Myra Lillian Davis Hemmings

Hemmings's path to Howard was helped by her community. Her widowed mother worked as a cook in a San Antonio boarding house, and local Black San Antonians, among them Samuel Johnson Sutton, Sr., helped pay her tuition. Three fellow Texans were among Delta Sigma Theta's twenty-two founders, and she served as first president of its Alpha Chapter. At Mary Church Terrell's urging, the founders marched in caps and gowns in the segregated section of the 1913 suffrage parade. She and her husband lived at 520 S. Olive Street, where students knew them as Moms and Pops.

What the plaque says

Myra Lillian Davis Hemmings (August 30, 1895 - December 8, 1968) African American educator, actress, and community activist Myra Hemmings was born in Gonzales, Texas to Henry and Susan (Dement) Davis. The family moved to San Antonio, where Myra graduated from Riverside High School in 1909. She attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., where on Jan. 13, 1913 she became one of 22 founders of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, the primary goals of which were to use their collective strength to promote educational excellence and to provide assistance to those in need. Their first public act was to participate in the women's suffrage procession down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington on Mar. 3, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson's presidential inauguration. Hemmings graduated from Howard in May 1913 and returned to begin her teaching career with the San Antonio Independent School District. She taught English and drama at Frederick Douglass and Phyllis Wheatley high schools for more than fifty years, influencing countless students to love performing arts and literature. Hemmings organized the San Antonio chapter of Delta Sigma Theta on Aug. 16, 1933 and served as its first president. Today there are more than 950 chapters and more than 250,000 members worldwide. Myra loved the theater and acting. In 1922, she married John (Pop) Hemmings, a former Broadway actor. Together they organized the Phyllis Wheatley Dramatic Guild Players. Their productions, in which she often acted, shaped the cultural life of Black San Antonioans. She directed more than twenty dramatic plays and appeared in three feature films: "Marching On!" (1943), "Go Down, Death!" (1944) and "The Girl in Room 20" (1946). Hemmings received her Master of Arts degree in Drama from Northwestern University in 1937. Myra Hemmings' prolific achievements continue to influence and inspire the community and the world. (2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Alamo — 1.0 mi
  Mission San Antonio de Valero before it was a fort: a church its builders never finished, a thirteen-day siege in 1836, and the Army gable of 1850-52 that became its emblem.
• La Villita Historic Arts Village — 1.1 mi
  The little village across the river from the presidio, where Cos surrendered San Antonio in 1835, rebuilt by Depression-era youth crews as a working crafts village.
• San Antonio River Walk — 1.1 mi
  A Depression-era park one level below downtown, built because San Antonio refused to pave its river after the 1921 flood, and designed by an architect the project later fired.
• San Fernando Cathedral — 1.4 mi
  The Canary Islanders' parish church on Main Plaza, where Bowie married and Santa Anna raised a red flag, rebuilt in Gothic Revival around the walls of the 1750s church.

More markers nearby

• Simona Smith Fisk — 0.2 mi
• James Nathaniel Fisk — 0.2 mi
• John Lang Sinclair — 0.2 mi
• Captain Lee Hall — 0.3 mi