Mary Lucifer Influence On Society

Since the conception of the United States of America there has been an underlying issue of Civil Rights, especially how those rights pertain to African Americans. As time has passed there have been many brave people who dared to challenge the status quo of the African American’s position in society. One of those people was Mary White Ovington. Due to family and religious influences in Mary’s early years she grew to understand the struggle of the African Americans. Through this understanding Mary was able to help establish organizations to aid in the battle of Civil Rights. Mary White Ovington’s work in the Civil Rights Movement helped define a future of equality. Mary White Ovington’s ambitions in her later years were very much shaped by the environment she was raised in. Mary’s family was progressive in their ideas on society. Many of Mary’s family members were abolitionists before she was born. A strong influence on Mary was her family’s involvement in the the Second Unitarian Church in Brooklyn, New York. Her church had no creed; over its door was the motto, “The Truth Shall Make You Free”. Yet an even greater influence was the minister in the church, John White Chadwick. John was known to be unusually radical in his preachings. He was very firm on the belief that African Americans were entitled to the same rights as any …show more content…
It was here Mary became increasingly aware of the discrimination the African American community was facing. In 1903, after Ovington heard a speech by Booker T. Washington, a prominent African American spokesman of the day, she realized even more forcibly how much discrimination African Americans encountered in the North. Mary was finally shown the true colors of the world she was living in. With all she had now learned from living in the city with impoverished African Americans she decided to investigate how this racial divide would affect New