I’m not completely sure about other non-whites, but the DAR had adopted the rule excluding black artists from the Constitution Hall nearly nine years prior following protests from some members over “mixed seating” at concerts of black artists. Despite this news story, the DAR’s “white performers only” policy was still official in the books until 1952.
As for the members themselves, membership in the DAR was and is open to women who can prove lineal bloodline descent from an ancestor who aided in achieving independence. There may have been non-white members before the 1970s (even in 1941), however, I haven’t come across documentation of those members as of now.
It is believed that some blacks have joined the society in the past but were not identified or recognized as such because they were so light‐skinned. Airs. Baylies said she had no way of knowing whether any blacks had applied for membership and been turned down because of color, since the national organization does not ask about an applicant’s race.
That was from a New York Times article about the admission of Karen Batchelor Farmer in December 1977. Yes, I know it’s the New York Times, but here it goes.
The New York Times (December 28, 1977)
A DETROIT BLACK WOMAN’S ROOTS LEAD TO A WELCOME IN THE D.A.R.
By William K. Stevens
Detroit, Dec. 27 –
After Karen Farmer’s son was born in August 1975, she decided to stay home for a while and “be an earth mother.” By January, she was bored silly.
I mean, I was climbing the walls.
Like many other modern young middle‐class women, she began looking for a way to “do something with my head.”
And like many other American blacks, even in those days before the publication of Alex Haley’s Roots, Mrs. Farmer became fascinated by personal and family origins. So what she did with her head was trace her ancestry.
The search did not turn up any Kunta Kinte in an African village. It turned up instead a direct ancestor, in some ways just as intriguing: a soldier, one William Hood, who served as a private in the Patriot Army in the American Revolution.
‘Delighted to have her’
Basically, that is how Karen Batchelor Farmer got to be the first known black member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, an organization that has been scorned as racist ever since it denied Marian Anderson, the singer, permission to perform in the DAR Constitution Hall in Washington in 1939.
But the society, said to be the largest women’s organization in the country, has nevertheless been trying to live the Anderson incident down for four decades. So in today’s changing social climate, the DAR says it welcomes Mrs. Farmer.
Jeannette O. Baylies of Scarsdale, N.Y., the organization’s president-general, said in a telephone interview:
Everyone who’s met her feels that she’s the tops, and we’re delighted to have her.
What is perhaps more surprising is that someone like Mrs. Farmer would go to all the trouble it took for her to become the 623,128th member of a group like the DAR (She was admitted last October, but the fact became generally known only this month).
Mrs. Farmer doesn’t quite fit the stereotypical image of the “Daughter” – the conservative, rigidly patriotic, lurid clubwoman with broad sash and strings of ribbons.
Slender, lively and a stylish dresser, the 26-year-old Mrs. Farmer is a political liberal who grew up reading W. E. B. DuBois and Herbert Aptheker and who was “slightly radical” as a student at Fisk University, where she was among the first women to wear jeans in place of dresses.
She is a dedicated city dweller who lives in a townhouse in downtown Detroit with her husband, a building contractor, and their young son, and she is involved in a real estate business with Shirl Lanier, wife of the captain of the Detroit Pistons basketball team.
When asked why she would go through all the trouble it took for her to become a member of the DAR, she said with a smile:
People have asked me that.
She did not do it just to become the fIrst black – a “blockbuster,” as she puts it – although she says her father, a Detroit physician, is “ecstatic” about that aspect. And she says she is not “into their patriotic thing” or the organization’s politics.
She sought membership, she says, because it would enhance her standing as a genealogist.
When she began her genealogical detective work, Mrs. Farmer knew her ancestry only three generations back on her mother’s side. In that line, great-grandmother Jennie Daisy Hood, a white woman, married Prince Albert Weaver, a black man, in Cleveland in 1889. Working from death certificates, burial lists and marriage licenses, Mrs. Farmer traced Jennie Hood Weaver’s origins back to William Hood. He was an Irish native, born around 1757, who came to America and served in the Revolution as a private 6th class in the Lancaster (Pa.) County Militia.
Clearly in the grip of intellectual excitement, Mrs. Farmer has continued on the many‐branching trails of origin and is finding that hers is not exactly an ordinary sort of lineage. Another Revolutionary forebear has turned tip. Just about every trail sooner or later crosses racial lines, leading her to believe that if her genealogy is at all representative, there has been more racial intermarriage in America than is commonly thought.
Mrs. Farmer has found relatives, all of them white, who fought on both sides in the Civil War.
It was a librarian, after Mrs. Farmer had pinned down her Revolutionary ancestry, who suggested that she try to join the DAR. There are two basic requirements: proof that a direct ancestor served in or aided the Revolution and person acceptance and sponsorship by a local DAR chapter.
Chapters in Detroit area
Mrs. Farmer made the first overtures by getting in touch with members of two chapters in the Detroit area. From the start, she made it clear she was black. For a time there was no response.
Let’s put it this way. I received no follow‐up on my calls.
According to Mrs. Baylies. Mrs. Farmer’s initiative was met with some consternation.
The president-general said:
To be perfectly frank, I believe one membership chairman went into a tizzy and got little alarmed, and I think then called the state regent.
The state regent, Mrs. Eldon Behr, called Mrs. Baylies. Mrs. Baylies said she told Mrs. Behr:
I thought the chapter that was willing to take her would do a great service to the national society.
The matter was discussed at a meeting of the Michigan DAR’s state board, Mrs. Behr said, and a member of the Ezra Parker Chapter, based in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak, volunteered to sponsor Mrs. Farmer. This chapter is a large one with a diverse membership and many younger members throughout the metropolitan area, Mrs. Behr explained. In addition, it has a number of active genealogists.
One step remaineth – for DAR genealogists to verify Mrs. Farmer’s research. They did.
That’s what really makes me proud, the fact that my stuff stood up under intense scrutiny. My research was flawless on this line, and that makes me feel good, because I’m a researcher.”
Mrs. Baylies says that the response from within the DAR, as measured by letters received has been “99% most favorable.”
There were exceptions. A grotto of California Daughters, for example, questioned the validity of Mrs. Farmer’s genealogical proof, and accused the national DAR of “hanky‐panky,” Mrs. Baylies said, and requested Mrs. Farmer’s papers. Such papers are available to a DAR member unless the subject wishes to “close” them. Mrs. Farmer chose to close hers.
I’ve already passed. Why should I have somebody nit‐picking over it for whatever reason?
With the surge in interest in black origins, Mrs. Baylies said:
We’re bound to eventually have more blacks in the DAR and that doesn’t bother us one single bit.
It is believed that some blacks have joined the society in the past but were not identified or recognized as such because they were so light‐skinned. Airs. Baylies said she had no way of knowing whether any blacks had applied for membership and been turned down because of color, since the national organization does not ask about an applicant’s race.
Calls her the first
Mrs. Baylies said that to her knowledge, however, Mrs. Farmer was the first black woman who identified herself as such from the start in seeking a local chapter’s approval.
The president‐general acknowledged that the DAR had made no active effort to seek black members or members of any other ethnic group as such. But for some years past, she said, blacks would have been admitted. Some members of the society insist that any black who undertook the task of tracing her lineage could have become a member before now.
To say the least, this has excited some doubt. In a 1974 book, The Daughters, the author, Peggy Anderson, noted that some day a black woman would surely apply for membership in the DAR.
Very likely it would accept her. Whether it does or not, its decision will provide a fair basis for judging the DAR’s racial attitudes.
Whatever else the DAR is today – the conservative, still dominated by stereotypical characters or, as some believe. increasingly open to younger, more flexible women – its leaders feel it has now passed the Peggy Anderson test.
Mrs. Baylies said:
I say let’s forget about the Marian Anderson incident and go forward.