Cecelia Cabaniss Saunders

Cecelia Cabaniss Saunders (1879 – February 23, 1966) sometimes written as Cecilia Cabaniss Saunders, was an African-American civil rights leader, and executive director of the Harlem, New York YWCA. She is best known for working against racial discrimination in wartime employment during World War II,[1][2] for broader work training and opportunities for African-American women,[3] and against police violence in Harlem.[4]

Cecelia Cabaniss Saunders
An African-American woman, from a 1923 publication.
Cecelia Cabaniss Saunders, from a 1923 newspaper.
Born
Cecelia Hayne Holloway

1879 (1879)
Charleston, South Carolina
DiedFebruary 23, 1966
Alma materFisk University,
Columbia University,
New School for Social Research
OccupationYWCA

Early life and education

Cecelia Hayne Holloway was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1879 (though some sources give 1883, she was listed in the 1880 census as an infant), daughter of James Harrison Holloway, a harness maker and school principal, and his wife Harriet Huger Holloway.[5] She attended Avery Normal Institute, then Fisk University as an undergraduate, graduating in 1903,[6] and pursued some graduate studies at Columbia University and the New School for Social Research.[7]

Career

As a young woman, Saunders taught at South Carolina State University.[8]

Saunders became executive director of the Harlem YWCA in 1914.[9] In that position, she worked with and nurtured African-American women leaders, including Elizabeth Ross Haynes, Anna Arnold Hedgeman (whom she hired in the 1920s as membership secretary),[10] Dorothy Height,[11] Emma Ransom,[12] missionary Helen Curtis, Pauline Murray, Ruth Logan Roberts, Ella Baker and Eunice Carter.[13] When she began as director, the Harlem YWCA was located in a private residence. When she retired in 1947, the institution was housed in a large complex with more than a hundred employees.[7][14][15][16] The improvements she instituted included facilities for housing and summer camps.[17] She also established a trade school there to train African-American women for jobs.[17] She considered proper training a key step to overcome racial barriers in the workplace.[17]

As director of the YWCA, Saunders testified to conditions in Harlem, especially conditions for women, at various hearings and before various commissions. In 1935, she spoke to the mayor's Commission on Conditions in Harlem, about women's work experiences with racial discrimination.[18] In 1939, she was part of the work of the Committee on Street Corner Markets.[19] She was also presented as a speaker at YWCAs and YMCAs in other cities.[20] Her work was important to the move towards racial integration in the YWCA system in 1946.[21]

In 1939, Tuskegee Institute recognized her work with an honorary Master of Science degree.[22] The New York Age said of Saunders' career and its impact, "When a proper history of the development of Harlem in a period from 1914 to 1947 is written, Cecilia Cabaniss Saunders will have star billing."[23]

Personal life and legacy

Cecelia Holloway married twice. She married her first husband, dentist Dr. James E. Cabaniss, in August 1912;[24] she was widowed before their first anniversary.[25] She married her second husband John D. Saunders in 1915.[26]

She died in 1966, at the age of 86.[7][27]

References
  1. Cecilia Cabaniss Saunders Papers, 1941-1945, New York Public Library.
  2. "Social Work Agencies Here are Gratified that F. E. P. C. Is Cracking Down on War Plants" New York Age (June 27, 1942): 3. via Newspapers.com open access
  3. Traci C. West, Disruptive Christian Ethics: When Racism and Women's Lives Matter (Westminster John Knox Press 2006): 18. ISBN 9780664229597
  4. Thomas Lewis Schubeck, Love That Does Justice (Orbis Books 2015): 183. ISBN 9781608334025
  5. Harlan Green and Jessica Lancia, "The Holloway Scrapbook: The Legacy of a Charleston Family" South Carolina Historical Magazine 111(1/2)(January/April 2010): 5-33.
  6. Catalog of the Officers, Students, and Alumni of Fisk University (Fisk University 1912): 96.
  7. "Mrs. C. H. Saunders of Harlem Y. W. C. A." New York Times (February 24, 1966): 37.
  8. Ida E. Jones, Mary McLeod Bethune in Washington D. C.: Activism and Education in Logan Circle (History Press 2013): 99. ISBN 9781625840844
  9. Judith Weisenfeld, African American Women and Christian Activism: New York's Black YWCA, 1905-1945 (Harvard University Press 1997): 115. ISBN 9780674007789
  10. Jennifer Scanlon, Until There is Justice: The Life of Anna Arnold Hedgeman (Oxford University Press 2015): 55. ISBN 9780190248604
  11. Dorothy Height, Open Wide The Freedom Gates: A Memoir (Public Affairs 2009): 78. ISBN 9780786739752
  12. "137th Street Y. W. C. A. Has Closed Successful Year" New York Age (January 27, 1923): 1. via Newspapers.com open access
  13. Julie A. Gallagher, Black Women and Politics in New York City (University of Illinois Press 2012): 60. ISBN 9780252036965
  14. "Mrs. Cecelia Saunders Feted at Reception at YWCA; 400 Attend" The New York Age (June 21, 1947): 4. via Newspapers.com open access
  15. Rhea Callaway, "Friends Pay Public Tribute to Mrs. Cecilia Cabaniss Saunders" New York Age (February 28, 1959): 13. via Newspapers.com open access
  16. Judith Weisenfeld, "The Harlem YWCA and the Secular City, 1904-1945" Journal of Women's History 6(3)(Fall 1994): 62-78.
  17. Weisenfeld 1993.
  18. Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present (Basic Books 2009): 179. ISBN 9780465018819
  19. Vanessa H. May, Unprotected Labor: Household Workers, Politics, and Middle Class Reform in New York, 1870-1940 (University of North Carolina Press 2011): 124. ISBN 9780807834770
  20. "Leading Business Figure at Y. M. C. A. Sunday at Four" Pittsburgh Courier (March 10, 1934): 8. via Newspapers.com open access
  21. Judith Weisenfeld, "On Jordan's Stormy Banks: Margins, Center, and Bridges in African American Religious History" in Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart, eds., New Directions in American Religious History (Oxford University Press 1997): 436. ISBN 9780198027201
  22. "Tuskegee Honors Mrs. Saunders" New York Times (May 23, 1939): 2.
  23. "Cecilia Cabaniss Saunders' Role in the Development of Harlem, 1914-1947, Deserves Star Billing" New York Age (February 21, 1959): 13. via Newspapers.com open access
  24. Untitled wedding announcement, New York Age (August 29, 1912): 8. via Newspapers.com open access
  25. "Well-Known Dentist Dies" New York Age (May 8, 1913): 1. via Newspapers.com open access
  26. Judith Weisenfeld, "Saunders, Cecelia Cabaniss" Archived 2016-02-15 at the Wayback Machine, in Darlene Clark Hine, ed. Black Women in America: Religion and Community, Encyclopedia of Black Women in America (Facts On File 1997), at African-American History Online (accessed February 12, 2016).
  27. "Mrs. Saunders Dies in New York" Pittsburgh Courier (March 12, 1966): 7. via Newspapers.com open access

Sources
  • Weisenfeld, Judith (1993). "Saunders, Cecelia Cabaniss". In Clark Hine, Darlene (ed.). Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, Inc. pp. 1010. ISBN 0926019619.
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