Philip Randolph Institute, an organization aimed at studying the causes of poverty and co-founded by Randolph's mentee Bayard Rustin. In 1965, at a White House conference, he proposed a poverty-elimination program called the "Freedom Budget for All Americans."

Suffering from a heart condition and high blood pressure, Randolph resigned from his more than 40-year tenure as president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1968. He spent the next few years writing his autobiography until his health worsened, forcing him to stop.

Asa Philip Randolph died in bed at his New York City home on May 16, 1979, at age 90. He was cremated, and his ashes were interred at the A. Philip Randolph Institute in Washington, D.C.

Mary White Ovington

Mary White Ovington was born on April 11, 1865, in Brooklyn, New York. Ovington was one of four children raised in a socially and politically progressive household. Many members of her family had been active in the abolitionist and women's rights movements. Ovington first attended the Packer Collegiate Institute and then continued her studies at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She had leave school in 1893 before completing her degree because the family ran into some financial difficulty. Back in Brooklyn, Ovington soon began her life of social work.

In the mid-1890s, Ovington helped the poor at what became known as the Greenpoint Settlement. In addition to her social work at Greenpoint, she began studying the lives of African Americans living in New York at the time. Her research would result in the 1911 book “Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New York”. Ovington stated "If we deny full expression to a race, if we restrict its education, stifle its intellectual and aesthetic impulses, we make it impossible to fairly gauge its ability."

After hearing a 1903 speech by Booker T. Washington, Ovington devoted herself to racial equality. But in 1904, she left Greenpoint because she came down with typhoid and spent a year recuperating from her illness. During this time, she began exchanging letters with W.E.B. Du Bois. In 1908, she read an article about a racial attack in Springfield, Illinois on the town’s African American residents. The riot left seven people dead and destroyed dozens of homes and business. The article asked for people to unite in support of African Americans.

Ovington contacted the writer of the article, William Walling, and she met with him and Dr. Henry Moskowitz. They created plans to hold a special conference, which became known as the National Negro Committee. The first conference was held in New York in 1909. They held another meeting the following year, during which a new organization called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed. Made up of both blacks and whites, the NAACP was a picture of racial harmony. As one of the group's founders, Ovington became the NAACP's first executive secretary and a member of its board. Her friend W.E.B. Du Bois served as the organization's director of publicity and research and ran its publication “The Crisis”.

In 1947, Ovington was forced to resign from the NAACP due to poor health. She died on July 15, 1951, in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts. Besides her many contributions to the NAACP, Ovington left behind an extensive body of work. In addition to “Half a Man”, she is remembered for her books “Status of the Negro in the United States” (1913); “Socialism and the Feminist Movement” (1914); “The Upward Path” (1919), an anthology for black children; “Portraits in Color” (1927), a collection of biographical sketches of prominent African Americans; and “The Walls Came Tumbling Down”, a history of the NAACP.