Amelia Elizabeth Perry Pride (27 March 1857 or 1858–4 June 1932), educator and civic leader, was born free in Lynchburg and was the daughter of Ellen George Perry and William Perry, a master carpenter and building contractor. Her parents were members of the free Black elite of the city. She attended Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton University) and graduated in 1879. Pride immediately began teaching, for one year in the Indian School at Hampton and for one year in the Norfolk public schools. She then returned to Lynchburg, where on 27 December 1881 she married Claiborne Gladman Pride, a barber and a member of a Lynchburg family whose ancestors had been free long before the Civil War. They had three sons, all of whom died by age thirty, and the couple later helped care for two of their granddaughters as well as other children they took into their home.

Pride taught in Lynchburg's public schools until 1911 and for many years was principal of the Polk Street Colored School. She organized and led night classes for children and adults for whom day school was not possible. In 1888 she reported that she had already taught about 1,250 children and that about 120 of them had gone on to become teachers. In 1898, with a donation from Lynchburg writer and reformer Orra Gray Langhorne, Pride started a free sewing school to provide girls with skills for future employment and by 1901 about 150 students had enrolled. She later established the Theresa Pierce Cooking School and her work led to the incorporation of home economics into the city's public schools for Black students. She introduced gardening into her public school curriculum and her students grew the gourds used as dippers for the classroom water buckets. Throughout her career, Pride also sought money and scholarships for girls to attend college.

Characterized by an abiding concern for the welfare of her community, Pride worked selflessly for the betterment of others. She was an officer in the local African American temperance organization by the 1880s. In 1897, she began raising money to establish a home for destitute older African American women, many of whom had been born into slavery and who had no family to support them in their old age. Named Dorchester Home in honor of a donation sent from the Massachusetts town of that name, it provided a place to live as well as fuel, food, clothing, and money for its residents. Pride organized dozens of local women into committees with responsibility for fundraising through weekly fairs and "pound parties," where they collected pounds of beans, cornmeal, and other food supplies. The home remained open until 1904, when all but one of the residents had died. During this time Pride also headed up the Woman's Christian Alliance, which had been organized to assist Lynchburg residents in poverty and poor health who did not receive care from the city's hospital or almshouse. From at least 1899 until 1902 she was a member of the Committee on Domestic Economy of the Hampton Negro Conference, which worked to ameliorate economic and social challenges faced by African Americans around the state.

Pride continued operating her cooking school until 1917, when she turned over its facilities to the Virginia Theological Seminary and College (later Virginia University of Lynchburg). During World War I, she joined the Red Cross and, among other tasks, taught adults how to stretch tight budgets for food conservation. Amelia Elizabeth Perry Pride died of heart disease at her Lynchburg home on 4 June 1932. She was buried in her family plot in Methodist Cemetery, later Old City Cemetery, in Lynchburg. Eulogized as a pioneer, Pride was described as "ahead of her generation in her plans for the progress of her race." The Amelia Pride Building for adult education on the campus of P. L. Dunbar Middle School memorializes her in Lynchburg. The Dorchester Home is recognized by a state historic highway marker, and Pride's name is also inscribed on the Wall of Honor of the Virginia Women's Monument in Richmond's Capitol Square.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Elaine P. Witty, "Amelia Perry Pride (1858–1932)," Notable Black American Women, ed. Jessie Carney Smith (1992), 878–879 (born 1858), Ted Delaney and Phillip Wayne Rhodes, Free Blacks of Lynchburg, Virginia, 1805–1865 (2001), 63–64 (portrait, born 1857), and James M. Elson, Lynchburg, Virginia, The First Two Hundred Years, 1786–1986 (2004), 240–241 (born 1857); Amelia Perry Pride Papers, Hampton University Archives; United States Census Schedules, Lynchburg, 1860, (age three), 1870 (with first name Elizabeth, age thirteen), Norfolk, 1880 (age nineteen), Lynchburg, 1900 (born Mar. 1858), 1910 (age fifty), 1930 (age seventy), Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; Lynchburg, Marriage Register (with full name and age twenty-three on 27 Dec. 1881), Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; Twenty-Two Years' Work of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (1893), 123–124; What Hampton Graduates Are Doing (n.p., n.d. [Hampton, 1904?]), 26; Southern Workman 18 (1889): 16, 102 (self-reported birth date of 27 Mar. 1858), 26 (1897): 111 (first quotation), 27 (1898): 68, 116, and 28 (1899): 65–66; Richmond Planet, 9 June 1917; Hampton Negro Conference Annual Report, (1900), 46, and (1901), 31–33; some of Pride's cookbooks are in the collections of the Lynchburg Museum; Cynthia Neverdon-Morton, Afro-American Women of the South and the Advancement of the Race, 1895–1925 (1989); Lynchburg, Death Certificate (birth date of 27 Mar. 1857), BVS; obituaries in Norfolk Journal and Guide, 25 June 1932 (with second quotation and portrait), and Southern Workman 61 (1932): 384; gravestone with birth date of 27 Mar. 1857 in Old City Cemetery, Lynchburg.

Photograph in What Hampton Graduates are Doing (1904?).

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Leila Christenbury.

How to cite this page:
Leila Christenbury, "Amelia Elizabeth Perry Pride (1857 or 1858–1932)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2022 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Pride_Amelia_Perry, accessed [today's date]).

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