Adella Hunt Logan

Adella Hunt Logan (February 10, 1863 – December 10, 1915) was an African-American writer, educator, administrator and suffragist. Born during the Civil War, she earned her teaching credentials at Atlanta University, an historically black college founded by the American Missionary Association. She became a teacher at the Tuskegee Institute and became an activist for education and suffrage for women of color. As part of her advocacy, she published articles in some of the most noted black periodicals of her time.

Early life and education Adella Hunt was born in 1863 in Sparta, Georgia, to parents Mariah Hunt, a free woman of color, and Henry Hunt, a plantation owner. She was their fourth of eight children. Her father provided her with an education at Bass Academy, and she became certified as a teacher at the age of 16. Hunt gained a scholarship to Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia, founded by the American Missionary Association (AMA) after the Civil War. There she attended the Upper Normal College, where she got a teacher's education and graduated in 1881 after completing the two-year program. Hunt spent two years teaching in Albany, Georgia, at an AMA primary school.

Hunt Logan wrote many articles for The Crisis, as well as the Colored American magazine. In most of her arguments for universal suffrage, Hunt Logan returned to her roots in education. She argued that African-American women should be given the vote so that they would have a say in education legislation. After her close friend Booker T. Washington died in November 1915, Hunt Logan fell deeper into depression. On December 10, 1915, she committed suicide by jumping from the top floor of a building on the Tuskegee campus.

Five years after her death, the United States passed the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote, effective in 1920. Hunt Logan had fought for this right for many years. Today she is taught in schools because of her influence, especially as an advocate for women's suffrage and women of color.