Jenkins, Maude Veal
Biographical Statement
There is very little biographical information regarding the life of Maude Veal Jenkins. Jenkins was a Boston native who earned two graduate degrees. Before her move to South Carolina from Cinicinatti, Ohio, Jenkins worked as a Dean of Women at a black university. Her husband, Frank Veal, was appointed as pastor of Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which prompted their move to South Carolina. Jenkins worked as a school teacher and was the first Black woman to be accepted into the League of Women Voters (LWV) in South Carolina, an all- white political organization that encouraged the participation of citizens in government. Initially, when Jenkins applied for membership to the LWV she did not reveal her race and was promptly accepted. However, when the LWV's president learned of Jenkin's race she tried to persuade Jenkins to form a separate black women's voters auxillary but Jenkins refused.
Jenkins and her husband were close friends of Federal Judge Julius Waties Waring and his wife Elizabeth Avery Waring. Waring, born in 1880 in Charleston, South Carolina, was nominated to the federal bench in 1942 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Waring, descended from eight generations of Waties and Warings in Charleston and a father who was a Confederate, deviated from the established segregated racial hierarchy in Charleston by ruling favorably in cases that granted civil rights to African Americans. These rulings included voting for equal pay for black teachers (1944), declaring the all white-Democratic Party primary in South Carolina to be unconstitutional (1947), and the Briggs v. Elliot case that attacked segregation in South Carolina schools. Due to his judicial support for civil rights of African Americans, Waring and his wife became social pariahs amongst the white Charleston community. They were harassed and threatened to a point where they eventually left Charleston and moved to New York, New York. Waring died in 1968. He had one child, Anne, from his first marriage with wife Annie Gammell.
Citation:
Author: Chianta DorseyCitation:
Yarborough, Tinsley E. A Passion for Justice: J. Waties Waring and Civil Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.Charron, Katherine Mellen. Freedom's Teachers: The Life of Septima Clark. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
Rosen, Robert N. "Judge J. Waties Waring: Charleston's Inside Agitator." Post and Courier, April 10, 2014. Accessed May 30, 2015. http://www.postandcourier.com/article/ 20140410/ PC1002/ 140419992.