Prominent US Leader of Women’s Mission By the 1960s, Sadie Wilson Tillman, who was born in Tennessee, and grew up a member of a small rural church near Lewisburg, had become one of the nation’s most prominent church women. From 1924 to 1927, she was Director of Christian Education at Laura Haygood Normal School, in...
A Methodist and an Activist Mai Gray, the first African-American woman to be president of United Methodist Women, was deeply dedicated both to the Methodist tradition and to fighting segregation. Born in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1922, Gray worked with her husband, a Methodist pastor, to build a coalition of leadership in the Central Jurisdiction, the...
Courageous advocates for racial justice United Methodist Women member Dorothy Ravenhorst was proud when her Virginia Conference Woman’s Society of Christian Service adopted the Charter for Racial Justice in midst of the Civil Rights Movement. “It was during this turbulent time in May 1965 that our conference president, Margaret (Peg) Tyrrell, decided to bring the Charter for Racial Justice forward to...
