Sarah Massey Overton

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Sarah Massey Overton
Sarah Massey Overton.jpg
Born
Sarah Massey

1850 (1850)
Lennox, Massachusetts
DiedAugust 24, 1914(1914-08-24) (aged 63–64)
San Jose, California
NationalityAmerican
Spouse(s)
Jacob Overton
​
(m. 1869)​

Sarah Massey Overton (1850 – August 24, 1914) was a suffragist, women's rights activist, and African-American rights activist.[1][2]

Biography[]

She was born in Lennox, Massachusetts but moved to California in the 1880s.[2] There she attended St. Phillip’s Mission School.[2] In 1869 she married Jacob Overton, and then she ran a catering business with her husband.[2] In the 1880s she became a leader in the fight to allow African-American children in California to attend public school.[2] In 1906 she cofounded San Jose’s Garden City Women’s Club, and as a member of it she lobbied in favor of interracial women’s club coalitions for women's suffrage.[2][3] She lobbied for women's suffrage in the 1911 statewide election in California, and was vice-president of San Jose’s interracial Suffrage Amendment League.[2] She also did voter registration of men in California who supported women's suffrage, doing this through the Political Equality Club of San Jose.[3] She was president of the all-black Victoria Earle Matthews (Mothers) Club, which helped girls and women who had been sexually abused or threatened with such.[2]

Overton had a daughter named Harriet and a son named Charles.[4]

Overton died on August 24, 1914 in San Jose, California.[2]

References[]

  1. ^ "The African-American Suffragists History Forgot". MAKERS. October 22, 2015. Retrieved October 24, 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Herbert G. Ruffin II (June 5, 2011). "Overton, Sarah Massey (1850–1914)". The Black Past. Retrieved October 24, 2015.
  3. ^ a b Herbert G. Ruffin (March 28, 2014). Uninvited Neighbors: African Americans in Silicon Valley, 1769–1990. University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 45–. ISBN 978-0-8061-4583-9.
  4. ^ Delilah Leontium Beasley (1919). The Negro Trail Blazers of California: A Compilation of Records from the California Archives in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, in Berkeley; and from the Diaries, Old Papers, and Conversations of Old Pioneers in the State of California ... Times Mirror printing and binding house. pp. 232–.
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