Historic Huntsville Foundation Celebrates Madison County's First Black Women Voters

From the Historic Huntsville Foundation:

January 6, 2021

Following the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920, over 100,000 Alabama women registered to vote, including 1,373 Madison County women. Of those, six were Black women. Soon, the names of these heroes–Mary Wood Binford, Ellen Scruggs Brandon, India Leslie Herndon, Lou Bertha Johnson, Dora Fackler Lowery, and Celia Horton Love—will be inscribed in the Huntsville landscape for posterity, with a historic marker placed in their honor at Councill High Memorial Park. This marker will memorialize the courage of six Black women who walked up the steps of the Madison County Courthouse in Jim Crow Alabama and claimed their right to vote.

Madison County’s first Black women voters lived in a community whose political and civil rights were threatened by the rise of white supremacy. Black citizens fought vigorously to retain the political and civil rights granted to them by the Constitution’s 14th and 15th amendments. They took their disputes to the courts, and by the late 1800s these cases landed at the Supreme Court. The highest court in the land codified legal segregation with its 1896 ruling in Plessy V. Ferguson. The Supreme Court also upheld the constitutionality of Alabama’s 1901 constitution, which imposed property, literacy, residency requirements and the payment of a poll tax to qualify for voter registration. Through these provisions, over 178,000 Black males lost their right to vote.

All of Madison County’s Black women voters were the daughters and granddaughters of formerly enslaved people who had established a foothold of success in the decades following slavery.

The 19th amendment offered some Black women an opportunity to defend their community, their families and themselves through the exercise of their voting rights. All of Madison County’s Black women voters were the daughters and granddaughters of formerly enslaved people who had established a foothold of success in the decades following slavery. Their fathers, brothers and husbands had voting rights before the 1901 Constitution. In fact, several of their male family members held elected office. Huntsville voters elected Henry C. Binford, Sr., the father-in-law of Mary Binford, and Daniel Brandon, the husband of Ellen Brandon as city aldermen.

The women and their husbands were successful members of Huntsville’s Black community. Ellen and Daniel Brandon owned a prosperous construction company. Lou Bertha and Shelby Johnson owned Grand Shine Parlor, a dry-cleaning business. India and A. J. Herndon owned Citizens Drug Store, and Dora and Leroy Lowery owned businesses in the Church Street business district. Leroy Lowery also served on the Board of the Supreme Life Insurance Company of Illinois.

Celia Love McCrary was the only woman whose income was related to agriculture. She and her husband owned a large farm in Mullen’s Flat, now part of Redstone Arsenal. Her husband, Adolphus Love, was reputed to be the wealthiest Black man in Madison County. Their commitment to education is clear: in 1917, Celia and Adolphus Love donated land to the state of Alabama for the construction of what became the Silver Hill Rosenwald School. This one-room school house provided a first through eighth grade education to Black children in the Mullins Flat community. Students wishing to finish their education were required to transfer to Councill High School, the only high school for Black students in Madison County.

All the women had formal educations. In fact, Binford, Brandon, Herndon, and Lowery taught at the school eventually named for William Hooper Councill. Mary Binford and her husband, Henry C. Binford, Jr. both graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C. Henry Binford retired as the principal of Councill High in 1918.

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This press release was produced by the Historic Huntsville Foundation. The views expressed are the author's own.