Born: 3 July 1870, United States
Died: 12 August 1943
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Mrs. Lewis Coleman, Mattie Eliza Howard
African-American activist Mattie E. Coleman was one of the first African-American woman physicians, as well as a religious feminist and suffragist who built alliances between black and white women.
After graduating from Meharry Medical College in 1906, Dr. Coleman started a medical practice in Clarksville, Tennessee, where she provided medical care to those in need. From 1939 to 1943, whse served as superintendent of the Tennessee State Vocational School for Girls.
Coleman co-founded the Woman’s Connectional Missionary Council, the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church’s first woman-run society, in 1918, and served as its first president for 20 years. Recognising the potential of allying with white women, she worked closely with those the Methodist Episcopal Church, South on projects like the Bethlehem House settlement, which provided a kindergarten, sewing schools, Bible story hour and other services. She also enlisted white women to help African-American women gain independent roles in the church, even before white women had achieved that goal in their own churches, as well as working together on causes like social justice and women’s suffrage. Coleman worked with Juno Frankie Pierce to register more than 2,500 African-American women to vote in the 1919 Nashville municipal elections.