Jessie Daniel Ames
(1883-1972)

woman and civil rights activist

Died aged 88

Jessie Daniel Ames (November 2, 1883 – February 21, 1972) was a suffragist and civil rights leader from Texas who helped create the anti-lynching movement in the American South. She was one of the first Southern white women to speak out and work publicly against lynching of African Americans, murders which white men claimed to commit in an effort to protect women's "virtue." Despite risks to her personal safety, Ames stood up to these men and led organized efforts by white women to protest lynchings. She gained 40,000 signatures of Southern white women to oppose lynching, helping change attitudes and bring about a decline in these murders in the 1930s and 1940s.

DbPedia
Wikidata Wikipedia

Commemorated on 1 plaque

Texas Historical Marker #13878

Jessie Daniel Ames. (1883-1972) A native of Palestine, Texas, Jessie Daniel came to Georgetown in 1893. She graduated from Southwestern University in 1902. In 1904 she moved to Laredo, where she married Roger Post Ames (d. 1914), and Army surgeon. They were the parents of three children. Following her husband's death, Jessie operated the Georgetown Telephone Company with her mother and became active in civic projects, including the Woman's Club. She joined the Texas Equal Suffrage Association and worked to acquire voting rights for women. She led a large group of women to the Williamson County Courthouse to register to vote for the first time in 1918. The Texas Equal Suffrage Association reorganized as the Texas League of Women Voters in 1919, and she served as its first president until 1924. A champion of civil rights causes, Ames was active in the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Opposed to the use of chivalry as a justification for lynching, she moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and formed the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching in 1930. She retired in 1944 and moved to Tryon, North Carolina. Ames later returned to central Texas and died in an Austin nursing home in 1972. She is buried in the I.O.O.F. Cemetery in Georgetown. (1988) #13878

1004 Church St, Georgetown, TX, United States where they was