Daughters of the American Revolution
The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (often abbreviated as DAR or NSDAR) is a lineage-based membership service organization for women who are directly descended from a person involved in supporting the American Revolution.[1] A non-profit group, the organization promotes education and patriotism. Its membership is limited to direct lineal descendants of soldiers or others of the American Revolution era who aided the revolution and its subsequent war. Applicants must be at least 18 years of age and have a birth certificate indicating that their gender is female. DAR has over 190,000 current members[2] in the United States and other countries.[3] The organization's motto is "God, Home, and Country".[4][5][6]
This article is about the women's organization. For the Grant Wood painting, see Daughters of Revolution.Abbreviation
NSDAR or DAR
October 11, 1890
Non-profit, lineage society, service organization
Historic preservation, education, patriotism, community service
190,000
American Spirit Magazine, Daughters Magazine
Structure[edit]
DAR is structured into three Society levels: National Society, State Society, and Chapter. A State Society may be formed in any US State, the District of Columbia, or other countries that are home to at least one DAR Chapter. Chapters can be organized by a minimum of 12 members, or prospective members, who live in the same city or town.[10]
Each Society or Chapter is overseen by an executive board composed of a variety of officers. National level officers are: President General, First Vice President General, Chaplain General, Recording Secretary General, Corresponding Secretary General, Organizing Secretary General, Treasurer General, Registrar General, Historian General, Librarian General, Curator General, and Reporter General, to be designated as Executive Officers, and twenty-one Vice Presidents General. These officers are mirrored at the State and Chapter level, with a few changes: instead of a President General, States and Chapters have Regents, the twenty-one Vice Presidents General become one Second Vice Regent position, and the title of "General" is replaced by the title of either "State" or "Chapter". Example: First Vice President General becomes State First Vice Regent.[11]
African Americans and DAR[edit]
In 1932, DAR adopted a rule excluding African American musicians from performing at DAR Constitution Hall in response to complaints by some members against "mixed seating," as both black and white people were attracted to concerts of black artists. In 1939, they denied permission for Marian Anderson to perform a concert. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a DAR member, resigned from the organization.
In her letter to the DAR, Roosevelt wrote, "I am in complete disagreement with the attitude taken in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artist...You had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way and it seems to me that your organization has failed." Author Zora Neale Hurston criticized Roosevelt's refusal to condemn the Board of Education of Washington, D.C.'s simultaneous decision to exclude Anderson from singing at the segregated white Central High School. Hurston declared "to jump the people responsible for racial bias would be to accuse and expose the accusers themselves. The District of Columbia has no home rule; it is controlled by congressional committees, and Congress at the time was overwhelmingly Democratic. It was controlled by the very people who were screaming so loudly against the DAR. To my way of thinking, both places should have been denounced, or neither."[33]
As the controversy grew, American media overwhelmingly backed Anderson's right to sing. The Philadelphia Tribune, an African American newspaper in Philadelphia, wrote, "A group of tottering old ladies, who don't know the difference between patriotism and putridism, have compelled the gracious First Lady to apologize for their national rudeness." The Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote, "In these days of racial intolerance so crudely expressed in the Third Reich, an action such as the D.A.R.'s ban ... seems all the more deplorable." At Eleanor Roosevelt's behest, President Roosevelt and Walter White, then-executive secretary of the NAACP, and Anderson's manager, impresario Sol Hurok arranged an open-air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with a dignified and stirring rendition of "America (My Country, 'Tis of Thee)". The event attracted a crowd of more than 75,000 in addition to a national radio audience of millions.[34]
In 1952, DAR reversed its "white performers only" policy.[35] In 1957, however, DAR's Colorado branch refused to allow a Mexican American child to participate in an Abraham Lincoln birthday event.[36]
In 1977, Karen Batchelor Farmer (now Karen Batchelor) from Detroit, was admitted to the Ezra Parker Chapter in Royal Oak, Michigan as the first known DAR African American member.[37] Batchelor's admission as the first known African American member of DAR sparked international interest after it was featured in a story on page one of The New York Times.[38] In 1984, Lena Lorraine Santos Ferguson, a retired school secretary, was denied membership in a Washington, D.C. chapter of the DAR because she was Black, according to a report by The Washington Post.[39] Ferguson met the lineage requirements and could trace her ancestry to Jonah Gay, a white man who fought in Maine.[39] Sarah M. King, the President General of the DAR, told The Washington Post that DAR's chapters have autonomy in determining members,[39] saying "Being black is not the only reason why some people have not been accepted into chapters. There are other reasons: divorce, spite, neighbors' dislike. I would say being black is very far down the line....There are a lot of people who are troublemakers. You wouldn't want them in there because they could cause some problems."[39] After King's comments were reported in a page one story, outrage erupted, and the City Council threatened to revoke the DAR's real estate tax exemption. King quickly qualified her comments, saying that Ferguson should have been admitted, and that her application had been handled "inappropriately". DAR changed its bylaws to bar discrimination "on the basis of race or creed." In addition, King announced a resolution to recognize "the heroic contributions of black patriots in the American Revolution."[40]
Since the mid-1980s, the DAR has supported a project to identify African Americans, Native Americans, and individuals of mixed race who were patriots of the American Revolution, expanding their recognition beyond soldiers.[41]
In 2008, DAR published Forgotten Patriots: African-American and American Indian Patriots in the Revolutionary War.[19][41] In 2007, the DAR posthumously honored Mary Hemings Bell, an individual enslaved by Thomas Jefferson, as a "Patriot of the Revolution." Because of Hemings Bell's declaration by the DAR to be a Patriot, all of her female descendants qualify for membership in the DAR.[42] Wilhelmena Rhodes Kelly, in 2019, became the first African American elected to the DAR National Board of Management when she was installed as New York State Regent in June.[43]
Caroline Scott Harrison, First DAR President General
Southern Woman Named DAR President General
Silver Arrow, the symbol of the Dillon administration in the form of a pin.
