Vivian Osborne Marsh

Vivian Osborne Marsh (September 5, 1898 – March 8, 1986) was an American clubwoman based in San Francisco, California. She was president of the California State Association of Colored Women, and national president of Delta Sigma Theta.

Early life Vivian Costroma Osborne was born in Houston, Texas, the daughter of Benjamin J. Osborne and Alice Estes Osborne. She moved to California with her sister and their widowed mother in 1913. She graduated from Berkeley High School in 1914. She earned a bachelor's degree (1920) and a master's degree (1922) in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She was the first Black woman to major in anthropology and first Black woman to receive a master's degree from Berkeley. in Her master's thesis was titled "Types and Distribution of Negro Folklore in America". In 1921, Marsh is credited with chartering the Kappa chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and later, the Berkeley Bay Area Alumnae Chapter. This makes the Kappa chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc,the second National Pan-Hellenic Council sorority chartered in California, after Alpha Kappa Alpha's Rho chapter. She later earned a teaching credential from UCLA, in 1932.

Career Marsh remained active with Delta Sigma Theta throughout her life, establishing the Berkeley Bay Area Alumnae Chapter in 1934, and was the sorority's seventh national president, from 1935 to 1939. During her time as president of Delta Sigma Theta, she organized a traveling library for rural Georgia, and Teen Lift, a program to improve access to concerts, operas, and plays for black teenagers. Marsh was an active member and leader of several other fraternal associations, including Heroines of Jericho, the Order of Calanthe, and Prince Hall Order of the Eastern Star. She was elected president of the California State Association of Colored Women in 1941.

During World War II, she christened a Navy cargo ship, the S. S. Ocean Telegraph, in Oakland in 1944.

Marsh took part in Republican Party politics in California. She was a member of the State Republican Legislative Council, and of the Alameda County Republican Central Committee. In 1956 she was vice president of the Alameda County Republican League. She was appointed to the Planning Commission in the city of Berkeley, and chaired the Board of Adjustments.

Personal life Vivian Osborne married a fellow Texan, World War I veteran Leon F. Marsh, in 1921. They raised two sons, Roy Curtin Osborne and Leon F. Marsh Jr.; Leon Jr., the first black firefighter in Berkeley, died in 1956. She was widowed when Leon Sr. died in 1968, and she died on March 8, 1986, aged 87 years, at a nursing home in El Cerrito, California, following a stroke and was survived by 5 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. Canadian football player Dante Marsh is her great-grandson.