The Frances Albrier papers include correspondence, legal and financial records, awards, photographs, records of civic organizations and women’s clubs, and assorted printed material documenting Albrier life and participation in various civic organizations and women’s clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Social activist Frances Albrier (1898-1987) was born on September 21, 1898 in Mt. Vernon, New York to Lewis L. and Laura Redgray. Following the death of her mother at the age of three, she was raised by her grandparents in Tuskegee, Alabama, attending primary and secondary school at the nearby Tuskegee Institute. She attended Howard University graduating with a B.A. in 1920. After graduation she moved to Berkeley, California where she met and married William Albert Jackson, and the couple had three children: Albert Jackson, Betty Kimble, and Anita Black. In 1921, she attended a meeting of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association at the Oakland Auditorium and joined Black Cross Nurse Corps. After she was unable to find a nursing job in the Bay Area’s segregated hospitals, she took a position as a maid with the Pullman Company in 1926. As a Pullman car maid, she met her second husband, Willie Antoine Albrier, and the two were married in 1934.

7.9 linear feet (7 boxes + 2 oversized boxes)

Permission to publish from the Frances Albrier papers must be obtained from the African American Museum & Library at Oakland.

No access restrictions. Collection is open to the public.