Activist Lugenia Burns Hope To Receive Historical Society Marker For Civil Rights Work In Georgia

The Georgia Historical Society has announced plans to dedicate a civil rights trail historical marker to Lugenia Burns Hope on Tuesday, June 13.

In a partnership with Mercedes-Benz USA and the Morehouse College Cultural Heritage Preservation Initiative, GHS will add Hope’s marker to more than 50 others that make up the organization’s Georgia Civil Rights Trail, which aims to ‘document the struggle for human and civil rights from the period following Reconstruction to the modern movement in the mid-twentieth century,’ according to Rough Draft Atlanta. The marker will honor Hope’s commitment to social service issues facing the community. “As a founder of Atlanta’s Neighborhood Union (NU), Lugenia Burns Hope advocated for African Americans to have increased accessibility to social services and living conditions. GHS is pleased to add this new historical marker to the GHS Georgia Civil Rights Trail,” said GHS’ Marker Manager Elyse Butler.

Hope began her social activism career in Chicago, working at two charitable organizations before moving to Atlanta with her husband in the early 1900s. In 1908, Hope founded Neighborhood Union alongside other women and served as the organization’s president for over three decades, according to Rough Draft Atlanta.

“As Founding President of the Neighborhood Union, Lugenia Burns Hope was very much in the tradition of the Black Women’s Club Movement, which sought to improve such things as housing, healthcare, and education for African Americans through self-help initiatives,” said Dr. Clarissa Myrick-Harris, professor of Africana Studies and co-founder of the Morehouse College Cultural Heritage Preservation Initiative. “However, Hope was also an innovative social justice activist who fought for desegregation and political empowerment of African Americans—including voting rights for women. Within the NU and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), she led initiatives that laid the foundation for grassroots social and political activism during the civil rights movement and became a model for community building around the world.”