Ruby Hurley

Ruby Hurley (November 7, 1909 – August 9, 1980) was an American civil rights activist. She was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement and administrator for the NAACP, and was known as the "queen of civil rights". she attended Miner Teachers College (now known as University of the District of Columbia) and Robert H. Terrell Law School. She worked briefly for the federal government and at the Industrial Bank of Washington.

Career with the NAACP For the next four years, Hurley worked reorganizing the D.C. branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), bolstering their youth council. Walter Francis White, who headed the NAACP, appointed Hurley to the position of national Youth Secretary in 1943. She moved to New York City and stayed in that role until 1950.

In 1951, she moved from New York to Birmingham, Alabama, to set up an NAACP office and oversee membership drives in Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. It was the first permanent NAACP office located in the Deep South. She became Regional Secretary of the NAACP's newly formed Southeast Regional Office the following year. Following the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954, Hurley worked to implement racial integration in the South. In order to interview witnesses for Till's case, Hurley wore cotton picker's clothes. In 1956, Hurley helped to prepare the case of Autherine Lucy to be allowed to attend the University of Alabama.

Hurley was forced to flee Alabama in the night on June 1, 1956, after the state barred the NAACP from operating there. She moved to Atlanta where she opened a regional office four months later. The headquarters became a focal point for civil rights organizers and Hurley worked alongside Vernon Jordan. Jordan and Fredericka Thompson Bradley assisted Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton E. Holmes in gaining admission to the University of Georgia in 1961. The Chattanooga–Hamilton County NAACP hosts an annual Ruby Hurley Image Awards. In 2009, Hurley was featured alongside Ella Baker on a 42-cent stamp.