Adair, Christia V.

Christia Adair was a black suffragette. In her later life, she actively campaigned for civil rights for blacks in Houston and in Texas. Born in victoria, Texas in 1893, to uneducated parents, she attended Samuel Huston College in Austin and Prarie View State Normal and Industrial college (now Prarie View A&M), attaining a teaching certificate in 1914.

After her graduation, she moved to Edna to work as a teacher, marrying Elbert Adair in 1918. The two moved to Kingsville, where she worked with whites for women's suffrage. Although Congress granted women the right to vote, Christia soon found that this act did not include black women. After attending a rally for then-president Warren Harding who ignored her children to shake the hands of white children standing behind them, Christia became a lifelong Democrat. In doing so, she broke with black political tradition.

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