Jessie Daniel Ames

Who was Jessie Daniel Ames?

Jessie Daniel Ames was a civil rights activist in the Southern United States. She was one of the first Southern white women to speak out and work publicly against lynching of blacks, which were often done by white men as a misguided act of chivalry to protect their "virtue". She bravely stood up to them and led organized efforts by white women in protest of its brutality, helping to bring about the decline of lynching in the 1930s and 1940s.

Ames was born in Palestine, Texas. She studied at Southwestern University, and thereafter, despite the objection to religion of her father, became a convert to Methodism. In 1905, she married Roger Post Ames, a doctor with the United States Army. He spent most of their married life in Central America, fighting yellow fever with Walter Reed, before dying there himself in 1914.

Jessie, a single 31-year-old with three children to support, moved in with her mother and helped with the family business. She also became involved with several Methodist women's groups. This involvement was the impetus for her involvement in the women's suffrage movement.