Maud Anna Berry Smith Fuller

As president of the Women's Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention of America for forty years, Fuller founded and edited its national newspaper, the Woman's Helper. Around 1922 she introduced the resolution creating the Girls Auxiliary and the Shepherd Boys' League. In 1944 she led a campaign to build a mission in Africa, negotiating for a land grant in Liberia. She and her husband helped educate more than twenty-five young people from Panama to Liberia. In Austin she spoke before the city council, visited jail inmates and pressed for higher pensions for the aged.

What the plaque says

Maud Anna Berry Smith Fuller (October 7, 1868 - January 26, 1972) One of Austin's most revered African American civic and religious leaders, Maud Anna Berry Smith Fuller is best remembered for her generosity, inspirational speeches, Baptist missionary activity, teaching abilities, and compassion for those less fortunate than herself. The daughter of Hugh and Anna Barry, Maud was born and reared in Lockhart where she attended public school. After completing her studies at Guadalupe College in Seguin and Tillotson College in Austin, she embarked on a distinguished teaching career that spanned 25 years. She married W. H. Fuller in 1914. Influenced by a deep devotion to her Baptist beliefs, Maud Fuller led efforts to organize several local and national youth organizations and led many international missionary efforts while an active member of the Ebenezer Baptist Church of Austin and the Women's Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention. She served the Auxiliary as corresponding secretary prior to her election as president in 1928. She became Dr. Fuller in 1954 after receiving an honorary humanities degree from the Union Baptist Theological Seminary of Houston. She and her husband owned and operated a funeral home in East Austin beginning in 1932. She was buried in Austin's Evergreen Cemetery. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George Washington Carver Museum — 1.1 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 1.1 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.
• Texas State Cemetery — 1.3 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 1.6 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.

More markers nearby

• The Gant Family — 0.7 mi
• University Interscholastic League — 0.7 mi
• James L. Farmer, Jr. — 0.9 mi
• Laurine Cecil Anderson — 0.9 mi