Whether in the classroom, in community meetings or with her colleagues at the NAACP, Enolia P. McMillan was known to speak her mind and never to suffer fools kindly. She was a formidable leader with a keen understanding of social, economic and political affairs, qualities and attributes that served her well in 1984, when she became the first female president of the NAACP.
But there were many plateaus of challenge before she arrived at the helm of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. At every step along the way, she demonstrated an intelligence and perspicacity that always placed her a notch above the extraordinary, and ever ready to assume whatever the awesome responsibility.
She may have acquired these abilities from her father and mother. She was born Enolia Virginia Pettigen Oct. 20, 1904, in Willow Grove, Pa. Her father was a former slave who became a widely respected vegetable farmer after moving the family to Baltimore. One of his most prominent clients was Morgan State University. Her mother was a domestic worker who taught her reading and writing long before she began attending school.
“In my third year of high school,” McMillan told a reporter, “a classmate told me, ‘If you aren’t in with the teacher, she won’t pass you.’ I said, ‘I’m not going to get in with her, and she’ll pass me.’ And she did. She gave me 75s while others got 95s. My mother asked her what my weakness was. Do you know what she said? ‘She’s not using enough commas.’”
Not only did she possess an ample supply of commas by the time she enrolled at Howard University, she also had enough stamina and vitality to commute for four years to school because she couldn’t afford board and lodging. But soon, given her academic progress, her financial situation improved dramatically during the later undergraduate years, when she was awarded a scholarship by the Epsilon Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.
After receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree in education in 1926, she began teaching. While working on her master’s degree, she resumed a commuting schedule, this time to Columbia University, where she worked on her master’s thesis entitled, “Factors Affecting Secondary Education in the Counties of Maryland.” For the most part, her thesis was a searing critique of Maryland’s racist dual school system during the 1930s, including the rampant inequality in school terms, salary scales and curricula.
One result of her thesis was her election as president of the Maryland State Colored Teachers’ Association and as regional vice president of the National Association of Colored Teachers. Busy as she was as teacher, organizer and leader of organizations, she still found time to marry Betha D. McMillan Sr. in 1936. Meanwhile, other impediments loomed, none more problematic than the denial of promotions in the Baltimore City School System.
The setbacks in the school system only spurred her activism with the NAACP, where throughout the 1960s and 1970s, McMillan was president of the Baltimore branch of the organization. In 1984, she was elected to the presidency of the organization, and although the position was largely ceremonial, she used the platform to raise critical questions and to resolve some of the internal debates. A year after assuming this new role, her husband, a restauranteur, died.
There were also a number of national and international issues on the table, and she dealt with them forthrightly. Much of her time was spent dealing with the Reagan administration, voicing her complaint about his policies on housing, employment, business and particularly education, her main concern.
Despite the brave fight she waged with a reactionary government and its leadership, the NAACP was enduring a decline in membership. Even worse, there was trouble within the organization. Not satisfied with the leadership under her watch, McMillan was very upset with the organization’s direction set by its executive director, Benjamin Chavis Jr., and the chairman of the board, Dr. William Gibson. By the early 1990s, under accusations of financial mismanagement, both were no longer functioning at the NAACP.
McMillan was chiefly responsible for their departure, having voted against Gibson at the annual board meeting in 1995. Civil rights icon Myrlie Evers-Williams replaced him by one vote. With the organization under new leadership, McMillan then set out to improve the financial situation. She launched an initiative based on the sale of a button that declared “I Gave NAACP.” More than $30,000 was raised through the campaign.
In 1998, during an annual NAACP affair, Julian Bond, chairman of the board, thanked her for her service. “Here’s this woman who you would otherwise think would be tending to her knitting,” he said, “who had been a lifetime civil rights activist. And when the organization she spent her life working for was in crisis, she jumped to make sure it was salvaged. For many people, she became the public face of the NAACP.”
When she was asked about the role of the NAACP and how it should increase its place in public life, she said, “The NAACP must appeal to the young people of today and make them aware of what young people were able to do before, and show them exactly how much of what had been done is being undone.”
Along with her duties and obligations at the NAACP, McMillan was a member of the Board of Regents of Morgan State University, an institution her father had helped to grow and flourish. And there isn’t space here to cite the numerous awards and tributes she received during a very active life as an educator and civil rights advocate.
McMillan died of congestive heart failure Oct. 24, 2006, four days after celebrating her 102nd birthday.
