Victoria Jackson Gray Adams (November 5, 1926 – August 12, 2006) was an American civil rights activist from Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
They returned to the United States and lived in Maryland, during which time Adams worked as a cosmetics sales representative.
[1] Victoria Gray Adams' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement began in the early 1960s when she convinced her pastor to open up their church to workers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
She announced that she and others from the tiny Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, of which she was a founding member, along with Fannie Lou Hamer and Annie Devine, would challenge the power of white segregationist politicians like Stennis.
The time had come, she said, to pay attention "to the Negro in Mississippi, who had not even had the leavings from the American political table."
Adams called the MFDP the true Democratic Party and boasted its accomplishment of tearing down the "curtain of fear in Mississippi for African Americans demanding their rights."
When Adams ran for the MFDP in 1964, one of the main issues she planned on focusing on during the campaign was education for citizens in the state.
She also stated that "Unemployment, automation, inadequate housing, health care, education, and rural development are the real issues in Mississippi, not 'states rights' or 'federal encroachment.
The same three women (Adams, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Annie Devine) were honored congressional guests in 1968, and were seated on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) recognized that the convention wasn't helping with their representation problems.
Adams states the umbrella organizations, which include but are not limited to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, didn't have enough resources to invest into the Civil Rights Movement.
Virginia Times article “Victoria Jackson Grey Adams” member of “Concerned Citizens of Petersburg” movement about “ Health care for All”