Victoria Clay Haley

Victoria Clay Haley (January 1, 1877 – after 1940[1]), later Victoria Clay Roland, was an American suffragist, clubwoman, bank executive, and fundraiser based in St. Louis, Missouri and later in Chicago.

Victoria Clay Haley, in a 1917 publication.

Early life

Victoria Clay was born in Macon, Mississippi and raised in St. Louis, the daughter of Samuel Clay and Charlotte Williams Clay. She graduated from Sumner High School in St. Louis in 1895, and attended a business college in Chicago.[2]

Career

Victoria Clay taught school from 1900 until her marriage in 1904. She was the first vice-president of the Young Women's Christian Association in St. Louis, and served two terms on the board of commissioners of the State Industrial School for Incorrigible Negro Girls. She was a contributing editor to a weekly newspaper, St. Louis Afro-American, and wrote short stories.[2] She was a member of the National Negro Press Association.[3]

Victoria Clay Haley was president of the Federated Colored Women's Clubs of St. Louis in 1913, when the city hosted a large regional suffrage conference. Haley attended, although the hotel venue of the conference did not usually serve black guests. The hotel management and some fellow attendees requested that she leave, but she held her seat, and her attendance was defended by the conference leadership.[4][5] She returned to the same conference in Des Moines, Iowa the following year.[6]

Haley was active in the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs. She was on the executive committee of the Frederick Douglass Home, a historic preservation project of the NACW.[7] In 1914, her motion carried for the NACW to endorse the work of her friend, Madame C. J. Walker.[8] During World War I, she chaired the St. Louis chapter of the Colored Women's Unit of the Council of National Defense,[9] and chaired the Colored Women's War Savings Commission of Missouri.[10]

Haley was active in Republican party work in St. Louis.[11] She was an alternate in the Missouri delegation to the 1920 Republican National Convention.[12] In 1921, she was the director of the Western district for the Republican National Committee's outreach to black women voters.[13] Victoria Clay Haley was also active in church work, and was Grand Matron of the Order of the Eastern Star in Missouri.[14] She was also "chief of the St. Louis division of the Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers" in 1912.[15]

In the 1920s, she was on the executive board of the Douglass National Bank of Chicago.[16] In 1926 she was named chair of the National Headquarters Fund of the NACW, to raise money for a national headquarters.[17]

Personal life

Victoria Clay married James L. Haley in 1904.[2] They divorced in 1921.[18] She moved to Chicago soon after and was known as Victoria Clay Roland there.[16]

References
  1. Ancestry Library Edition
  2. Mather, Frank Lincoln, ed. (1915). "HALEY, Victoria Clay". Who's who of the Colored Race: A General Biographical Dictionary of Men and Women of African Descent. p. 127.
  3. "Woman of Broad Culture" The Appeal (October 3, 1914): 2. via Newspapers.comopen access
  4. "Suffrage Split Over Race Issue" Chicago Tribune (April 4, 1913): 5.
  5. "Suffragettes Particular" Lead Daily Call (April 4, 1913): 1. via Newspapers.comopen access
  6. Untitled brief news item, The Bystander (March 27, 1914): 1. via Newspapers.comopen access
  7. Mary B. Talbert, "The Frederick Douglass Home" The Crisis (February 1917): 174-176.
  8. Gill, Tiffany M. (2010). Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women's Activism in the Beauty Industry. University of Illinois Press. p. 44. ISBN 978-0-252-09554-2.
  9. Dowden-White, Priscilla A. (2011). Groping toward Democracy: African American Social Welfare Reform in St. Louis, 1910-1949. University of Missouri Press. pp. 90–91. ISBN 978-0-8262-7226-3.
  10. "Mrs. Victoria Clay Haley to Tour State for Fourth Liberty Loan" Kansas City Sun (October 12, 1918): 4. via Newspapers.comopen access
  11. "Negress Named on Twelfth District G. O. P. Committee" St. Louis Post-Dispatch (July 20, 1919): 52. via Newspapers.comopen access
  12. Official Report of the Proceedings (Republican National Committee 1920): 55.
  13. "Washington Letter" New York Age (March 12, 1921): 7. via Newspapers.comopen access
  14. "Grand Matron Visits Helena" Kansas City Sun (October 16, 1915): 3. via Newspapers.comopen access
  15. "Victoria Clay Haley Has Brilliant Record" Pittsburgh Courier (November 22, 1912): 1. via Newspapers.comopen access
  16. Untitled brief news item, New York Age (September 15, 1923): 4. via Newspapers.comopen access
  17. "NACW Begins Campaign for Headquarters" Pittsburgh Courier (January 19, 1926): 7. via Newspapers.comopen access
  18. "Negro Woman Political Leader Sues for Divorce" St. Louis Post-Dispatch (January 23, 1921): 3. via Newspapers.comopen access
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