A plaque and scholarship will honor Lena Ferguson who, after initially being denied membership, pushed to make the Daughters of the American Revolution more inclusive to women of color.
In 1980, Lena Ferguson wanted to connect with her ancestry and aimed to join the Daughters of the American Revolution. But after multiple attempts, she was denied by a local D.C. chapter. It led to a fight to make the organization more inclusive of Black and other women of color.Four decades later, Ferguson is being recognized with a plaque in a memorial garden at DAR’s National Headquarters and with a scholarship renamed in Ferguson’s honor.
Ferguson sought to join the DAR in the early 1980s after being encouraged by her nephew, Maurice Barboza, who had connected the family’s lineage to the Revolutionary War, a requirement for membership. Her ancestor is Jonah Gay, a member of the town committee of Friendship, Maine, that supported the war effort.But her attempts to become a member of a Washington chapter of the DAR were initially rebuffed because of her race.
“She was just a remarkable person. People go through these awful things, and she just did it with such grace and such dignity, and such decency,” said Patricia Brannan, a lawyer who represented Ferguson in the early 1980s in her fight to be admitted into the DAR. “She knew she had been wronged and that she didn’t want it to happen to anyone else.”Serena Ferguson had pushed the DAR for years to name its D.C. scholarships in honor of her mother.
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