Lucy Randolph Mason

Who was Lucy Randolph Mason?

Lucy Randolph Mason was an activist in the union movement, the consumer movement and the civil rights movement in the mid-20th century.

Born near Alexandria, Virginia in 1882, Mason vowed as a child to continue her family's long tradition of community service and commitment to human rights. Her father and grandfather were Episcopal ministers. She was also a fifth-generation descendant of George Mason, author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights which served as the model for the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution.

Mason sought to bring about more humane conditions for working people, ending racial injustice and ensuring that union organizers throughout the South were guaranteed the constitutional rights to free speech, assembly and due process that George Mason had helped establish.