The Evening Star (May 2, 1946)
Slave’s granddaughter selected as American mother of 1946
Mrs. Emma Clement of Louisville first Negro to get award
NEW YORK (AP) – Mrs. Emma Clarissa Clement of Louisville, Kentucky, 71-year-old mother of seven children and a granddaughter of a slave, is the American mother of 1946 – the first colored woman so honored by the American Mothers Committee of the Golden Rule Foundation.
Advised of her selection last night while attending the district conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church at Springfield, Kentucky, Mrs. Clement said: “I am very proud of the honor for my race, for my children and for my church.”
She was notified by a daughter, who telephoned from Louisville, and was “so overjoyed I couldn’t say anything at first.”
Mrs. Clement is the 12th mother selected since the start of the award in 1935. She is expected to come to New York to represent American mothers during the Mother’s Day observance.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island
Mrs. Clement was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and attended Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina. There she met and married George Clinton Clement who later became a bishop in the church. He died 11 years ago.
Her children, all graduates of Livingstone, are: Mrs. Abbie Jackson, executive secretary of the Women’s Home and Foreign Mission Society, A. M. E. Zion Church; Rufus E. Clement, president of Atlanta University; Frederick A. Clement, professor of physics at West Virginia College; Ruth G. Bond, wife of the director of the Inter-American Foundation in Haiti; George W. Clement, a Red Cross recreation director in Italy; Maj. James A. Clement, Army chaplain on leave from Hood Theological Seminary, and Emma C. Walker, Tuskegee Institute English professor.
She has seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Hold many offices
Mrs. Clement is district president of the Women’s Home and Foreign Mission Society and chorister at the Broadway Temple Church in Louisville. She also is charter member of the Southern Commission on Inter-Racial Cooperation; secretary (Negro division) of the Kentucky Division of the American Field Army Cancer Society, and a statistician of the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs.
One of the committee members who voted for Mrs. Clement was Miss Mary E. Hughes of New York City, a native of Louisville and a member of the Society of Kentucky Women.
“I never dreamed I would ever in my life vote for a Negro,” she said yesterday. “But when I saw her record, I couldn’t be fair and serve on the committee without recognizing it.”
State mothers elected
Twenty-six state mothers also were elected by the committee. Among these were Mrs. Harold H. Burton, wife of the Supreme Court justice, representing the District of Columbia; Mrs. Roberta Fulbright, mother of Sen. Fulbright of Arkansas, and Mrs. Carl Bong, mother of the late war air ace, Maj. Richard Ira Bong.
Mrs. Burton, who lives here in the Dodge Hotel, is the mother of two sons and two daughters and has six grandchildren, all of whom live out of town.
Mrs. Fulbright is a resident of Fayetteville, Arkansas, where she has been actively engaged in managing six businesses bequeathed her by her husband, who died in 1923. She is the mother of two sons, including the senator, and three daughters, including twins. Mrs. Bong’s home is in Poplar, Wisconsin.