First Baptist Church Bible SchoolPaxton participated in an extensive array of community, church, and political activities and was an officer or member of almost every African American women’s organization in the city. By 1905 she was helping organize local chapters of the Independent Order of Calanthe, the women’s affiliate of the Knights of Pythias, an African American fraternal association headed by John Mitchell Jr., editor of the
Richmond Planet. At Roanoke’s prominent First Baptist Church, Paxton was the longtime teacher of the Dorcas Bible Class, vice president of the Missionary Society, and a leader in the Helping Hand Club, which assisted in special services and observances. First Baptist’s
(Photo courtesy of Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division)
As
Encyclopedia Virginia director Peter Hedlund recently noted here on the
EV blog, we are committed to revising existing entries to eliminate racial bias and better reflect new historical understandings of key moments in Virginia history.
One such entry that needed revision was our entry on Woman Suffrage in Virginia, which failed to adequately note the contributions of Black women to the suffrage fight. As Brent Staples noted in the
New York Times, white suffrage leaders intentionally obscured the contributions of Black women to the movement and “looked away from the racism that tightened its grip on the fight for the women’s vote in the years after the Civil War.”