Mary Townsend Seymour
|  | ||||||||||
For More information please visit: | |||||||||||
Audio Archives: | |||||||||||
| Hartford native and lifetime sociopolitical activist, Mary Townsend Seymour is celebrated for her commitment to fighting for equal rights and full citizenship for African-Americans and all women. Committed to full civil liberties, she worked vigorously to improve working conditions for Connecticut’s female African-American tobacco workers and advocated for unionization. After WWI, she worked to enfranchise African-American Women. She was the first African-American woman to run for the Connecticut State Assembly. Mary Townsend Seymour lived during a time of racial and sex discrimination. The youngest of 7 children, her father, Jacob disappeared from the city directory, fate unknown and mother Emma Townsend, died before Mary turned 16. She was adopted into the family of celebrated Civil War veteran and social activist Lloyd G. Seymour. At age 15, Mary’s first act of social advocacy was to note in the public record, her full identity as Mary Emma Townsend Seymour. She later married Lloyd’s son, Frederick Seymour, and the couple had only one child, Richard who died in infancy. Mary pursued social justice full-time on behalf of southern-born African-Americans who migrated to Hartford in 1916-17— many to work in the tobacco fields. She exposed the wage discrimination and substandard working conditions the migrants experienced. With a group of twenty people including African-Americans and female suffragists she helped found Hartford’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and served as its spokesperson. Seymour extended her energy and knowledge of community organizing to the equal rights advocacy group, The Hartford Chapter of the Circle for Negro War Relief, Inc., that helped Negro soldier’s families during WWI. Mary was also a member of the Colored Women's League of Hartford and in 1920 was the first African American woman to run for the Connecticut State Assembly. Her earnest belief that an end to discrimination was a universal good compelled her to fight tirelessly to unite all people in pursuing equal rights, regardless of their race or sex. As a tribute, The Mary Townsend Seymour Place Apartments located in Hartford, Connecticut provides supportive housing for homeless women and children. | |||||||||||
|