Carrie Barnes Ross
Carolyn V. "Carrie" Barnes Ross was an American educator and suffragist, based in Indianapolis. She was founding president of Branch No. 7, a chapter of the Equal Suffrage League of Indiana.
Early life and education
Carolyn V. Barnes was born in Kentucky in the 1880s to Charles Henry Barnes and Lillie Peters Barnes. She was raised by her widowed mother and maternal grandmother in Denver, Colorado. She graduated from Denver High School in 1902, and from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1905.Career
Barnes taught at Tuskegee Institute for three years after college. In 1908 she moved to Indianapolis and taught school in the segregated schools of the Indianapolis Public School District. She was active in the leadership for the Camp Fire girls and secretary of the Indianapolis chapter of the NAACP. She gave addresses at church and community events, and hosted meetings of a literary society in her home.Barnes attended a 1912 woman's suffrage meeting at the home of Madam C. J. Walker, organized by attorney Freeman Briley Ransom. Ross was elected president of the resulting group, which was known as Branch No. 7 of the Equal Suffrage League of Indiana. "We all feel that colored women have need for the ballot that white women have, and a great many needs that they have not," she wrote of their work. For four years she worked for suffrage in Indianapolis's Black community. She often spoke at events with fellow teacher Frances Berry Coston.