Fannie Lewis
Fannie Lewis was Cleveland, Ohio's longest-serving councilwoman and civil rights activist, best known for the Fannie Lewis Law requiring government contracts in Cleveland provide for employment of local workers.
In 1986, Lewis was selected to be a member of a delegation of Black female politicians who traveled to China as representatives of the United States. Several members of the delegation included prominent National political figures including Congress Woman Maxine Waters and House Representative Woman Dianne Watson, both of California.
Early life
Lewis was born in Memphis, Tennessee. She spent her early years in Marked Tree, Arkansas, before moving to Memphis, where, as a teenager she attended Booker T. Washington High in Memphis, Tennessee. At Booker T. she lettered in two sports, Basketball and Track. During the late Thirties, Lewis, who also excelled in baseball, was on a traveling female Barnstorming team, who, after agreeing to scrimmage an all white female team, were threaten with lynching by white spectators who felt her team was deliberately running up the score on their white opponents. Lewis and her teammates were forced to sprint to their already running pickup to escape the wrath of the white patrons.As a child, she worked in the fields picking cotton in Marion, Arkansas, where she witnessed a white farmer publicly murder one of her friends from school without facing repercussions. Her schoolteacher, also from Marion, was tied to a tree and burned to death for teaching black children to read.