Elizabeth Simpson Drewry
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Elizabeth Simpson Drewry | |
|---|---|
| In office 1951–1966 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | September 22, 1893 Motley, Virginia, U.S. |
| Died | September 24, 1979 (aged 86) Welch, West Virginia, U.S. |
| Party | Democratic |
| Alma mater | Bluefield State Teacher's College |
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Elizabeth Simpson Drewry (September 22, 1893 – September 24, 1979) was an American politician from the state of West Virginia. In 1950, she became the first African-American woman to be elected to the West Virginia Legislature. She served eight terms in the House of Delegates.[1]
Drewry was born September 22, 1893, in Motley, Virginia.[2] She was the oldest of 10 children. Her family moved to Elkhorn, West Virginia, when she was a child.[1] Her family was part of the earliest generation of the Great Migration. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many African Americans moved to West Virginia attracted by work opportunities in the growing mining communities across the state. Between 1900-1910, McDowell County, where Drewry grew up and attended public school, experienced the largest increase in African-American residents in the state. By the end of the decade, thirty percent of the population of McDowell County was African American.[3]
Drewry's father owned a successful barbershop and a home in Elkhorn. Drewry's family was part of a growing black middle class, a group that stressed education as a means of personal improvement and racial uplift in the early twentieth century.[4] She graduated from the Bluefield State Teacher's College in 1934 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education.[5] She had also previously attended Wilberforce University and the University of Cincinnati.[1] She was married to Bluefield professor William H. Drewry.[6] They had one child, a daughter named Lucille.[7] As an active member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, the National Association of Colored Women, and her church, Drewry instituted community programs to improve the lives of adults and children in need and spoke for racial justice and education.[1]