Mission Leader Within Segregated Methodism Born in North Carolina, Lillian Warrick Pope grew up in Philadelphia, where she was a social worker in the Zoar Methodist Church. A graduate of the Bible Institute of Pennsylvania and Temple University School of Theology in Philadelphia, she was ordained a local deacon in 1939 by Bishop Ernest G....
Educational Missionary in Liberia and Beyond Vivienne Newton Gray has been a public school teacher, religious social worker, Field Secretary with the Woman’s Division (1945-48), educational missionary in Liberia, West Africa (1948-74), and director of admissions and director of alumni affairs, Wiley College, Marshall, Texas. Working as a religious social worker with migrant families, Vivienne...
Leader in Mission, Integration Growing up in a Methodist parsonage laid the groundwork for Nettie Alice Green’s keen interest in mission. She was a charter member of the Woman’s Society of Christian Service in the Scott Methodist Church of Detroit, held offices in the Lexington Conference, and was Secretary of Student Work (1960-1964) and of...
Leader Against Racial Discrimination Ernestine Henderson McKinney of Little Rock, Arkansas, was in decision-making, leadership positions before, during, and after the history-making unions of the branches of this church that now make up United Methodism. She worked for human rights and against racial discrimination when it was not popular to do so, receiving threatening calls...
Leader in and Student of Mission Following graduation from Dillard University in New Orleans, Emma Wilson Strother went to work with her mother, Clara J. Wilson, who was one of the superintendents of the National Friendship Home in Cincinnati. Emma later became superintendent of the Mother’s Memorial Center (now Wesley Child Care Center), which was...
Missionary, Mission Board Staff, and Mission Advocate From her early years of growing up in a parsonage to her years as a professional person, and later a lay woman active in church affairs, Kathryne Bieri Sears was devoted to mission. At age twenty-four, she was the first single woman appointed by the Methodist Episcopal Board...
Michigan Advocate for Human Rights Louise Donaldson is remembered for her involvement in human rights issues. In Dearborn, Michigan, she founded a local Council on Human Rights, and was instrumental in the desegregation of every restaurant in her community. She worked with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom to register black voters in...
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...
Mission and Hymn Translator Elida García de Falcón was orphaned at the age of ten in Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Mexico. She made her home with her only sister, Rosaura, who had married one of the first Mexican Methodist ministers, Pedro Grado. With them she itinerated and attended mission schools, including Holding Institute at Laredo, Texas. She...
The Amazing Adventures of Methodist Women in Mission This comic showing the history of Methodist women in mission is available at www.unitedmethodistwomen.org/responsecomic. It is also available as a PDF: www.unitedmethodistwomen.org/assemblycomicbook.pdf.
