Eva Del Vakia Bowles
*Eva Del Vakia Bowles was born on this date in 1875. She was a Black administrator and activist.
From Albany, Athens County, Ohio, her grandfather, John R. Bowles, served as chaplain of the all-Black 54th Massachusetts Infantry during the American Civil War and later became the first Black teacher hired by the Ohio Public School Fund. Her father was also a teacher. When they moved to Columbus, Ohio, her father became the first Black postal clerk for the Railway Mail Service.
She began her career in education as the first Black faculty member of Chandler Normal School in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1905, she was called to New York to work as secretary of the Colored Young Women's Christian Association (later, the 137th Street YWCA) in Harlem. With this position, she became the first Black YWCA secretary. President Theodore Roosevelt was so impressed with Bowles's work during World War I that he designated $4,000 of his Nobel Peace Prize Award to be disbursed at her discretion. Bowles advocated for increased work with Black women in Africa and the Caribbean in her international work.
She also served as an essential liaison between the associations and such organizations as the National Urban League, the National Interracial Conference, the American Interracial Peace Committee, the NAACP, the National League of Women Voters, the Commission of Church and Race Relations of the Federal Council of Churches, and her own denominational Episcopalian women's interracial organization. Eva Bowles died on June 14, 1943.
