Hedgemen, Anna Arnold (1899-1990)

ARNOLD, HEDGEMAN

Posted By: C. Tucker (email)
Date: 7/10/2016 at 11:38:09

New York Times
New York, NY [1-26-1990]

ANNA HEDGEMAN IS DEAD AT 90; AIDE TO MAYOR WAGNER IN 1950'S

Anna Arnold Hedgeman, an educator, civil rights advocate and the first black woman to be a member of a mayoral cabinet in New York City, died Jan. 17 in Harlem Hospital. She was 90 years old and had lived in Harlem for many years. Mrs. Hedgeman was an assistant to Mayor Robert F. Wagner from 1954 to 1958. Earlier she had been executive director of the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission and assistant to Oscar R. Ewing, Administrator of the Federal Security Agency, now part of the Department of Health and Human Services. As an executive of the Young Women's Christian Association for 12 years, she helped to develop a variety of international programs in education. In 1963 Mrs. Hedgeman joined the staff of the Commission on Religion and Race of the National Council of Churches. The commission was intended to mobilize the resources of Protestant and Orthodox churches to work against racial injustice in American life. Mrs. Hedgeman retired at the end of 1967. RAN FOR COUNCIL PRESIDENT Before joining the commission, Mrs. Hedgeman was a consultant to the American Missionary Association of the United Church of Christ. A Democrat, she ran for Congress in 1960 as an insurgent from the East Bronx and lost. In 1965 she was an unsuccessful candidate for City Council President on the Reform Democratic ticket with Representative William Fitz Ryan. In 1953, at the request of Chester Bowles, the United States Ambassador to India, Mrs. Hedgeman spent three months in India as an exchange leader for the State Department. She was also the keynote speaker at the first Conference of the Women of Africa and African Descent at Accra, Ghana, in 1960. Mrs. Hedgeman was honored for her work in race relations by, among others, the National Urban League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature, the National Council of Negro Women and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. In 1983 she received a ''pioneer woman'' award from the New York State Conference on Midlife and Older Women. She was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, grew up in Anoka, Minn., and graduated from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn. After graduation, she moved to Holly Springs, Miss., to teach at Rust College. She moved north and, after she married, settled in Brooklyn. She was the author of ''The Trumpet Sounds'' (Holt, Rinehart & Company, 1964) and ''The Gift of Chaos'' (Oxford University Press, 1977). She was married for 54 years to the late Merritt A. Hedgeman, an interpreter of black folk music and opera. There are no immediate survivors.