Voorhees, Lillian Welch papers 1973 addendum, 1917-1972 | Amistad Research Center

Dr. Lillian Welch Voorhees was a civil rights activist and educator who taught at Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Mississippi (1917-1927), Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama(1928-1943), and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee (1943-1970). Voorhees had a particular interest in race relations, discrimination in accommodation, missionary work, and theater. Voorhees, daughter of Emma Welch and Garrett Scott Voorhees, was born on February 6, 1896, in Bedminster, New Jersey. She was the older sister to Garrett Scott Voorhees, Jr. (1900-1921) who died in a railway accident while a Junior at Rutgers University. After her early education in the public schools of Basking Ridge, New Jersey, Voorhees attended Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts (1913-1917). After receiving her bachelor's degree, Voorhees started teaching at Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Mississippi, as a missionary-teacher employed by the American Missionary Association in 1917. Voorhees originally intended to become a missionary in China; however, she was advised to acquire experience in the field home missions work first. From 1920-1924, Voorhees spent the summers studying at the Teacher's College of Columbia University in New York. After the death of her younger brother, Garrett, in 1921, Voorhees's parents moved from Basking Ridge to Tougaloo, and her father became the superintendent of the Tougaloo College farm (some 400 acres) while her mother worked as the director of the girls' dormitory and residences. During the summer of 1924, Voorhees assisted Olivia M. Hunter, a student and informally adopted sister, to live in New York City to study music. Hunter spent the summer at the Voorhees' farm in Basking Ridge, where she rested and studied organ with the local church organist. In collaboration with Hunter, Voorhees arranged "An' de Walls Came Tumbling Down: an Evening with Paul Laurence Dunbar," a dramatization with songs for 45 poems and two short stories. This would be her first play, which was produced at Tougaloo College in 1926 and 1927. In 1927, Voorhees left Tougaloo to accept a new position at Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama. Voorhees participated in an international summer theater tour (England and Germany) and was awarded a Drama League Scholarship to study at the Central School of Speech in London, England in 1932. In 1943, Voorhees received her doctorate in Speech Education from Teachers College at Columbia University. During this same year, Voorhees became a professor of Speech and Dramatics at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. At Fisk, she helped establish a drama major at the institution and was named the first chairperson of the new Department of Speech and Dramatics. She retired from this position in 1963. Voorhees associated herself with a predominately black church, the Union Church (Congregational) at Fisk University, where she served as treasurer (1944-1970), and to which she left a considerable sum upon her death. She also worked closely with the Eighteenth Avenue Community Center in Nashville (1955-1971), holding various administrative offices. She attempted to persuade the Children's Theatre of Nashville to accept an open policy of admission, and to reopen the Fisk University Social Center as a gathering place for neighborhood children. Voorhees was a member of numerous professional speech and drama organizations such as the American Educational Theatre Association (1943-1971), the American National Theatre and Academy (1947-1963), and the National Association of Dramatic and Speech Arts (1936-1971. In all cases, she sought to have conventions held in cities and hotels where accommodations were available to all and where everyone had access to meetings. Dr. Voorhees died in 1972.Sources:
The papers of Lillian W. Voorhees.

African American educators
African American theater
Discrimination in accommodations