14 Facts About Christia Adair

Christia V Daniels Adair was an African-American suffragist and civil rights worker based in Texas.

Christia Adair had an older half-sister whom her mother had legally adopted, and two younger brothers.

Christia Adair attended Samuel Huston College, which her godfather co-founded and trained to teach at the Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College, graduating in 1915.

Christia Adair moved to Houston in 1925, and joined the city's chapter of the NAACP in 1943.

Christia Adair served the chapter as executive secretary from 1949 or 1950 to 1959, through the period of the landmark Smith v Allwright case.

Christia Adair refused to divulge the group's membership rolls to police due to the belief that the Houston police were trying to procure the list in order to break up the chapter, under the guise of claims of barratry.

Christia Adair was one of the chapter members who testified during the trial regarding the attempted seizure of the chapter's records.

Christia Adair worked on desegregation of the Houston Public Library, airport, hospital, and public transit facilities, as well as department store dressing rooms.

Christia Adair was part of the effort to make black Texans eligible to serve on juries, and to be hired for county jobs.

Christia Adair co-founded the Harris County Democrats, an integrated organization, and in 1966 was the first African-American woman elected to the state's Democratic Executive Committee.

Christia Adair was active in the Methodist Episcopal Church from childhood, and was the first woman on the denomination's general board.

Christia Adair gave an interview in 1977 to the Black Women Oral History Project at Harvard's Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.

Christia Adair Daniels was widowed in 1943 and died in 1989 at 96.

Christia Adair's papers are archived in the collection of the Houston Public Library, within the African American Library at the Gregory School in the Fourth Ward.