There were seven siblings, who by birth order were: Elizabeth (teacher), Hope (clergyman), Alva (politician), Morris (lawyer), Grace (writer), and Katharine (academic).
In her autobiography, Lumpkin describes her shock upon learning that her all-white chapter of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) would be addressed by a black woman named Miss Jane Arthur.
In realizing that nothing fundamentally distinguished Miss Arthur from a white woman, she said that she had touched the "tabernacle of our sacred racial beliefs" and "not the slightest thing had happened".
At the end of her term at Mount Holyoke she accepted a one-year postdoctoral fellow at the Social Sciences Research Council in New York City.
In her most notable work, The Making of a Southerner (1947), Lumpkin autobiographically explored her upbringing in a former slaveholding family that supported the Lost Cause narrative of the Civil War.
[12] On southern slaveholders and how her father was raised she has written that:"Above all, he would know his slaves, each by name and each for his good points and foibles, most of them being inherited, or the children of those who had been handed down.
"[13]The rest of the biography focuses on Lumpkin's own upbringing in the South and her life experiences as a Southerner in the North and Midwest.