Atlanta, Georgia (November 7, 1909 – August 9, 1980) 70 yrs

Ruby Hurley was an American civil rights activist. She was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement and administrator for the NAACP and was known as the “queen of civil rights”. In 1951, she moved to Birmingham, Alabama, to set up an NAACP office and oversee membership drives in Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. It was the first permanent NAACP office located in the Deep South. She became Regional Secretary of the NAACP’s newly formed Southeast Regional Office in 1951. In 1955, Hurley joined with civil rights activists Amzie Moore and Medgar Evers, who was Field Secretary at the NAACP’s Mississippi office, in investigating the murders of minister George W. Lee and 14-year-old Emmett Till.  Hurley appeared on the cover of Jet magazine’s October 6, 1955, issue with a caption reading “Most Militant Negro Woman In The South”.