Jemison, Alice Lee (1901–1964)

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Jemison, Alice Lee (1901–1964)

Native American political leader and journalist. Born Alice Mae Lee on October 9, 1901, at Silver Creek, New York (just off of the Cattaraugus Reservation); died on March 6, 1964, in Washington, D.C.; daughter of Daniel A. Lee and Elnora E. Seneca; educated at Silver Creek High School; married LeVerne Leonard Jemison, on December 6, 1919 (separated, December 1928); children: LeVerne "Jimmy" Lee (b. 1920);Jeanne Marie Jemison (b. 1923).

Alice Jemison was born on October 9, 1901, the first of three children of Daniel A. Lee and Elnora Seneca . Though her cabinetmaker father was Cherokee, Alice grew up in the matrilineal society of her Seneca mother. Much of Alice's confidence in her later activist work stemmed from the ancient Iroquois tradition of female political participation. Her family's financial instability limited Alice's education to the Silver Creek High School, and she worked in the evenings as an usher and a beautician until she graduated in 1919.

Alice married LeVerne Jemison, a steelworker from her reservation, on December 6, 1919. After their marriage ended in 1928, Alice Jemison was left to support her two children and her mother. Over the next two years, she was employed as a factory worker, a clerk, a peddler, a dressmaker, a practical nurse, a secretary, a paralegal researcher, and a freelance journalist. In 1930, she became an employee for the Bureau of the Census.

Increasingly concerned about the plight of the poverty-stricken Seneca Nation, Jemison became the secretary to Ray Jimerson, the president of the Nation. She was instrumental in the defense of two Seneca women arrested for the murder of a white woman in Buffalo, New York, in 1930. Jemison wrote letters to public figures and articles for the Buffalo newspapers in defense of the women, who were eventually released. From 1932 to 1934, Jemison was a syndicated columnist for the North American Newspaper Alliance. In her writings, she expressed a firm belief in the sanctity of Indian treaty rights and advocated the abolishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The writings of Carlos Montezuma, the prominent Pan-Indian leader, profoundly influenced her stance on the BIA and her criticism of Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier.

In 1935, Jemison became the spokesperson for Joseph Bruner, president of the American Indian Federation. As such, she functioned as the organization's main lobbyist on Capitol Hill. Attending more congressional hearings than any other Indian in the late 1930s, she fought for the repeal of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which had been established by Collier as a way to fashion home rule among the nation's tribes. Jemison resented federal intervention in Native American affairs and opposed government imposition on every side. She disagreed with the herd reduction program among the Navaho, lobbied against the construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway through Cherokee land, and charged the BIA with incompetence. She resigned from this position in 1939.

Occasionally known to denounce opponents as communists or atheists, Jemison gained acceptance from right-wing critics of the Roosevelt administration. In 1938 and 1940, determined in her battle against the BIA, she was willing to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities at the same hearings with self-proclaimed fascists. Jemison also showed formidable opposition to the Selective Service Act in 1940, and these activities opened the door for the Interior Department to successfully label her an "Indian Nazi," even though she passed the most rigorous FBI loyalty checks. Despite constant government harassment, she continued to call for the abolishment of the BIA.

Alice Jemison remained in Washington, D.C. for the rest of her life, keeping her connection with the Seneca through her uncle Cornelius Seneca, president of the Seneca Nation. She died of cancer on March 6, 1964, and was buried on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation.