Mary Townsend was born in
Hartford, Connecticut on May 10, 1873. Her parents died while she was a teenager. Prior to her mother's death, she was adopted by the family of the
American Civil War veteran and social activist Lloyd G. Seymour. In June 1888, at the age of fifteen, she visited the City Hall to review her birth certificates and declared her official name as Mary Emma Townsend Seymour. In 1891, she married Frederick Seymour, a member of the Seymour family. As part of her activities with the NAACP, she went undercover to investigate the treatment of women tobacco workers, and worked to publicize their plight. An account of Mary's undercover work was published in the NAACP's newsletter
The Crisis in June 1920 under the title "A Woman's Work." In 1918, she helped form Hartford's equal rights advocacy chapter of the
Circle For Negro War Relief, to help black soldiers' families during the war. Around the same time, she also joined the Colored Women's League of Hartford. In 1919, when
suffragists were working to have the
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution passed prohibiting any United States citizen from being denied the
right to vote on the basis of sex, Seymour campaigned to ensure that black women's right to vote would also be protected. Around 1920, Seymour joined the
American Red Cross and worked with African-American women tobacco packers. She and fellow activist Josephine Bennett interviewed female laborers, and co-wrote an exposé on the subject for
The Crisis in 1920. In 1920, Seymour became the first African-American woman to run for the
Connecticut General Assembly. She did not win, but was the first African-American woman to run for this position. She died in Hartford on January 12, 1957 and is buried in Hartford's
Old North Cemetery. Her grave is a site on the Connecticut Freedom Trail. In 1997, Mary Seymour Place was opened in Hartford, to provide supportive housing for homeless women and children. She was inducted into the
Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 2006. ==References==