Maritcha Lyons as a school girl

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NYPL: psnypl_scg_194
Nineteenth Century Collections--Ambrotype Collection

Date:

circa 1860

Rights:

Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
Born in 1848, Maritcha was the daughter of Albro and Mary Joseph Lyons. She attended the city's Colored Schools where Charles Reason was one of her teachers. After graduation, she herself became a teacher and had a long career in elementary school education. She was also a social activist, close friend of Ida B. Wells, and founding member of a black women's club in Brooklyn, the Woman's Loyal Union.

According to Maritcha, her father once told her: "I want you to write a book; I tried to do this myself but never got further than the selection of a title—"The Gentlemen in Black." She eventually wrote a memoir which she titled "Memories of Yesterdays: All of Which I Saw and Part of Which I Was." It's preserved in the Harry Albro Williamson papers at the Schomburg Center.

Maritcha never married and died in 1929.

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Citation

“Maritcha Lyons as a school girl,” Black Gotham Archive, accessed July 10, 2018, https://archive.blackgothamarchive.org/items/show/20/.