Mamie Dillard
Mary "Mamie" J. Dillard was an American educator, clubwoman and suffragist.Life
Dillard was born on September 10, 1874, in Lawrence, Kansas. In 1896 she received a bachelor's degree from Kansas University and went on to start her career as a teacher at the segregated Pinckney Elementary School in Lawrence. One of her students in the early twentieth century was Langston Hughes, whom she befriended and corresponded with for years after he left Kansas.
From 1909 through 1913 Dillard attended graduate school at the University of Kansas where she studied English and special education. She then became the principal of the segregated elementary school, the Lincoln School. In 1916 she attended the Negro National Educational Congress as an appointed delegate from Kansas.
Dillard was an active clubwoman. She was a member of the African American Woman's Christian Temperance Union, joining at the age of eighteen. She was also a member of the Double Six Club, the Home and Garden Club, the Self Culture Club, and the Sierra Leone Club. She was involved as a patron of the University of Kansas chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. Dillard was also a suffrage activist, working with Carrie Langston to advocate for African American women to become involved with the suffrage movement.
Dillard died on November 24, 1954 in Lawrence, where she had lived her entire life.
