A barrier-breaker who helped plan the 1963 March on Washington among other efforts, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, was integral to achieving civil rights, labor rights and educational equity in the nation. The activist, educator, politician, author, and early leader with the National Organization for Women, led a long life of advocacy, proving triumphant over the various hurdles put before her and other Black Americans of her time.
“There is chaos in the land; utter confusion and fear,” Hedgeman once wrote reflecting on the racism she saw throughout her travels in the U.S. “Where people thought there had been order there was no order; only day by day reports of our world falling apart.”
Hedgeman was born July 5, 1899 in Marshalltown, Iowa to Mary Ellen Parker and William James Arnold II. She grew up an avid reader, with parents who prioritized education throughout grade school.
The labor and civil rights organizer became the first African American person to become a student at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. During her years in university, she found herself moved by the various lectures of famous speakers, most notably W.E.B. DuBois, whose work inspired her to become a teacher.
Upon traveling to Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi for her first teaching job, Hedgeman confronted the stark reality of Jim Crow, which became the fuel behind her unyielding dedication to activism.
She lived throughout the U.S.—including Washington, D.C., Ohio, New York and New Jersey— and traveled to recruit others to fight for racial, educational and gender equity, and labor and civil rights.
“I did not know yet that the basic difference between the north and the south is the difference between an ax and a stiletto,” Hedgeman later recalled, according to Oxford University Press Blog.
Hedgeman became the first African American woman to hold a position in a New York Mayoral cabinet in 1954, working for Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr.’s administration until 1958. However, she left due to persistent frustrations with gender discrimination.
Despite unsuccessful political runs for Congress and the New York City Council president, Hedgeman, became a well-known advocate and leader, bringing attention to the issues of poverty, labor, and education facing underserved communities across the city.
Portrayed by CCH Pounder in the 2023 Netflix film “Rustin,” Hedgeman also famously advocated for women to speak at the 1963 March on Washington. In her book “The Trumpet Sounds: A Memoir of Negro Leadership” (1964),” she noted her disappointment that women weren’t prominently represented when King shares his famous dream of a more civil world.
“It had never occurred to me to that folks other than Black Power figures had had serious critiques of King in that moment,” reads a Crunk Feminist Collective piece about the activist in January 2013. “Hedgeman’s moxie and courage are a lesson to us today.”
The NAACP and National Council of Negro Women award-winning activist used her work to speak out for change.
“I have decided that I want to live to be 120,” Anna Arnold Hedgeman once said, “to see whether we can in this country produce some people who have sense enough to know that they have the world in their hands.”