Posted on behalf of Callum Carr, Head of Archives.
Olive G. Beasley was one of Flint’s most significant civil rights activists and premier citizens. She is remembered as a force of nature who fought for equal rights and invested her life in making Flint a better place for everyone. With seemingly boundless energy, she worked for equal and equitable education, housing, employment, and policing.
Born in 1903 in Chicago, Beasley was orphaned by age five. An unrelated family raised her in a predominantly Eastern European immigrant neighborhood. She graduated from Englewood High School and, in 1922, married George Leroy Beasley. In 1941, she worked as a registration interviewer for the Illinois State Employment Service in Moline, Illinois. As WWII progressed, the state agency was federalized, and when she left in 1946, she was a counselor for the U.S. Employment Service, still in the “Tri-Cities” region.
In 1947, she moved to Detroit, acting as executive director of the Michigan Committee on Civil Rights, a statewide coalition of civil rights groups working to pass a fair employment practices law. She held this position until 1955, when Michigan enacted just such a law, the Fair Employment Practices Act. From 1955 to 1957, she was in charge of the “Freedom Agenda” program, a project organized by the National League of Women Voters to promote discussion about civil liberties. From 1958 to 1959, she was an executive assistant to the head of the Detroit Branch of the NAACP, organizing Freedom Fund Dinners.
During her Detroit years, Olive Beasley was closely involved with many social welfare, civil rights, and political organizations, including as secretary of the Detroit League of Women Voters, president of the Detroit Branch of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, secretary of the Detroit chapter of Americans for Democratic Action, and as a member of the board of the Michigan Council on the Employment Problems of Working Women; and in other, organizations.
As a result of a long campaign in which Beasley had been extensively involved, the new state constitution, adopted in 1963, enacted a law establishing the Michigan Civil Rights Commission. This became effective on January 1, 1964, and she was transferred to the new agency. Her work at first consisted of processing claims of discrimination and investigating those claims. Later that year, the Commission formed regional offices. Beasley was appointed District Executive of the Commission’s office in Flint. She spent the first two years driving in from Detroit but in 1966, she moved to Flint where she lived the rest of her life.
As Flint’s District Executive, she almost immediately established herself as the matriarch of Flint's civil rights movement. Her most daring and well-known event occurred at City Hall in 1967. Floyd McCree, the first black mayor of Flint and the first black mayor of a major city post-reconstruction, fought for an open housing ordinance. When the City Commission refused, and McCree threatened to step down, Beasley organized a ten-day sleep-in protest on the lawn of Flint City Hall, which rocked the city and state. The sleep-in gained over 4,000 participants, including Governor George Romney and Attorney General Frank Kelley. In response, the City Commission capitulated, but that decision was eventually challenged by a petition circulated by residents who did not support the ordinance and demanded a vote. In 1968, Flint became the first city in America to pass an open housing ordinance by popular vote by only 43 votes. This was especially significant in Flint as urban renewal destroyed traditionally black neighborhoods in favor of highways while redlining and racial covenants were squeezing black residents out of the city.
Facing forced retirement in 1973, she was able to extend her career until she finally stepped down in 1980. Following retirement from the Commission in 1980, she worked as acting Executive Director of the Flint Urban Coalition for almost two years. She also served on the Michigan Advisory Committee to the United States Civil Rights Commission, the Michigan Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Legal Services of Eastern Michigan, the Flint Y.W.C.A. and many others. In 1990 she retired from activity in
All these organizations. She died May 13, 1999, in Flint and was buried in Sunset Hills Cemetery.
In 2000 Olive Beasley’s papers were processed into the Genesee Historical Collections Center (located on the second floor of the Thompson Library) and can be accessed by researchers by contacting the GHCC at ghcc-archives@umich.edu.
University of Michigan-Flint
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