Betty Hill (activist)
Her efforts were significant in making certain that segregation and racial discrimination were unable to gain a foothold in Southern California as they did in the South.
It originally opened as a college for ex-slaves, and one of its founders was her (probable) uncle Daniel L. Lapsley, an attorney and justice of the peace who was forced to leave the state due to racial persecution.
By 1898 she was married to a Buffalo soldier, also from Nashville, named Abraham Houston Hill, a sergeant in Company B of the 24th Infantry Regiment.
Hill was noted as a distinguished marksman and expert rifleman who made the top score at the infantrymen’s competition for the United States Army, and his skill was reported in newspapers across the country.
In 1913, Dr. John Somerville (who, along with his wife Vada, were the first two black graduates of the University of Southern California [USC] School of Dentistry) wrote a letter to the headquarters of the NAACP in New York saying that there was great interest in starting a chapter in Los Angeles.
Performers, which not only included world-famous musicians but actors and sports figures, stayed at the Dunbar while they visited the Club Alabam.
[citation needed] In 1920, Betty Hill helped form the Westside Homeowner’s Association to fight acts of bigotry and self-protection.
The Playground Commission created a policy where African Americans could only use the new city swimming pool in Exposition Park on "colored" days.
Political study clubs existed since the late 19th century, growing in prominence as the passage of the twentieth amendment neared.
It not only sought to promote African Americans and fight racial discrimination, it also fought against the New Deal and policies that were seen as collectivist and advanced the cause of the Republican Party.
Being a realist, however, after the mass migration of African Americans from the Republican to the Democratic Party in the 1930s, she changed the name to the Women’s Political Study Club.
However, through Mrs. Hill’s Women’s Political Study Club, she was selected to go to Washington in person as an envoy to present President Harry S. Truman with a resolution condemning bias in the Capital.
The resolution, signed by whites and African Americans, not only called for an end to bias in Washington but pointed out that many foreign diplomats leave the country with an impression that discrimination is government policy.
Seeking support from what she believed were allies in the same cause, in September 1946 Hill sent a copy of the resolution to the president of the California Council of Republican Women, Barbara Whittiker.
[citation needed] Although officially President Franklin D. Roosevelt ended racial discrimination in the military, it still existed at that time.
When the military refused to bring back World War II fighter pilot Captain William R. Melton to active duty, Betty Hill, the WPSC, and California Congressman Gordon L. McDonough went to work and got results.
Betty Hill was a founding member of the Los Angeles branch of the, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was formed in 1913.
Beyond her activities with the NAACP and the WPSC, she helped initiate the Urban League's Los Angeles chapter; was a Republican State Central Committeewoman of Southern California, 63rd District; was active with the Eastside Settlement House, and the National Council of Women; was the first chairperson of Girls Reserve of the YWCA, 12th Street Branch; the Vice-President of the Organization of National Defense, West Coast; and was also a delegate to the 1940 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia (the first African American female west of the Rockies to serve as a delegate).
Additionally, it was a huge risk for a white senator to ask an African American woman to run a campaign while America was still in the throes of Jim Crow.
