WOMEN IN HISTORY - JANE EDNA HUNTER

African-American social worker, attorney, founder of Phyllis Wheatley Association of Cleveland

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DATE OF BIRTH

Born Jane Edna Harris - Dec. 13, 1882

PLACE OF BIRTH

Pendleton, South Carolina

DATE OF DEATH

Jan. 19, 1971

PLACE OF DEATH

Cleveland, Ohio

FAMILY BACKGROUND

Jane's parents, Edward Harris and Harriet Millner, were sharecroppers. Jane's father was born to a slave woman and the white overseer of a plantation. Jane was light-skinned and felt more akin to her father's side; she was somewhat alienated from her dark-skinned mother. Later in life she admitted rejecting her racial heritage with its poverty and subjugation. In part her life's work sought to give the world what she had not been able to give her mother. Following her father's death when she was ten, Jane and her 3 siblings were raised by various relatives. She had a brief marriage to Edward Hunter, a man 40 years her senior.

EDUCATION

Jane was taught to read and write by the daughter of her employer where she was a live-in servant. At fourteen Jane was invited by missionaries to attend a Presbyterian school in Abbeville, South Carolina. She graduated from Ferguson College in 1896, and subsequently completed nursing training. In 1904 she completed advanced training at Hampton Institute in Virginia. She attended Marshall Law School in Cleveland and passed the Ohio bar examination in 1925.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

The focus of Jane's adult life was the improvement of conditions for African-American women. She sought to protect and guide poor young single girls from the south who migrated north for work as she had. In Cleveland in 1911 she founded the Working Girls Association which became the Phillis Wheatley Association the next year. The Association established a settlement house that provided lodging, training and work placement. Hunter's project became the model for similar projects nationwide. She founded the Women's Civic League of Cleveland in 1943. She established the Phillis Wheatley Foundation scholarship fund; the foundation later established the Jane Edna Hunter Scholarship Fund. She held executive offices in the National Association for Colored Women (NACW). In 1937 she was a nominee for the NAACP's Spingarn Medal. She was granted honorary degrees from Fisk University, Allen University in South Carolina, Central State University in Ohio and the Tuskegee Institute. In 1940 she penned her autobiography, A Nickel and a Prayer." The Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Department of Children and Family Services building at 3955 Euclid Avenue in Cleveland is named in her honor. There is a Jane Edna Hunter Museum at the Phillis Wheatley Center at 4450 Cedar Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio.

CITATION

This page may be cited as:
Women in History. Jane Edna Hunter biography. Last Updated: 2/20/2013. Women In History Ohio.
<http://www.womeninhistoryohio.com/jane-edna-hunter.html>