Born on August 9, 1883, in Washington D.C., Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin came of age as the United States reeled from the repercussions of the end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow segregation. Shortly after her birth, Lampkin’s parents, George and Rosa Adams, moved the family to Reading, Pennsylvania, to raise their only child. In 1909, at age 26, Lampkin relocated to Pittsburgh, where she would reside for the rest of her life. In 1912, she married William Lampkin, who owned and operated a restaurant in one of Pittsburgh’s suburbs. Daisy and William lived together in Pittsburgh’s Hill District for the duration of their fifty-year marriage and raised one child together, their goddaughter, Romaine Childs, whom they adopted in 1924 after the death of her mother.

Lampkin’s early activism centered around the women’s suffrage movement, in which women fought for the right to vote. Working within the white-dominated suffrage movement, Lampkin powerfully mobilized and advocated for Black women specifically. Through her “street corner” campaigns she organized Black women in protests and consumer boycotts around Pittsburgh (Toner 10). In 1915, Lampkin was elected president of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Lucy Stone Women’s Suffrage League, later renamed the Lucy Stone Civic League, which she led for forty years. By 1924, Pennsylvania’s Governor Gifford Pinchot had identified Lampkin as an influential Pennsylvania activist and appointed her to his Interracial Committee to advise the state legislature’s race relation policies.

Lampkin’s activism in Pittsburgh and throughout Pennsylvania, along with the passage of the nineteenth amendment granting women the right to vote, influenced Lampkin to become increasingly involved in politics and political organizing at the national level. Twice in the 1920s, the Republican Party elected Lampkin as an alternate representative for the national Republican convention to support Calvin Coolidge. Lampkin later shifted her support to the Democratic Party with the campaign and election of Franklin Roosevelt in the early 1930s. Along with Lampkin’s increased involvement in the political establishment, she became an indispensable organizer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). 

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Lampkin labored relentlessly as a field organizer for the NAACP, fundraising and registering new members at a rapid pace. In 1930, the NAACP appointed Lampkin as Regional Field Secretary, a position she held as she helped bring the national NAACP convention to Pittsburgh in 1931. The NAACP then promoted Lampkin to National Field Secretary, a title she held from 1935 until 1947. Through national membership drives and continuous promotion of the NAACP in the Pittsburgh Courier, Lampkin raised more money for the organization than any previous executive. In 1945, the NAACP named Lampkin the “NAACP Woman of the Year” for her groundbreaking fundraising and recruitment efforts across the country. After stepping down from National Field Secretary, Lampkin made history by becoming the first woman to serve on the national board of directors for the NAACP and served for seventeen years. As a board member, Lampkin continued traveling the country, advocating for voting rights and encouraging new members to join the NAACP.

In 1929, Lampkin, already a prominent shareholder with the Pittsburgh Courier, the leading African American newspaper, became the company’s vice president. During more than thirty years with the Pittsburgh Courier, Lampkin wrote, edited, and promoted the paper to communicate Black activism in Pittsburgh and around the United States. Through her strong leadership and fundraising efforts, as well her connection to the NAACP, Lampkin helped oversee the paper’s transformation from a local and regional news source to an internationally circulated publication.

Lampkin’s commitment to achieving equality for Black Americans earned her local and national recognition and inspired the next generation of Black civil rights activists. Pittsburgh locals referred to Lampkin as “Our Daisy,” and her work directly inspired lawyer and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to take a more active role in the NAACP. Additionally, Lampkin encouraged Kirkland Leroy Iris to join the Urban League in Pittsburgh, arguably launching his influential and historic political career. In 1944, activist Mary Mcleod Bethune named Lampkin one of the “Most Outstanding Women of 1944,” and in 1947, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority granted Lampkin an honorary membership. Elenore Roosevelt honored Lampkin with the Mary Mcleod Bethune World Citizenship Award in 1964.

In October 1964, while leading a membership campaign in New Jersey, Lampkin suffered a severe stroke. She died at her home in Pittsburgh’s Hill District on March 9, 1965, at the age of eighty-one. In 1983, in what would mark her one hundredth birthday, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission unveiled the Daisy E. Lampkin historical marker, situated at the intersection of Webster Avenue and Watt Lane in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. With this act, she became the first Black woman in Pennsylvania commemorated by a state historical marker. Lampkin’s tireless fights for both Black civil rights and women’s rights have placed her among the leading activists of the twentieth century. She is remembered for her strength, courage, compassion, and commitment to achieving equality for future generations of Black Americans.