Margaret Flagg Holmes - Civic and Alpha Kappa Alpha Involvement

Civic and Alpha Kappa Alpha Involvement

In Chicago, Margaret Holmes participated in the NAACP and the YWCA. Through her civic work relating to civil rights, Holmes collaborated with national NAACP leaders Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, and Dr. Joel Spingarn.

For more than thirty years, from 1922 to 1953, Margaret Holmes was active in Chicago's Theta Omega alumnae chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha. She served as the vice-president and president of the chapter. Both the chapter and national organization raised funds in the 1920s and 1930s for scholarships, and contributed to the NAACP and Urban League. They worked to support education for African Americans and gain civil rights. Holmes helped serve the African American community through challenges of the Great Depression and the Great Migration, when Southern blacks arrived in Chicago at the rate of 5,000 per week.

After her move later in life to New York, Holmes became a member of the Tau Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha. In total, she worked with the sorority nearly seventy years to build social capital.

With her husband John, Margaret traveled across the United States and Canada. In Paris, France, Margaret met the famous African American dancer Josephine Baker. The Holmes couple were received by Pope Pius XI in 1931. After her husband died in 1946, Margaret Holmes moved to New York City to live with her sister. Holmes died on January 29, 1976.