Life Story: Carrie Williams Clifford (1862-1934)

Carrie Williams Clifford was born in 1862 in Chillicothe, Ohio. Carrie’s maternal grandparents were self-emancipated people who purchased their freedom in Alabama after the War of 1812. They moved to Ohio where there was a growing community of Black settlers, and their family thrived. Carrie’s parents, Mary and Joshua Williams, were both hairdressers. They moved to Columbus, Ohio shortly after Carrie was born to open a hairdressing shop. Carrie’s younger brother Charles was born in 1864.

Carrie grew up in the Reconstruction Era, a time of expanded rights and opportunities for Black Americans. Carrie attended an integrated public high school and graduated with her teaching certificate. She took a job in Parkersburg, West Virginia for a few years before returning to Columbus to help her parents with their shop.

In 1886 Carrie married William H. Clifford. William worked for a railway company, but he had political aspirations. In the next two years, Carrie gave birth to two boys named Joshua and Maurice. At some point in this period, Carrie and William moved their family to Cleveland.

William’s political career began in 1888 when he became the highest-paid Black man in the Ohio government. William’s hard work and reputation earned him various offices in the Republican party, and in 1894 he was elected to the Ohio state legislature. William served two terms in the state legislature before going back to school to earn his law degree. In 1908 he was appointed to a job in the war department in Washington, D.C. He held this job until his death in 1929.

Social custom in the early 1900s demanded that Carrie devote her attention to raising her children and caring for her home while supporting her husband’s career. Carrie fulfilled all of her traditional obligations, but she was also a committed political activist. Her career began when she joined the Republican Women’s Executive Committee of Cleveland to support her husband’s political campaign. But she soon branched out, following her own interests.

Carrie supported women’s suffrage, but was frustrated at the way majority-white suffrage organizations dismissed the concerns of Black women. Since the end of Reconstruction in 1877 states all over the country had passed laws limiting the rights of Black Americans. Carrie wanted women to get the right to vote, but she also wanted an end to racial discrimination in the US.  She joined with other like-minded Black women in 1896 to form the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Led by Mary Church Terrell, the NACW was an umbrella organization of clubs dedicated to the advancement of women and people of color together. Their motto was “Lifting As We Climb.” Carrie was elected to office in the NACW in 1899. 

Carrie believed that the written word was a powerful tool for making change. She founded and edited the Queen’s Garden, an Ohio newspaper dedicated to promoting Black women’s rights. In 1900 Carrie oversaw the publication of Sowing for Others to Reap, a collection of essays by Black women activists from Ohio. In 1901 she founded the Ohio Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs (OFCWC) to coordinate all the political activism led by Black women in her state. 

Carrie’s activism led her to work with some of the most famous Black activists of the early 1900s. She had close relationships with Booker T. Washington and Mary Church Terrell. W. E. B. DuBois personally asked Carrie to organize the women’s division of the Niagara Movement. 

In 1907 Carrie and her family moved to Washington, D.C. Carrie continued her political activism, writing and speaking whenever the opportunity arose. She joined the NAACP when it was founded in 1910 and held a variety of important roles in that organization. She frequently wrote about women’s suffrage for the NAACP’s publications, pointing out that women’s votes were needed to advance the causes of the Black community. Carrie published her first book of poetry, Race Rhymes, in 1911. Her second book of poetry, The Widening Light, was published in 1922. Both books raised awareness about the oppression Black Americans faced. The same year The Widening Light was published, Carrie was part of a group of NAACP leaders who spoke with President William Taft about the lynching crisis.  

Carrie continued her writing and activism until the end of her life. In the 1920s her home was an important gathering place for Black artists of the Harlem Renaissance. She passed away in 1934 and is buried in Woodland Cemetery in Cleveland. Her years of hard work and dedication were vital to the women’s rights and Black activist movements, but her story was forgotten over time.

• Harlem Renaissance: An era from the 1910s through the 1920s that was marked by an outpouring of Black American creativity centered in the neighborhood of Harlem in NYC.   
• lynching: The extralegal execution of a person by a mob.
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): An organization committed to fighting for the rights of Black Americans.
• National Association of Colored Women (NACW): An organization committed to the empowerment of Black women and communities.
• Niagara Movement: A civil rights group organized by W. E. B. DuBois and William Monroe Trotter in 1905 to combat notions of Black inferiority through legal changes and demands for equal rights.
• Reconstruction: The years between 1865 and 1877 when the federal government actively sought to reincorporate the former Confederacy back into the United States and integrate Black Americans into the nation’s economics, politics, and society.
• segregation: The act of separating people by race, class, gender, or ethnic group.
• self-emancipated: People who have freed themselves from slavery, usually by running away or purchasing their freedom.
• War of 1812: War between the US and Great Britain.