As we celebrate Women’s History Month, many of us can name countless women who had a profound impact on our lives. For some of us, it was a dedicated teacher or an attentive crossing guard. For others, it was a next-door neighbor or the cashier at the neighborhood grocery store.  But for many, it was a family “shero” who taught us life’s lessons, who treated us kindly, who modeled for us womanhood at its finest.  Women, who we declared at a young age, were the ones we most wanted to be like when we grew up.  

For me, it was my maternal grandmother, Vashti Turley Murphy. She was a soft-spoken, genteel woman, who rarely raised her voice. But, when she spoke, we (her 16 grandchildren — 8 boys and 8 girls) stood at attention, ready to receive her pearls of wisdom. Sometimes it was in the form of a gentle admonition. Other times it was simply a raised eyebrow or a disapproving glance.   

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Grandmother Murphy was quite the teacher. She taught us how to set a table, how to sit with our backs straight and our ankles crossed, and she insisted that you can “catch more flies with honey than with vinegar” or that “beauty is, as beauty does” (it took me a long time to figure that one out). She also taught us to respect ourselves, to tell the truth no matter what, and to advocate for what we believed was right.  

A Washington, D.C., native, a graduate of  D.C.’s famed Miner Normal School, and a D.C. public school teacher, Grandmother Murphy was one of the 22 Howard University students who co-founded Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. on January 13, 1913.

Two months later, she joined her fellow sorority sisters and others, as they marched down Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue in support of a woman’s right to vote. The “colored women” were relegated to the back of the line, but they continued to march with their heads held high — enduring slurs and insults along the way. 

Isn’t it ironic (sad and disgusting) that here we are, more than 110 years later, still fighting for full voting rights for African Americans? Still witnessing the “lynching” of Black Americans? Still being judged by the color of our skin, rather than the content of our character? Still studying history books (those that are not banned) that gloss over the brutality of enslavement while minimizing the full contributions of the enslaved? Still fighting the structures and systems that privilege one race of people over another? Still having “The Talk” with our sons…and our daughters? 

 More than 60 years ago, in a speech for a Delta sponsored mother–daughter luncheon, Grandmother Murphy said, “As a founder, it has been my privilege to rejoice quietly in the growth of this child; to see it stretch north, south, east, and west; to see it expand into regions, boards, committees, and projects. It has been a joy to note its work in fellowship, libraries, and the creation of jobs; to discover that everywhere Delta goes, it encourages women to reach for the noblest, the highest and the best in our civilization, and shed its sweetness and light upon our communities.”

She went on to say, “Wherever one Delta exists, graduate or undergraduate, wherever one Delta family is established, there should grow an outpost of freedom: firm, unyielding, accepting no compromise. What a tragedy it would be, if we should stand by the Red Sea of Segregation, unwilling to advance up to our knees, up to our waists, up to our throats, up to our chins, up to our lips. What a tragedy it would be, as the history of this period is written, if it could be said that 15,000 of the best-educated women in the United States, the flower of American womanhood, stood in a struggling, hesitant mass, undecided, unwilling to take the first step. Daughters of Delta, show now that you are daughters of freedom and that you are worthy of redemption. Come, let us go forward into the sea to meet the God of our Father. Oh, God of our fathers, work thy miracle with Delta.” 

Vashti Turley Murphy with 3 of her 5 daughters: Standing (l to r) twin daughters Carlita and Vashti, age 14 or 15. Seated: my mother Frances, age 13 or 14 .Photo credit: From the personal collection of Frances Murphy Draper

Yes, Grandmother Murphy was quite the orator. She also was a double amputee, the mother of five daughters, the convener of several civic organizations, the wife of a busy newspaper publisher (her husband, Carl J. Murphy, was the publisher of the Baltimore AFRO for more than 40 years, and as I’ve already said, the grandmother of 16, yet she rarely complained.  She, like so many strong Black women, was always fighting for one cause or another, refusing to give in or to give up; constantly sacrificing for her family, and often quoting her favorite hymn:  

Be strong! 
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift; 
We have hard work to do and loads to lift; 
Shun not the struggle, face it, ’tis God’s gift. 

Be strong! 
Say not the days are evil— who’s to blame? 
And fold the hands and acquiesce— O shame! 
Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God’s Name. 

Be strong! 
It matters not how deep entrenched the wrong, 
How hard the battle goes, the day, how long; 
Faint not, fight on! Tomorrow comes the song. 

Grandmother Murphy died in 1960, yet her legacy lives on. She and countless other Black women of yesterday and today are the role models we need — and the role models that must be remembered and revered — not only during Women’s History Month, but all year long.  

Frances “Toni” Draper is the publisher of the AFRO-American Newspaper (the AFRO), with offices in Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.