As a Wisconsinite, I’ve always been interested in our history and – even more so – the women who shaped it.
When I think of these progressive, inspiring women, top of mind is Ardie Clark Halyard. Born to a family of sharecroppers in Georgia, Clark Halyard attended Atlanta University and in 1923 moved to Milwaukee with her husband, according to Women in Wisconsin.
With a $10 bill, they changed their lives.
As African-Americans faced discriminatory banking practices greatly limiting their property ownership opportunities, Clark Halyard and her husband opened the first savings and loan owned by African Americans in 1924, helping to clear the way for others to get a loan and buy a home.
While I was inspired by this alone, that grew when I realized that Clark Halyard did this all without having the right to open a bank account herself—one she and other women would not have until the 1960s.
However, these and other societal obstacles did not keep her from assisting others in climbing over their own. She breathed new life into NAACP chapters around Wisconsin and collaborated to form the NAACP Youth Council—the same group that called for fair housing policies in Milwaukee.
In the 1950s, she became the first woman to ascend to the presidency of Milwaukee’s NAACP, and serve as the state organization’s treasurer and president. She also sat on state boards for adult education and for the status of women.
In her life, I see countless examples of not letting your circumstances define you or set you back. Instead, like Clark Halyard, we must do the work to make the progress we want to see, even if it takes a while for the ripples of change to reach us. |THIS.
[By Sarah Razner]
Sarah Razner is a reporter of real-life Wisconsin by day, and a writer of fictional lives throughout the world by night.
THISENT.com has teamed with ThePromptMag.com to celebrate Women’s History Month by honoring a “Wonder Woman” that has impacted our lives.
