{{Short description|American rights activist (1862–1957)}} {{Infobox person | name = Ida Alexander Gibbs Hunt | image = Photo of Ida Gibbs.jpg | alt = | caption = | birth_name = Ida Alexander Gibbs | birth_date = {{birth date|1862|11|16|mf=y}} | birth_place = Victoria, British Columbia, Canada | death_date = {{death date and age|1957|12|19|1862|11|16|mf=y}} | death_place = Washington, D.C. | resting_place = Lincoln Memorial Cemetery | other_names = | alma_mater = Oberlin College | occupation = Educator, Civil Rights Activist, & Pan-Africanist | years_active = | known_for = | notable_works = | spouse = {{marriage|William Henry Hunt|1904}} | relatives = Father, Mifflin Wistar Gibbs; Sister, Harriet Gibbs Marshall }}
'''Ida Alexander Gibbs Hunt''' (November 16, 1862 – December 19, 1957)<ref>{{Cite web |date=2008-06-23 |title=Ida Alexander Gibbs Hunt (1862-1957) • |url=https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/hunt-ida-alexander-gibbs-1862-1957/ |access-date=2022-03-06 |language=en-US}}</ref> was an advocate of racial and gender equality and co-founded one of the first YWCAs in Washington, D.C., for African-Americans in 1905.<ref name=":3">{{cite journal|last1=Ardizzone|first1=Heidi|date=2013|title=Marriage, Melanin, and American Racialism|journal=Reviews in American History|volume=41|issue=2|pages=282–291|doi=10.1353/rah.2013.0048|jstor=43661544|s2cid=143048419}}</ref><ref name="blackpast">{{cite web|date=23 June 2008|title=Hunt, Ida Alexander Gibbs (1862-1957) {{!}} The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed|url=http://www.blackpast.org/aah/hunt-ida-alexander-gibbs-1862-1957|access-date=14 February 2017|website=www.blackpast.org|language=en}}</ref> She was the daughter of Judge Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, the wife of William Henry Hunt, and a longtime friend of W. E. B. Du Bois.<ref name=":1">{{cite news|date=22 Dec 1957|title=Ida Gibbs Hunt|page=B2|newspaper=The Washington Post|id={{ProQuest|149009999}}}}</ref><ref name=":5">{{cite news|title=Husband And Wife Duo Paved The Way For Blacks In Diplomacy|work=NPR|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123565407|id={{ProQuest|1015821265}}}}</ref> Along with Du Bois, she was a leader of the early Pan-African movement.
==Early life and education== Ida's father, Judge Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, was one of the wealthiest African-Americans in the United States in the late nineteenth century.<ref name=":5" /> Before he acquired wealth, he and his wife, Maria Ann Alexander Gibbs, traveled from Pennsylvania to California and finally to Vancouver Island where Ida Alexander Gibbs Hunt was born on November 16, 1862, in Victoria, British Columbia. Ten years later, in 1872, the Gibbs family returned to the United States as an affluent family.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|last=Alexander|first=Adele Logan|title=Parallel Worlds: The Remarkable Gibbs-Hunts and the Enduring (In)significance of Melanin|publisher=University of Virginia Press|year=2010|isbn=978-0-8139-2887-6|pages=132|language=English}}</ref> The third child of five siblings, Ida was the eldest daughter.<ref name=":8">{{Cite book|last=Siegel|first=Mona L.|title=Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women's Rights After the First World War|publisher=Columbia University Press|year=2020|isbn=978-0-231-19510-2|location=New York|pages=64|language=English}}</ref> One of her sisters was Harriet Gibbs Marshall.
At Oberlin College, she completed a classical and scientific academic course in the Department of Philosophy and the Arts. She was a part of the first class of black women to graduate from the school in 1884 alongside Mary Church Terrell and Anna Julia Cooper. They counted among the first-generation of African-American women to graduate from a university.<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":9">{{Cite book|last=Siegel|first=Mona L.|title=Peace on our terms the global battle for women's rights after the First World War|date=2020|isbn=978-0-231-55118-2|location=New York|pages=72|oclc=1124788151}}</ref> Gibbs was also elected president of the Oberlin Literacy Society.<ref>"Oberlin." <nowiki><em>Cleveland Gazette</em></nowiki>, 24 Nov. 1883, p. 3. <nowiki><em>Readex: America's Historical Newspapers</em></nowiki>, infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A12B716FE88B82998%40EANX-12CC2D2342F41A80%402409139-12CBE5C74EAF4AE8%402-12DBAECC8BC9A3A0%40Oberlin. Accessed 27 Apr. 2020.</ref> In 1892, she received a masters of arts degree.{{citation needed|date=November 2021}} Oberlin College was the first college to accept and treat equally African-American men and all women.<ref name=":5" />
== Career and activism == ===Teaching===
Gibbs taught Latin and mathematics before her marriage.<ref name="Tyee">{{cite news|last1=Kilian|first1=Crawford|date=28 February 2011|title=Born Black in Victoria in 1862 - The Tyee|language=en|work=The Tyee|url=https://thetyee.ca/Books/2011/02/28/BornBlackinVic/|access-date=14 February 2017}}</ref><ref name="blackpast" /> She had to leave her teaching job upon marriage because until 1920, married women in the public school system in Washington, D.C., were forced to stop working.<ref name=":5" />
As a teacher, Gibbs taught English at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College in Normal, Alabama.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Woodson|first=C.G.|date=October 1947|title=The Gibbs Family|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44174731|journal=Negro History Bulletin|volume=11|issue=1 |pages=5|jstor=44174731 }}</ref> She also taught at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Armstrong Manual Training High School in Washington, D.C., and M Street High School, a prestigious African-American college preparatory school in Washington, D.C.<ref name=":1" /><ref name="blackpast" /> In the 1920s, M Street High School, later renamed Dunbar High School, had four African-American women who had doctorates, Ida Gibbs being one of them, which brought a lot of attention to the school.<ref name=":5" />
On April 12, 1904, Gibbs married the diplomat William Henry Hunt at #14 N Street, NW in Washington, D.C. After she married, she left her career as an educator to join her husband in various consular postings abroad.
=== Diplomat's wife ===
After her marriage, Gibbs Hunt accompanied her husband on his diplomatic assignments, including to Liberia, France, Madagascar, and Guadeloupe.<ref name="blackpast" /> Through her travels with her husband, Gibbs Hunt developed an international perspective on racial justice.<ref name=":0" /> Her time abroad exposed her to parallels between the African-American struggle in the United States and the struggles faced by African peoples in colonized territories.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Alexander|first=Adele Logan|title=Parallel worlds : the remarkable Gibbs-Hunts and the enduring (in)significance of melanin|date=2010|publisher=University of Virginia Press|isbn=978-0-8139-2887-6|location=Charlottesville|pages=10|oclc=429902455}}</ref>
=== YWCA and Red Cross work === Gibbs Hunt pursued her civil activism in a variety of ways. Promoting black education, civil rights, and woman's suffrage, Gibbs Hunt made her mark as an educator and Pan-Africanist. Between 1905 and 1907, Gibbs Hunt returned to the United States and endorsed Washington, D.C.'s new Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA).<ref>{{Cite book|last=Alexander|first=Adele Logan|title=Parallel worlds : the remarkable Gibbs-Hunts and the enduring (in)significance of melanin|date=2010|publisher=University of Virginia Press|isbn=978-0-8139-2887-6|location=Charlottesville|pages=131|oclc=429902455}}</ref> She organized the first Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) for black women and became a board member of the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|last=Lemay, Kate Clarke, 1978-|title=Votes for women! : a portrait of persistence|date=2019-03-26|others=Goodier, Susan; Jones, Martha S.; Tetrault, Lisa; National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution)|isbn=9780691191171|location=Princeton, New Jersey|oclc=1051137979}}</ref><ref name=":7" /> In 1906, while attending the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) conference in Detroit, Michigan, Gibbs Hunt described how African women responded to Belgian colonists in the Congo.<ref name=":4" /> During World War I, Gibbs Hunt was active in the French Red Cross where she aided Belgian refugees and visited wounded Allied soldiers.<ref name=":8" />
After World War I, Gibbs began to write for ''The Crisis'' under the pen name Iola Gibson.<ref name=":3" />
=== Pan Africanism ===
thumb|Ida Alexander Gibbs Hunt, 1918The Paris Peace Conference marked beginning of Gibbs Hunt's political leadership beyond her role as a diplomat's wife.<ref name=":6">Siegel, Mona L." Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women's Rights After the First World War". Columbia University Press, 2020.</ref> Internationally, she helped support W.E.B. DuBois in organizing many Pan-African Congresses beginning in 1919.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=Baumann|first=Roland M.|title=Constructing Black Education at Oberlin College|publisher=Ohio University Press|year=2010|isbn=978-0-8214-1887-1|pages=68}}</ref><ref name=":2" /> Gibbs encouraged W.E.B. Du Bois to come to France where she was living in order to advocate for global racial equality in the peace negotiations. Gibbs Hunt likely introduced Du Bois to black, French legislator, Blaise Diagne, who pushed the French government for approval of the Pan-African Congress of 1919.<ref name=":6" /> W.E.B. DuBois relied on Gibbs Hunt for her fluency in French, her organizational work, and her political connections.<ref name=":6" /> Gibbs Hunt acted as the primary translator at the 1919 Paris Pan-African Congress.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Dunstan|first1=Sarah Claire|date=2016|title=Conflicts of Interest: The 1919 Pan-African Congress and the Wilsonian Moment|journal=Callaloo|volume=39|issue=1|pages=133–150|doi=10.1353/cal.2016.0017|id={{ProQuest|1790184012}}|s2cid=159668506}}</ref> Her ultimate goal was to unite Africans across the diaspora around a common purpose.<ref name=":9" />
She also advocated for world disarmament and for the appointment of black representatives at the 1923 London Third Pan-African Congress in a paper entitled "The Colored Races and the League of Nations." Along with W.E.B. DuBois, she co-chaired the Conference's Executive Committee.<ref>Ramdani, Fatma. "Afro-American Women Activists as True Negotiators in the Internatio..." European Journal of American Studies, European Association for American Studies, 26 Mar. 2015, journals.openedition.org/ejas/10646.</ref><ref name="blackpast" /><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Ramdani|first1=Fatma|date=26 March 2015|title=Afro-American Women Activists as True Negotiators in the International Arena (1893-1945)|journal=European Journal of American Studies|volume=10|issue=1|doi=10.4000/ejas.10646|doi-access=free|hdl=20.500.12210/63477|hdl-access=free}}</ref>
=== Civil Rights and Women's rights === Nationally, she was involved in the Niagara Movement as well as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Other organizations Gibbs Hunt was involved in included the ''Club Franco-Étranger'', the Book Lover's Club, the Bethel Literary Society, the Washington Welfare Association, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.<ref name=":7">Smith, Jessie Carney. "Notable Black American Women". United States, Gale Research, 1992.</ref> Gibbs Hunt, along with other like-minded African-American and African women, fought for racial and gender equality by advocating for a global women's coalition.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Siegel|first=Mona L.|title=Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women's Rights After the First World War|publisher=Columbia University Press|year=2020|isbn=978-0-231-55118-2|location=New York|pages=39|language=English}}</ref>
Gibbs published articles in the ''Journal of Negro History'' and in the ''Negro History Bulletin'' including "The Price of Peace" (1938), "Civilization and the Darker Races" (n.d.), and the "Recollection of Frederick Douglas" (1953).<ref name=":7" /> Her writing allowed her to share her ideas regarding racial progress and reform that she learned from her experience living on three continents.<ref name=":7" />
== Death and legacy == Ida Gibbs Hunt died in Washington, D.C., on December 19, 1957.<ref name="blackpast" />
Though Du Bois is recognized as the leader of the Pan-African movement, Gibbs Hunt was the major organizer behind the 1919 conference, and an influential member of the Executive Committee in subsequent years.<ref name=":9" />
==References== {{Reflist|30em}}
==Further reading== * {{Cite book |last=Alexander |first=Adele Logan |author-link1=Adele Logan Alexander|title=Parallel worlds : the remarkable Gibbs-Hunts and the enduring (in)significance of melanin |date=2012 |publisher=University of Virginia Press |isbn=978-0-8139-3245-3 |edition=1st|location=Charlottesville |oclc=793010738}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gibbs, Ida}} Category:1862 births Category:1957 deaths Category:Oberlin College alumni Category:African-American educators Category:African-American women educators Category:American women educators Category:NAACP activists Category:20th-century African-American people Category:20th-century African-American women Category:American women human rights activists